1682	----	MENEXENUS by Plato (see Appendix I) Translated by Benjamin Jowett APPENDIX I. It seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of Plato from the spurious. The only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of Aristotle; for the Alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries. Even the value of the Aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him. And several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken. Prior, however, to the enquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following: Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation, than longer ones; and some kinds of composition, such as epistles or panegyrical orations, are more liable to suspicion than others; those, again, which have a taste of sophistry in them, or the ring of a later age, or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise, or in which a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected, or which seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical author, are also of doubtful credit; while there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery, which combines excellence with length. A really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato; and to the forger or imitator, the 'literary hack' of Alexandria and Athens, the Gods did not grant originality or genius. Further, in attempting to balance the evidence for and against a Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries. Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to have composed dialogues; and mistakes of names are very likely to have occurred. Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication, or printing, or binding, or even of distinct titles. An unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same character; and the name once appended easily obtained authority. A tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been preserved to us. These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness: (1) That is most certainly Plato's which Aristotle attributes to him by name, which (2) is of considerable length, of (3) great excellence, and also (4) in harmony with the general spirit of the Platonic writings. But the testimony of Aristotle cannot always be distinguished from that of a later age (see above); and has various degrees of importance. Those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour. They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible; those again which are quoted but not named, are still more defective in their external credentials. There may be also a possibility that Aristotle was mistaken, or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing; but this is inconceivable about a more important work, e.g. the Laws, especially when we remember that he was living at Athens, and a frequenter of the groves of the Academy, during the last twenty years of Plato's life. Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from the Platonic writings he never attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to any one but Plato. And lastly, we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian (1) credentials may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of (2) length, (3) excellence, and (4) accordance with the general spirit of his writings. Indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient Greek authors may be summed up under two heads only: (1) excellence; and (2) uniformity of tradition--a kind of evidence, which though in many cases sufficient, is of inferior value. Proceeding upon these principles we appear to arrive at the conclusion that nineteen-twentieths of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to Plato, are undoubtedly genuine. There is another portion of them, including the Epistles, the Epinomis, the dialogues rejected by the ancients themselves, namely, the Axiochus, De justo, De virtute, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Eryxias, which on grounds, both of internal and external evidence, we are able with equal certainty to reject. But there still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are genuine or spurious. They may have been written in youth, or possibly like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions of pupils; or they may have been the writings of some contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master. Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them. Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their spurious character. For who always does justice to himself, or who writes with equal care at all times? Certainly not Plato, who exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power, in the formation of sentences, and in the use of words, if his earlier writings are compared with his later ones, say the Protagoras or Phaedrus with the Laws. Or who can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over above fifty years, in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of political and literary transition? Certainly not Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his later writings from Aristotle. The dialogues which have been translated in the first Appendix, and which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades. Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle; the first in the Metaphysics, the latter in the Rhetoric. Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues. From the mention of 'Hippias' in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with a second dialogue bearing the same name. Moreover, the mere existence of a Greater and Lesser Hippias, and of a First and Second Alcibiades, does to a certain extent throw a doubt upon both of them. Though a very clever and ingenious work, the Lesser Hippias does not appear to contain anything beyond the power of an imitator, who was also a careful student of the earlier Platonic writings, to invent. The motive or leading thought of the dialogue may be detected in Xen. Mem., and there is no similar instance of a 'motive' which is taken from Xenophon in an undoubted dialogue of Plato. On the other hand, the upholders of the genuineness of the dialogue will find in the Hippias a true Socratic spirit; they will compare the Ion as being akin both in subject and treatment; they will urge the authority of Aristotle; and they will detect in the treatment of the Sophist, in the satirical reasoning upon Homer, in the reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that vice is ignorance, traces of a Platonic authorship. In reference to the last point we are doubtful, as in some of the other dialogues, whether the author is asserting or overthrowing the paradox of Socrates, or merely following the argument 'whither the wind blows.' That no conclusion is arrived at is also in accordance with the character of the earlier dialogues. The resemblances or imitations of the Gorgias, Protagoras, and Euthydemus, which have been observed in the Hippias, cannot with certainty be adduced on either side of the argument. On the whole, more may be said in favour of the genuineness of the Hippias than against it. The Menexenus or Funeral Oration is cited by Aristotle, and is interesting as supplying an example of the manner in which the orators praised 'the Athenians among the Athenians,' falsifying persons and dates, and casting a veil over the gloomier events of Athenian history. It exhibits an acquaintance with the funeral oration of Thucydides, and was, perhaps, intended to rival that great work. If genuine, the proper place of the Menexenus would be at the end of the Phaedrus. The satirical opening and the concluding words bear a great resemblance to the earlier dialogues; the oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides. To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades, which, of all the disputed dialogues of Plato, has the greatest merit, and is somewhat longer than any of them, though not verified by the testimony of Aristotle, and in many respects at variance with the Symposium in the description of the relations of Socrates and Alcibiades. Like the Lesser Hippias and the Menexenus, it is to be compared to the earlier writings of Plato. The motive of the piece may, perhaps, be found in that passage of the Symposium in which Alcibiades describes himself as self-convicted by the words of Socrates. For the disparaging manner in which Schleiermacher has spoken of this dialogue there seems to be no sufficient foundation. At the same time, the lesson imparted is simple, and the irony more transparent than in the undoubted dialogues of Plato. We know, too, that Alcibiades was a favourite thesis, and that at least five or six dialogues bearing this name passed current in antiquity, and are attributed to contemporaries of Socrates and Plato. (1) In the entire absence of real external evidence (for the catalogues of the Alexandrian librarians cannot be regarded as trustworthy); and (2) in the absence of the highest marks either of poetical or philosophical excellence; and (3) considering that we have express testimony to the existence of contemporary writings bearing the name of Alcibiades, we are compelled to suspend our judgment on the genuineness of the extant dialogue. Neither at this point, nor at any other, do we propose to draw an absolute line of demarcation between genuine and spurious writings of Plato. They fade off imperceptibly from one class to another. There may have been degrees of genuineness in the dialogues themselves, as there are certainly degrees of evidence by which they are supported. The traditions of the oral discourses both of Socrates and Plato may have formed the basis of semi-Platonic writings; some of them may be of the same mixed character which is apparent in Aristotle and Hippocrates, although the form of them is different. But the writings of Plato, unlike the writings of Aristotle, seem never to have been confused with the writings of his disciples: this was probably due to their definite form, and to their inimitable excellence. The three dialogues which we have offered in the Appendix to the criticism of the reader may be partly spurious and partly genuine; they may be altogether spurious;--that is an alternative which must be frankly admitted. Nor can we maintain of some other dialogues, such as the Parmenides, and the Sophist, and Politicus, that no considerable objection can be urged against them, though greatly overbalanced by the weight (chiefly) of internal evidence in their favour. Nor, on the other hand, can we exclude a bare possibility that some dialogues which are usually rejected, such as the Greater Hippias and the Cleitophon, may be genuine. The nature and object of these semi-Platonic writings require more careful study and more comparison of them with one another, and with forged writings in general, than they have yet received, before we can finally decide on their character. We do not consider them all as genuine until they can be proved to be spurious, as is often maintained and still more often implied in this and similar discussions; but should say of some of them, that their genuineness is neither proven nor disproven until further evidence about them can be adduced. And we are as confident that the Epistles are spurious, as that the Republic, the Timaeus, and the Laws are genuine. On the whole, not a twentieth part of the writings which pass under the name of Plato, if we exclude the works rejected by the ancients themselves and two or three other plausible inventions, can be fairly doubted by those who are willing to allow that a considerable change and growth may have taken place in his philosophy (see above). That twentieth debatable portion scarcely in any degree affects our judgment of Plato, either as a thinker or a writer, and though suggesting some interesting questions to the scholar and critic, is of little importance to the general reader. MENEXENUS INTRODUCTION. The Menexenus has more the character of a rhetorical exercise than any other of the Platonic works. The writer seems to have wished to emulate Thucydides, and the far slighter work of Lysias. In his rivalry with the latter, to whom in the Phaedrus Plato shows a strong antipathy, he is entirely successful, but he is not equal to Thucydides. The Menexenus, though not without real Hellenic interest, falls very far short of the rugged grandeur and political insight of the great historian. The fiction of the speech having been invented by Aspasia is well sustained, and is in the manner of Plato, notwithstanding the anachronism which puts into her mouth an allusion to the peace of Antalcidas, an event occurring forty years after the date of the supposed oration. But Plato, like Shakespeare, is careless of such anachronisms, which are not supposed to strike the mind of the reader. The effect produced by these grandiloquent orations on Socrates, who does not recover after having heard one of them for three days and more, is truly Platonic. Such discourses, if we may form a judgment from the three which are extant (for the so-called Funeral Oration of Demosthenes is a bad and spurious imitation of Thucydides and Lysias), conformed to a regular type. They began with Gods and ancestors, and the legendary history of Athens, to which succeeded an almost equally fictitious account of later times. The Persian war usually formed the centre of the narrative; in the age of Isocrates and Demosthenes the Athenians were still living on the glories of Marathon and Salamis. The Menexenus veils in panegyric the weak places of Athenian history. The war of Athens and Boeotia is a war of liberation; the Athenians gave back the Spartans taken at Sphacteria out of kindness--indeed, the only fault of the city was too great kindness to their enemies, who were more honoured than the friends of others (compare Thucyd., which seems to contain the germ of the idea); we democrats are the aristocracy of virtue, and the like. These are the platitudes and falsehoods in which history is disguised. The taking of Athens is hardly mentioned. The author of the Menexenus, whether Plato or not, is evidently intending to ridicule the practice, and at the same time to show that he can beat the rhetoricians in their own line, as in the Phaedrus he may be supposed to offer an example of what Lysias might have said, and of how much better he might have written in his own style. The orators had recourse to their favourite loci communes, one of which, as we find in Lysias, was the shortness of the time allowed them for preparation. But Socrates points out that they had them always ready for delivery, and that there was no difficulty in improvising any number of such orations. To praise the Athenians among the Athenians was easy,--to praise them among the Lacedaemonians would have been a much more difficult task. Socrates himself has turned rhetorician, having learned of a woman, Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles; and any one whose teachers had been far inferior to his own--say, one who had learned from Antiphon the Rhamnusian--would be quite equal to the task of praising men to themselves. When we remember that Antiphon is described by Thucydides as the best pleader of his day, the satire on him and on the whole tribe of rhetoricians is transparent. The ironical assumption of Socrates, that he must be a good orator because he had learnt of Aspasia, is not coarse, as Schleiermacher supposes, but is rather to be regarded as fanciful. Nor can we say that the offer of Socrates to dance naked out of love for Menexenus, is any more un-Platonic than the threat of physical force which Phaedrus uses towards Socrates. Nor is there any real vulgarity in the fear which Socrates expresses that he will get a beating from his mistress, Aspasia: this is the natural exaggeration of what might be expected from an imperious woman. Socrates is not to be taken seriously in all that he says, and Plato, both in the Symposium and elsewhere, is not slow to admit a sort of Aristophanic humour. How a great original genius like Plato might or might not have written, what was his conception of humour, or what limits he would have prescribed to himself, if any, in drawing the picture of the Silenus Socrates, are problems which no critical instinct can determine. On the other hand, the dialogue has several Platonic traits, whether original or imitated may be uncertain. Socrates, when he departs from his character of a 'know nothing' and delivers a speech, generally pretends that what he is speaking is not his own composition. Thus in the Cratylus he is run away with; in the Phaedrus he has heard somebody say something--is inspired by the genius loci; in the Symposium he derives his wisdom from Diotima of Mantinea, and the like. But he does not impose on Menexenus by his dissimulation. Without violating the character of Socrates, Plato, who knows so well how to give a hint, or some one writing in his name, intimates clearly enough that the speech in the Menexenus like that in the Phaedrus is to be attributed to Socrates. The address of the dead to the living at the end of the oration may also be compared to the numerous addresses of the same kind which occur in Plato, in whom the dramatic element is always tending to prevail over the rhetorical. The remark has been often made, that in the Funeral Oration of Thucydides there is no allusion to the existence of the dead. But in the Menexenus a future state is clearly, although not strongly, asserted. Whether the Menexenus is a genuine writing of Plato, or an imitation only, remains uncertain. In either case, the thoughts are partly borrowed from the Funeral Oration of Thucydides; and the fact that they are so, is not in favour of the genuineness of the work. Internal evidence seems to leave the question of authorship in doubt. There are merits and there are defects which might lead to either conclusion. The form of the greater part of the work makes the enquiry difficult; the introduction and the finale certainly wear the look either of Plato or of an extremely skilful imitator. The excellence of the forgery may be fairly adduced as an argument that it is not a forgery at all. In this uncertainty the express testimony of Aristotle, who quotes, in the Rhetoric, the well-known words, 'It is easy to praise the Athenians among the Athenians,' from the Funeral Oration, may perhaps turn the balance in its favour. It must be remembered also that the work was famous in antiquity, and is included in the Alexandrian catalogues of Platonic writings. PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates and Menexenus. SOCRATES: Whence come you, Menexenus? Are you from the Agora? MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates; I have been at the Council. SOCRATES: And what might you be doing at the Council? And yet I need hardly ask, for I see that you, believing yourself to have arrived at the end of education and of philosophy, and to have had enough of them, are mounting upwards to things higher still, and, though rather young for the post, are intending to govern us elder men, like the rest of your family, which has always provided some one who kindly took care of us. MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I shall be ready to hold office, if you allow and advise that I should, but not if you think otherwise. I went to the council chamber because I heard that the Council was about to choose some one who was to speak over the dead. For you know that there is to be a public funeral? SOCRATES: Yes, I know. And whom did they choose? MENEXENUS: No one; they delayed the election until tomorrow, but I believe that either Archinus or Dion will be chosen. SOCRATES: O Menexenus! Death in battle is certainly in many respects a noble thing. The dead man gets a fine and costly funeral, although he may have been poor, and an elaborate speech is made over him by a wise man who has long ago prepared what he has to say, although he who is praised may not have been good for much. The speakers praise him for what he has done and for what he has not done--that is the beauty of them--and they steal away our souls with their embellished words; in every conceivable form they praise the city; and they praise those who died in war, and all our ancestors who went before us; and they praise ourselves also who are still alive, until I feel quite elevated by their laudations, and I stand listening to their words, Menexenus, and become enchanted by them, and all in a moment I imagine myself to have become a greater and nobler and finer man than I was before. And if, as often happens, there are any foreigners who accompany me to the speech, I become suddenly conscious of having a sort of triumph over them, and they seem to experience a corresponding feeling of admiration at me, and at the greatness of the city, which appears to them, when they are under the influence of the speaker, more wonderful than ever. This consciousness of dignity lasts me more than three days, and not until the fourth or fifth day do I come to my senses and know where I am; in the meantime I have been living in the Islands of the Blest. Such is the art of our rhetoricians, and in such manner does the sound of their words keep ringing in my ears. MENEXENUS: You are always making fun of the rhetoricians, Socrates; this time, however, I am inclined to think that the speaker who is chosen will not have much to say, for he has been called upon to speak at a moment's notice, and he will be compelled almost to improvise. SOCRATES: But why, my friend, should he not have plenty to say? Every rhetorician has speeches ready made; nor is there any difficulty in improvising that sort of stuff. Had the orator to praise Athenians among Peloponnesians, or Peloponnesians among Athenians, he must be a good rhetorician who could succeed and gain credit. But there is no difficulty in a man's winning applause when he is contending for fame among the persons whom he is praising. MENEXENUS: Do you think not, Socrates? SOCRATES: Certainly 'not.' MENEXENUS: Do you think that you could speak yourself if there should be a necessity, and if the Council were to choose you? SOCRATES: That I should be able to speak is no great wonder, Menexenus, considering that I have an excellent mistress in the art of rhetoric,--she who has made so many good speakers, and one who was the best among all the Hellenes--Pericles, the son of Xanthippus. MENEXENUS: And who is she? I suppose that you mean Aspasia. SOCRATES: Yes, I do; and besides her I had Connus, the son of Metrobius, as a master, and he was my master in music, as she was in rhetoric. No wonder that a man who has received such an education should be a finished speaker; even the pupil of very inferior masters, say, for example, one who had learned music of Lamprus, and rhetoric of Antiphon the Rhamnusian, might make a figure if he were to praise the Athenians among the Athenians. MENEXENUS: And what would you be able to say if you had to speak? SOCRATES: Of my own wit, most likely nothing; but yesterday I heard Aspasia composing a funeral oration about these very dead. For she had been told, as you were saying, that the Athenians were going to choose a speaker, and she repeated to me the sort of speech which he should deliver, partly improvising and partly from previous thought, putting together fragments of the funeral oration which Pericles spoke, but which, as I believe, she composed. MENEXENUS: And can you remember what Aspasia said? SOCRATES: I ought to be able, for she taught me, and she was ready to strike me because I was always forgetting. MENEXENUS: Then why will you not rehearse what she said? SOCRATES: Because I am afraid that my mistress may be angry with me if I publish her speech. MENEXENUS: Nay, Socrates, let us have the speech, whether Aspasia's or any one else's, no matter. I hope that you will oblige me. SOCRATES: But I am afraid that you will laugh at me if I continue the games of youth in old age. MENEXENUS: Far otherwise, Socrates; let us by all means have the speech. SOCRATES: Truly I have such a disposition to oblige you, that if you bid me dance naked I should not like to refuse, since we are alone. Listen then: If I remember rightly, she began as follows, with the mention of the dead:--(Thucyd.) There is a tribute of deeds and of words. The departed have already had the first, when going forth on their destined journey they were attended on their way by the state and by their friends; the tribute of words remains to be given to them, as is meet and by law ordained. For noble words are a memorial and a crown of noble actions, which are given to the doers of them by the hearers. A word is needed which will duly praise the dead and gently admonish the living, exhorting the brethren and descendants of the departed to imitate their virtue, and consoling their fathers and mothers and the survivors, if any, who may chance to be alive of the previous generation. What sort of a word will this be, and how shall we rightly begin the praises of these brave men? In their life they rejoiced their own friends with their valour, and their death they gave in exchange for the salvation of the living. And I think that we should praise them in the order in which nature made them good, for they were good because they were sprung from good fathers. Wherefore let us first of all praise the goodness of their birth; secondly, their nurture and education; and then let us set forth how noble their actions were, and how worthy of the education which they had received. And first as to their birth. Their ancestors were not strangers, nor are these their descendants sojourners only, whose fathers have come from another country; but they are the children of the soil, dwelling and living in their own land. And the country which brought them up is not like other countries, a stepmother to her children, but their own true mother; she bore them and nourished them and received them, and in her bosom they now repose. It is meet and right, therefore, that we should begin by praising the land which is their mother, and that will be a way of praising their noble birth. The country is worthy to be praised, not only by us, but by all mankind; first, and above all, as being dear to the Gods. This is proved by the strife and contention of the Gods respecting her. And ought not the country which the Gods praise to be praised by all mankind? The second praise which may be fairly claimed by her, is that at the time when the whole earth was sending forth and creating diverse animals, tame and wild, she our mother was free and pure from savage monsters, and out of all animals selected and brought forth man, who is superior to the rest in understanding, and alone has justice and religion. And a great proof that she brought forth the common ancestors of us and of the departed, is that she provided the means of support for her offspring. For as a woman proves her motherhood by giving milk to her young ones (and she who has no fountain of milk is not a mother), so did this our land prove that she was the mother of men, for in those days she alone and first of all brought forth wheat and barley for human food, which is the best and noblest sustenance for man, whom she regarded as her true offspring. And these are truer proofs of motherhood in a country than in a woman, for the woman in her conception and generation is but the imitation of the earth, and not the earth of the woman. And of the fruit of the earth she gave a plenteous supply, not only to her own, but to others also; and afterwards she made the olive to spring up to be a boon to her children, and to help them in their toils. And when she had herself nursed them and brought them up to manhood, she gave them Gods to be their rulers and teachers, whose names are well known, and need not now be repeated. They are the Gods who first ordered our lives, and instructed us in the arts for the supply of our daily needs, and taught us the acquisition and use of arms for the defence of the country. Thus born into the world and thus educated, the ancestors of the departed lived and made themselves a government, which I ought briefly to commemorate. For government is the nurture of man, and the government of good men is good, and of bad men bad. And I must show that our ancestors were trained under a good government, and for this reason they were good, and our contemporaries are also good, among whom our departed friends are to be reckoned. Then as now, and indeed always, from that time to this, speaking generally, our government was an aristocracy--a form of government which receives various names, according to the fancies of men, and is sometimes called democracy, but is really an aristocracy or government of the best which has the approval of the many. For kings we have always had, first hereditary and then elected, and authority is mostly in the hands of the people, who dispense offices and power to those who appear to be most deserving of them. Neither is a man rejected from weakness or poverty or obscurity of origin, nor honoured by reason of the opposite, as in other states, but there is one principle--he who appears to be wise and good is a governor and ruler. The basis of this our government is equality of birth; for other states are made up of all sorts and unequal conditions of men, and therefore their governments are unequal; there are tyrannies and there are oligarchies, in which the one party are slaves and the others masters. But we and our citizens are brethren, the children all of one mother, and we do not think it right to be one another's masters or servants; but the natural equality of birth compels us to seek for legal equality, and to recognize no superiority except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom. And so their and our fathers, and these, too, our brethren, being nobly born and having been brought up in all freedom, did both in their public and private capacity many noble deeds famous over the whole world. They were the deeds of men who thought that they ought to fight both against Hellenes for the sake of Hellenes on behalf of freedom, and against barbarians in the common interest of Hellas. Time would fail me to tell of their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the Amazons, or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of the Heracleids against the Argives; besides, the poets have already declared in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any commemoration of their deeds in prose which we might attempt would hold a second place. They already have their reward, and I say no more of them; but there are other worthy deeds of which no poet has worthily sung, and which are still wooing the poet's muse. Of these I am bound to make honourable mention, and shall invoke others to sing of them also in lyric and other strains, in a manner becoming the actors. And first I will tell how the Persians, lords of Asia, were enslaving Europe, and how the children of this land, who were our fathers, held them back. Of these I will speak first, and praise their valour, as is meet and fitting. He who would rightly estimate them should place himself in thought at that time, when the whole of Asia was subject to the third king of Persia. The first king, Cyrus, by his valour freed the Persians, who were his countrymen, and subjected the Medes, who were their lords, and he ruled over the rest of Asia, as far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the accessible part of Egypt and Libya; the third king was Darius, who extended the land boundaries of the empire to Scythia, and with his fleet held the sea and the islands. None presumed to be his equal; the minds of all men were enthralled by him--so many and mighty and warlike nations had the power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel against us and the Eretrians, because, as he said, we had conspired against Sardis, and he sent 500,000 men in transports and vessels of war, and 300 ships, and Datis as commander, telling him to bring the Eretrians and Athenians to the king, if he wished to keep his head on his shoulders. He sailed against the Eretrians, who were reputed to be amongst the noblest and most warlike of the Hellenes of that day, and they were numerous, but he conquered them all in three days; and when he had conquered them, in order that no one might escape, he searched the whole country after this manner: his soldiers, coming to the borders of Eretria and spreading from sea to sea, joined hands and passed through the whole country, in order that they might be able to tell the king that no one had escaped them. And from Eretria they went to Marathon with a like intention, expecting to bind the Athenians in the same yoke of necessity in which they had bound the Eretrians. Having effected one-half of their purpose, they were in the act of attempting the other, and none of the Hellenes dared to assist either the Eretrians or the Athenians, except the Lacedaemonians, and they arrived a day too late for the battle; but the rest were panic-stricken and kept quiet, too happy in having escaped for a time. He who has present to his mind that conflict will know what manner of men they were who received the onset of the barbarians at Marathon, and chastened the pride of the whole of Asia, and by the victory which they gained over the barbarians first taught other men that the power of the Persians was not invincible, but that hosts of men and the multitude of riches alike yield to valour. And I assert that those men are the fathers not only of ourselves, but of our liberties and of the liberties of all who are on the continent, for that was the action to which the Hellenes looked back when they ventured to fight for their own safety in the battles which ensued: they became disciples of the men of Marathon. To them, therefore, I assign in my speech the first place, and the second to those who fought and conquered in the sea fights at Salamis and Artemisium; for of them, too, one might have many things to say--of the assaults which they endured by sea and land, and how they repelled them. I will mention only that act of theirs which appears to me to be the noblest, and which followed that of Marathon and came nearest to it; for the men of Marathon only showed the Hellenes that it was possible to ward off the barbarians by land, the many by the few; but there was no proof that they could be defeated by ships, and at sea the Persians retained the reputation of being invincible in numbers and wealth and skill and strength. This is the glory of the men who fought at sea, that they dispelled the second terror which had hitherto possessed the Hellenes, and so made the fear of numbers, whether of ships or men, to cease among them. And so the soldiers of Marathon and the sailors of Salamis became the schoolmasters of Hellas; the one teaching and habituating the Hellenes not to fear the barbarians at sea, and the others not to fear them by land. Third in order, for the number and valour of the combatants, and third in the salvation of Hellas, I place the battle of Plataea. And now the Lacedaemonians as well as the Athenians took part in the struggle; they were all united in this greatest and most terrible conflict of all; wherefore their virtues will be celebrated in times to come, as they are now celebrated by us. But at a later period many Hellenic tribes were still on the side of the barbarians, and there was a report that the great king was going to make a new attempt upon the Hellenes, and therefore justice requires that we should also make mention of those who crowned the previous work of our salvation, and drove and purged away all barbarians from the sea. These were the men who fought by sea at the river Eurymedon, and who went on the expedition to Cyprus, and who sailed to Egypt and divers other places; and they should be gratefully remembered by us, because they compelled the king in fear for himself to look to his own safety instead of plotting the destruction of Hellas. And so the war against the barbarians was fought out to the end by the whole city on their own behalf, and on behalf of their countrymen. There was peace, and our city was held in honour; and then, as prosperity makes men jealous, there succeeded a jealousy of her, and jealousy begat envy, and so she became engaged against her will in a war with the Hellenes. On the breaking out of war, our citizens met the Lacedaemonians at Tanagra, and fought for the freedom of the Boeotians; the issue was doubtful, and was decided by the engagement which followed. For when the Lacedaemonians had gone on their way, leaving the Boeotians, whom they were aiding, on the third day after the battle of Tanagra, our countrymen conquered at Oenophyta, and righteously restored those who had been unrighteously exiled. And they were the first after the Persian war who fought on behalf of liberty in aid of Hellenes against Hellenes; they were brave men, and freed those whom they aided, and were the first too who were honourably interred in this sepulchre by the state. Afterwards there was a mighty war, in which all the Hellenes joined, and devastated our country, which was very ungrateful of them; and our countrymen, after defeating them in a naval engagement and taking their leaders, the Spartans, at Sphagia, when they might have destroyed them, spared their lives, and gave them back, and made peace, considering that they should war with the fellow-countrymen only until they gained a victory over them, and not because of the private anger of the state destroy the common interest of Hellas; but that with barbarians they should war to the death. Worthy of praise are they also who waged this war, and are here interred; for they proved, if any one doubted the superior prowess of the Athenians in the former war with the barbarians, that their doubts had no foundation--showing by their victory in the civil war with Hellas, in which they subdued the other chief state of the Hellenes, that they could conquer single-handed those with whom they had been allied in the war against the barbarians. After the peace there followed a third war, which was of a terrible and desperate nature, and in this many brave men who are here interred lost their lives--many of them had won victories in Sicily, whither they had gone over the seas to fight for the liberties of the Leontines, to whom they were bound by oaths; but, owing to the distance, the city was unable to help them, and they lost heart and came to misfortune, their very enemies and opponents winning more renown for valour and temperance than the friends of others. Many also fell in naval engagements at the Hellespont, after having in one day taken all the ships of the enemy, and defeated them in other naval engagements. And what I call the terrible and desperate nature of the war, is that the other Hellenes, in their extreme animosity towards the city, should have entered into negotiations with their bitterest enemy, the king of Persia, whom they, together with us, had expelled;--him, without us, they again brought back, barbarian against Hellenes, and all the hosts, both of Hellenes and barbarians, were united against Athens. And then shone forth the power and valour of our city. Her enemies had supposed that she was exhausted by the war, and our ships were blockaded at Mitylene. But the citizens themselves embarked, and came to the rescue with sixty other ships, and their valour was confessed of all men, for they conquered their enemies and delivered their friends. And yet by some evil fortune they were left to perish at sea, and therefore are not interred here. Ever to be remembered and honoured are they, for by their valour not only that sea-fight was won for us, but the entire war was decided by them, and through them the city gained the reputation of being invincible, even though attacked by all mankind. And that reputation was a true one, for the defeat which came upon us was our own doing. We were never conquered by others, and to this day we are still unconquered by them; but we were our own conquerors, and received defeat at our own hands. Afterwards there was quiet and peace abroad, but there sprang up war at home; and, if men are destined to have civil war, no one could have desired that his city should take the disorder in a milder form. How joyful and natural was the reconciliation of those who came from the Piraeus and those who came from the city; with what moderation did they order the war against the tyrants in Eleusis, and in a manner how unlike what the other Hellenes expected! And the reason of this gentleness was the veritable tie of blood, which created among them a friendship as of kinsmen, faithful not in word only, but in deed. And we ought also to remember those who then fell by one another's hands, and on such occasions as these to reconcile them with sacrifices and prayers, praying to those who have power over them, that they may be reconciled even as we are reconciled. For they did not attack one another out of malice or enmity, but they were unfortunate. And that such was the fact we ourselves are witnesses, who are of the same race with them, and have mutually received and granted forgiveness of what we have done and suffered. After this there was perfect peace, and the city had rest; and her feeling was that she forgave the barbarians, who had severely suffered at her hands and severely retaliated, but that she was indignant at the ingratitude of the Hellenes, when she remembered how they had received good from her and returned evil, having made common cause with the barbarians, depriving her of the ships which had once been their salvation, and dismantling our walls, which had preserved their own from falling. She thought that she would no longer defend the Hellenes, when enslaved either by one another or by the barbarians, and did accordingly. This was our feeling, while the Lacedaemonians were thinking that we who were the champions of liberty had fallen, and that their business was to subject the remaining Hellenes. And why should I say more? for the events of which I am speaking happened not long ago and we can all of us remember how the chief peoples of Hellas, Argives and Boeotians and Corinthians, came to feel the need of us, and, what is the greatest miracle of all, the Persian king himself was driven to such extremity as to come round to the opinion, that from this city, of which he was the destroyer, and from no other, his salvation would proceed. And if a person desired to bring a deserved accusation against our city, he would find only one charge which he could justly urge--that she was too compassionate and too favourable to the weaker side. And in this instance she was not able to hold out or keep her resolution of refusing aid to her injurers when they were being enslaved, but she was softened, and did in fact send out aid, and delivered the Hellenes from slavery, and they were free until they afterwards enslaved themselves. Whereas, to the great king she refused to give the assistance of the state, for she could not forget the trophies of Marathon and Salamis and Plataea; but she allowed exiles and volunteers to assist him, and they were his salvation. And she herself, when she was compelled, entered into the war, and built walls and ships, and fought with the Lacedaemonians on behalf of the Parians. Now the king fearing this city and wanting to stand aloof, when he saw the Lacedaemonians growing weary of the war at sea, asked of us, as the price of his alliance with us and the other allies, to give up the Hellenes in Asia, whom the Lacedaemonians had previously handed over to him, he thinking that we should refuse, and that then he might have a pretence for withdrawing from us. About the other allies he was mistaken, for the Corinthians and Argives and Boeotians, and the other states, were quite willing to let them go, and swore and covenanted, that, if he would pay them money, they would make over to him the Hellenes of the continent, and we alone refused to give them up and swear. Such was the natural nobility of this city, so sound and healthy was the spirit of freedom among us, and the instinctive dislike of the barbarian, because we are pure Hellenes, having no admixture of barbarism in us. For we are not like many others, descendants of Pelops or Cadmus or Egyptus or Danaus, who are by nature barbarians, and yet pass for Hellenes, and dwell in the midst of us; but we are pure Hellenes, uncontaminated by any foreign element, and therefore the hatred of the foreigner has passed unadulterated into the life-blood of the city. And so, notwithstanding our noble sentiments, we were again isolated, because we were unwilling to be guilty of the base and unholy act of giving up Hellenes to barbarians. And we were in the same case as when we were subdued before; but, by the favour of Heaven, we managed better, for we ended the war without the loss of our ships or walls or colonies; the enemy was only too glad to be quit of us. Yet in this war we lost many brave men, such as were those who fell owing to the ruggedness of the ground at the battle of Corinth, or by treason at Lechaeum. Brave men, too, were those who delivered the Persian king, and drove the Lacedaemonians from the sea. I remind you of them, and you must celebrate them together with me, and do honour to their memories. Such were the actions of the men who are here interred, and of others who have died on behalf of their country; many and glorious things I have spoken of them, and there are yet many more and more glorious things remaining to be told--many days and nights would not suffice to tell of them. Let them not be forgotten, and let every man remind their descendants that they also are soldiers who must not desert the ranks of their ancestors, or from cowardice fall behind. Even as I exhort you this day, and in all future time, whenever I meet with any of you, shall continue to remind and exhort you, O ye sons of heroes, that you strive to be the bravest of men. And I think that I ought now to repeat what your fathers desired to have said to you who are their survivors, when they went out to battle, in case anything happened to them. I will tell you what I heard them say, and what, if they had only speech, they would fain be saying, judging from what they then said. And you must imagine that you hear them saying what I now repeat to you:-- 'Sons, the event proves that your fathers were brave men; for we might have lived dishonourably, but have preferred to die honourably rather than bring you and your children into disgrace, and rather than dishonour our own fathers and forefathers; considering that life is not life to one who is a dishonour to his race, and that to such a one neither men nor Gods are friendly, either while he is on the earth or after death in the world below. Remember our words, then, and whatever is your aim let virtue be the condition of the attainment of your aim, and know that without this all possessions and pursuits are dishonourable and evil. For neither does wealth bring honour to the owner, if he be a coward; of such a one the wealth belongs to another, and not to himself. Nor does beauty and strength of body, when dwelling in a base and cowardly man, appear comely, but the reverse of comely, making the possessor more conspicuous, and manifesting forth his cowardice. And all knowledge, when separated from justice and virtue, is seen to be cunning and not wisdom; wherefore make this your first and last and constant and all-absorbing aim, to exceed, if possible, not only us but all your ancestors in virtue; and know that to excel you in virtue only brings us shame, but that to be excelled by you is a source of happiness to us. And we shall most likely be defeated, and you will most likely be victors in the contest, if you learn so to order your lives as not to abuse or waste the reputation of your ancestors, knowing that to a man who has any self-respect, nothing is more dishonourable than to be honoured, not for his own sake, but on account of the reputation of his ancestors. The honour of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honour, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonourable. And if you follow our precepts you will be received by us as friends, when the hour of destiny brings you hither; but if you neglect our words and are disgraced in your lives, no one will welcome or receive you. This is the message which is to be delivered to our children. 'Some of us have fathers and mothers still living, and we would urge them, if, as is likely, we shall die, to bear the calamity as lightly as possible, and not to condole with one another; for they have sorrows enough, and will not need any one to stir them up. While we gently heal their wounds, let us remind them that the Gods have heard the chief part of their prayers; for they prayed, not that their children might live for ever, but that they might be brave and renowned. And this, which is the greatest good, they have attained. A mortal man cannot expect to have everything in his own life turning out according to his will; and they, if they bear their misfortunes bravely, will be truly deemed brave fathers of the brave. But if they give way to their sorrows, either they will be suspected of not being our parents, or we of not being such as our panegyrists declare. Let not either of the two alternatives happen, but rather let them be our chief and true panegyrists, who show in their lives that they are true men, and had men for their sons. Of old the saying, "Nothing too much," appeared to be, and really was, well said. For he whose happiness rests with himself, if possible, wholly, and if not, as far as is possible,--who is not hanging in suspense on other men, or changing with the vicissitude of their fortune,--has his life ordered for the best. He is the temperate and valiant and wise; and when his riches come and go, when his children are given and taken away, he will remember the proverb--"Neither rejoicing overmuch nor grieving overmuch," for he relies upon himself. And such we would have our parents to be--that is our word and wish, and as such we now offer ourselves, neither lamenting overmuch, nor fearing overmuch, if we are to die at this time. And we entreat our fathers and mothers to retain these feelings throughout their future life, and to be assured that they will not please us by sorrowing and lamenting over us. But, if the dead have any knowledge of the living, they will displease us most by making themselves miserable and by taking their misfortunes too much to heart, and they will please us best if they bear their loss lightly and temperately. For our life will have the noblest end which is vouchsafed to man, and should be glorified rather than lamented. And if they will direct their minds to the care and nurture of our wives and children, they will soonest forget their misfortunes, and live in a better and nobler way, and be dearer to us. 'This is all that we have to say to our families: and to the state we would say--Take care of our parents and of our sons: let her worthily cherish the old age of our parents, and bring up our sons in the right way. But we know that she will of her own accord take care of them, and does not need any exhortation of ours.' This, O ye children and parents of the dead, is the message which they bid us deliver to you, and which I do deliver with the utmost seriousness. And in their name I beseech you, the children, to imitate your fathers, and you, parents, to be of good cheer about yourselves; for we will nourish your age, and take care of you both publicly and privately in any place in which one of us may meet one of you who are the parents of the dead. And the care of you which the city shows, you know yourselves; for she has made provision by law concerning the parents and children of those who die in war; the highest authority is specially entrusted with the duty of watching over them above all other citizens, and they will see that your fathers and mothers have no wrong done to them. The city herself shares in the education of the children, desiring as far as it is possible that their orphanhood may not be felt by them; while they are children she is a parent to them, and when they have arrived at man's estate she sends them to their several duties, in full armour clad; and bringing freshly to their minds the ways of their fathers, she places in their hands the instruments of their fathers' virtues; for the sake of the omen, she would have them from the first begin to rule over their own houses arrayed in the strength and arms of their fathers. And as for the dead, she never ceases honouring them, celebrating in common for all rites which become the property of each; and in addition to this, holding gymnastic and equestrian contests, and musical festivals of every sort. She is to the dead in the place of a son and heir, and to their sons in the place of a father, and to their parents and elder kindred in the place of a guardian--ever and always caring for them. Considering this, you ought to bear your calamity the more gently; for thus you will be most endeared to the dead and to the living, and your sorrows will heal and be healed. And now do you and all, having lamented the dead in common according to the law, go your ways. You have heard, Menexenus, the oration of Aspasia the Milesian. MENEXENUS: Truly, Socrates, I marvel that Aspasia, who is only a woman, should be able to compose such a speech; she must be a rare one. SOCRATES: Well, if you are incredulous, you may come with me and hear her. MENEXENUS: I have often met Aspasia, Socrates, and know what she is like. SOCRATES: Well, and do you not admire her, and are you not grateful for her speech? MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I am very grateful to her or to him who told you, and still more to you who have told me. SOCRATES: Very good. But you must take care not to tell of me, and then at some future time I will repeat to you many other excellent political speeches of hers. MENEXENUS: Fear not, only let me hear them, and I will keep the secret. SOCRATES: Then I will keep my promise. 
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1636	----	PHAEDRUS By Plato Translated by Benjamin Jowett INTRODUCTION. The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is an aspect of the other. The spiritual and emotional part is elevated into the ideal, to which in the Symposium mankind are described as looking forward, and which in the Phaedrus, as well as in the Phaedo, they are seeking to recover from a former state of existence. Whether the subject of the Dialogue is love or rhetoric, or the union of the two, or the relation of philosophy to love and to art in general, and to the human soul, will be hereafter considered. And perhaps we may arrive at some conclusion such as the following--that the dialogue is not strictly confined to a single subject, but passes from one to another with the natural freedom of conversation. Phaedrus has been spending the morning with Lysias, the celebrated rhetorician, and is going to refresh himself by taking a walk outside the wall, when he is met by Socrates, who professes that he will not leave him until he has delivered up the speech with which Lysias has regaled him, and which he is carrying about in his mind, or more probably in a book hidden under his cloak, and is intending to study as he walks. The imputation is not denied, and the two agree to direct their steps out of the public way along the stream of the Ilissus towards a plane-tree which is seen in the distance. There, lying down amidst pleasant sounds and scents, they will read the speech of Lysias. The country is a novelty to Socrates, who never goes out of the town; and hence he is full of admiration for the beauties of nature, which he seems to be drinking in for the first time. As they are on their way, Phaedrus asks the opinion of Socrates respecting the local tradition of Boreas and Oreithyia. Socrates, after a satirical allusion to the 'rationalizers' of his day, replies that he has no time for these 'nice' interpretations of mythology, and he pities anyone who has. When you once begin there is no end of them, and they spring from an uncritical philosophy after all. 'The proper study of mankind is man;' and he is a far more complex and wonderful being than the serpent Typho. Socrates as yet does not know himself; and why should he care to know about unearthly monsters? Engaged in such conversation, they arrive at the plane-tree; when they have found a convenient resting-place, Phaedrus pulls out the speech and reads:-- The speech consists of a foolish paradox which is to the effect that the non-lover ought to be accepted rather than the lover--because he is more rational, more agreeable, more enduring, less suspicious, less hurtful, less boastful, less engrossing, and because there are more of them, and for a great many other reasons which are equally unmeaning. Phaedrus is captivated with the beauty of the periods, and wants to make Socrates say that nothing was or ever could be written better. Socrates does not think much of the matter, but then he has only attended to the form, and in that he has detected several repetitions and other marks of haste. He cannot agree with Phaedrus in the extreme value which he sets upon this performance, because he is afraid of doing injustice to Anacreon and Sappho and other great writers, and is almost inclined to think that he himself, or rather some power residing within him, could make a speech better than that of Lysias on the same theme, and also different from his, if he may be allowed the use of a few commonplaces which all speakers must equally employ. Phaedrus is delighted at the prospect of having another speech, and promises that he will set up a golden statue of Socrates at Delphi, if he keeps his word. Some raillery ensues, and at length Socrates, conquered by the threat that he shall never again hear a speech of Lysias unless he fulfils his promise, veils his face and begins. First, invoking the Muses and assuming ironically the person of the non-lover (who is a lover all the same), he will enquire into the nature and power of love. For this is a necessary preliminary to the other question--How is the non-lover to be distinguished from the lover? In all of us there are two principles--a better and a worse--reason and desire, which are generally at war with one another; and the victory of the rational is called temperance, and the victory of the irrational intemperance or excess. The latter takes many forms and has many bad names--gluttony, drunkenness, and the like. But of all the irrational desires or excesses the greatest is that which is led away by desires of a kindred nature to the enjoyment of personal beauty. And this is the master power of love. Here Socrates fancies that he detects in himself an unusual flow of eloquence--this newly-found gift he can only attribute to the inspiration of the place, which appears to be dedicated to the nymphs. Starting again from the philosophical basis which has been laid down, he proceeds to show how many advantages the non-lover has over the lover. The one encourages softness and effeminacy and exclusiveness; he cannot endure any superiority in his beloved; he will train him in luxury, he will keep him out of society, he will deprive him of parents, friends, money, knowledge, and of every other good, that he may have him all to himself. Then again his ways are not ways of pleasantness; he is mighty disagreeable; 'crabbed age and youth cannot live together.' At every hour of the night and day he is intruding upon him; there is the same old withered face and the remainder to match--and he is always repeating, in season or out of season, the praises or dispraises of his beloved, which are bad enough when he is sober, and published all over the world when he is drunk. At length his love ceases; he is converted into an enemy, and the spectacle may be seen of the lover running away from the beloved, who pursues him with vain reproaches, and demands his reward which the other refuses to pay. Too late the beloved learns, after all his pains and disagreeables, that 'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' (Compare Char.) Here is the end; the 'other' or 'non-lover' part of the speech had better be understood, for if in the censure of the lover Socrates has broken out in verse, what will he not do in his praise of the non-lover? He has said his say and is preparing to go away. Phaedrus begs him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has passed; he would like to have a little more conversation before they go. Socrates, who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him to depart until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened, and like Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes the form of a myth. Socrates begins his tale with a glorification of madness, which he divides into four kinds: first, there is the art of divination or prophecy--this, in a vein similar to that pervading the Cratylus and Io, he connects with madness by an etymological explanation (mantike, manike--compare oionoistike, oionistike, ''tis all one reckoning, save the phrase is a little variations'); secondly, there is the art of purification by mysteries; thirdly, poetry or the inspiration of the Muses (compare Ion), without which no man can enter their temple. All this shows that madness is one of heaven's blessings, and may sometimes be a great deal better than sense. There is also a fourth kind of madness--that of love--which cannot be explained without enquiring into the nature of the soul. All soul is immortal, for she is the source of all motion both in herself and in others. Her form may be described in a figure as a composite nature made up of a charioteer and a pair of winged steeds. The steeds of the gods are immortal, but ours are one mortal and the other immortal. The immortal soul soars upwards into the heavens, but the mortal drops her plumes and settles upon the earth. Now the use of the wing is to rise and carry the downward element into the upper world--there to behold beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the other things of God by which the soul is nourished. On a certain day Zeus the lord of heaven goes forth in a winged chariot; and an array of gods and demi-gods and of human souls in their train, follows him. There are glorious and blessed sights in the interior of heaven, and he who will may freely behold them. The great vision of all is seen at the feast of the gods, when they ascend the heights of the empyrean--all but Hestia, who is left at home to keep house. The chariots of the gods glide readily upwards and stand upon the outside; the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they have a vision of the world beyond. But the others labour in vain; for the mortal steed, if he has not been properly trained, keeps them down and sinks them towards the earth. Of the world which is beyond the heavens, who can tell? There is an essence formless, colourless, intangible, perceived by the mind only, dwelling in the region of true knowledge. The divine mind in her revolution enjoys this fair prospect, and beholds justice, temperance, and knowledge in their everlasting essence. When fulfilled with the sight of them she returns home, and the charioteer puts up the horses in their stable, and gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. This is the life of the gods; the human soul tries to reach the same heights, but hardly succeeds; and sometimes the head of the charioteer rises above, and sometimes sinks below, the fair vision, and he is at last obliged, after much contention, to turn away and leave the plain of truth. But if the soul has followed in the train of her god and once beheld truth she is preserved from harm, and is carried round in the next revolution of the spheres; and if always following, and always seeing the truth, is then for ever unharmed. If, however, she drops her wings and falls to the earth, then she takes the form of man, and the soul which has seen most of the truth passes into a philosopher or lover; that which has seen truth in the second degree, into a king or warrior; the third, into a householder or money-maker; the fourth, into a gymnast; the fifth, into a prophet or mystic; the sixth, into a poet or imitator; the seventh, into a husbandman or craftsman; the eighth, into a sophist or demagogue; the ninth, into a tyrant. All these are states of probation, wherein he who lives righteously is improved, and he who lives unrighteously deteriorates. After death comes the judgment; the bad depart to houses of correction under the earth, the good to places of joy in heaven. When a thousand years have elapsed the souls meet together and choose the lives which they will lead for another period of existence. The soul which three times in succession has chosen the life of a philosopher or of a lover who is not without philosophy receives her wings at the close of the third millennium; the remainder have to complete a cycle of ten thousand years before their wings are restored to them. Each time there is full liberty of choice. The soul of a man may descend into a beast, and return again into the form of man. But the form of man will only be taken by the soul which has once seen truth and acquired some conception of the universal:--this is the recollection of the knowledge which she attained when in the company of the Gods. And men in general recall only with difficulty the things of another world, but the mind of the philosopher has a better remembrance of them. For when he beholds the visible beauty of earth his enraptured soul passes in thought to those glorious sights of justice and wisdom and temperance and truth which she once gazed upon in heaven. Then she celebrated holy mysteries and beheld blessed apparitions shining in pure light, herself pure, and not as yet entombed in the body. And still, like a bird eager to quit its cage, she flutters and looks upwards, and is therefore deemed mad. Such a recollection of past days she receives through sight, the keenest of our senses, because beauty, alone of the ideas, has any representation on earth: wisdom is invisible to mortal eyes. But the corrupted nature, blindly excited by this vision of beauty, rushes on to enjoy, and would fain wallow like a brute beast in sensual pleasures. Whereas the true mystic, who has seen the many sights of bliss, when he beholds a god-like form or face is amazed with delight, and if he were not afraid of being thought mad he would fall down and worship. Then the stiffened wing begins to relax and grow again; desire which has been imprisoned pours over the soul of the lover; the germ of the wing unfolds, and stings, and pangs of birth, like the cutting of teeth, are everywhere felt. (Compare Symp.) Father and mother, and goods and laws and proprieties are nothing to him; his beloved is his physician, who can alone cure his pain. An apocryphal sacred writer says that the power which thus works in him is by mortals called love, but the immortals call him dove, or the winged one, in order to represent the force of his wings--such at any rate is his nature. Now the characters of lovers depend upon the god whom they followed in the other world; and they choose their loves in this world accordingly. The followers of Ares are fierce and violent; those of Zeus seek out some philosophical and imperial nature; the attendants of Here find a royal love; and in like manner the followers of every god seek a love who is like their god; and to him they communicate the nature which they have received from their god. The manner in which they take their love is as follows:-- I told you about the charioteer and his two steeds, the one a noble animal who is guided by word and admonition only, the other an ill-looking villain who will hardly yield to blow or spur. Together all three, who are a figure of the soul, approach the vision of love. And now a fierce conflict begins. The ill-conditioned steed rushes on to enjoy, but the charioteer, who beholds the beloved with awe, falls back in adoration, and forces both the steeds on their haunches; again the evil steed rushes forwards and pulls shamelessly. The conflict grows more and more severe; and at last the charioteer, throwing himself backwards, forces the bit out of the clenched teeth of the brute, and pulling harder than ever at the reins, covers his tongue and jaws with blood, and forces him to rest his legs and haunches with pain upon the ground. When this has happened several times, the villain is tamed and humbled, and from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. And now their bliss is consummated; the same image of love dwells in the breast of either, and if they have self-control, they pass their lives in the greatest happiness which is attainable by man--they continue masters of themselves, and conquer in one of the three heavenly victories. But if they choose the lower life of ambition they may still have a happy destiny, though inferior, because they have not the approval of the whole soul. At last they leave the body and proceed on their pilgrim's progress, and those who have once begun can never go back. When the time comes they receive their wings and fly away, and the lovers have the same wings. Socrates concludes:-- These are the blessings of love, and thus have I made my recantation in finer language than before: I did so in order to please Phaedrus. If I said what was wrong at first, please to attribute my error to Lysias, who ought to study philosophy instead of rhetoric, and then he will not mislead his disciple Phaedrus. Phaedrus is afraid that he will lose conceit of Lysias, and that Lysias will be out of conceit with himself, and leave off making speeches, for the politicians have been deriding him. Socrates is of opinion that there is small danger of this; the politicians are themselves the great rhetoricians of the age, who desire to attain immortality by the authorship of laws. And therefore there is nothing with which they can reproach Lysias in being a writer; but there may be disgrace in being a bad one. And what is good or bad writing or speaking? While the sun is hot in the sky above us, let us ask that question: since by rational conversation man lives, and not by the indulgence of bodily pleasures. And the grasshoppers who are chirruping around may carry our words to the Muses, who are their patronesses; for the grasshoppers were human beings themselves in a world before the Muses, and when the Muses came they died of hunger for the love of song. And they carry to them in heaven the report of those who honour them on earth. The first rule of good speaking is to know and speak the truth; as a Spartan proverb says, 'true art is truth'; whereas rhetoric is an art of enchantment, which makes things appear good and evil, like and unlike, as the speaker pleases. Its use is not confined, as people commonly suppose, to arguments in the law courts and speeches in the assembly; it is rather a part of the art of disputation, under which are included both the rules of Gorgias and the eristic of Zeno. But it is not wholly devoid of truth. Superior knowledge enables us to deceive another by the help of resemblances, and to escape from such a deception when employed against ourselves. We see therefore that even in rhetoric an element of truth is required. For if we do not know the truth, we can neither make the gradual departures from truth by which men are most easily deceived, nor guard ourselves against deception. Socrates then proposes that they shall use the two speeches as illustrations of the art of rhetoric; first distinguishing between the debatable and undisputed class of subjects. In the debatable class there ought to be a definition of all disputed matters. But there was no such definition in the speech of Lysias; nor is there any order or connection in his words any more than in a nursery rhyme. With this he compares the regular divisions of the other speech, which was his own (and yet not his own, for the local deities must have inspired him). Although only a playful composition, it will be found to embody two principles: first, that of synthesis or the comprehension of parts in a whole; secondly, analysis, or the resolution of the whole into parts. These are the processes of division and generalization which are so dear to the dialectician, that king of men. They are effected by dialectic, and not by rhetoric, of which the remains are but scanty after order and arrangement have been subtracted. There is nothing left but a heap of 'ologies' and other technical terms invented by Polus, Theodorus, Evenus, Tisias, Gorgias, and others, who have rules for everything, and who teach how to be short or long at pleasure. Prodicus showed his good sense when he said that there was a better thing than either to be short or long, which was to be of convenient length. Still, notwithstanding the absurdities of Polus and others, rhetoric has great power in public assemblies. This power, however, is not given by any technical rules, but is the gift of genius. The real art is always being confused by rhetoricians with the preliminaries of the art. The perfection of oratory is like the perfection of anything else; natural power must be aided by art. But the art is not that which is taught in the schools of rhetoric; it is nearer akin to philosophy. Pericles, for instance, who was the most accomplished of all speakers, derived his eloquence not from rhetoric but from the philosophy of nature which he learnt of Anaxagoras. True rhetoric is like medicine, and the rhetorician has to consider the natures of men's souls as the physician considers the natures of their bodies. Such and such persons are to be affected in this way, such and such others in that; and he must know the times and the seasons for saying this or that. This is not an easy task, and this, if there be such an art, is the art of rhetoric. I know that there are some professors of the art who maintain probability to be stronger than truth. But we maintain that probability is engendered by likeness of the truth which can only be attained by the knowledge of it, and that the aim of the good man should not be to please or persuade his fellow-servants, but to please his good masters who are the gods. Rhetoric has a fair beginning in this. Enough of the art of speaking; let us now proceed to consider the true use of writing. There is an old Egyptian tale of Theuth, the inventor of writing, showing his invention to the god Thamus, who told him that he would only spoil men's memories and take away their understandings. From this tale, of which young Athens will probably make fun, may be gathered the lesson that writing is inferior to speech. For it is like a picture, which can give no answer to a question, and has only a deceitful likeness of a living creature. It has no power of adaptation, but uses the same words for all. It is not a legitimate son of knowledge, but a bastard, and when an attack is made upon this bastard neither parent nor anyone else is there to defend it. The husbandman will not seriously incline to sow his seed in such a hot-bed or garden of Adonis; he will rather sow in the natural soil of the human soul which has depth of earth; and he will anticipate the inner growth of the mind, by writing only, if at all, as a remedy against old age. The natural process will be far nobler, and will bring forth fruit in the minds of others as well as in his own. The conclusion of the whole matter is just this,--that until a man knows the truth, and the manner of adapting the truth to the natures of other men, he cannot be a good orator; also, that the living is better than the written word, and that the principles of justice and truth when delivered by word of mouth are the legitimate offspring of a man's own bosom, and their lawful descendants take up their abode in others. Such an orator as he is who is possessed of them, you and I would fain become. And to all composers in the world, poets, orators, legislators, we hereby announce that if their compositions are based upon these principles, then they are not only poets, orators, legislators, but philosophers. All others are mere flatterers and putters together of words. This is the message which Phaedrus undertakes to carry to Lysias from the local deities, and Socrates himself will carry a similar message to his favourite Isocrates, whose future distinction as a great rhetorician he prophesies. The heat of the day has passed, and after offering up a prayer to Pan and the nymphs, Socrates and Phaedrus depart. There are two principal controversies which have been raised about the Phaedrus; the first relates to the subject, the second to the date of the Dialogue. There seems to be a notion that the work of a great artist like Plato cannot fail in unity, and that the unity of a dialogue requires a single subject. But the conception of unity really applies in very different degrees and ways to different kinds of art; to a statue, for example, far more than to any kind of literary composition, and to some species of literature far more than to others. Nor does the dialogue appear to be a style of composition in which the requirement of unity is most stringent; nor should the idea of unity derived from one sort of art be hastily transferred to another. The double titles of several of the Platonic Dialogues are a further proof that the severer rule was not observed by Plato. The Republic is divided between the search after justice and the construction of the ideal state; the Parmenides between the criticism of the Platonic ideas and of the Eleatic one or being; the Gorgias between the art of speaking and the nature of the good; the Sophist between the detection of the Sophist and the correlation of ideas. The Theaetetus, the Politicus, and the Philebus have also digressions which are but remotely connected with the main subject. Thus the comparison of Plato's other writings, as well as the reason of the thing, lead us to the conclusion that we must not expect to find one idea pervading a whole work, but one, two, or more, as the invention of the writer may suggest, or his fancy wander. If each dialogue were confined to the development of a single idea, this would appear on the face of the dialogue, nor could any controversy be raised as to whether the Phaedrus treated of love or rhetoric. But the truth is that Plato subjects himself to no rule of this sort. Like every great artist he gives unity of form to the different and apparently distracting topics which he brings together. He works freely and is not to be supposed to have arranged every part of the dialogue before he begins to write. He fastens or weaves together the frame of his discourse loosely and imperfectly, and which is the warp and which is the woof cannot always be determined. The subjects of the Phaedrus (exclusive of the short introductory passage about mythology which is suggested by the local tradition) are first the false or conventional art of rhetoric; secondly, love or the inspiration of beauty and knowledge, which is described as madness; thirdly, dialectic or the art of composition and division; fourthly, the true rhetoric, which is based upon dialectic, and is neither the art of persuasion nor knowledge of the truth alone, but the art of persuasion founded on knowledge of truth and knowledge of character; fifthly, the superiority of the spoken over the written word. The continuous thread which appears and reappears throughout is rhetoric; this is the ground into which the rest of the Dialogue is worked, in parts embroidered with fine words which are not in Socrates' manner, as he says, 'in order to please Phaedrus.' The speech of Lysias which has thrown Phaedrus into an ecstacy is adduced as an example of the false rhetoric; the first speech of Socrates, though an improvement, partakes of the same character; his second speech, which is full of that higher element said to have been learned of Anaxagoras by Pericles, and which in the midst of poetry does not forget order, is an illustration of the higher or true rhetoric. This higher rhetoric is based upon dialectic, and dialectic is a sort of inspiration akin to love (compare Symp.); in these two aspects of philosophy the technicalities of rhetoric are absorbed. And so the example becomes also the deeper theme of discourse. The true knowledge of things in heaven and earth is based upon enthusiasm or love of the ideas going before us and ever present to us in this world and in another; and the true order of speech or writing proceeds accordingly. Love, again, has three degrees: first, of interested love corresponding to the conventionalities of rhetoric; secondly, of disinterested or mad love, fixed on objects of sense, and answering, perhaps, to poetry; thirdly, of disinterested love directed towards the unseen, answering to dialectic or the science of the ideas. Lastly, the art of rhetoric in the lower sense is found to rest on a knowledge of the natures and characters of men, which Socrates at the commencement of the Dialogue has described as his own peculiar study. Thus amid discord a harmony begins to appear; there are many links of connection which are not visible at first sight. At the same time the Phaedrus, although one of the most beautiful of the Platonic Dialogues, is also more irregular than any other. For insight into the world, for sustained irony, for depth of thought, there is no Dialogue superior, or perhaps equal to it. Nevertheless the form of the work has tended to obscure some of Plato's higher aims. The first speech is composed 'in that balanced style in which the wise love to talk' (Symp.). The characteristics of rhetoric are insipidity, mannerism, and monotonous parallelism of clauses. There is more rhythm than reason; the creative power of imagination is wanting. ''Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.' Plato has seized by anticipation the spirit which hung over Greek literature for a thousand years afterwards. Yet doubtless there were some who, like Phaedrus, felt a delight in the harmonious cadence and the pedantic reasoning of the rhetoricians newly imported from Sicily, which had ceased to be awakened in them by really great works, such as the odes of Anacreon or Sappho or the orations of Pericles. That the first speech was really written by Lysias is improbable. Like the poem of Solon, or the story of Thamus and Theuth, or the funeral oration of Aspasia (if genuine), or the pretence of Socrates in the Cratylus that his knowledge of philology is derived from Euthyphro, the invention is really due to the imagination of Plato, and may be compared to the parodies of the Sophists in the Protagoras. Numerous fictions of this sort occur in the Dialogues, and the gravity of Plato has sometimes imposed upon his commentators. The introduction of a considerable writing of another would seem not to be in keeping with a great work of art, and has no parallel elsewhere. In the second speech Socrates is exhibited as beating the rhetoricians at their own weapons; he 'an unpractised man and they masters of the art.' True to his character, he must, however, profess that the speech which he makes is not his own, for he knows nothing of himself. (Compare Symp.) Regarded as a rhetorical exercise, the superiority of his speech seems to consist chiefly in a better arrangement of the topics; he begins with a definition of love, and he gives weight to his words by going back to general maxims; a lesser merit is the greater liveliness of Socrates, which hurries him into verse and relieves the monotony of the style. But Plato had doubtless a higher purpose than to exhibit Socrates as the rival or superior of the Athenian rhetoricians. Even in the speech of Lysias there is a germ of truth, and this is further developed in the parallel oration of Socrates. First, passionate love is overthrown by the sophistical or interested, and then both yield to that higher view of love which is afterwards revealed to us. The extreme of commonplace is contrasted with the most ideal and imaginative of speculations. Socrates, half in jest and to satisfy his own wild humour, takes the disguise of Lysias, but he is also in profound earnest and in a deeper vein of irony than usual. Having improvised his own speech, which is based upon the model of the preceding, he condemns them both. Yet the condemnation is not to be taken seriously, for he is evidently trying to express an aspect of the truth. To understand him, we must make abstraction of morality and of the Greek manner of regarding the relation of the sexes. In this, as in his other discussions about love, what Plato says of the loves of men must be transferred to the loves of women before we can attach any serious meaning to his words. Had he lived in our times he would have made the transposition himself. But seeing in his own age the impossibility of woman being the intellectual helpmate or friend of man (except in the rare instances of a Diotima or an Aspasia), seeing that, even as to personal beauty, her place was taken by young mankind instead of womankind, he tries to work out the problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. And full of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show that the 'non-lover's' love is better than the 'lover's.' We may raise the same question in another form: Is marriage preferable with or without love? 'Among ourselves,' as we may say, a little parodying the words of Pausanias in the Symposium, 'there would be one answer to this question: the practice and feeling of some foreign countries appears to be more doubtful.' Suppose a modern Socrates, in defiance of the received notions of society and the sentimental literature of the day, alone against all the writers and readers of novels, to suggest this enquiry, would not the younger 'part of the world be ready to take off its coat and run at him might and main?' (Republic.) Yet, if like Peisthetaerus in Aristophanes, he could persuade the 'birds' to hear him, retiring a little behind a rampart, not of pots and dishes, but of unreadable books, he might have something to say for himself. Might he not argue, 'that a rational being should not follow the dictates of passion in the most important act of his or her life'? Who would willingly enter into a contract at first sight, almost without thought, against the advice and opinion of his friends, at a time when he acknowledges that he is not in his right mind? And yet they are praised by the authors of romances, who reject the warnings of their friends or parents, rather than those who listen to them in such matters. Two inexperienced persons, ignorant of the world and of one another, how can they be said to choose?--they draw lots, whence also the saying, 'marriage is a lottery.' Then he would describe their way of life after marriage; how they monopolize one another's affections to the exclusion of friends and relations: how they pass their days in unmeaning fondness or trivial conversation; how the inferior of the two drags the other down to his or her level; how the cares of a family 'breed meanness in their souls.' In the fulfilment of military or public duties, they are not helpers but hinderers of one another: they cannot undertake any noble enterprise, such as makes the names of men and women famous, from domestic considerations. Too late their eyes are opened; they were taken unawares and desire to part company. Better, he would say, a 'little love at the beginning,' for heaven might have increased it; but now their foolish fondness has changed into mutual dislike. In the days of their honeymoon they never understood that they must provide against offences, that they must have interests, that they must learn the art of living as well as loving. Our misogamist will not appeal to Anacreon or Sappho for a confirmation of his view, but to the universal experience of mankind. How much nobler, in conclusion, he will say, is friendship, which does not receive unmeaning praises from novelists and poets, is not exacting or exclusive, is not impaired by familiarity, is much less expensive, is not so likely to take offence, seldom changes, and may be dissolved from time to time without the assistance of the courts. Besides, he will remark that there is a much greater choice of friends than of wives--you may have more of them and they will be far more improving to your mind. They will not keep you dawdling at home, or dancing attendance upon them; or withdraw you from the great world and stirring scenes of life and action which would make a man of you. In such a manner, turning the seamy side outwards, a modern Socrates might describe the evils of married and domestic life. They are evils which mankind in general have agreed to conceal, partly because they are compensated by greater goods. Socrates or Archilochus would soon have to sing a palinode for the injustice done to lovely Helen, or some misfortune worse than blindness might be fall them. Then they would take up their parable again and say:--that there were two loves, a higher and a lower, holy and unholy, a love of the mind and a love of the body. 'Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds. ..... Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.' But this true love of the mind cannot exist between two souls, until they are purified from the grossness of earthly passion: they must pass through a time of trial and conflict first; in the language of religion they must be converted or born again. Then they would see the world transformed into a scene of heavenly beauty; a divine idea would accompany them in all their thoughts and actions. Something too of the recollections of childhood might float about them still; they might regain that old simplicity which had been theirs in other days at their first entrance on life. And although their love of one another was ever present to them, they would acknowledge also a higher love of duty and of God, which united them. And their happiness would depend upon their preserving in them this principle--not losing the ideals of justice and holiness and truth, but renewing them at the fountain of light. When they have attained to this exalted state, let them marry (something too may be conceded to the animal nature of man): or live together in holy and innocent friendship. The poet might describe in eloquent words the nature of such a union; how after many struggles the true love was found: how the two passed their lives together in the service of God and man; how their characters were reflected upon one another, and seemed to grow more like year by year; how they read in one another's eyes the thoughts, wishes, actions of the other; how they saw each other in God; how in a figure they grew wings like doves, and were 'ready to fly away together and be at rest.' And lastly, he might tell how, after a time at no long intervals, first one and then the other fell asleep, and 'appeared to the unwise' to die, but were reunited in another state of being, in which they saw justice and holiness and truth, not according to the imperfect copies of them which are found in this world, but justice absolute in existence absolute, and so of the rest. And they would hold converse not only with each other, but with blessed souls everywhere; and would be employed in the service of God, every soul fulfilling his own nature and character, and would see into the wonders of earth and heaven, and trace the works of creation to their author. So, partly in jest but also 'with a certain degree of seriousness,' we may appropriate to ourselves the words of Plato. The use of such a parody, though very imperfect, is to transfer his thoughts to our sphere of religion and feeling, to bring him nearer to us and us to him. Like the Scriptures, Plato admits of endless applications, if we allow for the difference of times and manners; and we lose the better half of him when we regard his Dialogues merely as literary compositions. Any ancient work which is worth reading has a practical and speculative as well as a literary interest. And in Plato, more than in any other Greek writer, the local and transitory is inextricably blended with what is spiritual and eternal. Socrates is necessarily ironical; for he has to withdraw from the received opinions and beliefs of mankind. We cannot separate the transitory from the permanent; nor can we translate the language of irony into that of plain reflection and common sense. But we can imagine the mind of Socrates in another age and country; and we can interpret him by analogy with reference to the errors and prejudices which prevail among ourselves. To return to the Phaedrus:-- Both speeches are strongly condemned by Socrates as sinful and blasphemous towards the god Love, and as worthy only of some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown. The meaning of this and other wild language to the same effect, which is introduced by way of contrast to the formality of the two speeches (Socrates has a sense of relief when he has escaped from the trammels of rhetoric), seems to be that the two speeches proceed upon the supposition that love is and ought to be interested, and that no such thing as a real or disinterested passion, which would be at the same time lasting, could be conceived. 'But did I call this "love"? O God, forgive my blasphemy. This is not love. Rather it is the love of the world. But there is another kingdom of love, a kingdom not of this world, divine, eternal. And this other love I will now show you in a mystery.' Then follows the famous myth, which is a sort of parable, and like other parables ought not to receive too minute an interpretation. In all such allegories there is a great deal which is merely ornamental, and the interpreter has to separate the important from the unimportant. Socrates himself has given the right clue when, in using his own discourse afterwards as the text for his examination of rhetoric, he characterizes it as a 'partly true and tolerably credible mythus,' in which amid poetical figures, order and arrangement were not forgotten. The soul is described in magnificent language as the self-moved and the source of motion in all other things. This is the philosophical theme or proem of the whole. But ideas must be given through something, and under the pretext that to realize the true nature of the soul would be not only tedious but impossible, we at once pass on to describe the souls of gods as well as men under the figure of two winged steeds and a charioteer. No connection is traced between the soul as the great motive power and the triple soul which is thus imaged. There is no difficulty in seeing that the charioteer represents the reason, or that the black horse is the symbol of the sensual or concupiscent element of human nature. The white horse also represents rational impulse, but the description, 'a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and a follower of true glory,' though similar, does not at once recall the 'spirit' (thumos) of the Republic. The two steeds really correspond in a figure more nearly to the appetitive and moral or semi-rational soul of Aristotle. And thus, for the first time perhaps in the history of philosophy, we have represented to us the threefold division of psychology. The image of the charioteer and the steeds has been compared with a similar image which occurs in the verses of Parmenides; but it is important to remark that the horses of Parmenides have no allegorical meaning, and that the poet is only describing his own approach in a chariot to the regions of light and the house of the goddess of truth. The triple soul has had a previous existence, in which following in the train of some god, from whom she derived her character, she beheld partially and imperfectly the vision of absolute truth. All her after existence, passed in many forms of men and animals, is spent in regaining this. The stages of the conflict are many and various; and she is sorely let and hindered by the animal desires of the inferior or concupiscent steed. Again and again she beholds the flashing beauty of the beloved. But before that vision can be finally enjoyed the animal desires must be subjected. The moral or spiritual element in man is represented by the immortal steed which, like thumos in the Republic, always sides with the reason. Both are dragged out of their course by the furious impulses of desire. In the end something is conceded to the desires, after they have been finally humbled and overpowered. And yet the way of philosophy, or perfect love of the unseen, is total abstinence from bodily delights. 'But all men cannot receive this saying': in the lower life of ambition they may be taken off their guard and stoop to folly unawares, and then, although they do not attain to the highest bliss, yet if they have once conquered they may be happy enough. The language of the Meno and the Phaedo as well as of the Phaedrus seems to show that at one time of his life Plato was quite serious in maintaining a former state of existence. His mission was to realize the abstract; in that, all good and truth, all the hopes of this and another life seemed to centre. To him abstractions, as we call them, were another kind of knowledge--an inner and unseen world, which seemed to exist far more truly than the fleeting objects of sense which were without him. When we are once able to imagine the intense power which abstract ideas exercised over the mind of Plato, we see that there was no more difficulty to him in realizing the eternal existence of them and of the human minds which were associated with them, in the past and future than in the present. The difficulty was not how they could exist, but how they could fail to exist. In the attempt to regain this 'saving' knowledge of the ideas, the sense was found to be as great an enemy as the desires; and hence two things which to us seem quite distinct are inextricably blended in the representation of Plato. Thus far we may believe that Plato was serious in his conception of the soul as a motive power, in his reminiscence of a former state of being, in his elevation of the reason over sense and passion, and perhaps in his doctrine of transmigration. Was he equally serious in the rest? For example, are we to attribute his tripartite division of the soul to the gods? Or is this merely assigned to them by way of parallelism with men? The latter is the more probable; for the horses of the gods are both white, i.e. their every impulse is in harmony with reason; their dualism, on the other hand, only carries out the figure of the chariot. Is he serious, again, in regarding love as 'a madness'? That seems to arise out of the antithesis to the former conception of love. At the same time he appears to intimate here, as in the Ion, Apology, Meno, and elsewhere, that there is a faculty in man, whether to be termed in modern language genius, or inspiration, or imagination, or idealism, or communion with God, which cannot be reduced to rule and measure. Perhaps, too, he is ironically repeating the common language of mankind about philosophy, and is turning their jest into a sort of earnest. (Compare Phaedo, Symp.) Or is he serious in holding that each soul bears the character of a god? He may have had no other account to give of the differences of human characters to which he afterwards refers. Or, again, in his absurd derivation of mantike and oionistike and imeros (compare Cratylus)? It is characteristic of the irony of Socrates to mix up sense and nonsense in such a way that no exact line can be drawn between them. And allegory helps to increase this sort of confusion. As is often the case in the parables and prophecies of Scripture, the meaning is allowed to break through the figure, and the details are not always consistent. When the charioteers and their steeds stand upon the dome of heaven they behold the intangible invisible essences which are not objects of sight. This is because the force of language can no further go. Nor can we dwell much on the circumstance, that at the completion of ten thousand years all are to return to the place from whence they came; because he represents their return as dependent on their own good conduct in the successive stages of existence. Nor again can we attribute anything to the accidental inference which would also follow, that even a tyrant may live righteously in the condition of life to which fate has called him ('he aiblins might, I dinna ken'). But to suppose this would be at variance with Plato himself and with Greek notions generally. He is much more serious in distinguishing men from animals by their recognition of the universal which they have known in a former state, and in denying that this gift of reason can ever be obliterated or lost. In the language of some modern theologians he might be said to maintain the 'final perseverance' of those who have entered on their pilgrim's progress. Other intimations of a 'metaphysic' or 'theology' of the future may also be discerned in him: (1) The moderate predestinarianism which here, as in the Republic, acknowledges the element of chance in human life, and yet asserts the freedom and responsibility of man; (2) The recognition of a moral as well as an intellectual principle in man under the image of an immortal steed; (3) The notion that the divine nature exists by the contemplation of ideas of virtue and justice--or, in other words, the assertion of the essentially moral nature of God; (4) Again, there is the hint that human life is a life of aspiration only, and that the true ideal is not to be found in art; (5) There occurs the first trace of the distinction between necessary and contingent matter; (6) The conception of the soul itself as the motive power and reason of the universe. The conception of the philosopher, or the philosopher and lover in one, as a sort of madman, may be compared with the Republic and Theaetetus, in both of which the philosopher is regarded as a stranger and monster upon the earth. The whole myth, like the other myths of Plato, describes in a figure things which are beyond the range of human faculties, or inaccessible to the knowledge of the age. That philosophy should be represented as the inspiration of love is a conception that has already become familiar to us in the Symposium, and is the expression partly of Plato's enthusiasm for the idea, and is also an indication of the real power exercised by the passion of friendship over the mind of the Greek. The master in the art of love knew that there was a mystery in these feelings and their associations, and especially in the contrast of the sensible and permanent which is afforded by them; and he sought to explain this, as he explained universal ideas, by a reference to a former state of existence. The capriciousness of love is also derived by him from an attachment to some god in a former world. The singular remark that the beloved is more affected than the lover at the final consummation of their love, seems likewise to hint at a psychological truth. It is difficult to exhaust the meanings of a work like the Phaedrus, which indicates so much more than it expresses; and is full of inconsistencies and ambiguities which were not perceived by Plato himself. For example, when he is speaking of the soul does he mean the human or the divine soul? and are they both equally self-moving and constructed on the same threefold principle? We should certainly be disposed to reply that the self-motive is to be attributed to God only; and on the other hand that the appetitive and passionate elements have no place in His nature. So we should infer from the reason of the thing, but there is no indication in Plato's own writings that this was his meaning. Or, again, when he explains the different characters of men by referring them back to the nature of the God whom they served in a former state of existence, we are inclined to ask whether he is serious: Is he not rather using a mythological figure, here as elsewhere, to draw a veil over things which are beyond the limits of mortal knowledge? Once more, in speaking of beauty is he really thinking of some external form such as might have been expressed in the works of Phidias or Praxiteles; and not rather of an imaginary beauty, of a sort which extinguishes rather than stimulates vulgar love,--a heavenly beauty like that which flashed from time to time before the eyes of Dante or Bunyan? Surely the latter. But it would be idle to reconcile all the details of the passage: it is a picture, not a system, and a picture which is for the greater part an allegory, and an allegory which allows the meaning to come through. The image of the charioteer and his steeds is placed side by side with the absolute forms of justice, temperance, and the like, which are abstract ideas only, and which are seen with the eye of the soul in her heavenly journey. The first impression of such a passage, in which no attempt is made to separate the substance from the form, is far truer than an elaborate philosophical analysis. It is too often forgotten that the whole of the second discourse of Socrates is only an allegory, or figure of speech. For this reason, it is unnecessary to enquire whether the love of which Plato speaks is the love of men or of women. It is really a general idea which includes both, and in which the sensual element, though not wholly eradicated, is reduced to order and measure. We must not attribute a meaning to every fanciful detail. Nor is there any need to call up revolting associations, which as a matter of good taste should be banished, and which were far enough away from the mind of Plato. These and similar passages should be interpreted by the Laws. Nor is there anything in the Symposium, or in the Charmides, in reality inconsistent with the sterner rule which Plato lays down in the Laws. At the same time it is not to be denied that love and philosophy are described by Socrates in figures of speech which would not be used in Christian times; or that nameless vices were prevalent at Athens and in other Greek cities; or that friendships between men were a more sacred tie, and had a more important social and educational influence than among ourselves. (See note on Symposium.) In the Phaedrus, as well as in the Symposium, there are two kinds of love, a lower and a higher, the one answering to the natural wants of the animal, the other rising above them and contemplating with religious awe the forms of justice, temperance, holiness, yet finding them also 'too dazzling bright for mortal eye,' and shrinking from them in amazement. The opposition between these two kinds of love may be compared to the opposition between the flesh and the spirit in the Epistles of St. Paul. It would be unmeaning to suppose that Plato, in describing the spiritual combat, in which the rational soul is finally victor and master of both the steeds, condescends to allow any indulgence of unnatural lusts. Two other thoughts about love are suggested by this passage. First of all, love is represented here, as in the Symposium, as one of the great powers of nature, which takes many forms and two principal ones, having a predominant influence over the lives of men. And these two, though opposed, are not absolutely separated the one from the other. Plato, with his great knowledge of human nature, was well aware how easily one is transformed into the other, or how soon the noble but fleeting aspiration may return into the nature of the animal, while the lower instinct which is latent always remains. The intermediate sentimentalism, which has exercised so great an influence on the literature of modern Europe, had no place in the classical times of Hellas; the higher love, of which Plato speaks, is the subject, not of poetry or fiction, but of philosophy. Secondly, there seems to be indicated a natural yearning of the human mind that the great ideas of justice, temperance, wisdom, should be expressed in some form of visible beauty, like the absolute purity and goodness which Christian art has sought to realize in the person of the Madonna. But although human nature has often attempted to represent outwardly what can be only 'spiritually discerned,' men feel that in pictures and images, whether painted or carved, or described in words only, we have not the substance but the shadow of the truth which is in heaven. There is no reason to suppose that in the fairest works of Greek art, Plato ever conceived himself to behold an image, however faint, of ideal truths. 'Not in that way was wisdom seen.' We may now pass on to the second part of the Dialogue, which is a criticism on the first. Rhetoric is assailed on various grounds: first, as desiring to persuade, without a knowledge of the truth; and secondly, as ignoring the distinction between certain and probable matter. The three speeches are then passed in review: the first of them has no definition of the nature of love, and no order in the topics (being in these respects far inferior to the second); while the third of them is found (though a fancy of the hour) to be framed upon real dialectical principles. But dialectic is not rhetoric; nothing on that subject is to be found in the endless treatises of rhetoric, however prolific in hard names. When Plato has sufficiently put them to the test of ridicule he touches, as with the point of a needle, the real error, which is the confusion of preliminary knowledge with creative power. No attainments will provide the speaker with genius; and the sort of attainments which can alone be of any value are the higher philosophy and the power of psychological analysis, which is given by dialectic, but not by the rules of the rhetoricians. In this latter portion of the Dialogue there are many texts which may help us to speak and to think. The names dialectic and rhetoric are passing out of use; we hardly examine seriously into their nature and limits, and probably the arts both of speaking and of conversation have been unduly neglected by us. But the mind of Socrates pierces through the differences of times and countries into the essential nature of man; and his words apply equally to the modern world and to the Athenians of old. Would he not have asked of us, or rather is he not asking of us, Whether we have ceased to prefer appearances to reality? Let us take a survey of the professions to which he refers and try them by his standard. Is not all literature passing into criticism, just as Athenian literature in the age of Plato was degenerating into sophistry and rhetoric? We can discourse and write about poems and paintings, but we seem to have lost the gift of creating them. Can we wonder that few of them 'come sweetly from nature,' while ten thousand reviewers (mala murioi) are engaged in dissecting them? Young men, like Phaedrus, are enamoured of their own literary clique and have but a feeble sympathy with the master-minds of former ages. They recognize 'a POETICAL necessity in the writings of their favourite author, even when he boldly wrote off just what came in his head.' They are beginning to think that Art is enough, just at the time when Art is about to disappear from the world. And would not a great painter, such as Michael Angelo, or a great poet, such as Shakespeare, returning to earth, 'courteously rebuke' us--would he not say that we are putting 'in the place of Art the preliminaries of Art,' confusing Art the expression of mind and truth with Art the composition of colours and forms; and perhaps he might more severely chastise some of us for trying to invent 'a new shudder' instead of bringing to the birth living and healthy creations? These he would regard as the signs of an age wanting in original power. Turning from literature and the arts to law and politics, again we fall under the lash of Socrates. For do we not often make 'the worse appear the better cause;' and do not 'both parties sometimes agree to tell lies'? Is not pleading 'an art of speaking unconnected with the truth'? There is another text of Socrates which must not be forgotten in relation to this subject. In the endless maze of English law is there any 'dividing the whole into parts or reuniting the parts into a whole'--any semblance of an organized being 'having hands and feet and other members'? Instead of a system there is the Chaos of Anaxagoras (omou panta chremata) and no Mind or Order. Then again in the noble art of politics, who thinks of first principles and of true ideas? We avowedly follow not the truth but the will of the many (compare Republic). Is not legislation too a sort of literary effort, and might not statesmanship be described as the 'art of enchanting' the house? While there are some politicians who have no knowledge of the truth, but only of what is likely to be approved by 'the many who sit in judgment,' there are others who can give no form to their ideal, neither having learned 'the art of persuasion,' nor having any insight into the 'characters of men.' Once more, has not medical science become a professional routine, which many 'practise without being able to say who were their instructors'--the application of a few drugs taken from a book instead of a life-long study of the natures and constitutions of human beings? Do we see as clearly as Hippocrates 'that the nature of the body can only be understood as a whole'? (Compare Charm.) And are not they held to be the wisest physicians who have the greatest distrust of their art? What would Socrates think of our newspapers, of our theology? Perhaps he would be afraid to speak of them;--the one vox populi, the other vox Dei, he might hesitate to attack them; or he might trace a fanciful connexion between them, and ask doubtfully, whether they are not equally inspired? He would remark that we are always searching for a belief and deploring our unbelief, seeming to prefer popular opinions unverified and contradictory to unpopular truths which are assured to us by the most certain proofs: that our preachers are in the habit of praising God 'without regard to truth and falsehood, attributing to Him every species of greatness and glory, saying that He is all this and the cause of all that, in order that we may exhibit Him as the fairest and best of all' (Symp.) without any consideration of His real nature and character or of the laws by which He governs the world--seeking for a 'private judgment' and not for the truth or 'God's judgment.' What would he say of the Church, which we praise in like manner, 'meaning ourselves,' without regard to history or experience? Might he not ask, whether we 'care more for the truth of religion, or for the speaker and the country from which the truth comes'? or, whether the 'select wise' are not 'the many' after all? (Symp.) So we may fill up the sketch of Socrates, lest, as Phaedrus says, the argument should be too 'abstract and barren of illustrations.' (Compare Symp., Apol., Euthyphro.) He next proceeds with enthusiasm to define the royal art of dialectic as the power of dividing a whole into parts, and of uniting the parts in a whole, and which may also be regarded (compare Soph.) as the process of the mind talking with herself. The latter view has probably led Plato to the paradox that speech is superior to writing, in which he may seem also to be doing an injustice to himself. For the two cannot be fairly compared in the manner which Plato suggests. The contrast of the living and dead word, and the example of Socrates, which he has represented in the form of the Dialogue, seem to have misled him. For speech and writing have really different functions; the one is more transitory, more diffuse, more elastic and capable of adaptation to moods and times; the other is more permanent, more concentrated, and is uttered not to this or that person or audience, but to all the world. In the Politicus the paradox is carried further; the mind or will of the king is preferred to the written law; he is supposed to be the Law personified, the ideal made Life. Yet in both these statements there is also contained a truth; they may be compared with one another, and also with the other famous paradox, that 'knowledge cannot be taught.' Socrates means to say, that what is truly written is written in the soul, just as what is truly taught grows up in the soul from within and is not forced upon it from without. When planted in a congenial soil the little seed becomes a tree, and 'the birds of the air build their nests in the branches.' There is an echo of this in the prayer at the end of the Dialogue, 'Give me beauty in the inward soul, and may the inward and outward man be at one.' We may further compare the words of St. Paul, 'Written not on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart;' and again, 'Ye are my epistles known and read of all men.' There may be a use in writing as a preservative against the forgetfulness of old age, but to live is higher far, to be ourselves the book, or the epistle, the truth embodied in a person, the Word made flesh. Something like this we may believe to have passed before Plato's mind when he affirmed that speech was superior to writing. So in other ages, weary of literature and criticism, of making many books, of writing articles in reviews, some have desired to live more closely in communion with their fellow-men, to speak heart to heart, to speak and act only, and not to write, following the example of Socrates and of Christ... Some other touches of inimitable grace and art and of the deepest wisdom may be also noted; such as the prayer or 'collect' which has just been cited, 'Give me beauty,' etc.; or 'the great name which belongs to God alone;' or 'the saying of wiser men than ourselves that a man of sense should try to please not his fellow-servants, but his good and noble masters,' like St. Paul again; or the description of the 'heavenly originals'... The chief criteria for determining the date of the Dialogue are (1) the ages of Lysias and Isocrates; (2) the character of the work. Lysias was born in the year 458; Isocrates in the year 436, about seven years before the birth of Plato. The first of the two great rhetoricians is described as in the zenith of his fame; the second is still young and full of promise. Now it is argued that this must have been written in the youth of Isocrates, when the promise was not yet fulfilled. And thus we should have to assign the Dialogue to a year not later than 406, when Isocrates was thirty and Plato twenty-three years of age, and while Socrates himself was still alive. Those who argue in this way seem not to reflect how easily Plato can 'invent Egyptians or anything else,' and how careless he is of historical truth or probability. Who would suspect that the wise Critias, the virtuous Charmides, had ended their lives among the thirty tyrants? Who would imagine that Lysias, who is here assailed by Socrates, is the son of his old friend Cephalus? Or that Isocrates himself is the enemy of Plato and his school? No arguments can be drawn from the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the characters of Plato. (Else, perhaps, it might be further argued that, judging from their extant remains, insipid rhetoric is far more characteristic of Isocrates than of Lysias.) But Plato makes use of names which have often hardly any connection with the historical characters to whom they belong. In this instance the comparative favour shown to Isocrates may possibly be accounted for by the circumstance of his belonging to the aristocratical, as Lysias to the democratical party. Few persons will be inclined to suppose, in the superficial manner of some ancient critics, that a dialogue which treats of love must necessarily have been written in youth. As little weight can be attached to the argument that Plato must have visited Egypt before he wrote the story of Theuth and Thamus. For there is no real proof that he ever went to Egypt; and even if he did, he might have known or invented Egyptian traditions before he went there. The late date of the Phaedrus will have to be established by other arguments than these: the maturity of the thought, the perfection of the style, the insight, the relation to the other Platonic Dialogues, seem to contradict the notion that it could have been the work of a youth of twenty or twenty-three years of age. The cosmological notion of the mind as the primum mobile, and the admission of impulse into the immortal nature, also afford grounds for assigning a later date. (Compare Tim., Soph., Laws.) Add to this that the picture of Socrates, though in some lesser particulars,--e.g. his going without sandals, his habit of remaining within the walls, his emphatic declaration that his study is human nature,--an exact resemblance, is in the main the Platonic and not the real Socrates. Can we suppose 'the young man to have told such lies' about his master while he was still alive? Moreover, when two Dialogues are so closely connected as the Phaedrus and Symposium, there is great improbability in supposing that one of them was written at least twenty years after the other. The conclusion seems to be, that the Dialogue was written at some comparatively late but unknown period of Plato's life, after he had deserted the purely Socratic point of view, but before he had entered on the more abstract speculations of the Sophist or the Philebus. Taking into account the divisions of the soul, the doctrine of transmigration, the contemplative nature of the philosophic life, and the character of the style, we shall not be far wrong in placing the Phaedrus in the neighbourhood of the Republic; remarking only that allowance must be made for the poetical element in the Phaedrus, which, while falling short of the Republic in definite philosophic results, seems to have glimpses of a truth beyond. Two short passages, which are unconnected with the main subject of the Dialogue, may seem to merit a more particular notice: (1) the locus classicus about mythology; (2) the tale of the grasshoppers. The first passage is remarkable as showing that Plato was entirely free from what may be termed the Euhemerism of his age. For there were Euhemerists in Hellas long before Euhemerus. Early philosophers, like Anaxagoras and Metrodorus, had found in Homer and mythology hidden meanings. Plato, with a truer instinct, rejects these attractive interpretations; he regards the inventor of them as 'unfortunate;' and they draw a man off from the knowledge of himself. There is a latent criticism, and also a poetical sense in Plato, which enable him to discard them, and yet in another way to make use of poetry and mythology as a vehicle of thought and feeling. What would he have said of the discovery of Christian doctrines in these old Greek legends? While acknowledging that such interpretations are 'very nice,' would he not have remarked that they are found in all sacred literatures? They cannot be tested by any criterion of truth, or used to establish any truth; they add nothing to the sum of human knowledge; they are--what we please, and if employed as 'peacemakers' between the new and old are liable to serious misconstruction, as he elsewhere remarks (Republic). And therefore he would have 'bid Farewell to them; the study of them would take up too much of his time; and he has not as yet learned the true nature of religion.' The 'sophistical' interest of Phaedrus, the little touch about the two versions of the story, the ironical manner in which these explanations are set aside--'the common opinion about them is enough for me'--the allusion to the serpent Typho may be noted in passing; also the general agreement between the tone of this speech and the remark of Socrates which follows afterwards, 'I am a diviner, but a poor one.' The tale of the grasshoppers is naturally suggested by the surrounding scene. They are also the representatives of the Athenians as children of the soil. Under the image of the lively chirruping grasshoppers who inform the Muses in heaven about those who honour them on earth, Plato intends to represent an Athenian audience (tettigessin eoikotes). The story is introduced, apparently, to mark a change of subject, and also, like several other allusions which occur in the course of the Dialogue, in order to preserve the scene in the recollection of the reader. ***** No one can duly appreciate the dialogues of Plato, especially the Phaedrus, Symposium, and portions of the Republic, who has not a sympathy with mysticism. To the uninitiated, as he would himself have acknowledged, they will appear to be the dreams of a poet who is disguised as a philosopher. There is a twofold difficulty in apprehending this aspect of the Platonic writings. First, we do not immediately realize that under the marble exterior of Greek literature was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emotion. Secondly, the forms or figures which the Platonic philosophy assumes, are not like the images of the prophet Isaiah, or of the Apocalypse, familiar to us in the days of our youth. By mysticism we mean, not the extravagance of an erring fancy, but the concentration of reason in feeling, the enthusiastic love of the good, the true, the one, the sense of the infinity of knowledge and of the marvel of the human faculties. When feeding upon such thoughts the 'wing of the soul' is renewed and gains strength; she is raised above 'the manikins of earth' and their opinions, waiting in wonder to know, and working with reverence to find out what God in this or in another life may reveal to her. ON THE DECLINE OF GREEK LITERATURE. One of the main purposes of Plato in the Phaedrus is to satirize Rhetoric, or rather the Professors of Rhetoric who swarmed at Athens in the fourth century before Christ. As in the opening of the Dialogue he ridicules the interpreters of mythology; as in the Protagoras he mocks at the Sophists; as in the Euthydemus he makes fun of the word-splitting Eristics; as in the Cratylus he ridicules the fancies of Etymologers; as in the Meno and Gorgias and some other dialogues he makes reflections and casts sly imputation upon the higher classes at Athens; so in the Phaedrus, chiefly in the latter part, he aims his shafts at the rhetoricians. The profession of rhetoric was the greatest and most popular in Athens, necessary 'to a man's salvation,' or at any rate to his attainment of wealth or power; but Plato finds nothing wholesome or genuine in the purpose of it. It is a veritable 'sham,' having no relation to fact, or to truth of any kind. It is antipathetic to him not only as a philosopher, but also as a great writer. He cannot abide the tricks of the rhetoricians, or the pedantries and mannerisms which they introduce into speech and writing. He sees clearly how far removed they are from the ways of simplicity and truth, and how ignorant of the very elements of the art which they are professing to teach. The thing which is most necessary of all, the knowledge of human nature, is hardly if at all considered by them. The true rules of composition, which are very few, are not to be found in their voluminous systems. Their pretentiousness, their omniscience, their large fortunes, their impatience of argument, their indifference to first principles, their stupidity, their progresses through Hellas accompanied by a troop of their disciples--these things were very distasteful to Plato, who esteemed genius far above art, and was quite sensible of the interval which separated them (Phaedrus). It is the interval which separates Sophists and rhetoricians from ancient famous men and women such as Homer and Hesiod, Anacreon and Sappho, Aeschylus and Sophocles; and the Platonic Socrates is afraid that, if he approves the former, he will be disowned by the latter. The spirit of rhetoric was soon to overspread all Hellas; and Plato with prophetic insight may have seen, from afar, the great literary waste or dead level, or interminable marsh, in which Greek literature was soon to disappear. A similar vision of the decline of the Greek drama and of the contrast of the old literature and the new was present to the mind of Aristophanes after the death of the three great tragedians (Frogs). After about a hundred, or at most two hundred years if we exclude Homer, the genius of Hellas had ceased to flower or blossom. The dreary waste which follows, beginning with the Alexandrian writers and even before them in the platitudes of Isocrates and his school, spreads over much more than a thousand years. And from this decline the Greek language and literature, unlike the Latin, which has come to life in new forms and been developed into the great European languages, never recovered. This monotony of literature, without merit, without genius and without character, is a phenomenon which deserves more attention than it has hitherto received; it is a phenomenon unique in the literary history of the world. How could there have been so much cultivation, so much diligence in writing, and so little mind or real creative power? Why did a thousand years invent nothing better than Sibylline books, Orphic poems, Byzantine imitations of classical histories, Christian reproductions of Greek plays, novels like the silly and obscene romances of Longus and Heliodorus, innumerable forged epistles, a great many epigrams, biographies of the meanest and most meagre description, a sham philosophy which was the bastard progeny of the union between Hellas and the East? Only in Plutarch, in Lucian, in Longinus, in the Roman emperors Marcus Aurelius and Julian, in some of the Christian fathers are there any traces of good sense or originality, or any power of arousing the interest of later ages. And when new books ceased to be written, why did hosts of grammarians and interpreters flock in, who never attain to any sound notion either of grammar or interpretation? Why did the physical sciences never arrive at any true knowledge or make any real progress? Why did poetry droop and languish? Why did history degenerate into fable? Why did words lose their power of expression? Why were ages of external greatness and magnificence attended by all the signs of decay in the human mind which are possible? To these questions many answers may be given, which if not the true causes, are at least to be reckoned among the symptoms of the decline. There is the want of method in physical science, the want of criticism in history, the want of simplicity or delicacy in poetry, the want of political freedom, which is the true atmosphere of public speaking, in oratory. The ways of life were luxurious and commonplace. Philosophy had become extravagant, eclectic, abstract, devoid of any real content. At length it ceased to exist. It had spread words like plaster over the whole field of knowledge. It had grown ascetic on one side, mystical on the other. Neither of these tendencies was favourable to literature. There was no sense of beauty either in language or in art. The Greek world became vacant, barbaric, oriental. No one had anything new to say, or any conviction of truth. The age had no remembrance of the past, no power of understanding what other ages thought and felt. The Catholic faith had degenerated into dogma and controversy. For more than a thousand years not a single writer of first-rate, or even of second-rate, reputation has a place in the innumerable rolls of Greek literature. If we seek to go deeper, we can still only describe the outward nature of the clouds or darkness which were spread over the heavens during so many ages without relief or light. We may say that this, like several other long periods in the history of the human race, was destitute, or deprived of the moral qualities which are the root of literary excellence. It had no life or aspiration, no national or political force, no desire for consistency, no love of knowledge for its own sake. It did not attempt to pierce the mists which surrounded it. It did not propose to itself to go forward and scale the heights of knowledge, but to go backwards and seek at the beginning what can only be found towards the end. It was lost in doubt and ignorance. It rested upon tradition and authority. It had none of the higher play of fancy which creates poetry; and where there is no true poetry, neither can there be any good prose. It had no great characters, and therefore it had no great writers. It was incapable of distinguishing between words and things. It was so hopelessly below the ancient standard of classical Greek art and literature that it had no power of understanding or of valuing them. It is doubtful whether any Greek author was justly appreciated in antiquity except by his own contemporaries; and this neglect of the great authors of the past led to the disappearance of the larger part of them, while the Greek fathers were mostly preserved. There is no reason to suppose that, in the century before the taking of Constantinople, much more was in existence than the scholars of the Renaissance carried away with them to Italy. The character of Greek literature sank lower as time went on. It consisted more and more of compilations, of scholia, of extracts, of commentaries, forgeries, imitations. The commentator or interpreter had no conception of his author as a whole, and very little of the context of any passage which he was explaining. The least things were preferred by him to the greatest. The question of a reading, or a grammatical form, or an accent, or the uses of a word, took the place of the aim or subject of the book. He had no sense of the beauties of an author, and very little light is thrown by him on real difficulties. He interprets past ages by his own. The greatest classical writers are the least appreciated by him. This seems to be the reason why so many of them have perished, why the lyric poets have almost wholly disappeared; why, out of the eighty or ninety tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, only seven of each had been preserved. Such an age of sciolism and scholasticism may possibly once more get the better of the literary world. There are those who prophesy that the signs of such a day are again appearing among us, and that at the end of the present century no writer of the first class will be still alive. They think that the Muse of Literature may transfer herself to other countries less dried up or worn out than our own. They seem to see the withering effect of criticism on original genius. No one can doubt that such a decay or decline of literature and of art seriously affects the manners and character of a nation. It takes away half the joys and refinements of life; it increases its dulness and grossness. Hence it becomes a matter of great interest to consider how, if at all, such a degeneracy may be averted. Is there any elixir which can restore life and youth to the literature of a nation, or at any rate which can prevent it becoming unmanned and enfeebled? First there is the progress of education. It is possible, and even probable, that the extension of the means of knowledge over a wider area and to persons living under new conditions may lead to many new combinations of thought and language. But, as yet, experience does not favour the realization of such a hope or promise. It may be truly answered that at present the training of teachers and the methods of education are very imperfect, and therefore that we cannot judge of the future by the present. When more of our youth are trained in the best literatures, and in the best parts of them, their minds may be expected to have a larger growth. They will have more interests, more thoughts, more material for conversation; they will have a higher standard and begin to think for themselves. The number of persons who will have the opportunity of receiving the highest education through the cheap press, and by the help of high schools and colleges, may increase tenfold. It is likely that in every thousand persons there is at least one who is far above the average in natural capacity, but the seed which is in him dies for want of cultivation. It has never had any stimulus to grow, or any field in which to blossom and produce fruit. Here is a great reservoir or treasure-house of human intelligence out of which new waters may flow and cover the earth. If at any time the great men of the world should die out, and originality or genius appear to suffer a partial eclipse, there is a boundless hope in the multitude of intelligences for future generations. They may bring gifts to men such as the world has never received before. They may begin at a higher point and yet take with them all the results of the past. The co-operation of many may have effects not less striking, though different in character from those which the creative genius of a single man, such as Bacon or Newton, formerly produced. There is also great hope to be derived, not merely from the extension of education over a wider area, but from the continuance of it during many generations. Educated parents will have children fit to receive education; and these again will grow up under circumstances far more favourable to the growth of intelligence than any which have hitherto existed in our own or in former ages. Even if we were to suppose no more men of genius to be produced, the great writers of ancient or of modern times will remain to furnish abundant materials of education to the coming generation. Now that every nation holds communication with every other, we may truly say in a fuller sense than formerly that 'the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.' They will not be 'cribbed, cabined, and confined' within a province or an island. The East will provide elements of culture to the West as well as the West to the East. The religions and literatures of the world will be open books, which he who wills may read. The human race may not be always ground down by bodily toil, but may have greater leisure for the improvement of the mind. The increasing sense of the greatness and infinity of nature will tend to awaken in men larger and more liberal thoughts. The love of mankind may be the source of a greater development of literature than nationality has ever been. There may be a greater freedom from prejudice and party; we may better understand the whereabouts of truth, and therefore there may be more success and fewer failures in the search for it. Lastly, in the coming ages we shall carry with us the recollection of the past, in which are necessarily contained many seeds of revival and renaissance in the future. So far is the world from becoming exhausted, so groundless is the fear that literature will ever die out. PHAEDRUS PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Phaedrus. SCENE: Under a plane-tree, by the banks of the Ilissus. SOCRATES: My dear Phaedrus, whence come you, and whither are you going? PHAEDRUS: I come from Lysias the son of Cephalus, and I am going to take a walk outside the wall, for I have been sitting with him the whole morning; and our common friend Acumenus tells me that it is much more refreshing to walk in the open air than to be shut up in a cloister. SOCRATES: There he is right. Lysias then, I suppose, was in the town? PHAEDRUS: Yes, he was staying with Epicrates, here at the house of Morychus; that house which is near the temple of Olympian Zeus. SOCRATES: And how did he entertain you? Can I be wrong in supposing that Lysias gave you a feast of discourse? PHAEDRUS: You shall hear, if you can spare time to accompany me. SOCRATES: And should I not deem the conversation of you and Lysias 'a thing of higher import,' as I may say in the words of Pindar, 'than any business'? PHAEDRUS: Will you go on? SOCRATES: And will you go on with the narration? PHAEDRUS: My tale, Socrates, is one of your sort, for love was the theme which occupied us--love after a fashion: Lysias has been writing about a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the point: he ingeniously proved that the non-lover should be accepted rather than the lover. SOCRATES: O that is noble of him! I wish that he would say the poor man rather than the rich, and the old man rather than the young one;--then he would meet the case of me and of many a man; his words would be quite refreshing, and he would be a public benefactor. For my part, I do so long to hear his speech, that if you walk all the way to Megara, and when you have reached the wall come back, as Herodicus recommends, without going in, I will keep you company. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean, my good Socrates? How can you imagine that my unpractised memory can do justice to an elaborate work, which the greatest rhetorician of the age spent a long time in composing. Indeed, I cannot; I would give a great deal if I could. SOCRATES: I believe that I know Phaedrus about as well as I know myself, and I am very sure that the speech of Lysias was repeated to him, not once only, but again and again;--he insisted on hearing it many times over and Lysias was very willing to gratify him; at last, when nothing else would do, he got hold of the book, and looked at what he most wanted to see,--this occupied him during the whole morning;--and then when he was tired with sitting, he went out to take a walk, not until, by the dog, as I believe, he had simply learned by heart the entire discourse, unless it was unusually long, and he went to a place outside the wall that he might practise his lesson. There he saw a certain lover of discourse who had a similar weakness;--he saw and rejoiced; now thought he, 'I shall have a partner in my revels.' And he invited him to come and walk with him. But when the lover of discourse begged that he would repeat the tale, he gave himself airs and said, 'No I cannot,' as if he were indisposed; although, if the hearer had refused, he would sooner or later have been compelled by him to listen whether he would or no. Therefore, Phaedrus, bid him do at once what he will soon do whether bidden or not. PHAEDRUS: I see that you will not let me off until I speak in some fashion or other; verily therefore my best plan is to speak as I best can. SOCRATES: A very true remark, that of yours. PHAEDRUS: I will do as I say; but believe me, Socrates, I did not learn the very words--O no; nevertheless I have a general notion of what he said, and will give you a summary of the points in which the lover differed from the non-lover. Let me begin at the beginning. SOCRATES: Yes, my sweet one; but you must first of all show what you have in your left hand under your cloak, for that roll, as I suspect, is the actual discourse. Now, much as I love you, I would not have you suppose that I am going to have your memory exercised at my expense, if you have Lysias himself here. PHAEDRUS: Enough; I see that I have no hope of practising my art upon you. But if I am to read, where would you please to sit? SOCRATES: Let us turn aside and go by the Ilissus; we will sit down at some quiet spot. PHAEDRUS: I am fortunate in not having my sandals, and as you never have any, I think that we may go along the brook and cool our feet in the water; this will be the easiest way, and at midday and in the summer is far from being unpleasant. SOCRATES: Lead on, and look out for a place in which we can sit down. PHAEDRUS: Do you see the tallest plane-tree in the distance? SOCRATES: Yes. PHAEDRUS: There are shade and gentle breezes, and grass on which we may either sit or lie down. SOCRATES: Move forward. PHAEDRUS: I should like to know, Socrates, whether the place is not somewhere here at which Boreas is said to have carried off Orithyia from the banks of the Ilissus? SOCRATES: Such is the tradition. PHAEDRUS: And is this the exact spot? The little stream is delightfully clear and bright; I can fancy that there might be maidens playing near. SOCRATES: I believe that the spot is not exactly here, but about a quarter of a mile lower down, where you cross to the temple of Artemis, and there is, I think, some sort of an altar of Boreas at the place. PHAEDRUS: I have never noticed it; but I beseech you to tell me, Socrates, do you believe this tale? SOCRATES: The wise are doubtful, and I should not be singular if, like them, I too doubted. I might have a rational explanation that Orithyia was playing with Pharmacia, when a northern gust carried her over the neighbouring rocks; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas. There is a discrepancy, however, about the locality; according to another version of the story she was taken from Areopagus, and not from this place. Now I quite acknowledge that these allegories are very nice, but he is not to be envied who has to invent them; much labour and ingenuity will be required of him; and when he has once begun, he must go on and rehabilitate Hippocentaurs and chimeras dire. Gorgons and winged steeds flow in apace, and numberless other inconceivable and portentous natures. And if he is sceptical about them, and would fain reduce them one after another to the rules of probability, this sort of crude philosophy will take up a great deal of time. Now I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny? But let me ask you, friend: have we not reached the plane-tree to which you were conducting us? PHAEDRUS: Yes, this is the tree. SOCRATES: By Here, a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. Here is this lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images, this must be a spot sacred to Achelous and the Nymphs. How delightful is the breeze:--so very sweet; and there is a sound in the air shrill and summerlike which makes answer to the chorus of the cicadae. But the greatest charm of all is the grass, like a pillow gently sloping to the head. My dear Phaedrus, you have been an admirable guide. PHAEDRUS: What an incomprehensible being you are, Socrates: when you are in the country, as you say, you really are like some stranger who is led about by a guide. Do you ever cross the border? I rather think that you never venture even outside the gates. SOCRATES: Very true, my good friend; and I hope that you will excuse me when you hear the reason, which is, that I am a lover of knowledge, and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, and not the trees or the country. Though I do indeed believe that you have found a spell with which to draw me out of the city into the country, like a hungry cow before whom a bough or a bunch of fruit is waved. For only hold up before me in like manner a book, and you may lead me all round Attica, and over the wide world. And now having arrived, I intend to lie down, and do you choose any posture in which you can read best. Begin. PHAEDRUS: Listen. You know how matters stand with me; and how, as I conceive, this affair may be arranged for the advantage of both of us. And I maintain that I ought not to fail in my suit, because I am not your lover: for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown when their passion ceases, but to the non-lovers who are free and not under any compulsion, no time of repentance ever comes; for they confer their benefits according to the measure of their ability, in the way which is most conducive to their own interest. Then again, lovers consider how by reason of their love they have neglected their own concerns and rendered service to others: and when to these benefits conferred they add on the troubles which they have endured, they think that they have long ago made to the beloved a very ample return. But the non-lover has no such tormenting recollections; he has never neglected his affairs or quarrelled with his relations; he has no troubles to add up or excuses to invent; and being well rid of all these evils, why should he not freely do what will gratify the beloved? If you say that the lover is more to be esteemed, because his love is thought to be greater; for he is willing to say and do what is hateful to other men, in order to please his beloved;--that, if true, is only a proof that he will prefer any future love to his present, and will injure his old love at the pleasure of the new. And how, in a matter of such infinite importance, can a man be right in trusting himself to one who is afflicted with a malady which no experienced person would attempt to cure, for the patient himself admits that he is not in his right mind, and acknowledges that he is wrong in his mind, but says that he is unable to control himself? And if he came to his right mind, would he ever imagine that the desires were good which he conceived when in his wrong mind? Once more, there are many more non-lovers than lovers; and if you choose the best of the lovers, you will not have many to choose from; but if from the non-lovers, the choice will be larger, and you will be far more likely to find among them a person who is worthy of your friendship. If public opinion be your dread, and you would avoid reproach, in all probability the lover, who is always thinking that other men are as emulous of him as he is of them, will boast to some one of his successes, and make a show of them openly in the pride of his heart;--he wants others to know that his labour has not been lost; but the non-lover is more his own master, and is desirous of solid good, and not of the opinion of mankind. Again, the lover may be generally noted or seen following the beloved (this is his regular occupation), and whenever they are observed to exchange two words they are supposed to meet about some affair of love either past or in contemplation; but when non-lovers meet, no one asks the reason why, because people know that talking to another is natural, whether friendship or mere pleasure be the motive. Once more, if you fear the fickleness of friendship, consider that in any other case a quarrel might be a mutual calamity; but now, when you have given up what is most precious to you, you will be the greater loser, and therefore, you will have more reason in being afraid of the lover, for his vexations are many, and he is always fancying that every one is leagued against him. Wherefore also he debars his beloved from society; he will not have you intimate with the wealthy, lest they should exceed him in wealth, or with men of education, lest they should be his superiors in understanding; and he is equally afraid of anybody's influence who has any other advantage over himself. If he can persuade you to break with them, you are left without a friend in the world; or if, out of a regard to your own interest, you have more sense than to comply with his desire, you will have to quarrel with him. But those who are non-lovers, and whose success in love is the reward of their merit, will not be jealous of the companions of their beloved, and will rather hate those who refuse to be his associates, thinking that their favourite is slighted by the latter and benefited by the former; for more love than hatred may be expected to come to him out of his friendship with others. Many lovers too have loved the person of a youth before they knew his character or his belongings; so that when their passion has passed away, there is no knowing whether they will continue to be his friends; whereas, in the case of non-lovers who were always friends, the friendship is not lessened by the favours granted; but the recollection of these remains with them, and is an earnest of good things to come. Further, I say that you are likely to be improved by me, whereas the lover will spoil you. For they praise your words and actions in a wrong way; partly, because they are afraid of offending you, and also, their judgment is weakened by passion. Such are the feats which love exhibits; he makes things painful to the disappointed which give no pain to others; he compels the successful lover to praise what ought not to give him pleasure, and therefore the beloved is to be pitied rather than envied. But if you listen to me, in the first place, I, in my intercourse with you, shall not merely regard present enjoyment, but also future advantage, being not mastered by love, but my own master; nor for small causes taking violent dislikes, but even when the cause is great, slowly laying up little wrath--unintentional offences I shall forgive, and intentional ones I shall try to prevent; and these are the marks of a friendship which will last. Do you think that a lover only can be a firm friend? reflect:--if this were true, we should set small value on sons, or fathers, or mothers; nor should we ever have loyal friends, for our love of them arises not from passion, but from other associations. Further, if we ought to shower favours on those who are the most eager suitors,--on that principle, we ought always to do good, not to the most virtuous, but to the most needy; for they are the persons who will be most relieved, and will therefore be the most grateful; and when you make a feast you should invite not your friend, but the beggar and the empty soul; for they will love you, and attend you, and come about your doors, and will be the best pleased, and the most grateful, and will invoke many a blessing on your head. Yet surely you ought not to be granting favours to those who besiege you with prayer, but to those who are best able to reward you; nor to the lover only, but to those who are worthy of love; nor to those who will enjoy the bloom of your youth, but to those who will share their possessions with you in age; nor to those who, having succeeded, will glory in their success to others, but to those who will be modest and tell no tales; nor to those who care about you for a moment only, but to those who will continue your friends through life; nor to those who, when their passion is over, will pick a quarrel with you, but rather to those who, when the charm of youth has left you, will show their own virtue. Remember what I have said; and consider yet this further point: friends admonish the lover under the idea that his way of life is bad, but no one of his kindred ever yet censured the non-lover, or thought that he was ill-advised about his own interests. 'Perhaps you will ask me whether I propose that you should indulge every non-lover. To which I reply that not even the lover would advise you to indulge all lovers, for the indiscriminate favour is less esteemed by the rational recipient, and less easily hidden by him who would escape the censure of the world. Now love ought to be for the advantage of both parties, and for the injury of neither. 'I believe that I have said enough; but if there is anything more which you desire or which in your opinion needs to be supplied, ask and I will answer.' Now, Socrates, what do you think? Is not the discourse excellent, more especially in the matter of the language? SOCRATES: Yes, quite admirable; the effect on me was ravishing. And this I owe to you, Phaedrus, for I observed you while reading to be in an ecstasy, and thinking that you are more experienced in these matters than I am, I followed your example, and, like you, my divine darling, I became inspired with a phrenzy. PHAEDRUS: Indeed, you are pleased to be merry. SOCRATES: Do you mean that I am not in earnest? PHAEDRUS: Now don't talk in that way, Socrates, but let me have your real opinion; I adjure you, by Zeus, the god of friendship, to tell me whether you think that any Hellene could have said more or spoken better on the same subject. SOCRATES: Well, but are you and I expected to praise the sentiments of the author, or only the clearness, and roundness, and finish, and tournure of the language? As to the first I willingly submit to your better judgment, for I am not worthy to form an opinion, having only attended to the rhetorical manner; and I was doubting whether this could have been defended even by Lysias himself; I thought, though I speak under correction, that he repeated himself two or three times, either from want of words or from want of pains; and also, he appeared to me ostentatiously to exult in showing how well he could say the same thing in two or three ways. PHAEDRUS: Nonsense, Socrates; what you call repetition was the especial merit of the speech; for he omitted no topic of which the subject rightly allowed, and I do not think that any one could have spoken better or more exhaustively. SOCRATES: There I cannot go along with you. Ancient sages, men and women, who have spoken and written of these things, would rise up in judgment against me, if out of complaisance I assented to you. PHAEDRUS: Who are they, and where did you hear anything better than this? SOCRATES: I am sure that I must have heard; but at this moment I do not remember from whom; perhaps from Sappho the fair, or Anacreon the wise; or, possibly, from a prose writer. Why do I say so? Why, because I perceive that my bosom is full, and that I could make another speech as good as that of Lysias, and different. Now I am certain that this is not an invention of my own, who am well aware that I know nothing, and therefore I can only infer that I have been filled through the ears, like a pitcher, from the waters of another, though I have actually forgotten in my stupidity who was my informant. PHAEDRUS: That is grand:--but never mind where you heard the discourse or from whom; let that be a mystery not to be divulged even at my earnest desire. Only, as you say, promise to make another and better oration, equal in length and entirely new, on the same subject; and I, like the nine Archons, will promise to set up a golden image at Delphi, not only of myself, but of you, and as large as life. SOCRATES: You are a dear golden ass if you suppose me to mean that Lysias has altogether missed the mark, and that I can make a speech from which all his arguments are to be excluded. The worst of authors will say something which is to the point. Who, for example, could speak on this thesis of yours without praising the discretion of the non-lover and blaming the indiscretion of the lover? These are the commonplaces of the subject which must come in (for what else is there to be said?) and must be allowed and excused; the only merit is in the arrangement of them, for there can be none in the invention; but when you leave the commonplaces, then there may be some originality. PHAEDRUS: I admit that there is reason in what you say, and I too will be reasonable, and will allow you to start with the premiss that the lover is more disordered in his wits than the non-lover; if in what remains you make a longer and better speech than Lysias, and use other arguments, then I say again, that a statue you shall have of beaten gold, and take your place by the colossal offerings of the Cypselids at Olympia. SOCRATES: How profoundly in earnest is the lover, because to tease him I lay a finger upon his love! And so, Phaedrus, you really imagine that I am going to improve upon the ingenuity of Lysias? PHAEDRUS: There I have you as you had me, and you must just speak 'as you best can.' Do not let us exchange 'tu quoque' as in a farce, or compel me to say to you as you said to me, 'I know Socrates as well as I know myself, and he was wanting to speak, but he gave himself airs.' Rather I would have you consider that from this place we stir not until you have unbosomed yourself of the speech; for here are we all alone, and I am stronger, remember, and younger than you:--Wherefore perpend, and do not compel me to use violence. SOCRATES: But, my sweet Phaedrus, how ridiculous it would be of me to compete with Lysias in an extempore speech! He is a master in his art and I am an untaught man. PHAEDRUS: You see how matters stand; and therefore let there be no more pretences; for, indeed, I know the word that is irresistible. SOCRATES: Then don't say it. PHAEDRUS: Yes, but I will; and my word shall be an oath. 'I say, or rather swear'--but what god will be witness of my oath?--'By this plane-tree I swear, that unless you repeat the discourse here in the face of this very plane-tree, I will never tell you another; never let you have word of another!' SOCRATES: Villain! I am conquered; the poor lover of discourse has no more to say. PHAEDRUS: Then why are you still at your tricks? SOCRATES: I am not going to play tricks now that you have taken the oath, for I cannot allow myself to be starved. PHAEDRUS: Proceed. SOCRATES: Shall I tell you what I will do? PHAEDRUS: What? SOCRATES: I will veil my face and gallop through the discourse as fast as I can, for if I see you I shall feel ashamed and not know what to say. PHAEDRUS: Only go on and you may do anything else which you please. SOCRATES: Come, O ye Muses, melodious, as ye are called, whether you have received this name from the character of your strains, or because the Melians are a musical race, help, O help me in the tale which my good friend here desires me to rehearse, in order that his friend whom he always deemed wise may seem to him to be wiser than ever. Once upon a time there was a fair boy, or, more properly speaking, a youth; he was very fair and had a great many lovers; and there was one special cunning one, who had persuaded the youth that he did not love him, but he really loved him all the same; and one day when he was paying his addresses to him, he used this very argument--that he ought to accept the non-lover rather than the lover; his words were as follows:-- 'All good counsel begins in the same way; a man should know what he is advising about, or his counsel will all come to nought. But people imagine that they know about the nature of things, when they don't know about them, and, not having come to an understanding at first because they think that they know, they end, as might be expected, in contradicting one another and themselves. Now you and I must not be guilty of this fundamental error which we condemn in others; but as our question is whether the lover or non-lover is to be preferred, let us first of all agree in defining the nature and power of love, and then, keeping our eyes upon the definition and to this appealing, let us further enquire whether love brings advantage or disadvantage. 'Every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. Now excess has many names, and many members, and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. The desire of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton; the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the same family would be called;--it will be the name of that which happens to be dominant. And now I think that you will perceive the drift of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the unspoken, I had better say further that the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred--that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love (erromenos eros).' And now, dear Phaedrus, I shall pause for an instant to ask whether you do not think me, as I appear to myself, inspired? PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you seem to have a very unusual flow of words. SOCRATES: Listen to me, then, in silence; for surely the place is holy; so that you must not wonder, if, as I proceed, I appear to be in a divine fury, for already I am getting into dithyrambics. PHAEDRUS: Nothing can be truer. SOCRATES: The responsibility rests with you. But hear what follows, and perhaps the fit may be averted; all is in their hands above. I will go on talking to my youth. Listen:-- Thus, my friend, we have declared and defined the nature of the subject. Keeping the definition in view, let us now enquire what advantage or disadvantage is likely to ensue from the lover or the non-lover to him who accepts their advances. He who is the victim of his passions and the slave of pleasure will of course desire to make his beloved as agreeable to himself as possible. Now to him who has a mind diseased anything is agreeable which is not opposed to him, but that which is equal or superior is hateful to him, and therefore the lover will not brook any superiority or equality on the part of his beloved; he is always employed in reducing him to inferiority. And the ignorant is the inferior of the wise, the coward of the brave, the slow of speech of the speaker, the dull of the clever. These, and not these only, are the mental defects of the beloved;--defects which, when implanted by nature, are necessarily a delight to the lover, and when not implanted, he must contrive to implant them in him, if he would not be deprived of his fleeting joy. And therefore he cannot help being jealous, and will debar his beloved from the advantages of society which would make a man of him, and especially from that society which would have given him wisdom, and thereby he cannot fail to do him great harm. That is to say, in his excessive fear lest he should come to be despised in his eyes he will be compelled to banish from him divine philosophy; and there is no greater injury which he can inflict upon him than this. He will contrive that his beloved shall be wholly ignorant, and in everything shall look to him; he is to be the delight of the lover's heart, and a curse to himself. Verily, a lover is a profitable guardian and associate for him in all that relates to his mind. Let us next see how his master, whose law of life is pleasure and not good, will keep and train the body of his servant. Will he not choose a beloved who is delicate rather than sturdy and strong? One brought up in shady bowers and not in the bright sun, a stranger to manly exercises and the sweat of toil, accustomed only to a soft and luxurious diet, instead of the hues of health having the colours of paint and ornament, and the rest of a piece?--such a life as any one can imagine and which I need not detail at length. But I may sum up all that I have to say in a word, and pass on. Such a person in war, or in any of the great crises of life, will be the anxiety of his friends and also of his lover, and certainly not the terror of his enemies; which nobody can deny. And now let us tell what advantage or disadvantage the beloved will receive from the guardianship and society of his lover in the matter of his property; this is the next point to be considered. The lover will be the first to see what, indeed, will be sufficiently evident to all men, that he desires above all things to deprive his beloved of his dearest and best and holiest possessions, father, mother, kindred, friends, of all whom he thinks may be hinderers or reprovers of their most sweet converse; he will even cast a jealous eye upon his gold and silver or other property, because these make him a less easy prey, and when caught less manageable; hence he is of necessity displeased at his possession of them and rejoices at their loss; and he would like him to be wifeless, childless, homeless, as well; and the longer the better, for the longer he is all this, the longer he will enjoy him. There are some sort of animals, such as flatterers, who are dangerous and mischievous enough, and yet nature has mingled a temporary pleasure and grace in their composition. You may say that a courtesan is hurtful, and disapprove of such creatures and their practices, and yet for the time they are very pleasant. But the lover is not only hurtful to his love; he is also an extremely disagreeable companion. The old proverb says that 'birds of a feather flock together'; I suppose that equality of years inclines them to the same pleasures, and similarity begets friendship; yet you may have more than enough even of this; and verily constraint is always said to be grievous. Now the lover is not only unlike his beloved, but he forces himself upon him. For he is old and his love is young, and neither day nor night will he leave him if he can help; necessity and the sting of desire drive him on, and allure him with the pleasure which he receives from seeing, hearing, touching, perceiving him in every way. And therefore he is delighted to fasten upon him and to minister to him. But what pleasure or consolation can the beloved be receiving all this time? Must he not feel the extremity of disgust when he looks at an old shrivelled face and the remainder to match, which even in a description is disagreeable, and quite detestable when he is forced into daily contact with his lover; moreover he is jealously watched and guarded against everything and everybody, and has to hear misplaced and exaggerated praises of himself, and censures equally inappropriate, which are intolerable when the man is sober, and, besides being intolerable, are published all over the world in all their indelicacy and wearisomeness when he is drunk. And not only while his love continues is he mischievous and unpleasant, but when his love ceases he becomes a perfidious enemy of him on whom he showered his oaths and prayers and promises, and yet could hardly prevail upon him to tolerate the tedium of his company even from motives of interest. The hour of payment arrives, and now he is the servant of another master; instead of love and infatuation, wisdom and temperance are his bosom's lords; but the beloved has not discovered the change which has taken place in him, when he asks for a return and recalls to his recollection former sayings and doings; he believes himself to be speaking to the same person, and the other, not having the courage to confess the truth, and not knowing how to fulfil the oaths and promises which he made when under the dominion of folly, and having now grown wise and temperate, does not want to do as he did or to be as he was before. And so he runs away and is constrained to be a defaulter; the oyster-shell (In allusion to a game in which two parties fled or pursued according as an oyster-shell which was thrown into the air fell with the dark or light side uppermost.) has fallen with the other side uppermost--he changes pursuit into flight, while the other is compelled to follow him with passion and imprecation, not knowing that he ought never from the first to have accepted a demented lover instead of a sensible non-lover; and that in making such a choice he was giving himself up to a faithless, morose, envious, disagreeable being, hurtful to his estate, hurtful to his bodily health, and still more hurtful to the cultivation of his mind, than which there neither is nor ever will be anything more honoured in the eyes both of gods and men. Consider this, fair youth, and know that in the friendship of the lover there is no real kindness; he has an appetite and wants to feed upon you: 'As wolves love lambs so lovers love their loves.' But I told you so, I am speaking in verse, and therefore I had better make an end; enough. PHAEDRUS: I thought that you were only half-way and were going to make a similar speech about all the advantages of accepting the non-lover. Why do you not proceed? SOCRATES: Does not your simplicity observe that I have got out of dithyrambics into heroics, when only uttering a censure on the lover? And if I am to add the praises of the non-lover what will become of me? Do you not perceive that I am already overtaken by the Nymphs to whom you have mischievously exposed me? And therefore I will only add that the non-lover has all the advantages in which the lover is accused of being deficient. And now I will say no more; there has been enough of both of them. Leaving the tale to its fate, I will cross the river and make the best of my way home, lest a worse thing be inflicted upon me by you. PHAEDRUS: Not yet, Socrates; not until the heat of the day has passed; do you not see that the hour is almost noon? there is the midday sun standing still, as people say, in the meridian. Let us rather stay and talk over what has been said, and then return in the cool. SOCRATES: Your love of discourse, Phaedrus, is superhuman, simply marvellous, and I do not believe that there is any one of your contemporaries who has either made or in one way or another has compelled others to make an equal number of speeches. I would except Simmias the Theban, but all the rest are far behind you. And now I do verily believe that you have been the cause of another. PHAEDRUS: That is good news. But what do you mean? SOCRATES: I mean to say that as I was about to cross the stream the usual sign was given to me,--that sign which always forbids, but never bids, me to do anything which I am going to do; and I thought that I heard a voice saying in my ear that I had been guilty of impiety, and that I must not go away until I had made an atonement. Now I am a diviner, though not a very good one, but I have enough religion for my own use, as you might say of a bad writer--his writing is good enough for him; and I am beginning to see that I was in error. O my friend, how prophetic is the human soul! At the time I had a sort of misgiving, and, like Ibycus, 'I was troubled; I feared that I might be buying honour from men at the price of sinning against the gods.' Now I recognize my error. PHAEDRUS: What error? SOCRATES: That was a dreadful speech which you brought with you, and you made me utter one as bad. PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: It was foolish, I say,--to a certain extent, impious; can anything be more dreadful? PHAEDRUS: Nothing, if the speech was really such as you describe. SOCRATES: Well, and is not Eros the son of Aphrodite, and a god? PHAEDRUS: So men say. SOCRATES: But that was not acknowledged by Lysias in his speech, nor by you in that other speech which you by a charm drew from my lips. For if love be, as he surely is, a divinity, he cannot be evil. Yet this was the error of both the speeches. There was also a simplicity about them which was refreshing; having no truth or honesty in them, nevertheless they pretended to be something, hoping to succeed in deceiving the manikins of earth and gain celebrity among them. Wherefore I must have a purgation. And I bethink me of an ancient purgation of mythological error which was devised, not by Homer, for he never had the wit to discover why he was blind, but by Stesichorus, who was a philosopher and knew the reason why; and therefore, when he lost his eyes, for that was the penalty which was inflicted upon him for reviling the lovely Helen, he at once purged himself. And the purgation was a recantation, which began thus,-- 'False is that word of mine--the truth is that thou didst not embark in ships, nor ever go to the walls of Troy;' and when he had completed his poem, which is called 'the recantation,' immediately his sight returned to him. Now I will be wiser than either Stesichorus or Homer, in that I am going to make my recantation for reviling love before I suffer; and this I will attempt, not as before, veiled and ashamed, but with forehead bold and bare. PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be more agreeable to me than to hear you say so. SOCRATES: Only think, my good Phaedrus, what an utter want of delicacy was shown in the two discourses; I mean, in my own and in that which you recited out of the book. Would not any one who was himself of a noble and gentle nature, and who loved or ever had loved a nature like his own, when we tell of the petty causes of lovers' jealousies, and of their exceeding animosities, and of the injuries which they do to their beloved, have imagined that our ideas of love were taken from some haunt of sailors to which good manners were unknown--he would certainly never have admitted the justice of our censure? PHAEDRUS: I dare say not, Socrates. SOCRATES: Therefore, because I blush at the thought of this person, and also because I am afraid of Love himself, I desire to wash the brine out of my ears with water from the spring; and I would counsel Lysias not to delay, but to write another discourse, which shall prove that 'ceteris paribus' the lover ought to be accepted rather than the non-lover. PHAEDRUS: Be assured that he shall. You shall speak the praises of the lover, and Lysias shall be compelled by me to write another discourse on the same theme. SOCRATES: You will be true to your nature in that, and therefore I believe you. PHAEDRUS: Speak, and fear not. SOCRATES: But where is the fair youth whom I was addressing before, and who ought to listen now; lest, if he hear me not, he should accept a non-lover before he knows what he is doing? PHAEDRUS: He is close at hand, and always at your service. SOCRATES: Know then, fair youth, that the former discourse was the word of Phaedrus, the son of Vain Man, who dwells in the city of Myrrhina (Myrrhinusius). And this which I am about to utter is the recantation of Stesichorus the son of Godly Man (Euphemus), who comes from the town of Desire (Himera), and is to the following effect: 'I told a lie when I said' that the beloved ought to accept the non-lover when he might have the lover, because the one is sane, and the other mad. It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none. And I might also tell you how the Sibyl and other inspired persons have given to many an one many an intimation of the future which has saved them from falling. But it would be tedious to speak of what every one knows. There will be more reason in appealing to the ancient inventors of names (compare Cratylus), who would never have connected prophecy (mantike) which foretells the future and is the noblest of arts, with madness (manike), or called them both by the same name, if they had deemed madness to be a disgrace or dishonour;--they must have thought that there was an inspired madness which was a noble thing; for the two words, mantike and manike, are really the same, and the letter tau is only a modern and tasteless insertion. And this is confirmed by the name which was given by them to the rational investigation of futurity, whether made by the help of birds or of other signs--this, for as much as it is an art which supplies from the reasoning faculty mind (nous) and information (istoria) to human thought (oiesis) they originally termed oionoistike, but the word has been lately altered and made sonorous by the modern introduction of the letter Omega (oionoistike and oionistike), and in proportion as prophecy (mantike) is more perfect and august than augury, both in name and fact, in the same proportion, as the ancients testify, is madness superior to a sane mind (sophrosune) for the one is only of human, but the other of divine origin. Again, where plagues and mightiest woes have bred in certain families, owing to some ancient blood-guiltiness, there madness has entered with holy prayers and rites, and by inspired utterances found a way of deliverance for those who are in need; and he who has part in this gift, and is truly possessed and duly out of his mind, is by the use of purifications and mysteries made whole and exempt from evil, future as well as present, and has a release from the calamity which was afflicting him. The third kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses; which taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyrical and all other numbers; with these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman. I might tell of many other noble deeds which have sprung from inspired madness. And therefore, let no one frighten or flutter us by saying that the temperate friend is to be chosen rather than the inspired, but let him further show that love is not sent by the gods for any good to lover or beloved; if he can do so we will allow him to carry off the palm. And we, on our part, will prove in answer to him that the madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings, and the proof shall be one which the wise will receive, and the witling disbelieve. But first of all, let us view the affections and actions of the soul divine and human, and try to ascertain the truth about them. The beginning of our proof is as follows:-- (Translated by Cic. Tus. Quaest.) The soul through all her being is immortal, for that which is ever in motion is immortal; but that which moves another and is moved by another, in ceasing to move ceases also to live. Only the self-moving, never leaving self, never ceases to move, and is the fountain and beginning of motion to all that moves besides. Now, the beginning is unbegotten, for that which is begotten has a beginning; but the beginning is begotten of nothing, for if it were begotten of something, then the begotten would not come from a beginning. But if unbegotten, it must also be indestructible; for if beginning were destroyed, there could be no beginning out of anything, nor anything out of a beginning; and all things must have a beginning. And therefore the self-moving is the beginning of motion; and this can neither be destroyed nor begotten, else the whole heavens and all creation would collapse and stand still, and never again have motion or birth. But if the self-moving is proved to be immortal, he who affirms that self-motion is the very idea and essence of the soul will not be put to confusion. For the body which is moved from without is soulless; but that which is moved from within has a soul, for such is the nature of the soul. But if this be true, must not the soul be the self-moving, and therefore of necessity unbegotten and immortal? Enough of the soul's immortality. Of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be composite--a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. I will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature. The soul in her totality has the care of inanimate being everywhere, and traverses the whole heaven in divers forms appearing--when perfect and fully winged she soars upward, and orders the whole world; whereas the imperfect soul, losing her wings and drooping in her flight at last settles on the solid ground--there, finding a home, she receives an earthly frame which appears to be self-moved, but is really moved by her power; and this composition of soul and body is called a living and mortal creature. For immortal no such union can be reasonably believed to be; although fancy, not having seen nor surely known the nature of God, may imagine an immortal creature having both a body and also a soul which are united throughout all time. Let that, however, be as God wills, and be spoken of acceptably to him. And now let us ask the reason why the soul loses her wings! The wing is the corporeal element which is most akin to the divine, and which by nature tends to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the habitation of the gods. The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the opposite of good, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the mighty lord, holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and taking care of all; and there follows him the array of gods and demi-gods, marshalled in eleven bands; Hestia alone abides at home in the house of heaven; of the rest they who are reckoned among the princely twelve march in their appointed order. They see many blessed sights in the inner heaven, and there are many ways to and fro, along which the blessed gods are passing, every one doing his own work; he may follow who will and can, for jealousy has no place in the celestial choir. But when they go to banquet and festival, then they move up the steep to the top of the vault of heaven. The chariots of the gods in even poise, obeying the rein, glide rapidly; but the others labour, for the vicious steed goes heavily, weighing down the charioteer to the earth when his steed has not been thoroughly trained:--and this is the hour of agony and extremest conflict for the soul. For the immortals, when they are at the end of their course, go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven, and the revolution of the spheres carries them round, and they behold the things beyond. But of the heaven which is above the heavens, what earthly poet ever did or ever will sing worthily? It is such as I will describe; for I must dare to speak the truth, when truth is my theme. There abides the very being with which true knowledge is concerned; the colourless, formless, intangible essence, visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul. The divine intelligence, being nurtured upon mind and pure knowledge, and the intelligence of every soul which is capable of receiving the food proper to it, rejoices at beholding reality, and once more gazing upon truth, is replenished and made glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same place. In the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute; and beholding the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home; and there the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to eat and nectar to drink. Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and with difficulty beholding true being; while another only rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they are carried round below the surface, plunging, treading on one another, each striving to be first; and there is confusion and perspiration and the extremity of effort; and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken through the ill-driving of the charioteers; and all of them after a fruitless toil, not having attained to the mysteries of true being, go away, and feed upon opinion. The reason why the souls exhibit this exceeding eagerness to behold the plain of truth is that pasturage is found there, which is suited to the highest part of the soul; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with this. And there is a law of Destiny, that the soul which attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal, but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature; that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king or warrior chief; the soul which is of the third class shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth shall lead the life of a prophet or hierophant; to the sixth the character of poet or some other imitative artist will be assigned; to the seventh the life of an artisan or husbandman; to the eighth that of a sophist or demagogue; to the ninth that of a tyrant--all these are states of probation, in which he who does righteously improves, and he who does unrighteously, deteriorates his lot. Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years; he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years:--and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others (The philosopher alone is not subject to judgment (krisis), for he has never lost the vision of truth.) receive judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished; others to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the good souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they please. The soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. But the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason;--this is the recollection of those things which our soul once saw while following God--when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him; they do not see that he is inspired. Thus far I have been speaking of the fourth and last kind of madness, which is imputed to him who, when he sees the beauty of earth, is transported with the recollection of the true beauty; he would like to fly away, but he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below; and he is therefore thought to be mad. And I have shown this of all inspirations to be the noblest and highest and the offspring of the highest to him who has or shares in it, and that he who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it. For, as has been already said, every soul of man has in the way of nature beheld true being; this was the condition of her passing into the form of man. But all souls do not easily recall the things of the other world; they may have seen them for a short time only, or they may have been unfortunate in their earthly lot, and, having had their hearts turned to unrighteousness through some corrupting influence, they may have lost the memory of the holy things which once they saw. Few only retain an adequate remembrance of them; and they, when they behold here any image of that other world, are rapt in amazement; but they are ignorant of what this rapture means, because they do not clearly perceive. For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. There was a time when with the rest of the happy band they saw beauty shining in brightness,--we philosophers following in the train of Zeus, others in company with other gods; and then we beheld the beatific vision and were initiated into a mystery which may be truly called most blessed, celebrated by us in our state of innocence, before we had any experience of evils to come, when we were admitted to the sight of apparitions innocent and simple and calm and happy, which we beheld shining in pure light, pure ourselves and not yet enshrined in that living tomb which we carry about, now that we are imprisoned in the body, like an oyster in his shell. Let me linger over the memory of scenes which have passed away. But of beauty, I repeat again that we saw her there shining in company with the celestial forms; and coming to earth we find her here too, shining in clearness through the clearest aperture of sense. For sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her, and the other ideas, if they had visible counterparts, would be equally lovely. But this is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight. Now he who is not newly initiated or who has become corrupted, does not easily rise out of this world to the sight of true beauty in the other; he looks only at her earthly namesake, and instead of being awed at the sight of her, he is given over to pleasure, and like a brutish beast he rushes on to enjoy and beget; he consorts with wantonness, and is not afraid or ashamed of pursuing pleasure in violation of nature. But he whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty; and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him; then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a god; then while he gazes on him there is a sort of reaction, and the shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration; for, as he receives the effluence of beauty through the eyes, the wing moistens and he warms. And as he warms, the parts out of which the wing grew, and which had been hitherto closed and rigid, and had prevented the wing from shooting forth, are melted, and as nourishment streams upon him, the lower end of the wing begins to swell and grow from the root upwards; and the growth extends under the whole soul--for once the whole was winged. During this process the whole soul is all in a state of ebullition and effervescence,--which may be compared to the irritation and uneasiness in the gums at the time of cutting teeth,--bubbles up, and has a feeling of uneasiness and tickling; but when in like manner the soul is beginning to grow wings, the beauty of the beloved meets her eye and she receives the sensible warm motion of particles which flow towards her, therefore called emotion (imeros), and is refreshed and warmed by them, and then she ceases from her pain with joy. But when she is parted from her beloved and her moisture fails, then the orifices of the passage out of which the wing shoots dry up and close, and intercept the germ of the wing; which, being shut up with the emotion, throbbing as with the pulsations of an artery, pricks the aperture which is nearest, until at length the entire soul is pierced and maddened and pained, and at the recollection of beauty is again delighted. And from both of them together the soul is oppressed at the strangeness of her condition, and is in a great strait and excitement, and in her madness can neither sleep by night nor abide in her place by day. And wherever she thinks that she will behold the beautiful one, thither in her desire she runs. And when she has seen him, and bathed herself in the waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed, and has no more pangs and pains; and this is the sweetest of all pleasures at the time, and is the reason why the soul of the lover will never forsake his beautiful one, whom he esteems above all; he has forgotten mother and brethren and companions, and he thinks nothing of the neglect and loss of his property; the rules and proprieties of life, on which he formerly prided himself, he now despises, and is ready to sleep like a servant, wherever he is allowed, as near as he can to his desired one, who is the object of his worship, and the physician who can alone assuage the greatness of his pain. And this state, my dear imaginary youth to whom I am talking, is by men called love, and among the gods has a name at which you, in your simplicity, may be inclined to mock; there are two lines in the apocryphal writings of Homer in which the name occurs. One of them is rather outrageous, and not altogether metrical. They are as follows: 'Mortals call him fluttering love, But the immortals call him winged one, Because the growing of wings (Or, reading pterothoiton, 'the movement of wings.') is a necessity to him.' You may believe this, but not unless you like. At any rate the loves of lovers and their causes are such as I have described. Now the lover who is taken to be the attendant of Zeus is better able to bear the winged god, and can endure a heavier burden; but the attendants and companions of Ares, when under the influence of love, if they fancy that they have been at all wronged, are ready to kill and put an end to themselves and their beloved. And he who follows in the train of any other god, while he is unspoiled and the impression lasts, honours and imitates him, as far as he is able; and after the manner of his God he behaves in his intercourse with his beloved and with the rest of the world during the first period of his earthly existence. Every one chooses his love from the ranks of beauty according to his character, and this he makes his god, and fashions and adorns as a sort of image which he is to fall down and worship. The followers of Zeus desire that their beloved should have a soul like him; and therefore they seek out some one of a philosophical and imperial nature, and when they have found him and loved him, they do all they can to confirm such a nature in him, and if they have no experience of such a disposition hitherto, they learn of any one who can teach them, and themselves follow in the same way. And they have the less difficulty in finding the nature of their own god in themselves, because they have been compelled to gaze intensely on him; their recollection clings to him, and they become possessed of him, and receive from him their character and disposition, so far as man can participate in God. The qualities of their god they attribute to the beloved, wherefore they love him all the more, and if, like the Bacchic Nymphs, they draw inspiration from Zeus, they pour out their own fountain upon him, wanting to make him as like as possible to their own god. But those who are the followers of Here seek a royal love, and when they have found him they do just the same with him; and in like manner the followers of Apollo, and of every other god walking in the ways of their god, seek a love who is to be made like him whom they serve, and when they have found him, they themselves imitate their god, and persuade their love to do the same, and educate him into the manner and nature of the god as far as they each can; for no feelings of envy or jealousy are entertained by them towards their beloved, but they do their utmost to create in him the greatest likeness of themselves and of the god whom they honour. Thus fair and blissful to the beloved is the desire of the inspired lover, and the initiation of which I speak into the mysteries of true love, if he be captured by the lover and their purpose is effected. Now the beloved is taken captive in the following manner:-- As I said at the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three--two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will now proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion (Or with grey and blood-shot eyes.); the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them. And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the beloved; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches, the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling; and when they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder, and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration; the other, when the pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion. Again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time. When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at length he on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again. And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and takes the bit in his teeth and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is worse off than ever; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer, and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear. And so the beloved who, like a god, has received every true and loyal service from his lover, not in pretence but in reality, being also himself of a nature friendly to his admirer, if in former days he has blushed to own his passion and turned away his lover, because his youthful companions or others slanderously told him that he would be disgraced, now as years advance, at the appointed age and time, is led to receive him into communion. For fate which has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil has also ordained that there shall ever be friendship among the good. And the beloved when he has received him into communion and intimacy, is quite amazed at the good-will of the lover; he recognises that the inspired friend is worth all other friends or kinsmen; they have nothing of friendship in them worthy to be compared with his. And when this feeling continues and he is nearer to him and embraces him, in gymnastic exercises and at other times of meeting, then the fountain of that stream, which Zeus when he was in love with Ganymede named Desire, overflows upon the lover, and some enters into his soul, and some when he is filled flows out again; and as a breeze or an echo rebounds from the smooth rocks and returns whence it came, so does the stream of beauty, passing through the eyes which are the windows of the soul, come back to the beautiful one; there arriving and quickening the passages of the wings, watering them and inclining them to grow, and filling the soul of the beloved also with love. And thus he loves, but he knows not what; he does not understand and cannot explain his own state; he appears to have caught the infection of blindness from another; the lover is his mirror in whom he is beholding himself, but he is not aware of this. When he is with the lover, both cease from their pain, but when he is away then he longs as he is longed for, and has love's image, love for love (Anteros) lodging in his breast, which he calls and believes to be not love but friendship only, and his desire is as the desire of the other, but weaker; he wants to see him, touch him, kiss him, embrace him, and probably not long afterwards his desire is accomplished. When they meet, the wanton steed of the lover has a word to say to the charioteer; he would like to have a little pleasure in return for many pains, but the wanton steed of the beloved says not a word, for he is bursting with passion which he understands not;--he throws his arms round the lover and embraces him as his dearest friend; and, when they are side by side, he is not in a state in which he can refuse the lover anything, if he ask him; although his fellow-steed and the charioteer oppose him with the arguments of shame and reason. After this their happiness depends upon their self-control; if the better elements of the mind which lead to order and philosophy prevail, then they pass their life here in happiness and harmony--masters of themselves and orderly--enslaving the vicious and emancipating the virtuous elements of the soul; and when the end comes, they are light and winged for flight, having conquered in one of the three heavenly or truly Olympian victories; nor can human discipline or divine inspiration confer any greater blessing on man than this. If, on the other hand, they leave philosophy and lead the lower life of ambition, then probably, after wine or in some other careless hour, the two wanton animals take the two souls when off their guard and bring them together, and they accomplish that desire of their hearts which to the many is bliss; and this having once enjoyed they continue to enjoy, yet rarely because they have not the approval of the whole soul. They too are dear, but not so dear to one another as the others, either at the time of their love or afterwards. They consider that they have given and taken from each other the most sacred pledges, and they may not break them and fall into enmity. At last they pass out of the body, unwinged, but eager to soar, and thus obtain no mean reward of love and madness. For those who have once begun the heavenward pilgrimage may not go down again to darkness and the journey beneath the earth, but they live in light always; happy companions in their pilgrimage, and when the time comes at which they receive their wings they have the same plumage because of their love. Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer upon you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non-lover, which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar qualities which the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below. And thus, dear Eros, I have made and paid my recantation, as well and as fairly as I could; more especially in the matter of the poetical figures which I was compelled to use, because Phaedrus would have them. And now forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to me, and do not in thine anger deprive me of sight, or take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair. And if Phaedrus or I myself said anything rude in our first speeches, blame Lysias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny; bid him study philosophy, like his brother Polemarchus; and then his lover Phaedrus will no longer halt between two opinions, but will dedicate himself wholly to love and to philosophical discourses. PHAEDRUS: I join in the prayer, Socrates, and say with you, if this be for my good, may your words come to pass. But why did you make your second oration so much finer than the first? I wonder why. And I begin to be afraid that I shall lose conceit of Lysias, and that he will appear tame in comparison, even if he be willing to put another as fine and as long as yours into the field, which I doubt. For quite lately one of your politicians was abusing him on this very account; and called him a 'speech writer' again and again. So that a feeling of pride may probably induce him to give up writing speeches. SOCRATES: What a very amusing notion! But I think, my young man, that you are much mistaken in your friend if you imagine that he is frightened at a little noise; and, possibly, you think that his assailant was in earnest? PHAEDRUS: I thought, Socrates, that he was. And you are aware that the greatest and most influential statesmen are ashamed of writing speeches and leaving them in a written form, lest they should be called Sophists by posterity. SOCRATES: You seem to be unconscious, Phaedrus, that the 'sweet elbow' (A proverb, like 'the grapes are sour,' applied to pleasures which cannot be had, meaning sweet things which, like the elbow, are out of the reach of the mouth. The promised pleasure turns out to be a long and tedious affair.) of the proverb is really the long arm of the Nile. And you appear to be equally unaware of the fact that this sweet elbow of theirs is also a long arm. For there is nothing of which our great politicians are so fond as of writing speeches and bequeathing them to posterity. And they add their admirers' names at the top of the writing, out of gratitude to them. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? I do not understand. SOCRATES: Why, do you not know that when a politician writes, he begins with the names of his approvers? PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: Why, he begins in this manner: 'Be it enacted by the senate, the people, or both, on the motion of a certain person,' who is our author; and so putting on a serious face, he proceeds to display his own wisdom to his admirers in what is often a long and tedious composition. Now what is that sort of thing but a regular piece of authorship? PHAEDRUS: True. SOCRATES: And if the law is finally approved, then the author leaves the theatre in high delight; but if the law is rejected and he is done out of his speech-making, and not thought good enough to write, then he and his party are in mourning. PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: So far are they from despising, or rather so highly do they value the practice of writing. PHAEDRUS: No doubt. SOCRATES: And when the king or orator has the power, as Lycurgus or Solon or Darius had, of attaining an immortality or authorship in a state, is he not thought by posterity, when they see his compositions, and does he not think himself, while he is yet alive, to be a god? PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: Then do you think that any one of this class, however ill-disposed, would reproach Lysias with being an author? PHAEDRUS: Not upon your view; for according to you he would be casting a slur upon his own favourite pursuit. SOCRATES: Any one may see that there is no disgrace in the mere fact of writing. PHAEDRUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly. PHAEDRUS: Clearly. SOCRATES: And what is well and what is badly--need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this? PHAEDRUS: Need we? For what should a man live if not for the pleasures of discourse? Surely not for the sake of bodily pleasures, which almost always have previous pain as a condition of them, and therefore are rightly called slavish. SOCRATES: There is time enough. And I believe that the grasshoppers chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun over our heads are talking to one another and looking down at us. What would they say if they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but slumbering at mid-day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think? Would they not have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we were slaves, who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like sheep lie asleep at noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing, and like Odysseus sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may perhaps, out of respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from the gods that they may impart them to men. PHAEDRUS: What gifts do you mean? I never heard of any. SOCRATES: A lover of music like yourself ought surely to have heard the story of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the Muses make to them--they neither hunger, nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them on earth. They win the love of Terpsichore for the dancers by their report of them; of Erato for the lovers, and of the other Muses for those who do them honour, according to the several ways of honouring them;--of Calliope the eldest Muse and of Urania who is next to her, for the philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make report to them; for these are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with heaven and thought, divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest utterance. For many reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep at mid-day. PHAEDRUS: Let us talk. SOCRATES: Shall we discuss the rules of writing and speech as we were proposing? PHAEDRUS: Very good. SOCRATES: In good speaking should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is going to speak? PHAEDRUS: And yet, Socrates, I have heard that he who would be an orator has nothing to do with true justice, but only with that which is likely to be approved by the many who sit in judgment; nor with the truly good or honourable, but only with opinion about them, and that from opinion comes persuasion, and not from the truth. SOCRATES: The words of the wise are not to be set aside; for there is probably something in them; and therefore the meaning of this saying is not hastily to be dismissed. PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: Let us put the matter thus:--Suppose that I persuaded you to buy a horse and go to the wars. Neither of us knew what a horse was like, but I knew that you believed a horse to be of tame animals the one which has the longest ears. PHAEDRUS: That would be ridiculous. SOCRATES: There is something more ridiculous coming:--Suppose, further, that in sober earnest I, having persuaded you of this, went and composed a speech in honour of an ass, whom I entitled a horse beginning: 'A noble animal and a most useful possession, especially in war, and you may get on his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or anything.' PHAEDRUS: How ridiculous! SOCRATES: Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous friend better than a cunning enemy? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: And when the orator instead of putting an ass in the place of a horse, puts good for evil, being himself as ignorant of their true nature as the city on which he imposes is ignorant; and having studied the notions of the multitude, falsely persuades them not about 'the shadow of an ass,' which he confounds with a horse, but about good which he confounds with evil,--what will be the harvest which rhetoric will be likely to gather after the sowing of that seed? PHAEDRUS: The reverse of good. SOCRATES: But perhaps rhetoric has been getting too roughly handled by us, and she might answer: What amazing nonsense you are talking! As if I forced any man to learn to speak in ignorance of the truth! Whatever my advice may be worth, I should have told him to arrive at the truth first, and then come to me. At the same time I boldly assert that mere knowledge of the truth will not give you the art of persuasion. PHAEDRUS: There is reason in the lady's defence of herself. SOCRATES: Quite true; if only the other arguments which remain to be brought up bear her witness that she is an art at all. But I seem to hear them arraying themselves on the opposite side, declaring that she speaks falsely, and that rhetoric is a mere routine and trick, not an art. Lo! a Spartan appears, and says that there never is nor ever will be a real art of speaking which is divorced from the truth. PHAEDRUS: And what are these arguments, Socrates? Bring them out that we may examine them. SOCRATES: Come out, fair children, and convince Phaedrus, who is the father of similar beauties, that he will never be able to speak about anything as he ought to speak unless he have a knowledge of philosophy. And let Phaedrus answer you. PHAEDRUS: Put the question. SOCRATES: Is not rhetoric, taken generally, a universal art of enchanting the mind by arguments; which is practised not only in courts and public assemblies, but in private houses also, having to do with all matters, great as well as small, good and bad alike, and is in all equally right, and equally to be esteemed--that is what you have heard? PHAEDRUS: Nay, not exactly that; I should say rather that I have heard the art confined to speaking and writing in lawsuits, and to speaking in public assemblies--not extended farther. SOCRATES: Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of Nestor and Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at Troy, and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes? PHAEDRUS: No more than of Nestor and Odysseus, unless Gorgias is your Nestor, and Thrasymachus or Theodorus your Odysseus. SOCRATES: Perhaps that is my meaning. But let us leave them. And do you tell me, instead, what are plaintiff and defendant doing in a law court--are they not contending? PHAEDRUS: Exactly so. SOCRATES: About the just and unjust--that is the matter in dispute? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And a professor of the art will make the same thing appear to the same persons to be at one time just, at another time, if he is so inclined, to be unjust? PHAEDRUS: Exactly. SOCRATES: And when he speaks in the assembly, he will make the same things seem good to the city at one time, and at another time the reverse of good? PHAEDRUS: That is true. SOCRATES: Have we not heard of the Eleatic Palamedes (Zeno), who has an art of speaking by which he makes the same things appear to his hearers like and unlike, one and many, at rest and in motion? PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: The art of disputation, then, is not confined to the courts and the assembly, but is one and the same in every use of language; this is the art, if there be such an art, which is able to find a likeness of everything to which a likeness can be found, and draws into the light of day the likenesses and disguises which are used by others? PHAEDRUS: How do you mean? SOCRATES: Let me put the matter thus: When will there be more chance of deception--when the difference is large or small? PHAEDRUS: When the difference is small. SOCRATES: And you will be less likely to be discovered in passing by degrees into the other extreme than when you go all at once? PHAEDRUS: Of course. SOCRATES: He, then, who would deceive others, and not be deceived, must exactly know the real likenesses and differences of things? PHAEDRUS: He must. SOCRATES: And if he is ignorant of the true nature of any subject, how can he detect the greater or less degree of likeness in other things to that of which by the hypothesis he is ignorant? PHAEDRUS: He cannot. SOCRATES: And when men are deceived and their notions are at variance with realities, it is clear that the error slips in through resemblances? PHAEDRUS: Yes, that is the way. SOCRATES: Then he who would be a master of the art must understand the real nature of everything; or he will never know either how to make the gradual departure from truth into the opposite of truth which is effected by the help of resemblances, or how to avoid it? PHAEDRUS: He will not. SOCRATES: He then, who being ignorant of the truth aims at appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric which is ridiculous and is not an art at all? PHAEDRUS: That may be expected. SOCRATES: Shall I propose that we look for examples of art and want of art, according to our notion of them, in the speech of Lysias which you have in your hand, and in my own speech? PHAEDRUS: Nothing could be better; and indeed I think that our previous argument has been too abstract and wanting in illustrations. SOCRATES: Yes; and the two speeches happen to afford a very good example of the way in which the speaker who knows the truth may, without any serious purpose, steal away the hearts of his hearers. This piece of good-fortune I attribute to the local deities; and, perhaps, the prophets of the Muses who are singing over our heads may have imparted their inspiration to me. For I do not imagine that I have any rhetorical art of my own. PHAEDRUS: Granted; if you will only please to get on. SOCRATES: Suppose that you read me the first words of Lysias' speech. PHAEDRUS: 'You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain that I ought not to fail in my suit, because I am not your lover. For lovers repent--' SOCRATES: Enough:--Now, shall I point out the rhetorical error of those words? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Every one is aware that about some things we are agreed, whereas about other things we differ. PHAEDRUS: I think that I understand you; but will you explain yourself? SOCRATES: When any one speaks of iron and silver, is not the same thing present in the minds of all? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: But when any one speaks of justice and goodness we part company and are at odds with one another and with ourselves? PHAEDRUS: Precisely. SOCRATES: Then in some things we agree, but not in others? PHAEDRUS: That is true. SOCRATES: In which are we more likely to be deceived, and in which has rhetoric the greater power? PHAEDRUS: Clearly, in the uncertain class. SOCRATES: Then the rhetorician ought to make a regular division, and acquire a distinct notion of both classes, as well of that in which the many err, as of that in which they do not err? PHAEDRUS: He who made such a distinction would have an excellent principle. SOCRATES: Yes; and in the next place he must have a keen eye for the observation of particulars in speaking, and not make a mistake about the class to which they are to be referred. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Now to which class does love belong--to the debatable or to the undisputed class? PHAEDRUS: To the debatable, clearly; for if not, do you think that love would have allowed you to say as you did, that he is an evil both to the lover and the beloved, and also the greatest possible good? SOCRATES: Capital. But will you tell me whether I defined love at the beginning of my speech? for, having been in an ecstasy, I cannot well remember. PHAEDRUS: Yes, indeed; that you did, and no mistake. SOCRATES: Then I perceive that the Nymphs of Achelous and Pan the son of Hermes, who inspired me, were far better rhetoricians than Lysias the son of Cephalus. Alas! how inferior to them he is! But perhaps I am mistaken; and Lysias at the commencement of his lover's speech did insist on our supposing love to be something or other which he fancied him to be, and according to this model he fashioned and framed the remainder of his discourse. Suppose we read his beginning over again: PHAEDRUS: If you please; but you will not find what you want. SOCRATES: Read, that I may have his exact words. PHAEDRUS: 'You know how matters stand with me, and how, as I conceive, they might be arranged for our common interest; and I maintain I ought not to fail in my suit because I am not your lover, for lovers repent of the kindnesses which they have shown, when their love is over.' SOCRATES: Here he appears to have done just the reverse of what he ought; for he has begun at the end, and is swimming on his back through the flood to the place of starting. His address to the fair youth begins where the lover would have ended. Am I not right, sweet Phaedrus? PHAEDRUS: Yes, indeed, Socrates; he does begin at the end. SOCRATES: Then as to the other topics--are they not thrown down anyhow? Is there any principle in them? Why should the next topic follow next in order, or any other topic? I cannot help fancying in my ignorance that he wrote off boldly just what came into his head, but I dare say that you would recognize a rhetorical necessity in the succession of the several parts of the composition? PHAEDRUS: You have too good an opinion of me if you think that I have any such insight into his principles of composition. SOCRATES: At any rate, you will allow that every discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning, and end, adapted to one another and to the whole? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Can this be said of the discourse of Lysias? See whether you can find any more connexion in his words than in the epitaph which is said by some to have been inscribed on the grave of Midas the Phrygian. PHAEDRUS: What is there remarkable in the epitaph? SOCRATES: It is as follows:-- 'I am a maiden of bronze and lie on the tomb of Midas; So long as water flows and tall trees grow, So long here on this spot by his sad tomb abiding, I shall declare to passers-by that Midas sleeps below.' Now in this rhyme whether a line comes first or comes last, as you will perceive, makes no difference. PHAEDRUS: You are making fun of that oration of ours. SOCRATES: Well, I will say no more about your friend's speech lest I should give offence to you; although I think that it might furnish many other examples of what a man ought rather to avoid. But I will proceed to the other speech, which, as I think, is also suggestive to students of rhetoric. PHAEDRUS: In what way? SOCRATES: The two speeches, as you may remember, were unlike; the one argued that the lover and the other that the non-lover ought to be accepted. PHAEDRUS: And right manfully. SOCRATES: You should rather say 'madly;' and madness was the argument of them, for, as I said, 'love is a madness.' PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And of madness there were two kinds; one produced by human infirmity, the other was a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention. PHAEDRUS: True. SOCRATES: The divine madness was subdivided into four kinds, prophetic, initiatory, poetic, erotic, having four gods presiding over them; the first was the inspiration of Apollo, the second that of Dionysus, the third that of the Muses, the fourth that of Aphrodite and Eros. In the description of the last kind of madness, which was also said to be the best, we spoke of the affection of love in a figure, into which we introduced a tolerably credible and possibly true though partly erring myth, which was also a hymn in honour of Love, who is your lord and also mine, Phaedrus, and the guardian of fair children, and to him we sung the hymn in measured and solemn strain. PHAEDRUS: I know that I had great pleasure in listening to you. SOCRATES: Let us take this instance and note how the transition was made from blame to praise. PHAEDRUS: What do you mean? SOCRATES: I mean to say that the composition was mostly playful. Yet in these chance fancies of the hour were involved two principles of which we should be too glad to have a clearer description if art could give us one. PHAEDRUS: What are they? SOCRATES: First, the comprehension of scattered particulars in one idea; as in our definition of love, which whether true or false certainly gave clearness and consistency to the discourse, the speaker should define his several notions and so make his meaning clear. PHAEDRUS: What is the other principle, Socrates? SOCRATES: The second principle is that of division into species according to the natural formation, where the joint is, not breaking any part as a bad carver might. Just as our two discourses, alike assumed, first of all, a single form of unreason; and then, as the body which from being one becomes double and may be divided into a left side and right side, each having parts right and left of the same name--after this manner the speaker proceeded to divide the parts of the left side and did not desist until he found in them an evil or left-handed love which he justly reviled; and the other discourse leading us to the madness which lay on the right side, found another love, also having the same name, but divine, which the speaker held up before us and applauded and affirmed to be the author of the greatest benefits. PHAEDRUS: Most true. SOCRATES: I am myself a great lover of these processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and to think. And if I find any man who is able to see 'a One and Many' in nature, him I follow, and 'walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.' And those who have this art, I have hitherto been in the habit of calling dialecticians; but God knows whether the name is right or not. And I should like to know what name you would give to your or to Lysias' disciples, and whether this may not be that famous art of rhetoric which Thrasymachus and others teach and practise? Skilful speakers they are, and impart their skill to any who is willing to make kings of them and to bring gifts to them. PHAEDRUS: Yes, they are royal men; but their art is not the same with the art of those whom you call, and rightly, in my opinion, dialecticians:--Still we are in the dark about rhetoric. SOCRATES: What do you mean? The remains of it, if there be anything remaining which can be brought under rules of art, must be a fine thing; and, at any rate, is not to be despised by you and me. But how much is left? PHAEDRUS: There is a great deal surely to be found in books of rhetoric? SOCRATES: Yes; thank you for reminding me:--There is the exordium, showing how the speech should begin, if I remember rightly; that is what you mean--the niceties of the art? PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Then follows the statement of facts, and upon that witnesses; thirdly, proofs; fourthly, probabilities are to come; the great Byzantian word-maker also speaks, if I am not mistaken, of confirmation and further confirmation. PHAEDRUS: You mean the excellent Theodorus. SOCRATES: Yes; and he tells how refutation or further refutation is to be managed, whether in accusation or defence. I ought also to mention the illustrious Parian, Evenus, who first invented insinuations and indirect praises; and also indirect censures, which according to some he put into verse to help the memory. But shall I 'to dumb forgetfulness consign' Tisias and Gorgias, who are not ignorant that probability is superior to truth, and who by force of argument make the little appear great and the great little, disguise the new in old fashions and the old in new fashions, and have discovered forms for everything, either short or going on to infinity. I remember Prodicus laughing when I told him of this; he said that he had himself discovered the true rule of art, which was to be neither long nor short, but of a convenient length. PHAEDRUS: Well done, Prodicus! SOCRATES: Then there is Hippias the Elean stranger, who probably agrees with him. PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: And there is also Polus, who has treasuries of diplasiology, and gnomology, and eikonology, and who teaches in them the names of which Licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish. PHAEDRUS: Had not Protagoras something of the same sort? SOCRATES: Yes, rules of correct diction and many other fine precepts; for the 'sorrows of a poor old man,' or any other pathetic case, no one is better than the Chalcedonian giant; he can put a whole company of people into a passion and out of one again by his mighty magic, and is first-rate at inventing or disposing of any sort of calumny on any grounds or none. All of them agree in asserting that a speech should end in a recapitulation, though they do not all agree to use the same word. PHAEDRUS: You mean that there should be a summing up of the arguments in order to remind the hearers of them. SOCRATES: I have now said all that I have to say of the art of rhetoric: have you anything to add? PHAEDRUS: Not much; nothing very important. SOCRATES: Leave the unimportant and let us bring the really important question into the light of day, which is: What power has this art of rhetoric, and when? PHAEDRUS: A very great power in public meetings. SOCRATES: It has. But I should like to know whether you have the same feeling as I have about the rhetoricians? To me there seem to be a great many holes in their web. PHAEDRUS: Give an example. SOCRATES: I will. Suppose a person to come to your friend Eryximachus, or to his father Acumenus, and to say to him: 'I know how to apply drugs which shall have either a heating or a cooling effect, and I can give a vomit and also a purge, and all that sort of thing; and knowing all this, as I do, I claim to be a physician and to make physicians by imparting this knowledge to others,'--what do you suppose that they would say? PHAEDRUS: They would be sure to ask him whether he knew 'to whom' he would give his medicines, and 'when,' and 'how much.' SOCRATES: And suppose that he were to reply: 'No; I know nothing of all that; I expect the patient who consults me to be able to do these things for himself'? PHAEDRUS: They would say in reply that he is a madman or a pedant who fancies that he is a physician because he has read something in a book, or has stumbled on a prescription or two, although he has no real understanding of the art of medicine. SOCRATES: And suppose a person were to come to Sophocles or Euripides and say that he knows how to make a very long speech about a small matter, and a short speech about a great matter, and also a sorrowful speech, or a terrible, or threatening speech, or any other kind of speech, and in teaching this fancies that he is teaching the art of tragedy--? PHAEDRUS: They too would surely laugh at him if he fancies that tragedy is anything but the arranging of these elements in a manner which will be suitable to one another and to the whole. SOCRATES: But I do not suppose that they would be rude or abusive to him: Would they not treat him as a musician a man who thinks that he is a harmonist because he knows how to pitch the highest and lowest note; happening to meet such an one he would not say to him savagely, 'Fool, you are mad!' But like a musician, in a gentle and harmonious tone of voice, he would answer: 'My good friend, he who would be a harmonist must certainly know this, and yet he may understand nothing of harmony if he has not got beyond your stage of knowledge, for you only know the preliminaries of harmony and not harmony itself.' PHAEDRUS: Very true. SOCRATES: And will not Sophocles say to the display of the would-be tragedian, that this is not tragedy but the preliminaries of tragedy? and will not Acumenus say the same of medicine to the would-be physician? PHAEDRUS: Quite true. SOCRATES: And if Adrastus the mellifluous or Pericles heard of these wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names which we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what would they say? Instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary epithets, as you and I have been doing, to the authors of such an imaginary art, their superior wisdom would rather censure us, as well as them. 'Have a little patience, Phaedrus and Socrates, they would say; you should not be in such a passion with those who from some want of dialectical skill are unable to define the nature of rhetoric, and consequently suppose that they have found the art in the preliminary conditions of it, and when these have been taught by them to others, fancy that the whole art of rhetoric has been taught by them; but as to using the several instruments of the art effectively, or making the composition a whole,--an application of it such as this is they regard as an easy thing which their disciples may make for themselves.' PHAEDRUS: I quite admit, Socrates, that the art of rhetoric which these men teach and of which they write is such as you describe--there I agree with you. But I still want to know where and how the true art of rhetoric and persuasion is to be acquired. SOCRATES: The perfection which is required of the finished orator is, or rather must be, like the perfection of anything else; partly given by nature, but may also be assisted by art. If you have the natural power and add to it knowledge and practice, you will be a distinguished speaker; if you fall short in either of these, you will be to that extent defective. But the art, as far as there is an art, of rhetoric does not lie in the direction of Lysias or Thrasymachus. PHAEDRUS: In what direction then? SOCRATES: I conceive Pericles to have been the most accomplished of rhetoricians. PHAEDRUS: What of that? SOCRATES: All the great arts require discussion and high speculation about the truths of nature; hence come loftiness of thought and completeness of execution. And this, as I conceive, was the quality which, in addition to his natural gifts, Pericles acquired from his intercourse with Anaxagoras whom he happened to know. He was thus imbued with the higher philosophy, and attained the knowledge of Mind and the negative of Mind, which were favourite themes of Anaxagoras, and applied what suited his purpose to the art of speaking. PHAEDRUS: Explain. SOCRATES: Rhetoric is like medicine. PHAEDRUS: How so? SOCRATES: Why, because medicine has to define the nature of the body and rhetoric of the soul--if we would proceed, not empirically but scientifically, in the one case to impart health and strength by giving medicine and food, in the other to implant the conviction or virtue which you desire, by the right application of words and training. PHAEDRUS: There, Socrates, I suspect that you are right. SOCRATES: And do you think that you can know the nature of the soul intelligently without knowing the nature of the whole? PHAEDRUS: Hippocrates the Asclepiad says that the nature even of the body can only be understood as a whole. (Compare Charmides.) SOCRATES: Yes, friend, and he was right:--still, we ought not to be content with the name of Hippocrates, but to examine and see whether his argument agrees with his conception of nature. PHAEDRUS: I agree. SOCRATES: Then consider what truth as well as Hippocrates says about this or about any other nature. Ought we not to consider first whether that which we wish to learn and to teach is a simple or multiform thing, and if simple, then to enquire what power it has of acting or being acted upon in relation to other things, and if multiform, then to number the forms; and see first in the case of one of them, and then in the case of all of them, what is that power of acting or being acted upon which makes each and all of them to be what they are? PHAEDRUS: You may very likely be right, Socrates. SOCRATES: The method which proceeds without analysis is like the groping of a blind man. Yet, surely, he who is an artist ought not to admit of a comparison with the blind, or deaf. The rhetorician, who teaches his pupil to speak scientifically, will particularly set forth the nature of that being to which he addresses his speeches; and this, I conceive, to be the soul. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: His whole effort is directed to the soul; for in that he seeks to produce conviction. PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Then clearly, Thrasymachus or any one else who teaches rhetoric in earnest will give an exact description of the nature of the soul; which will enable us to see whether she be single and same, or, like the body, multiform. That is what we should call showing the nature of the soul. PHAEDRUS: Exactly. SOCRATES: He will explain, secondly, the mode in which she acts or is acted upon. PHAEDRUS: True. SOCRATES: Thirdly, having classified men and speeches, and their kinds and affections, and adapted them to one another, he will tell the reasons of his arrangement, and show why one soul is persuaded by a particular form of argument, and another not. PHAEDRUS: You have hit upon a very good way. SOCRATES: Yes, that is the true and only way in which any subject can be set forth or treated by rules of art, whether in speaking or writing. But the writers of the present day, at whose feet you have sat, craftily conceal the nature of the soul which they know quite well. Nor, until they adopt our method of reading and writing, can we admit that they write by rules of art? PHAEDRUS: What is our method? SOCRATES: I cannot give you the exact details; but I should like to tell you generally, as far as is in my power, how a man ought to proceed according to rules of art. PHAEDRUS: Let me hear. SOCRATES: Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls--they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man. Having proceeded thus far in his analysis, he will next divide speeches into their different classes:--'Such and such persons,' he will say, are affected by this or that kind of speech in this or that way,' and he will tell you why. The pupil must have a good theoretical notion of them first, and then he must have experience of them in actual life, and be able to follow them with all his senses about him, or he will never get beyond the precepts of his masters. But when he understands what persons are persuaded by what arguments, and sees the person about whom he was speaking in the abstract actually before him, and knows that it is he, and can say to himself, 'This is the man or this is the character who ought to have a certain argument applied to him in order to convince him of a certain opinion;'--he who knows all this, and knows also when he should speak and when he should refrain, and when he should use pithy sayings, pathetic appeals, sensational effects, and all the other modes of speech which he has learned;--when, I say, he knows the times and seasons of all these things, then, and not till then, he is a perfect master of his art; but if he fail in any of these points, whether in speaking or teaching or writing them, and yet declares that he speaks by rules of art, he who says 'I don't believe you' has the better of him. Well, the teacher will say, is this, Phaedrus and Socrates, your account of the so-called art of rhetoric, or am I to look for another? PHAEDRUS: He must take this, Socrates, for there is no possibility of another, and yet the creation of such an art is not easy. SOCRATES: Very true; and therefore let us consider this matter in every light, and see whether we cannot find a shorter and easier road; there is no use in taking a long rough roundabout way if there be a shorter and easier one. And I wish that you would try and remember whether you have heard from Lysias or any one else anything which might be of service to us. PHAEDRUS: If trying would avail, then I might; but at the moment I can think of nothing. SOCRATES: Suppose I tell you something which somebody who knows told me. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: May not 'the wolf,' as the proverb says, 'claim a hearing'? PHAEDRUS: Do you say what can be said for him. SOCRATES: He will argue that there is no use in putting a solemn face on these matters, or in going round and round, until you arrive at first principles; for, as I said at first, when the question is of justice and good, or is a question in which men are concerned who are just and good, either by nature or habit, he who would be a skilful rhetorician has no need of truth--for that in courts of law men literally care nothing about truth, but only about conviction: and this is based on probability, to which he who would be a skilful orator should therefore give his whole attention. And they say also that there are cases in which the actual facts, if they are improbable, ought to be withheld, and only the probabilities should be told either in accusation or defence, and that always in speaking, the orator should keep probability in view, and say good-bye to the truth. And the observance of this principle throughout a speech furnishes the whole art. PHAEDRUS: That is what the professors of rhetoric do actually say, Socrates. I have not forgotten that we have quite briefly touched upon this matter already; with them the point is all-important. SOCRATES: I dare say that you are familiar with Tisias. Does he not define probability to be that which the many think? PHAEDRUS: Certainly, he does. SOCRATES: I believe that he has a clever and ingenious case of this sort:--He supposes a feeble and valiant man to have assaulted a strong and cowardly one, and to have robbed him of his coat or of something or other; he is brought into court, and then Tisias says that both parties should tell lies: the coward should say that he was assaulted by more men than one; the other should prove that they were alone, and should argue thus: 'How could a weak man like me have assaulted a strong man like him?' The complainant will not like to confess his own cowardice, and will therefore invent some other lie which his adversary will thus gain an opportunity of refuting. And there are other devices of the same kind which have a place in the system. Am I not right, Phaedrus? PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Bless me, what a wonderfully mysterious art is this which Tisias or some other gentleman, in whatever name or country he rejoices, has discovered. Shall we say a word to him or not? PHAEDRUS: What shall we say to him? SOCRATES: Let us tell him that, before he appeared, you and I were saying that the probability of which he speaks was engendered in the minds of the many by the likeness of the truth, and we had just been affirming that he who knew the truth would always know best how to discover the resemblances of the truth. If he has anything else to say about the art of speaking we should like to hear him; but if not, we are satisfied with our own view, that unless a man estimates the various characters of his hearers and is able to divide all things into classes and to comprehend them under single ideas, he will never be a skilful rhetorician even within the limits of human power. And this skill he will not attain without a great deal of trouble, which a good man ought to undergo, not for the sake of speaking and acting before men, but in order that he may be able to say what is acceptable to God and always to act acceptably to Him as far as in him lies; for there is a saying of wiser men than ourselves, that a man of sense should not try to please his fellow-servants (at least this should not be his first object) but his good and noble masters; and therefore if the way is long and circuitous, marvel not at this, for, where the end is great, there we may take the longer road, but not for lesser ends such as yours. Truly, the argument may say, Tisias, that if you do not mind going so far, rhetoric has a fair beginning here. PHAEDRUS: I think, Socrates, that this is admirable, if only practicable. SOCRATES: But even to fail in an honourable object is honourable. PHAEDRUS: True. SOCRATES: Enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art of speaking. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: But there is something yet to be said of propriety and impropriety of writing. PHAEDRUS: Yes. SOCRATES: Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God? PHAEDRUS: No, indeed. Do you? SOCRATES: I have heard a tradition of the ancients, whether true or not they only know; although if we had found the truth ourselves, do you think that we should care much about the opinions of men? PHAEDRUS: Your question needs no answer; but I wish that you would tell me what you say that you have heard. SOCRATES: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country. SOCRATES: There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes. PHAEDRUS: I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the Theban is right in his view about letters. SOCRATES: He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better than knowledge and recollection of the same matters? PHAEDRUS: That is most true. SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves. PHAEDRUS: That again is most true. SOCRATES: Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and having far greater power--a son of the same family, but lawfully begotten? PHAEDRUS: Whom do you mean, and what is his origin? SOCRATES: I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent. PHAEDRUS: You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image? SOCRATES: Yes, of course that is what I mean. And now may I be allowed to ask you a question: Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection? PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he will do the other, as you say, only in play. SOCRATES: And can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and honourable has less understanding, than the husbandman, about his own seeds? PHAEDRUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: Then he will not seriously incline to 'write' his thoughts 'in water' with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others? PHAEDRUS: No, that is not likely. SOCRATES: No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be the pastime in which his days are spent. PHAEDRUS: A pastime, Socrates, as noble as the other is ignoble, the pastime of a man who can be amused by serious talk, and can discourse merrily about justice and the like. SOCRATES: True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness. PHAEDRUS: Far nobler, certainly. SOCRATES: And now, Phaedrus, having agreed upon the premises we may decide about the conclusion. PHAEDRUS: About what conclusion? SOCRATES: About Lysias, whom we censured, and his art of writing, and his discourses, and the rhetorical skill or want of skill which was shown in them--these are the questions which we sought to determine, and they brought us to this point. And I think that we are now pretty well informed about the nature of art and its opposite. PHAEDRUS: Yes, I think with you; but I wish that you would repeat what was said. SOCRATES: Until a man knows the truth of the several particulars of which he is writing or speaking, and is able to define them as they are, and having defined them again to divide them until they can be no longer divided, and until in like manner he is able to discern the nature of the soul, and discover the different modes of discourse which are adapted to different natures, and to arrange and dispose them in such a way that the simple form of speech may be addressed to the simpler nature, and the complex and composite to the more complex nature--until he has accomplished all this, he will be unable to handle arguments according to rules of art, as far as their nature allows them to be subjected to art, either for the purpose of teaching or persuading;--such is the view which is implied in the whole preceding argument. PHAEDRUS: Yes, that was our view, certainly. SOCRATES: Secondly, as to the censure which was passed on the speaking or writing of discourses, and how they might be rightly or wrongly censured--did not our previous argument show--? PHAEDRUS: Show what? SOCRATES: That whether Lysias or any other writer that ever was or will be, whether private man or statesman, proposes laws and so becomes the author of a political treatise, fancying that there is any great certainty and clearness in his performance, the fact of his so writing is only a disgrace to him, whatever men may say. For not to know the nature of justice and injustice, and good and evil, and not to be able to distinguish the dream from the reality, cannot in truth be otherwise than disgraceful to him, even though he have the applause of the whole world. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: But he who thinks that in the written word there is necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and his legitimate offspring;--being, in the first place, the word which he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and relations of his idea which have been duly implanted by him in the souls of others;--and who cares for them and no others--this is the right sort of man; and you and I, Phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him. PHAEDRUS: That is most assuredly my desire and prayer. SOCRATES: And now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough. Go and tell Lysias that to the fountain and school of the Nymphs we went down, and were bidden by them to convey a message to him and to other composers of speeches--to Homer and other writers of poems, whether set to music or not; and to Solon and others who have composed writings in the form of political discourses which they would term laws--to all of them we are to say that if their compositions are based on knowledge of the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in comparison of them, then they are to be called, not only poets, orators, legislators, but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious pursuit of their life. PHAEDRUS: What name would you assign to them? SOCRATES: Wise, I may not call them; for that is a great name which belongs to God alone,--lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest and befitting title. PHAEDRUS: Very suitable. SOCRATES: And he who cannot rise above his own compilations and compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker or law-maker. PHAEDRUS: Certainly. SOCRATES: Now go and tell this to your companion. PHAEDRUS: But there is also a friend of yours who ought not to be forgotten. SOCRATES: Who is he? PHAEDRUS: Isocrates the fair:--What message will you send to him, and how shall we describe him? SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus; but I am willing to hazard a prophecy concerning him. PHAEDRUS: What would you prophesy? SOCRATES: I think that he has a genius which soars above the orations of Lysias, and that his character is cast in a finer mould. My impression of him is that he will marvellously improve as he grows older, and that all former rhetoricians will be as children in comparison of him. And I believe that he will not be satisfied with rhetoric, but that there is in him a divine inspiration which will lead him to things higher still. For he has an element of philosophy in his nature. This is the message of the gods dwelling in this place, and which I will myself deliver to Isocrates, who is my delight; and do you give the other to Lysias, who is yours. PHAEDRUS: I will; and now as the heat is abated let us depart. SOCRATES: Should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the local deities? PHAEDRUS: By all means. SOCRATES: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and carry.--Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me. PHAEDRUS: Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common. SOCRATES: Let us go. 
2562	----	THE CLOUDS By Aristophanes Trans. William James Hickie * All Greek from the original edition has been transliterated into Roman characters. DRAMATIS PERSONAE Strepsiades Phidippides Servant of Strepsiades Disciples of Socrates Socrates Chorus of Clouds Just Cause Unjust Cause Pasias Amynias Witness Chaerephon Scene: The interior of a sleeping-apartment: Strepsiades, Phidippides, and two servants are in their beds; a small house is seen at a distance. Time: midnight. Strepsiades (sitting up in his bed). Ah me! Ah me! O King Jupiter, of what a terrible length the nights are! Will it never be day? And yet long since I heard the cock. My domestics are snoring; but they would not have done so heretofore! May you perish then, O war! For many reasons; because I may not even punish my domestics. Neither does this excellent youth awake through the night; but takes his ease, wrapped up in five blankets. Well, if it is the fashion, let us snore wrapped up. [Lies down, and then almost immediately starts up again.] But I am not able, miserable man, to sleep, being tormented by my expenses, and my stud of horses, and my debts, through this son of mine. He with his long hair, is riding horses and driving curricles, and dreaming of horses; while I am driven to distraction, as I see the moon bringing on the twentieths; for the interest is running on. Boy! Light a lamp, and bring forth my tablets, that I may take them and read to how many I am indebted, and calculate the interest. [Enter boy with a light and tablets.] Come, let me see; what do I owe? Twelve minae to Pasias. Why twelve minae to Pasias? Why did I borrow them? When I bought the blood-horse. Ah me, unhappy! Would that it had had its eye knocked out with a stone first! Phidippides (talking in his sleep). You are acting unfairly, Philo! Drive on your own course. Strep. This is the bane that has destroyed me; for even in his sleep he dreams about horsemanship. Phid. How many courses will the war-chariots run? Strep. Many courses do you drive me, your father. But what debt came upon me after Pasias? Three minae to Amynias for a little chariot and pair of wheels. Phid. Lead the horse home, after having given him a good rolling. Strep. O foolish youth, you have rolled me out of my possessions; since I have been cast in suits, and others say that they will have surety given them for the interest. Phid. (awakening) Pray, father, why are you peevish, and toss about the whole night? Strep. A bailiff out of the bedclothes is biting me. Phid. Suffer me, good sir, to sleep a little. Strep. Then, do you sleep on; but know that all these debts will turn on your head. [Phidippides falls asleep again.] Alas! Would that the match-maker had perished miserably, who induced me to marry your mother. For a country life used to be most agreeable to me, dirty, untrimmed, reclining at random, abounding in bees, and sheep, and oil-cake. Then I, a rustic, married a niece of Megacles, the son of Megacles, from the city, haughty, luxurious, and Coesyrafied. When I married her, I lay with her redolent of new wine, of the cheese-crate, and abundance of wool; but she, on the contrary, of ointment, saffron, wanton-kisses, extravagance, gluttony, and of Colias and Genetyllis. I will not indeed say that she was idle; but she wove. And I used to show her this cloak by way of a pretext and say "Wife, you weave at a great rate." Servant re-enters. Servant. We have no oil in the lamp. Strep. Ah me! Why did you light the thirsty lamp? Come hither that you may weep! Ser. For what, pray, shall I weep? Strep. Because you put in one of the thick wicks. [Servant runs out] After this, when this son was born to us, to me, forsooth, and to my excellent wife, we squabbled then about the name: for she was for adding hippos to the name, Xanthippus, or Charippus, or Callipides; but I was for giving him the name of his grandfather, Phidonides. For a time therefore we disputed; and then at length we agreed, and called him Phidippides. She used to take this son and fondle him, saying, "When you, being grown up, shall drive your chariot to the city, like Megacles, with a xystis." But I used to say, "Nay, rather, when dressed in a leathern jerkin, you shall drive goats from Phelleus, like your father." He paid no attention to my words, but poured a horse-fever over my property. Now, therefore, by meditating the whole night, I have discovered one path for my course extraordinarily excellent; to which if I persuade this youth I shall be saved. But first I wish to awake him. How then can I awake him in the most agreeable manner? How? Phidippides, my little Phidippides? Phid. What, father? Strep. Kiss me, and give me your right hand! Phid. There. What's the matter? Strep. Tell me, do you love me? Phid. Yes, by this Equestrian Neptune. Strep. Nay, do not by any means mention this Equestrian to me, for this god is the author of my misfortunes. But, if you really love me from your heart, my son, obey me. Phid. In what then, pray, shall I obey you? Strep. Reform your habits as quickly as possible, and go and learn what I advise. Phid. Tell me now, what do you prescribe? Strep. And will you obey me at all? Phid. By Bacchus, I will obey you. Strep. Look this way then! Do you see this little door and little house? Phid. I see it. What then, pray, is this, father? Strep. This is a thinking-shop of wise spirits. There dwell men who in speaking of the heavens persuade people that it is an oven, and that it encompasses us, and that we are the embers. These men teach, if one give them money, to conquer in speaking, right or wrong. Phid. Who are they? Strep. I do not know the name accurately. They are minute philosophers, noble and excellent. Phid. Bah! They are rogues; I know them. You mean the quacks, the pale-faced wretches, the bare-footed fellows, of whose numbers are the miserable Socrates and Chaerephon. Strep. Hold! Hold! Be silent! Do not say anything foolish. But, if you have any concern for your father's patrimony, become one of them, having given up your horsemanship. Phid. I would not, by Bacchus, even if you were to give me the pheasants which Leogoras rears! Strep. Go, I entreat you, dearest of men, go and be taught. Phid. Why, what shall I learn? Strep. They say that among them are both the two causes--the better cause, whichever that is, and the worse: they say that the one of these two causes, the worse, prevails, though it speaks on the unjust side. If, therefore you learn for me this unjust cause, I would not pay any one, not even an obolus of these debts, which I owe at present on your account. Phid. I can not comply; for I should not dare to look upon the knights, having lost all my colour. Strep. Then, by Ceres, you shall not eat any of my good! Neither you, nor your blood-horse; but I will drive you out of my house to the crows. Phid. My uncle Megacles will not permit me to be without a horse. But I'll go in, and pay no heed to you. [Exit Phidippides.] Strep. Though fallen, still I will not lie prostrate: but having prayed to the gods, I will go myself to the thinking-shop and get taught. How, then, being an old man, shall I learn the subtleties of refined disquisitions? I must go. Why thus do I loiter and not knock at the door? [Knocks at the door.] Boy! Little boy! Disciple (from within). Go to the devil! Who it is that knocked at the door? Strep. Strepsiades, the son of Phidon, of Cicynna. Dis. You are a stupid fellow, by Jove! who have kicked against the door so very carelessly, and have caused the miscarriage of an idea which I had conceived. Strep. Pardon me; for I dwell afar in the country. But tell me the thing which has been made to miscarry. Dis. It is not lawful to mention it, except to disciples. Strep. Tell it, then, to me without fear; for I here am come as a disciple to the thinking-shop. Dis. I will tell you; but you must regard these as mysteries. Socrates lately asked Chaerephon about a flea, how many of its own feet it jumped; for after having bit the eyebrow of Chaerephon, it leaped away onto the head of Socrates. Strep. How then did he measure this? Dis. Most cleverly. He melted some wax; and then took the flea and dipped its feet in the wax; and then a pair of Persian slippers stuck to it when cooled. Having gently loosened these, he measured back the distance. Strep. O King Jupiter! What subtlety of thought! Dis. What then would you say if you heard another contrivance of Socrates? Strep. Of what kind? Tell me, I beseech you! Dis. Chaerephon the Sphettian asked him whether he thought gnats buzzed through the mouth or the breech. Strep. What, then, did he say about the gnat? Dis. He said the intestine of the gnat was narrow and that the wind went forcibly through it, being slender, straight to the breech; and then that the rump, being hollow where it is adjacent to the narrow part, resounded through the violence of the wind. Strep. The rump of the gnats then is a trumpet! Oh, thrice happy he for his sharp-sightedness! Surely a defendant might easily get acquitted who understands the intestine of the gnat. Dis. But he was lately deprived of a great idea by a lizard. Strep. In what way? Tell me. Dis. As he was investigating the courses of the moon and her revolutions, then as he was gaping upward a lizard in the darkness dropped upon him from the roof. Strep. I am amused at a lizard's having dropped on Socrates. Dis. Yesterday evening there was no supper for us. Strep. Well. What then did he contrive for provisions? Dis. He sprinkled fine ashes on the table, and bent a little spit, and then took it as a pair of compasses and filched a cloak from the Palaestra. Strep. Why then do we admire Thales? Open open quickly the thinking-shop, and show to me Socrates as quickly as possible. For I desire to be a disciple. Come, open the door. [The door of the thinking-shop opens and the pupils of Socrates are seen all with their heads fixed on the ground, while Socrates himself is seen suspended in the air in a basket.] O Hercules, from what country are these wild beasts? Dis. What do you wonder at? To what do they seem to you to be like? Strep. To the Spartans who were taken at Pylos. But why in the world do these look upon the ground? Dis. They are in search of the things below the earth. Strep. Then they are searching for roots. Do not, then, trouble yourselves about this; for I know where there are large and fine ones. Why, what are these doing, who are bent down so much? Dis. These are groping about in darkness under Tartarus. Strep. Why then does their rump look toward heaven? Dis. It is getting taught astronomy alone by itself. [Turning to the pupils.] But go in, lest he meet with us. Strep. Not yet, not yet; but let them remain, that I may communicate to them a little matter of my own. Dis. It is not permitted to them to remain without in the open air for a very long time. [The pupils retire.] Strep. (discovering a variety of mathematical instruments) Why, what is this, in the name of heaven? Tell me. Dis. This is Astronomy. Strep. But what is this? Dis. Geometry. Strep. What then is the use of this? Dis. To measure out the land. Strep. What belongs to an allotment? Dis. No, but the whole earth. Strep. You tell me a clever notion; for the contrivance is democratic and useful. Dis. (pointing to a map) See, here's a map of the whole earth. Do you see? This is Athens. Strep. What say you? I don't believe you; for I do not see the Dicasts sitting. Dis. Be assured that this is truly the Attic territory. Strep. Why, where are my fellow-tribesmen of Cicynna? Dis. Here they are. And Euboea here, as you see, is stretched out a long way by the side of it to a great distance. Strep. I know that; for it was stretched by us and Pericles. But where is Lacedaemon? Dis. Where is it? Here it is. Strep. How near it is to us! Pay great attention to this, to remove it very far from us. Dis. By Jupiter, it is not possible. Strep. Then you will weep for it. [Looking up and discovering Socrates.] Come, who is this man who is in the basket? Dis. Himself. Strep. Who's "Himself"? Dis. Socrates. Strep. O Socrates! Come, you sir, call upon him loudly for me. Dis. Nay, rather, call him yourself; for I have no leisure. [Exit Disciple.] Strep. Socrates! My little Socrates! Socrates. Why callest thou me, thou creature of a day? Strep. First tell me, I beseech you, what are you doing. Soc. I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun. Strep. And so you look down upon the gods from your basket, and not from the earth? Soc. For I should not have rightly discovered things celestial if I had not suspended the intellect, and mixed the thought in a subtle form with its kindred air. But if, being on the ground, I speculated from below on things above, I should never have discovered them. For the earth forcibly attracts to itself the meditative moisture. Water-cresses also suffer the very same thing. Strep. What do you say? Does meditation attract the moisture to the water-cresses? Come then, my little Socrates, descend to me, that you may teach me those things, for the sake of which I have come. [Socrates lowers himself and gets out of the basket.] Soc. And for what did you come? Strep. Wishing to learn to speak; for by reason of usury, and most ill-natured creditors, I am pillaged and plundered, and have my goods seized for debt. Soc. How did you get in debt without observing it? Strep. A horse-disease consumed me--terrible at eating. But teach me the other one of your two causes, that which pays nothing; and I will swear by the gods, I will pay down to you whatever reward you exact of me. Soc. By what gods will you swear? For, in the first place, gods are not a current coin with us. Strep. By what do you swear? By iron money, as in Byzantium? Soc. Do you wish to know clearly celestial matters, what they rightly are? Strep. Yes, by Jupiter, if it be possible! Soc. And to hold converse with the Clouds, our divinities? Strep. By all means. Soc. (with great solemnity). Seat yourself, then, upon the sacred couch. Strep. Well, I am seated! Soc. Take, then, this chaplet. Strep. For what purpose a chaplet? Ah me! Socrates, see that you do not sacrifice me like Athamas! Strep. No; we do all these to those who get initiated. Strep. Then what shall I gain, pray? Soc. You shall become in oratory a tricky knave, a thorough rattle, a subtle speaker. But keep quiet. Strep. By Jupiter! You will not deceive me; for if I am besprinkled, I shall become fine flour. Soc. It becomes the old man to speak words of good omen, and to hearken to my prayer. O sovereign King, immeasurable Air, who keepest the earth suspended, and through bright Aether, and ye august goddesses, the Clouds, sending thunder and lightning, arise, appear in the air, O mistresses, to your deep thinker! Strep. Not yet, not yet, till I wrap this around me lest I be wet through. To think of my having come from home without even a cap, unlucky man! Soc. Come then, ye highly honoured Clouds, for a display to this man. Whether ye are sitting upon the sacred snow-covered summits of Olympus, or in the gardens of Father Ocean form a sacred dance with the Nymphs, or draw in golden pitchers the streams of the waters of the Nile, or inhabit the Maeotic lake, or the snowy rock of Mimas, hearken to our prayer, and receive the sacrifice, and be propitious to the sacred rites. [The following song is heard at a distance, accompanied by loud claps of thunder.] Chorus. Eternal Clouds! Let us arise to view with our dewy, clear-bright nature, from loud-sounding Father Ocean to the wood-crowned summits of the lofty mountains, in order that we may behold clearly the far-seen watch-towers, and the fruits, and the fostering, sacred earth, and the rushing sounds of the divine rivers, and the roaring, loud-sounding sea; for the unwearied eye of Aether sparkles with glittering rays. Come, let us shake off the watery cloud from our immortal forms and survey the earth with far-seeing eye. Soc. O ye greatly venerable Clouds, ye have clearly heard me when I called. [Turning to Strepsiades.] Did you hear the voice, and the thunder which bellowed at the same time, feared as a god? Strep. I too worship you, O ye highly honoured, and am inclined to reply to the thundering, so much do I tremble at them and am alarmed. And whether it be lawful, or be not lawful, I have a desire just now to ease myself. Soc. Don't scoff, nor do what these poor-devil-poets do, but use words of good omen, for a great swarm of goddesses is in motion with their songs. Cho. Ye rain-bringing virgins, let us come to the fruitful land of Pallas, to view the much-loved country of Cecrops, abounding in brave men; where is reverence for sacred rites not to be divulged; where the house that receives the initiated is thrown open in holy mystic rites; and gifts to the celestial gods; and high-roofed temples, and statues; and most sacred processions in honour of the blessed gods; and well-crowned sacrifices to the gods, and feasts, at all seasons; and with the approach of spring the Bacchic festivity, and the rousings of melodious choruses, and the loud-sounding music of flutes. Strep. Tell me, O Socrates, I beseech you, by Jupiter, who are these that have uttered this grand song? Are they some heroines? Soc. By no means; but heavenly Clouds, great divinities to idle men; who supply us with thought and argument, and intelligence and humbug, and circumlocution, and ability to hoax, and comprehension. Strep. On this account therefore my soul, having heard their voice, flutters, and already seeks to discourse subtilely, and to quibble about smoke, and having pricked a maxim with a little notion, to refute the opposite argument. So that now I eagerly desire, if by any means it be possible, to see them palpably. Soc. Look, then, hither, toward Mount Parnes; for now I behold them descending gently. Strep. Pray where? Show me. Soc. See! There they come in great numbers through the hollows and thickets; there, obliquely. Strep. What's the matter? For I can't see them. Soc. By the entrance. [Enter Chorus] Strep. Now at length with difficulty I just see them. Soc. Now at length you assuredly see them, unless you have your eyes running pumpkins. Strep. Yes, by Jupiter! O highly honoured Clouds, for now they cover all things. Soc. Did you not, however, know, nor yet consider, these to be goddesses? Strep. No, by Jupiter! But I thought them to be mist, and dew, and smoke. Soc. For you do not know, by Jupiter! that these feed very many sophists, Thurian soothsayers, practisers of medicine, lazy-long-haired-onyx-ring-wearers, song-twisters for the cyclic dances, and meteorological quacks. They feed idle people who do nothing, because such men celebrate them in verse. Strep. For this reason, then, they introduced into their verses "the dreadful impetuosity of the moist, whirling-bright clouds"; and the "curls of hundred-headed Typho"; and the "hard-blowing tempests"; and then "aerial, moist"; "crooked-clawed birds, floating in air"; and "the showers of rain from dewy Clouds". And then, in return for these, they swallow "slices of great, fine mullets, and bird's-flesh of thrushes." Soc. Is it not just, however, that they should have their reward, on account of these? Strep. Tell me, pray, if they are really clouds, what ails them, that they resemble mortal women? For they are not such. Soc. Pray, of what nature are they? Strep. I do not clearly know: at any rate they resemble spread-out fleeces, and not women, by Jupiter! Not a bit; for these have noses. Soc. Answer, then, whatever I ask you. Strep. Then say quickly what you wish. Soc. Have you ever, when you; looked up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, or a panther, or a wolf, or a bull? Strep. By Jupiter, have I! But what of that? Soc. They become all things, whatever they please. And then if they see a person with long hair, a wild one of these hairy fellows, like the son of Xenophantes, in derision of his folly, they liken themselves to centaurs. Strep. Why, what, if they should see Simon, a plunderer of the public property, what do they do? Soc. They suddenly become wolves, showing up his disposition. Strep. For this reason, then, for this reason, when they yesterday saw Cleonymus the recreant, on this account they became stags, because they saw this most cowardly fellow. Soc. And now too, because they saw Clisthenes, you observe, on this account they became women. Strep. Hail therefore, O mistresses! And now, if ever ye did to any other, to me also utter a voice reaching to heaven, O all-powerful queens. Cho. Hail, O ancient veteran, hunter after learned speeches! And thou, O priest of most subtle trifles! Tell us what you require? For we would not hearken to any other of the recent meteorological sophists, except to Prodicus; to him, on account of his wisdom and intelligence; and to you, because you walk proudly in the streets, and cast your eyes askance, and endure many hardships with bare feet, and in reliance upon us lookest supercilious. Strep. O Earth, what a voice! How holy and dignified and wondrous! Soc. For, in fact, these alone are goddesses; and all the rest is nonsense. Strep. But come, by the Earth, is not Jupiter, the Olympian, a god? Soc. What Jupiter? Do not trifle. There is no Jupiter. Strep. What do you say? Who rains then? For first of all explain this to me. Soc. These to be sure. I will teach you it by powerful evidence. Come, where have you ever seen him raining at any time without Clouds? And yet he ought to rain in fine weather, and these be absent. Strep. By Apollo, of a truth you have rightly confirmed this by your present argument. And yet, before this, I really thought that Jupiter caused the rain. But tell me who is it that thunders. This makes me tremble. Soc. These, as they roll, thunder. Strep. In what way? you all-daring man! Soc. When they are full of much water, and are compelled to be borne along, being necessarily precipitated when full of rain, then they fall heavily upon each other and burst and clap. Strep. Who is it that compels them to borne along? Is it not Jupiter? Soc. By no means, but aethereal Vortex. Strep. Vortex? It had escaped my notice that Jupiter did not exist, and that Vortex now reigned in his stead. But you have taught me nothing as yet concerning the clap and the thunder. Soc. Have you not heard me, that I said that the Clouds, when full of moisture, dash against each other and clap by reason of their density? Strep. Come, how am I to believe this? Soc. I'll teach you from your own case. Were you ever, after being stuffed with broth at the Panathenaic festival, then disturbed in your belly, and did a tumult suddenly rumble through it? Strep. Yes, by Apollo! And immediately the little broth plays the mischief with me, and is disturbed and rumbles like thunder, and grumbles dreadfully: at first gently pappax, pappax; and then it adds papa-pappax; and finally, it thunders downright papapappax, as they do. Soc. Consider, therefore, how you have trumpeted from a little belly so small; and how is it not probable that this air, being boundless, should thunder so loudly? Strep. For this reason, therefore, the two names also Trump and Thunder, are similar to each other. But teach me this, whence comes the thunderbolt blazing with fire, and burns us to ashes when it smites us, and singes those who survive. For indeed Jupiter evidently hurls this at the perjured. Soc. Why, how then, you foolish person, and savouring of the dark ages and antediluvian, if his manner is to smite the perjured, does he not blast Simon, and Cleonymus, and Theorus? And yet they are very perjured. But he smites his own temple, and Sunium the promontory of Athens, and the tall oaks. Wherefore, for indeed an oak does not commit perjury. Strep. I do not know; but you seem to speak well. For what, pray, is the thunderbolt? Soc. When a dry wind, having been raised aloft, is inclosed in these Clouds, it inflates them within, like a bladder; and then, of necessity, having burst them, it rushes out with vehemence by reason of its density, setting fire to itself through its rushing and impetuosity. Strep. By Jupiter, of a truth I once experienced this exactly at the Diasian festival! I was roasting a haggis for my kinsfolk, and through neglect I did not cut it open; but it became inflated and then suddenly bursting, befouled my eyes and burned my face. Cho. O mortal, who hast desired great wisdom from us! How happy will you become among the Athenians and among the Greeks, if you be possessed of a good memory, and be a deep thinker, and endurance of labour be implanted in your soul, and you be not wearied either by standing or walking, nor be exceedingly vexed at shivering with cold, nor long to break your fast, and you refrain from wine, and gymnastics, and the other follies, and consider this the highest excellence, as is proper a clever man should, to conquer by action and counsel, and by battling with your tongue. Strep. As far as regards a sturdy spirit, and care that makes one's bed uneasy, and a frugal spirit and hard-living and savory-eating belly, be of good courage and don't trouble yourself; I would offer myself to hammer on, for that matter. Soc. Will you not, pray, now believe in no god, except what we believe in--this Chaos, and the Clouds, and the Tongue--these three? Strep. Absolutely I would not even converse with the others, not even if I met them; nor would I sacrifice to them, nor make libations, nor offer frankincense. Cho. Tell us then boldly, what we must do for you? For you shall not fail in getting it, if you honour and admire us, and seek to become clever. Strep. O mistresses, I request of you then this very small favour, that I be the best of the Greeks in speaking by a hundred stadia. Cho. Well, you shall have this from us, so that hence-forward from this time no one shall get more opinions passed in the public assemblies than you. Strep. Grant me not to deliver important opinions; for I do not desire these, but only to pervert the right for my own advantage, and to evade my creditors. Cho. Then you shall obtain what you desire; for you do not covet great things. But commit yourself without fear to our ministers. Strep. I will do so in reliance upon you, for necessity oppresses me, on account of the blood-horses, and the marriage that ruined me. Now, therefore, let them use me as they please. I give up this body to them to be beaten, to be hungered, to be troubled with thirst, to be squalid, to shiver with cold, to flay into a leathern bottle, if I shall escape clear from my debts, and appear to men to be bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventive of words, a practiced knave in lawsuits, a law-tablet, a thorough rattle, a fox, a sharper, a slippery knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an impostor, a gallows-bird, a blackguard, a twister, a troublesome fellow, a licker-up of hashes. If they call me this, when they meet me, let them do to me absolutely what they please. And if they like, by Ceres, let them serve up a sausage out of me to the deep thinkers. Cho. This man has a spirit not void of courage, but prompt. Know, that if you learn these matters from me, you will possess among mortals a glory as high as heaven. Strep. What shall I experience? Cho. You shall pass with me the most enviable of mortal lives the whole time. Strep. Shall I then ever see this? Cho. Yea, so that many be always seated at your gates, wishing to communicate with you and come to a conference with you, to consult with you as to actions and affidavits of many talents, as is worthy of your abilities. [To Socrates.] But attempt to teach the old man by degrees whatever you purpose, and scrutinize his intellect, and make trial of his mind. Soc. Come now, tell me your own turn of mind; in order that, when I know of what sort it is, I may now, after this, apply to you new engines. Strep. What? By the gods, do you purpose to besiege me? Soc. No; I wish to briefly learn from you if you are possessed of a good memory. Strep. In two ways, by Jove! If anything be owing to me, I have a very good memory; but if I owe unhappy man, I am very forgetful. Soc. Is the power of speaking, pray, implanted in your nature? Strep. Speaking is not in me, but cheating is. Soc. How, then, will you be able to learn? Strep. Excellently, of course. Soc. Come, then, take care that, whenever I propound any clever dogma about abstruse matters, you catch it up immediately. Strep. What then? Am I to feed upon wisdom like a dog? Soc. This man is ignorant and brutish--I fear, old man, lest you will need blows. Come, let me see; what do you do if any one beat you? Strep. I take the beating; and then, when I have waited a little while, I call witnesses to prove it; then again, after a short interval, I go to law. Soc. Come, then, lay down your cloak. Strep. Have I done any wrong? Soc. No; but it is the rule to enter naked. Strep. But I do not enter to search for stolen goods. Soc. Lay it down. Why do you talk nonsense? Strep. Now tell me this, pray. If I be diligent and learn zealously, to which of your disciples shall I become like? Soc. You will no way differ from Chaerephon in intellect. Strep. Ah me, unhappy! I shall become half-dead. Soc. Don't chatter; but quickly follow me hither with smartness. Strep. Then give me first into my hands a honeyed cake; for I am afraid of descending within, as if into the cave of Trophonius. Soc. Proceed; why do you keep poking about the door? [Exeunt Socrates and Strepsiades] Cho. Well, go in peace, for the sake of this your valour. May prosperity attend the man, because, being advanced into the vale of years, he imbues his intellect with modern subjects, and cultivates wisdom! [Turning to the audience.] Spectators, I will freely declare to you the truth, by Bacchus, who nurtured me! So may I conquer, and be accounted skillful, as that, deeming you to be clever spectators, and this to be the cleverest of my comedies, I thought proper to let you first taste that comedy, which gave me the greatest labour. And then I retired from the contest defeated by vulgar fellows, though I did not deserve it. These things, therefore, I object to you, a learned audience, for whose sake I was expending this labour. But not even thus will I ever willingly desert the discerning portion of you. For since what time my Modest Man and my Rake were very highly praised here by an audience, with whom it is a pleasure even to hold converse, and I (for I was still a virgin, and it was not lawful for me as yet to have children) exposed my offspring, and another girl took it up, and owned it, and you generously reared and educated it, from this time I have had sure pledges of your good will toward me. Now, therefore, like that well-known Electra, has this comedy come seeking, if haply it meet with an audience so clever, for it will recognize, if it should see, the lock of its brother. But see how modest she is by nature, who, in the first place, has come, having stitched to her no leathern phallus hanging down, red at the top, and thick, to set the boys a laughing; nor yet jeered the bald-headed, nor danced the cordax; nor does the old man who speaks the verses beat the person near him with his staff, keeping out of sight wretched ribaldry; nor has she rushed in with torches, nor does she shout iou, iou; but has come relying on herself and her verses. And I, although so excellent a poet, do not give myself airs, nor do I seek to deceive you by twice and thrice bringing forward the same pieces; but I am always clever at introducing new fashions, not at all resembling each other, and all of them clever; who struck Cleon in the belly when at the height of his power, and could not bear to attack him afterward when he was down. But these scribblers, when once Hyperbolus has given them a handle, keep ever trampling on this wretched man and his mother. Eupolis, indeed, first of all craftily introduced his Maricas, having basely, base fellow, spoiled by altering my play of the Knights, having added to it, for the sake of the cordax, a drunken old woman, whom Phrynichus long ago poetized, whom the whale was for devouring. Then again Hermippus made verses on Hyperbolus; and now all others press hard upon Hyperbolus, imitating my simile of the eels. Whoever, therefore, laughs at these, let him not take pleasure in my attempts; but if you are delighted with me and my inventions, in times to come you will seem to be wise. I first invoke, to join our choral band, the mighty Jupiter, ruling on high, the monarch of gods; and the potent master of the trident, the fierce upheaver of earth and briny sea; and our father of great renown, most august Aether, life-supporter of all; and the horse-guider, who fills the plain of the earth with exceeding bright beams, a mighty deity among gods and mortals. Most clever spectators, come, give us your attention; for having been injured, we blame you to your faces. For though we benefit the state most of all the gods, to us alone of the deities you do not offer sacrifice nor yet pour libations, who watch over you. For if there should be any expedition without prudence, then we either thunder or drizzle small rain. And then, when you were for choosing as your general the Paphlagonian tanner, hateful to the gods, we contracted our brows and were enraged; and thunder burst through the lightning; and the Moon forsook her usual paths; and the Sun immediately drew in his wick to himself, and declared he would not give you light, if Cleon should be your general. Nevertheless you chose him. For they say that ill counsel is in this city; that the gods, however, turn all these your mismanagements to a prosperous issue. And how this also shall be advantageous, we will easily teach you. If you should convict the cormorant Cleon of bribery and embezzlement, and then make fast his neck in the stocks, the affair will turn out for the state to the ancient form again, if you have mismanaged in any way, and to a prosperous issue. Hear me again, King Phoebus, Delian Apollo, who inhabitest the high-peaked Cynthian rock! And thou, blessed goddess, who inhabitest the all-golden house of Ephesus, in which Lydian damsels greatly reverence thee; and thou, our national goddess, swayer of the aegis, Minerva, guardian of the city! And thou, reveler Bacchus, who, inhabiting the Parnassian rock, sparklest with torches, conspicuous among the Delphic Bacchanals! When we had got ready to set out hither, the Moon met us, and commanded us first to greet the Athenians and their allies; and then declared that she was angry, for that she had suffered dreadful things, though she benefits you all, not in words, but openly. In the first place, not less than a drachma every month for torches; so that also all, when they went out of an evening, were wont to say, "Boy, don't buy a torch, for the moonlight is beautiful." And she says she confers other benefits on you, but that you do not observe the days at all correctly, but confuse them up and down; so that she says the gods are constantly threatening her, when they are defrauded of their dinner, and depart home, not having met with the regular feast according to the number of the days. And then, when you ought to be sacrificing, you are inflicting tortures and litigating. And often, while we gods are observing a fast, when we mourn for Memnon or Sarpedon, you are pouring libations and laughing. For which reason Hyperbolus, having obtained the lot this year to be Hieromnemon, was afterward deprived by us gods of his crown; for thus he will know better that he ought to spend the days of his life according to the Moon. [Enter Socrates] Soc. By Respiration, and Chaos, and Air, I have not seen any man so boorish, nor so impracticable, nor so stupid, nor so forgetful; who, while learning some little petty quibbles, forgets them before he has learned them. Nevertheless I will certainly call him out here to the light. Where is Strepsiades? Come forth with your couch. Strep. (from within). The bugs do not permit me to bring it forth. Soc. Make haste and lay it down; and give me your attention. [Enter Strepsiades] Strep. Very well. Soc. Come now; what do you now wish to learn first of those things in none of which you have ever been instructed? Tell me. About measures, or rhythms, or verses? Strep. I should prefer to learn about measures; for it is but lately I was cheated out of two choenices by a meal-huckster. Soc. I do not ask you this, but which you account the most beautiful measure; the trimetre or the tetrameter? Strep. Make a wager then with me, if the semisextarius be not a tetrameter. Soc. Go to the devil! How boorish you are and dull of learning. Perhaps you may be able to learn about rhythms. Strep. But what good will rhythms do me for a living? Soc. In the first place, to be clever at an entertainment, understanding what rhythm is for the war-dance, and what, again, according to the dactyle. Strep. According to the dactyle? By Jove, but I know it! Soc. Tell me, pray. Strep. What else but this finger? Formerly, indeed, when I was yet a boy, this here! Soc. You are boorish and stupid. Strep. For I do not desire, you wretch, to learn any of these things. Soc. What then? Strep. That, that, the most unjust cause. Soc. But you must learn other things before these; namely, what quadrupeds are properly masculine. Strep. I know the males, if I am not mad-krios, tragos, tauros, kuon, alektryon. Soc. Do you see what you are doing? You are calling both the female and the male alektryon in the same way. Strep. How, pray? Come, tell me. Soc. How? The one with you is alektryon, and the other is alektryon also. Strep. Yea, by Neptune! How now ought I to call them? Soc. The one alektryaina and the other alektor. Strep. Alektryaina? Capital, by the Air! So that, in return for this lesson alone, I will fill your kardopos full of barley-meal on all sides. Soc. See! See! There again is another blunder! You make kardopos, which is feminine, to be masculine. Strep. In what way do I make kardopos masculine? Soc. Most assuredly; just as if you were to say Cleonymos. Strep. Good sir, Cleonymus had no kneading-trough, but kneaded his bread in a round mortar. How ought I to call it henceforth? Soc. How? Call it kardope, as you call Sostrate. Strep. Kardope in the feminine? Soc. For so you speak it rightly. Strep. But that would make it kardope, Kleonyme. Soc. You must learn one thing more about names, what are masculine and what of them are feminine. Strep. I know what are female. Soc. Tell me, pray. Strep. Lysilla, Philinna, Clitagora, Demetria. Soc. What names are masculine? Strep. Thousands; Philoxenus, Melesias, Amynias. Soc. But, you wretch! These are not masculine. Strep. Are they not males with you? Soc. By no means; for how would you call Amynias, if you met him? Strep. How would I call? Thus: "Come hither, come hither Amynia!" Soc. Do you see? You call Amynias a woman. Strep. Is it not then with justice, who does not serve in the army? But why should I learn these things, that we all know? Soc. It is no use, by Jupiter! Having reclined yourself down here-- Strep. What must I do? Soc. Think out some of your own affairs. Strep. Not here, pray, I beseech you; but, if I must, suffer me to excogitate these very things on the ground. Soc. There is no other way. [Exit Socrates.] Strep. Unfortunate man that I am! What a penalty shall I this day pay to the bugs! Cho. Now meditate and examine closely; and roll yourself about in every way, having wrapped yourself up; and quickly, when you fall into a difficulty, spring to another mental contrivance. But let delightful sleep be absent from your eyes. Strep. Attatai! Attatai! Cho. What ails you? Why are you distressed? Strep. Wretched man, I am perishing! The Corinthians, coming out from the bed, are biting me, and devouring my sides, and drinking up my life-blood, and tearing away my flesh, and digging through my vitals, and will annihilate me. Cho. Do not now be very grievously distressed. Strep. Why, how, when my money is gone, my complexion gone, my life gone, and my slipper gone? And furthermore in addition to these evils, with singing the night-watches, I am almost gone myself. [Re-enter Socrates] Soc. Ho you! What are you about? Are you not meditating? Strep. I? Yea, by Neptune! Soc. And what, pray, have you thought? Strep. Whether any bit of me will be left by the bugs. Soc. You will perish most wretchedly. Strep. But, my good friend, I have already perished. Soc. You must not give in, but must wrap yourself up; for you have to discover a device for abstracting, and a means of cheating. [Walks up and down while Strepsiades wraps himself up in the blankets.] Strep. Ah me! Would, pray, some one would throw over me a swindling contrivance from the sheep-skins. Soc. Come now; I will first see this fellow, what he is about. Ho you! Are you asleep? Strep. No, by Apollo, I am not! Soc. Have you got anything? Strep. No; by Jupiter, certainly not! Soc. Nothing at all? Strep. Nothing, except what I have in my right hand. Soc. Will you not quickly cover yourself up and think of something? Strep. About what? For do you tell me this, O Socrates! Soc. Do you, yourself, first find out and state what you wish. Strep. You have heard a thousand times what I wish. About the interest; so that I may pay no one. Soc. Come then, wrap yourself up, and having given your mind play with subtilty, revolve your affairs by little and little, rightly distinguishing and examining. Strep. Ah me, unhappy man! Soc. Keep quiet; and if you be puzzled in any one of your conceptions, leave it and go; and then set your mind in motion again, and lock it up. Strep. (in great glee). O dearest little Socrates! Soc. What, old man? Strep. I have got a device for cheating them of the interest. Soc. Exhibit it. Strep. Now tell me this, pray; if I were to purchase a Thessalian witch, and draw down the moon by night, and then shut it up, as if it were a mirror, in a round crest-case, and then carefully keep it-- Soc. What good, pray, would this do you? Strep. What? If the moon were to rise no longer anywhere, I should not pay the interest. Soc. Why so, pray? Strep. Because the money is lent out by the month. Soc. Capital! But I will again propose to you another clever question. If a suit of five talents should be entered against you, tell me how you would obliterate it. Strep. How? How? I do not know but I must seek. Soc. Do not then always revolve your thoughts about yourself; but slack away your mind into the air, like a cock-chafer tied with a thread by the foot. Strep. I have found a very clever method of getting rid of my suit, so that you yourself would acknowledge it. Soc. Of what description? Strep. Have you ever seen this stone in the chemist's shops, the beautiful and transparent one, from which they kindle fire? Soc. Do you mean the burning-glass? Strep. I do. Come what would you say, pray, if I were to take this, when the clerk was entering the suit, and were to stand at a distance, in the direction of the sun, thus, and melt out the letters of my suit? Soc. Cleverly done, by the Graces! Strep. Oh! How I am delighted, that a suit of five talents has been cancelled! Soc. Come now, quickly seize upon this. Strep. What? Soc. How, when engaged in a lawsuit, you could overturn the suit, when you were about to be cast, because you had no witnesses. Strep. Most readily and easily. Soc. Tell me, pray. Strep. Well now, I'll tell you. If, while one suit was still pending, before mine was called on, I were to run away and hang myself. Soc. You talk nonsense. Strep. By the gods, would I! For no one will bring action against me when I am dead. Soc. You talk nonsense. Begone; I can't teach you any longer. Strep. Why so? Yea, by the gods, O Socrates! Soc. You straightaway forget whatever you learn. For what now was the first thing you were taught? Tell me. Strep. Come, let me see: nay, what was the first? What was the fist? Nay, what was the thing in which we knead our flour? Ah me! What was it? Soc. Will you not pack off to the devil, you most forgetful and most stupid old man? Strep. Ah me, what then, pray will become of me, wretched man? For I shall be utterly undone, if I do not learn to ply the tongue. Come, O ye Clouds, give me some good advice. Cho. We, old man, advise you, if you have a son grown up, to send him to learn in your stead. Strep. Well, I have a fine, handsome son, but he is not willing to learn. What must I do? Cho. But do you permit him? Strep. Yes, for he is robust in body, and in good health, and is come of the high-plumed dames of Coesyra. I will go for him, and if he be not willing, I will certainly drive him from my house. [To Socrates.] Go in and wait for me a short time. [Exit] Cho. Do you perceive that you are soon to obtain the greatest benefits through us alone of the gods? For this man is ready to do everything that you bid him. But you, while the man is astounded and evidently elated, having perceived it, will quickly fleece him to the best of your power. [Exit Socrates] For matters of this sort are somehow accustomed to turn the other way. [Enter Strepsiades and Phidippides] Strep. By Mist, you certainly shall not stay here any longer! But go and gnaw the columns of Megacles. Phid. My good sir, what is the matter with you, O father? You are not in your senses, by Olympian Jupiter! Strep. See, see, "Olympian Jupiter!" What folly! To think of your believing in Jupiter, as old as you are! Phid. Why, pray, did you laugh at this? Strep. Reflecting that you are a child, and have antiquated notions. Yet, however, approach, that you may know more; and I will tell you a thing, by learning which you will be a man. But see that you do not teach this to any one. Phid. Well, what is it? Strep. You swore now by Jupiter. Phid. I did. Strep. Seest thou, then, how good a thing is learning? There is no Jupiter, O Phidippides! Phid. Who then? Strep. Vortex reigns, having expelled Jupiter. Phid. Bah! Why do you talk foolishly? Strep. Be assured that it is so. Phid. Who says this? Strep. Socrates the Melian, and Chaerephon, who knows the footmarks of fleas. Phid. Have you arrived at such a pitch of frenzy that you believe madmen? Strep. Speak words of good omen, and say nothing bad of clever men and wise; of whom, through frugality, none ever shaved or anointed himself, or went to a bath to wash himself; while you squander my property in bathing, as if I were already dead. But go as quickly as possible and learn instead of me. Phid. What good could any one learn from them? Strep. What, really? Whatever wisdom there is among men. And you will know yourself, how ignorant and stupid you are. But wait for me here a short time. [Runs off] Phid. Ah me! What shall I do, my father being crazed? Shall I bring him into court and convict him of lunacy, or shall I give information of his madness to the coffin-makers? [Re-enter Strepsiades with a cock under one arm and a hen under the other] Strep. Come, let me see; what do you consider this to be? Tell me. Phid. Alectryon. Strep. Right. And what this? Phid. Alectryon. Strep. Both the same? You are very ridiculous. Do not do so, then, for the future; but call this alektryaina, and this one alektor. Phid. Alektryaina! Did you learn these clever things by going in just now to the Titans? Strep. And many others too; but whatever I learned on each occasion I used to forget immediately, through length of years. Phid. Is it for this reason, pray, that you have also lost your cloak? Strep. I have not lost it; but have studied it away. Phid. What have you made of your slippers, you foolish man? Strep. I have expended them, like Pericles, for needful purposes. Come, move, let us go. And then if you obey your father, go wrong if you like. I also know that I formerly obeyed you, a lisping child of six years old, and bought you a go-cart at the Diasia, with the first obolus I received from the Heliaea. Phid. You will assuredly some time at length be grieved at this. Strep. It is well done of you that you obeyed. Come hither, come hither O Socrates! Come forth, for I bring to you this son of mine, having persuaded him against his will. [Enter Socrates] Soc. For he is still childish, and not used to the baskets here. Phid. You would yourself be used to them if you were hanged. Strep. A mischief take you! Do you abuse your teacher? Soc. "Were hanged" quoth 'a! How sillily he pronounced it, and with lips wide apart! How can this youth ever learn an acquittal from a trial or a legal summons, or persuasive refutation? And yet Hyperbolus learned this at the cost of a talent. Strep. Never mind; teach him. He is clever by nature. Indeed, from his earliest years, when he was a little fellow only so big, he was wont to form houses and carve ships within-doors, and make little wagons of leather, and make frogs out of pomegranate-rinds, you can't think how cleverly. But see that he learns those two causes; the better, whatever it may be; and the worse, which, by maintaining what is unjust, overturns the better. If not both, at any rate the unjust one by all means. Soc. He shall learn it himself from the two causes in person. [Exit Socrates] Strep. I will take my departure. Remember this now, that he is to be able to reply to all just arguments. [Exit Strepsiades and enter Just Cause and Unjust Cause] Just Cause. Come hither! Show yourself to the spectators, although being audacious. Unjust Cause. Go whither you please; for I shall far rather do for you, if I speak before a crowd. Just. You destroy me? Who are you? Unj. A cause. Just. Ay, the worse. Unj. But I conquer you, who say that you are better than I. Just. By doing what clever trick? Unj. By discovering new contrivances. Just. For these innovations flourish by the favour of these silly persons. Unj. No; but wise persons. Just I will destroy you miserably. Unj. Tell me, by doing what? Just By speaking what is just. Unj. But I will overturn them by contradicting them; for I deny that justice even exists at all. Just Do you deny that it exists? Unj. For come, where is it? Just With the gods. Unj. How, then, if justice exists, has Jupiter not perished, who bound his own father? Just Bah! This profanity now is spreading! Give me a basin. Unj. You are a dotard and absurd. Just You are debauched and shameless. Unj. You have spoken roses of me. Just And a dirty lickspittle. Unj. You crown me with lilies. Just And a parricide. Unj. You don't know that you are sprinkling me with gold. Just Certainly not so formerly, but with lead. Unj. But now this is an ornament to me. Just You are very impudent. Unj. And you are antiquated. Just And through you, no one of our youths is willing to go to school; and you will be found out some time or other by the Athenians, what sort of doctrines you teach the simple-minded. Unj. You are shamefully squalid. Just And you are prosperous. And yet formerly you were a beggar saying that you were the Mysian Telephus, and gnawing the maxims of Pandeletus out of your little wallet. Unj. Oh, the wisdom-- Just Oh, the madness-- Unj. Which you have mentioned. Just And of your city, which supports you who ruin her youths. Unj. You shan't teach this youth, you old dotard. Just Yes, if he is to be saved, and not merely to practise loquacity. Unj. (to Phidippides) Come hither, and leave him to rave. Just You shall howl, if you lay your hand on him. Cho. Cease from contention and railing. But show to us, you, what you used to teach the men of former times, and you, the new system of education; in order that, having heard you disputing, he may decide and go to the school of one or the other. Just. I am willing to do so. Unj. I also am willing. Cho. Come now, which of the two shall speak first? Unj. I will give him the precedence; and then, from these things which he adduces, I will shoot him dead with new words and thoughts. And at last, if he mutter, he shall be destroyed, being stung in his whole face and his two eyes by my maxims, as if by bees. Cho. Now the two, relying on very dexterous arguments and thoughts, and sententious maxims, will show which of them shall appear superior in argument. For now the whole crisis of wisdom is here laid before them; about which my friends have a very great contest. But do you, who adorned our elders with many virtuous manners, utter the voice in which you rejoice, and declare your nature. Just. I will, therefore, describe the ancient system of education, how it was ordered, when I flourished in the advocacy of justice, and temperance was the fashion. In the first place it was incumbent that no one should hear the voice of a boy uttering a syllable; and next, that those from the same quarter of the town should march in good order through the streets to the school of the harp-master, naked, and in a body, even if it were to snow as thick as meal. Then again, their master would teach them, not sitting cross-legged, to learn by rote a song, either "pallada persepolin deinan" or "teleporon ti boama" raising to a higher pitch the harmony which our fathers transmitted to us. But if any of them were to play the buffoon, or to turn any quavers, like these difficult turns the present artists make after the manner of Phrynis, he used to be thrashed, being beaten with many blows, as banishing the Muses. And it behooved the boys, while sitting in the school of the Gymnastic-master, to cover the thigh, so that they might exhibit nothing indecent to those outside; then again, after rising from the ground, to sweep the sand together, and to take care not to leave an impression of the person for their lovers. And no boy used in those days to anoint himself below the navel; so that their bodies wore the appearance of blooming health. Nor used he to go to his lover, having made up his voice in an effeminate tone, prostituting himself with his eyes. Nor used it to be allowed when one was dining to take the head of the radish, or to snatch from their seniors dill or parsley, or to eat fish, or to giggle, or to keep the legs crossed. Unj. Aye, antiquated and dipolia-like and full of grasshoppers, and of Cecydes, and of the Buphonian festival! Just Yet certainly these are those principles by which my system of education nurtured the men who fought at Marathon. But you teach the men of the present day, so that I am choked, when at the Panathenaia a fellow, holding his shield before his person, neglects Tritogenia, when they ought to dance. Wherefore, O youth, choose with confidence, me, the better cause, and you will learn to hate the Agora, and to refrain from baths, and to be ashamed of what is disgraceful, and to be enraged if any one jeer you, and to rise up from seats before your seniors when they approach, and not to behave ill toward your parents, and to do nothing else that is base, because you are to form in your mind an image of Modesty: and not to dart into the house of a dancing-woman, lest, while gaping after these things, being struck with an apple by a wanton, you should be damaged in your reputation: and not to contradict your father in anything; nor by calling him Iapetus, to reproach him with the ills of age, by which you were reared in your infancy. Unj. If you shall believe him in this, O youth, by Bacchus, you will be like the sons of Hippocrates, and they will call you a booby. Just. Yet certainly shall you spend your time in the gymnastic schools, sleek and blooming; not chattering in the market-place rude jests, like the youths of the present day; nor dragged into court for a petty suit, greedy, pettifogging, knavish; but you shall descend to the Academy and run races beneath the sacred olives along with some modest compeer, crowned with white reeds, redolent of yew, and careless ease, of leaf-shedding white poplar, rejoicing in the season of spring, when the plane-tree whispers to the elm. If you do these things which I say, and apply your mind to these, you will ever have a stout chest, a clear complexion, broad shoulders, a little tongue, large hips, little lewdness. But if you practise what the youths of the present day do, you will have in the first place, a pallid complexion, small shoulders, a narrow chest, a large tongue, little hips, great lewdness, a long psephism; and this deceiver will persuade you to consider everything that is base to be honourable, and what is honourable to be base; and in addition to this, he will fill you with the lewdness of Antimachus. Cho. O thou that practisest most renowned high-towering wisdom! How sweetly does a modest grace attend your words! Happy, therefore, were they who lived in those days, in the times of former men! In reply, then, to these, O thou that hast a dainty-seeming Muse, it behooveth thee to say something new; since the man has gained renown. And it appears you have need of powerful arguments against him, if you are to conquer the man and not incur laughter. Unj. And yet I was choking in my heart, and was longing to confound all these with contrary maxims. For I have been called among the deep thinkers the "worse cause" on this very account, that I first contrived how to speak against both law and justice; and this art is worth more than ten thousand staters, that one should choose the worse cause, and nevertheless be victorious. But mark how I will confute the system of education on which he relies, who says, in the first place, that he will not permit you to be washed with warm water. And yet, on what principle do you blame the warm baths? Just. Because it is most vile, and makes a man cowardly. Unj. Stop! For immediately I seize and hold you by the waist without escape. Come, tell me, which of the sons of Jupiter do you deem to have been the bravest in soul, and to have undergone most labours? Just. I consider no man superior to Hercules. Unj. Where, pray, did you ever see cold Herculean baths? And yet, who was more valiant than he? Just. These are the very things which make the bath full of youths always chattering all day long, but the palaestras empty. Unj. You next find fault with their living in the market-place; but I commend it. For if it had been bad, Homer would never have been for representing Nestor as an orator; nor all the other wise men. I will return, then, from thence to the tongue, which this fellow says our youths ought not to exercise, while I maintain they should. And again, he says they ought to be modest: two very great evils. For tell me to whom you have ever seen any good accrue through modesty and confute me by your words. Just. To many. Peleus, at any rate, received his sword on account of it. Unj. A sword? Marry, he got a pretty piece of luck, the poor wretch! While Hyperbolus, he of the lamps, got more than many talents by his villainy, but by Jupiter, no sword! Just. And Peleus married Thetis, too, through his modesty. Unj. And then she went off and left him; for he was not lustful, nor an agreeable bedfellow to spend the night with. Now a woman delights in being wantonly treated. But you are an old dotard. For (to Phidippides) consider, O youth, all that attaches to modesty, and of how many pleasures you are about to be deprived--of women, of games at cottabus, of dainties, of drinking-bouts, of giggling. And yet, what is life worth to you if you be deprived of these enjoyments? Well, I will pass from thence to the necessities of our nature. You have gone astray, you have fallen in love, you have been guilty of some adultery, and then have been caught. You are undone, for you are unable to speak. But if you associate with me, indulge your inclination, dance, laugh, and think nothing disgraceful. For if you should happen to be detected as an adulterer, you will make this reply to him, "that you have done him no injury": and then refer him to Jupiter, how even he is overcome by love and women. And yet, how could you, who are a mortal, have greater power than a god? Just. But what if he should suffer the radish through obeying you, and be depillated with hot ashes? What argument will he be able to state, to prove that he is not a blackguard? Unj. And if he be a blackguard, what harm will he suffer? Just. Nay, what could he ever suffer still greater than this? Unj. What then will you say if you be conquered by me in this? Just. I will be silent: what else can I do? Unj. Come, now, tell me; from what class do the advocates come? Just. From the blackguards. Unj. I believe you. What then? From what class do tragedians come? Just. From the blackguards. Unj. You say well. But from what class do the public orators come? Just. From the blackguards. Unj. Then have you perceived that you say nothing to the purpose? And look which class among the audience is the more numerous. Just. Well now, I'm looking. Unj. What, then, do you see? Just. By the gods, the blackguards to be far more numerous. This fellow, at any rate, I know; and him yonder; and this fellow with the long hair. Unj. What, then, will you say? Just. We are conquered. Ye blackguards, by the gods, receive my cloak, for I desert to you. [Exeunt the Two Causes, and re-enter Socrates and Strepsiades.] Soc. What then? whether do you wish to take and lead away this your son, or shall I teach him to speak? Strep. Teach him, and chastise him: and remember that you train him properly; on the one side able for petty suits; but train his other jaw able for the more important causes. Soc. Make yourself easy; you shall receive him back a clever sophist. Strep. Nay, rather, pale and wretched. [Exeunt Socrates, Strepsiades, and Phidippides.] Cho. Go ye, then: but I think that you will repent of these proceedings. We wish to speak about the judges, what they will gain, if at all they justly assist this Chorus. For in the first place, if you wish to plough up your fields in spring, we will rain for you first; but for the others afterward. And then we will protect the fruits, and the vines, so that neither drought afflict them, nor excessive wet weather. But if any mortal dishonour us who are goddesses, let him consider what evils he will suffer at our hands, obtaining neither wine nor anything else from his farm. For when his olives and vines sprout, they shall be cut down; with such slings will we smite them. And if we see him making brick, we will rain; and we will smash the tiles of his roof with round hailstones. And if he himself, or any one of his kindred or friends, at any time marry, we will rain the whole night; so he will probably wish rather to have been even in Egypt than to have judged badly. [Enter Strepsiades with a meal-sack on his shoulder.] Strep. The fifth, the fourth, the third, after this the second; and then, of all the days I most fear, and dread, and abominate, immediately after this there is the Old and New. For every one to whom I happen to be indebted, swears, and says he will ruin and destroy me, having made his deposits against me; though I only ask what is moderate and just-"My good sir, one part don't take just now; the other part put off I pray; and the other part remit"; they say that thus they will never get back their money, but abuse me, as I am unjust, and say they will go to law with me. Now therefore let them go to law, for it little concerns me, if Phidippides has learned to speak well. I shall soon know by knocking at the thinking-shop. [Knocks at the door.] Boy, I say! Boy, boy! [Enter Socrates] Soc. Good morning, Strepsiades. Strep. The same to you. But first accept this present; for one ought to compliment the teacher with a fee. And tell me about my son, if he has learned that cause, which you just now brought forward. Soc. He has learned it. Strep. Well done, O Fraud, all-powerful queen! Soc. So that you can get clear off from whatever suit you please. Strep. Even if witnesses were present when I borrowed the money? Soc. Yea, much more! Even if a thousand be present. Strep. Then I will shout with a very loud shout: Ho! Weep, you petty-usurers, both you and your principals, and your compound interests! For you can no longer do me any harm, because such a son is being reared for me in this house, shining with a double-edged tongue, for my guardian, the preserver of my house, a mischief to my enemies, ending the sadness of the great woes of his father. Him do thou run and summon from within to me. [Socrates goes into the house.] O child! O son! Come forth from the house! Hear your father! [Re-enter Socrates leading in Phidippides] Soc. Lo, here is the man! Strep. O my dear, my dear! Soc. Take your son and depart. [Exit Socrates.] Strep. Oh, oh, my child! Huzza! Huzza! How I am delighted at the first sight of your complexion! Now, indeed, you are, in the first place, negative and disputatious to look at, and this fashion native to the place plainly appears, the "what do you say?" and the seeming to be injured when, I well know, you are injuring and inflicting a wrong; and in your countenance there is the Attic look. Now, therefore, see that you save me, since you have also ruined me. Phid. What, pray, do you fear? Strep. The Old and New. Phid. Why, is any day old and new? Strep. Yes; on which they say that they will make their deposits against me. Phid. Then those that have made them will lose them; for it is not possible that two days can be one day. Strep. Can not it? Phid. Certainly not; unless the same woman can be both old and young at the same time. Strep. And yet it is the law. Phid. For they do not, I think, rightly understand what the law means. Strep. And what does it mean? Phid. The ancient Solon was by nature the commons' friend. Strep. This surely is nothing whatever to the Old and New. Phid. He therefore made the summons for two days, for the Old and New, that the deposits might be made on the first of the month. Strep. Why, pray, did he add the old day? Phid. In order, my good sir, that the defendants, being present a day before, might compromise the matter of their own accord; but if not, that they might be worried on the morning of the new moon. Strep. Why, then, do the magistrates not receive the deposits on the new moon, but on the Old and New? Phid. They seem to me to do what the forestallers do: in order that they may appreciate the deposits as soon as possible, on this account they have the first pick by one day. Strep. (turning to the audience) Bravo! Ye wretches, why do you sit senseless, the gain of us wise men, being blocks, ciphers, mere sheep, jars heaped together, wherefore I must sing an encomium upon myself and this my son, on account of our good fortune. "O happy Strepsiades! How wise you are yourself, and how excellent is the son whom you are rearing!" My friends and fellow-tribesmen will say of me, envying me, when you prove victorious in arguing causes. But first I wish to lead you in and entertain you. [Exeunt Strepsiades and Phidippides.] Pasias (entering with his summons-witness) Then, ought a man to throw away any part of his own property? Never! But it were better then at once to put away blushes, rather than now to have trouble; since I am now dragging you to be a witness, for the sake of my own money; and further, in addition to this, I shall become an enemy to my fellow-tribesman. But never, while I live, will I disgrace my country, but will summon Strepsiades. Strep. (from within) Who's there? Pas. For the Old and New. Strep. I call you to witness, that he has named it for two days. For what matter do you summon me? Pas. For the twelve minae, which you received when you were buying the dapple-gray horse. Strep. A horse? Do you not hear? I, whom you all know to hate horsemanship! Pas. And, by Jupiter! You swore by the gods too, that you would repay it. Strep. Ay, by Jove! For then my Phidippides did not yet know the irrefragable argument. Pas. And do you now intend, on this account, to deny the debt? Strep. Why, what good should I get else from his instruction? Pas. And will you be willing to deny these upon oath of the gods? Strep. What gods? Pas. Jupiter, Mercury, and Neptune. Strep. Yes, by Jupiter! And would pay down, too, a three-obol piece besides to swear. Pas. Then may you perish some day for your impudence! Strep. This man would be the better for it if he were cleansed by rubbing with salt. Pas. Ah me, how you deride me! Strep. He will contain six choae. Pas. By great Jupiter and the gods, you certainly shall not do this to me with impunity! Strep. I like your gods amazingly; and Jupiter, sworn by, is ridiculous to the knowing ones. Pas. You will assuredly suffer punishment, some time or other, for this. But answer and dismiss me, whether you are going to repay me my money or not. Strep. Keep quiet now, for I will presently answer you distinctly. [Runs into the house.] Pas. (to his summons-witness). What do you think he will do? Witness. I think he will pay you. [Re-enter Strepsiades with a kneading-trough] Strep. Where is this man who asks me for his money? Tell me what is this? Pas. What is this? A kardopos. Strep. And do you then ask me for your money, being such an ignorant person? I would not pay, not even an obolus, to any one who called the kardope kardopos. Pas. Then won't you pay me? Strep. Not, as far as I know. Will you not then pack off as fast as possible from my door? Pas. I will depart; and be assured of this, that I will make deposit against you, or may I live no longer! Strep. Then you will lose it besides, in addition to your twelve minae. And yet I do not wish you to suffer this, because you named the kardopos foolishly. [Exeunt Pasias and Witness, and enter Amynias] Amynias. Ah me! Ah me! Strep. Ha! Whoever is this, who is lamenting? Surely it was not one of Carcinus' deities that spoke. Amyn. But why do you wish to know this, who I am?-A miserable man. Strep. Then follow your own path. Amyn. O harsh fortune! O Fates, breaking the wheels of my horses! O Pallas, how you have destroyed me! Strep. What evil, pray, has Tlepolemus ever done you? Amyn. Do not jeer me, my friend; but order your son to pay me the money which he received; especially as I have been unfortunate. Strep. What money is this? Amyn. That which he borrowed. Strep. Then you were really unlucky, as I think. Amyn. By the gods, I fell while driving my horses. Strep. Why, pray, do you talk nonsense, as if you had fallen from an ass? Amyn. Do I talk nonsense if I wish to recover my money? Strep. You can't be in your senses yourself. Amyn. Why, pray? Strep. You appear to me to have had your brains shaken as it were. Amyn. And you appear to me, by Hermes, to be going to be summoned, if you will not pay me the money? Strep. Tell me now, whether you think that Jupiter always rains fresh rain on each occasion, or that the sun draws from below the same water back again? Amyn. I know not which; nor do I care. Strep. How then is it just that you should recover your money, if you know nothing of meteorological matters? Amyn. Well, if you are in want, pay me the interest of my money. Strep. What sort of animal is this interest? Amyn. Most assuredly the money is always becoming more and more every month and every day as the time slips away. Strep. You say well. What then? Is it possible that you consider the sea to be greater now than formerly? Amyn. No, by Jupiter, but equal; for it is not fitting that it should be greater. Strep. And how then, you wretch does this become no way greater, though the rivers flow into it, while you seek to increase your money? Will you not take yourself off from my house? Bring me the goad. [Enter Servant with a goad.] Amyn. I call you to witness these things. Strep. (beating him). Go! Why do you delay? Won't you march, Mr. Blood-horse? Amyn. Is not this an insult, pray? Strep. Will you move quickly? [Pricks him behind with the goad.] I'll lay on you, goading you behind, you outrigger? Do you fly? [Amynias runs off.] I thought I should stir you, together with your wheels and your two-horse chariots. [Exit Strepsiades.] Cho. What a thing it is to love evil courses! For this old man, having loved them, wishes to withhold the money that he borrowed. And he will certainly meet with something today, which will perhaps cause this sophist to suddenly receive some misfortune, in return for the knaveries he has begun. For I think that he will presently find what has been long boiling up, that his son is skilful to speak opinions opposed to justice, so as to overcome all with whomsoever he holds converse, even if he advance most villainous doctrines; and perhaps, perhaps his father will wish that he were even speechless. Strep. (running out of the house pursued by his son) Hollo! Hollo! O neighbours, and kinsfolk, and fellow-tribesmen, defend me, by all means, who am being beaten! Ah me, unhappy man, for my head and jaw! Wretch! Do you beat your father? Phid. Yes, father. Strep. You see him owning that he beats me. Phid. Certainly. Strep. O wretch, and parricide, and house-breaker! Phid. Say the same things of me again, and more. Do you know that I take pleasure in being much abused? Strep. You blackguard! Phid. Sprinkle me with roses in abundance. Strep. Do you beat your father? Phid. And will prove too, by Jupiter! that I beat you with justice. Strep. O thou most rascally! Why, how can it be just to beat a father? Phid. I will demonstrate it, and will overcome you in argument. Strep. Will you overcome me in this? Phid. Yea, by much and easily. But choose which of the two Causes you wish to speak. Strep. Of what two Causes? Phid. The better, or the worse? Strep. Marry, I did get you taught to speak against justice, by Jupiter, my friend, if you are going to persuade me of this, that it is just and honourable for a father to be beaten by his sons! Phid. I think I shall certainly persuade you; so that, when you have heard, not even you yourself will say anything against it. Strep. Well, now, I am willing to hear what you have to say. Cho. It is your business, old man, to consider in what way you shall conquer the man; for if he were not relying upon something, he would not be so licentious. But he is emboldened by something; the boldness of the man is evident. Now you ought to tell to the Chorus from what the contention first arose. And this you must do by all means. Strep. Well, now, I will tell you from what we first began to rail at one another. After we had feasted, as you know, I first bade him take a lyre, and sing a song of Simonides, "The Shearing of the Ram." But he immediately said it was old-fashioned to play on the lyre and sing while drinking, like a woman grinding parched barley. Phid. For ought you not then immediately to be beaten and trampled on, bidding me sing, just as if you were entertaining cicadae? Strep. He expressed, however, such opinions then too within, as he does now; and he asserted that Simonides was a bad poet. I bore it at first, with difficulty indeed, yet nevertheless I bore it. And then I bade him at least take a myrtle-wreath and recite to me some portion of Aeschylus; and then he immediately said, "Shall I consider Aeschylus the first among the poets, full of empty sound, unpolished, bombastic, using rugged words?" And hereupon you can't think how my heart panted. But, nevertheless, I restrained my passion, and said, "At least recite some passage of the more modern poets, of whatever kind these clever things be." And he immediately sang a passage of Euripides, how a brother, O averter of ill! Debauched his uterine sister. And I bore it no longer, but immediately assailed him with many abusive reproaches. And then, after that, as was natural, we hurled word upon word. Then he springs upon me; and then he was wounding me, and beating me, and throttling me. Phid. Were you not therefore justly beaten, who do not praise Euripides, the wisest of poets? Strep. He the wisest! Oh, what shall I call you? But I shall be beaten again. Phid. Yes, by Jupiter, with justice? Strep. Why, how with justice? Who, O shameless fellow, reared you, understanding all your wishes, when you lisped what you meant? If you said bryn, I, understanding it, used to give you to drink. And when you asked for mamman, I used to come to you with bread. And you used no sooner to say caccan, than I used to take and carry you out of doors, and hold you before me. But you now, throttling me who was bawling and crying out because I wanted to ease myself, had not the heart to carry me forth out of doors, you wretch; but I did it there while I was being throttled. Cho. I fancy the hearts of the youths are panting to hear what he will say. For if, after having done such things, he shall persuade him by speaking, I would not take the hide of the old folks, even at the price of a chick-pea. It is thy business, thou author and upheaver of new words, to seek some means of persuasion, so that you shall seem to speak justly. Phid. How pleasant it is to be acquainted with new and clever things, and to be able to despise the established laws! For I, when I applied my mind to horsemanship alone, used not to be able to utter three words before I made a mistake; but now, since he himself has made me cease from these pursuits, and I am acquainted with subtle thoughts, and arguments, and speculations, I think I shall demonstrate that it is just to chastise one's father. Strep. Ride, then, by Jupiter! Since it is better for me to keep a team of four horses than to be killed with a beating. Phid. I will pass over to that part of my discourse where you interrupted me; and first I will ask you this: Did you beat me when I was a boy? Strep. I did, through good-will and concern for you. Phid. Pray tell me, is it not just that I also should be well inclined toward you in the same way, and beat you, since this is to be well inclined-to give a beating? For why ought your body to be exempt from blows and mine not? And yet I too was born free. The boys weep, and do you not think it is right that a father should weep? You will say that it is ordained by law that this should be the lot of boys. But I would reply, that old men are boys twice over, and that it is the more reasonable that the old should weep than the young, inasmuch as it is less just that they should err. Strep. It is nowhere ordained by law that a father should suffer this. Phid. Was it not then a man like you and me, who first proposed this law, and by speaking persuaded the ancients? Why then is it less lawful for me also in turn to propose henceforth a new law for the sons, that they should beat their fathers in turn? But as many blows as we received before the law was made, we remit: and we concede to them our having been thrashed without return. Observe the cocks and these other animals, how they punish their fathers; and yet, in what do they differ from us, except that they do not write decrees? Strep. Why then, since you imitate the cocks in all things, do you not both eat dung and sleep on a perch? Phid. It is not the same thing, my friend; nor would it appear so to Socrates. Strep. Therefore do not beat me; otherwise you will one day blame yourself. Phid. Why, how? Strep. Since I am justly entitled to chastise you; and you to chastise your son, if you should have one. Phid. But if I should not have one, I shall have wept for nothing, and you will die laughing at me. Strep. To me, indeed, O comrades, he seems to speak justly; and I think we ought to concede to them what is fitting. For it is proper that we should weep, if we do not act justly. Phid. Consider still another maxim. Strep. No; for I shall perish if I do. Phid. And yet perhaps you will not be vexed at suffering what you now suffer. Strep. How, pray? For inform me what good you will do me by this. Phid. I will beat my mother, just as I have you. Strep. What do you say? What do you say? This other, again, is a greater wickedness. Phid. But what if, having the worst Cause, I shall conquer you in arguing, proving that it is right to beat one's mother? Strep. Most assuredly, if you do this, nothing will hinder you from casting yourself and your Worse Cause into the pit along with Socrates. These evils have I suffered through you, O Clouds! Having intrusted all my affairs to you. Cho. Nay, rather, you are yourself the cause of these things, having turned yourself to wicked courses. Strep. Why, pray, did you not tell me this, then, but excited with hopes a rustic and aged man? Cho. We always do this to him whom we perceive to be a lover of wicked courses, until we precipitate him into misfortune, so that he may learn to fear the gods. Strep. Ah me! it is severe, O Clouds! But it is just; for I ought not to have withheld the money which I borrowed. Now, therefore, come with me, my dearest son, that you may destroy the blackguard Chaerephon and Socrates, who deceived you and me. Phid. I will not injure my teachers. Strep. Yes, yes, reverence Paternal Jove. Phid. "Paternal Jove" quoth'a! How antiquated you are! Why, is there any Jove? Strep. There is. Phid. There is not, no; for Vortex reigns having expelled Jupiter. Strep. He has not expelled him; but I fancied this, on account of this Vortex here. Ah me, unhappy man! When I even took you who are of earthenware for a god. Phid. Here rave and babble to yourself. [Exit Phidippides] Strep. Ah me, what madness! How mad, then, I was when I ejected the gods on account of Socrates! But O dear Hermes, by no means be wroth with me, nor destroy me; but pardon me, since I have gone crazy through prating. And become my adviser, whether I shall bring an action and prosecute them, or whatever you think. You advise me rightly, not permitting me to get up a lawsuit, but as soon as possible to set fire to the house of the prating fellows. Come hither, come hither, Xanthias! Come forth with a ladder and with a mattock and then mount upon the thinking-shop and dig down the roof, if you love your master, until you tumble the house upon them. [Xanthias mounts upon the roof] But let some one bring me a lighted torch and I'll make some of them this day suffer punishment, even if they be ever so much impostors. 1st Dis. (from within) Hollo! Hollo! Strep. It is your business, O torch, to send forth abundant flame. [Mounts upon the roof] 1st Dis. What are you doing, fellow? Strep. What am I doing? Why, what else, than chopping logic with the beams of your house? [Sets the house on fire] 2nd Dis. (from within) You will destroy us! You will destroy us! Strep. For I also wish this very thing; unless my mattock deceive my hopes, or I should somehow fall first and break my neck. Soc. (from within). Hollo you! What are you doing, pray, you fellow on the roof? Strep. I am walking on air, and speculating about the sun. Soc. Ah me, unhappy! I shall be suffocated, wretched man! Chaer. And I, miserable man, shall be burnt to death! Strep. For what has come into your heads that you acted insolently toward the gods, and pried into the seat of the moon? Chase, pelt, smite them, for many reasons, but especially because you know that they offended against the gods! [The thinking shop is burned down] Cho. Lead the way out; for we have sufficiently acted as chorus for today. [Exeunt omnes] 
17470	----	ON THE ART OF WRITING CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C.F. CLAY, Manager London: FETTER LANE, E.C. Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET. Bombay, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN & CO. LTD. Toronto: J.M. DENT AND SONS, LTD. Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA. Copyrighted in the United States of America by G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 2, 4 AND 6, WEST 45TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. All rights reserved ON THE ART OF WRITING LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 1913-1914 BY SIR ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH, M.A. Fellow of Jesus College King Edward VII Professor of English Literature Cambridge: at the University Press 1917 First Edition 1916 Reprinted 1916,1917 TO JOHN HAY LOBBAN PREFACE By recasting these lectures I might with pains have turned them into a smooth treatise. But I prefer to leave them (bating a very few corrections and additions) as they were delivered. If, as the reader will all too easily detect, they abound no less in repetitions than in arguments dropped and left at loose ends--the whole bewraying a man called unexpectedly to a post where in the act of adapting himself, of learning that he might teach, he had often to adjourn his main purpose and skirmish with difficulties--they will be the truer to life; and so may experimentally enforce their preaching, that the Art of Writing is a living business. Bearing this in mind, the reader will perhaps excuse certain small vivacities, sallies that meet fools with their folly, masking the main attack. _That_, we will see, is serious enough; and others will carry it on, though my effort come to naught. It amounts to this--Literature is not a mere Science, to be studied; but an Art, to be practised. Great as is our own literature, we must consider it as a legacy to be improved. Any nation that potters with any glory of its past, as a thing dead and done for, is to that extent renegade. If that be granted, not all our pride in a Shakespeare can excuse the relaxation of an effort--however vain and hopeless--to better him, or some part of him. If, with all our native exemplars to give us courage, we persist in striving to write well, we can easily resign to other nations all the secondary fame to be picked up by commentators. Recent history has strengthened, with passion and scorn, the faith in which I wrote the following pages. ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH November 1915 CONTENTS LECTURE I INAUGURAL II THE PRACTICE OF WRITING III ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE IV ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE V INTERLUDE: ON JARGON VI ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED VIII ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) IX ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) X ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) XI ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (II) XII ON STYLE INDEX LECTURE I. INAUGURAL Wednesday, January 29, 1913 In all the long quarrel set between philosophy and poetry I know of nothing finer, as of nothing more pathetically hopeless, than Plato's return upon himself in his last dialogue 'The Laws.' There are who find that dialogue (left unrevised) insufferably dull, as no doubt it is without form and garrulous. But I think they will read it with a new tolerance, may-be even with a touch of feeling, if upon second thoughts they recognise in its twisting and turnings, its prolixities and repetitions, the scruples of an old man who, knowing that his time in this world is short, would not go out of it pretending to know more than he does, and even in matters concerning which he was once very sure has come to divine that, after all, as Renan says, 'La Verité consiste dans les nuances.' Certainly 'the mind's dark cottage battered and decayed' does in that last dialogue admit some wonderful flashes, From Heaven descended to the low-roofed house Of Socrates, or rather to that noble 'banquet-hall deserted' which aforetime had entertained Socrates. Suffer me, Mr Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, before reaching my text, to remind you of the characteristically beautiful setting. The place is Crete, and the three interlocutors--Cleinias a Cretan, Megillus a Lacedaemonian, and an Athenian stranger--have joined company on a pilgrimage to the cave and shrine of Zeus, from whom Minos, first lawgiver of the island, had reputedly derived not only his parentage but much parental instruction. Now the day being hot, even scorching, and the road from Cnossus to the Sacred Cave a long one, our three pilgrims, who have foregathered as elderly men, take it at their leisure, and propose to beguile it with talk upon Minos and his laws. 'Yes, and on the way,' promises the Cretan, 'we shall come to cypress-groves exceedingly tall and fair, and to green meadows, where we may repose ourselves and converse.' 'Good,' assents the Athenian. 'Ay, very good indeed, and better still when we arrive at them. Let us push on.' So they proceed. I have said that all three are elderly men; that is, men who have had their opportunities, earned their wages, and so nearly earned their discharge that now, looking back on life, they can afford to see Man for what he really is--at his best a noble plaything for the gods. Yet they look forward, too, a little wistfully. They are of the world, after all, and nowise so tired of it, albeit disillusioned, as to have lost interest in the game or in the young who will carry it on. So Minos and his laws soon get left behind, and the talk (as so often befalls with Plato) is of the perfect citizen and how to train him--of education, in short; and so, as ever with Plato, we are back at length upon the old question which he could never get out of his way--What to do with the poets? It scarcely needs to be said that the Athenian has taken hold of the conversation, and that the others are as wax in his hands. 'O Athenian stranger,' Cleinias addresses him--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, for you seem to deserve rather the name of Athene herself, because you go back to first principles.' Thus complimented, the stranger lets himself go. Yet somehow he would seem to have lost speculative nerve. It was all very well in the 'Republic,' the ideal State, to be bold and declare for banishing poetry altogether. But elderly men have given up pursuing ideals; they have 'seen too many leaders of revolt.' Our Athenian is driving now at practice (as we say), at a well-governed State realisable on earth; and after all it is hard to chase out the poets, especially if you yourself happen to be something of a poet at heart. Hear, then, the terms on which, after allowing that comedies may be performed, but only by slaves and hirelings, he proceeds to allow serious poetry. And if any of the serious poets, as they are termed, who write tragedy, come to us and say--'O strangers, may we go to your city and country, or may we not, and shall we bring with us our poetry? What is your will about these matters?'--how shall we answer the divine men? I think that our answer should be as follows:-- 'Best of strangers,' we will say to them, 'we also, according to our ability, are tragic poets, and our tragedy is the best and noblest: for our whole state is an imitation of the best and noblest life.... You are poets and we are poets, both makers of the same strains, rivals and antagonists in the noblest of dramas, which true law alone can perfect, as our hope is. Do not then suppose that we shall all in a moment allow you to erect your stage in the Agora, and introduce the fair voices of your actors, speaking above our own, and permit you to harangue our women and children and the common people in language other than our own, and very often the opposite of our own. For a State would be mad which gave you this license, until the magistrates had determined whether your poetry might be recited and was fit for publication or not. Wherefore, O ye sons and scions of the softer Muses! first of all show your songs to the Magistrates and let them compare them with our own, and if they are the same or better, we will give you a chorus; but if not, then, my friends, we cannot.' Lame conclusion! Impotent compromise! How little applicable, at all events, to our Commonwealth! though, to be sure (you may say) we possess a relic of it in His Majesty's Licenser of Plays. As you know, there has been so much heated talk of late over the composition of the County Magistracy; yet I give you a countryman's word, Sir, that I have heard many names proposed for the Commission of the Peace, and on many grounds, but never one on the ground that its owner had a conservative taste in verse! Nevertheless, as Plato saw, we must deal with these poets somehow. It is possible (though not, I think, likely) that in the ideal State there would be no Literature, as it is certain there would be no Professors of it; but since its invention men have never been able to rid themselves of it for any length of time. _Tamen usque recurrit._ They may forbid Apollo, but still he comes leading his choir, the Nine:-- [Greek: Akletos men egoge menoimi ken es de kaleunton Tharsesas Moisaisi snu amepeaisin ikoiman.] And he may challenge us English boldly! For since Chaucer, at any rate, he and his train have never been [Greek: akletoi] to us--least of all here in Cambridge. Nay, we know that he should be welcome. Cardinal Newman, proposing the idea of a University to the Roman Catholics of Dublin, lamented that the English language had not, like the Greek, 'some definite words to express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference to the animal frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature.' Well, it is a reproach to us that we do not possess the term: and perhaps again a reproach to us that our attempts at it--the word 'culture' for instance--have been apt to take on some soil of controversy, some connotative damage from over-preaching on the one hand and impatience on the other. But we do earnestly desire the thing. We do prize that grace of intellect which sets So-and-so in our view as 'a scholar and a gentleman.' We do wish as many sons of this University as may be to carry forth that lifelong stamp from her precincts; and--this is my point--from our notion of such a man the touch of literary grace cannot be excluded. I put to you for a test Lucian's description of his friend Demonax-- His way was like other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to more orderly, contented, hopeful lives. I put it to you, Sir, that Lucian needs not to say another word, but we know that Demonax had loved letters, and partly by aid of them had arrived at being such a man. No; by consent of all, Literature is a nurse of noble natures, and right reading makes a full man in a sense even better than Bacon's; not replete, but complete rather, to the pattern for which Heaven designed him. In this conviction, in this hope, public spirited men endow Chairs in our Universities, sure that Literature is a good thing if only we can bring it to operate on young minds. That he has in him some power to guide such operation a man must believe before accepting such a Chair as this. And now, Sir, the terrible moment is come when your [Greek: xenos] must render some account--I will not say of himself, for that cannot be attempted--but of his business here. Well, first let me plead that while you have been infinitely kind to the stranger, feasting him and casting a gown over him, one thing not all your kindness has been able to do. With precedents, with traditions such as other Professors enjoy, you could not furnish him. The Chair is a new one, or almost new, and for the present would seem to float in the void, like Mahomet's coffin. Wherefore, being one who (in my Lord Chief Justice Crewe's phrase) would 'take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it'; being also prone (with Bacon) to believe that 'the counsels to which Time hath not been called, Time will not ratify'; I do assure you that, had any legacy of guidance been discovered among the papers left by my predecessor, it would have been eagerly welcomed and as piously honoured. O, trust me, Sir!--if any design for this Chair of English Literature had been left by Dr Verrall, it is not I who would be setting up any new stage in your agora! But in his papers--most kindly searched for me by Mrs Verrall--no such design can be found. He was, in truth, a stricken man when he came to the Chair, and of what he would have built we can only be sure that, had it been this or had it been that, it would infallibly have borne the impress of one of the most beautiful minds of our generation. The gods saw otherwise; and for me, following him, I came to a trench and stretched my hands to a shade. For me, then, if you put questions concerning the work of this Chair, I must take example from the artist in Don Quixote, who being asked what he was painting, answered modestly, 'That is as it may turn out.' The course is uncharted, and for sailing directions I have but these words of your Ordinance: It shall be the duty of the Professor to deliver courses of lectures on English Literature from the age of Chaucer onwards, and otherwise to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study in the University of the subject of English Literature. And I never even knew that English Literature had a 'subject'; or, rather, supposed it to have several! To resume: The Professor shall treat this subject on literary and critical rather than on philological and linguistic lines: --a proviso which at any rate cuts off a cantle, large in itself, if not comparatively, of the new Professor's ignorance. But I ask you to note the phrase 'to promote, so far as may be in his power, the study'--not, you will observe, 'to teach'; for this absolves me from raising at the start a question of some delicacy for me, as Green launched his "Prolegomena to Ethics" upon the remark that 'an author who seeks to gain general confidence scarcely goes the right way to work when he begins with asking whether there really is such a subject as that of which he proposes to treat.' In spite of--mark, pray, that I say _in spite of_--the activity of many learned Professors, some doubt does lurk in the public mind if, after all, English Literature can, in any ordinary sense, be taught, and if the attempts to teach it do not, after all, justify (as Wisdom is so often justified of her grandparents) the silence sapience of those old benefactors who abstained from endowing any such Chairs. But that the study of English Literature can be promoted in young minds by an elder one, that their zeal may be encouraged, their tastes directed, their vision cleared, quickened, enlarged--this, I take it, no man of experience will deny. Nay, since our two oldest Universities have a habit of marking one another with interest--an interest, indeed, sometimes heightened by nervousness--I may point out that all this has been done of late years, and eminently done, by a Cambridge man you gave to Oxford. This, then, Mr Vice-Chancellor--this or something like this, Gentlemen--is to be my task if I have the good fortune to win your confidence. Let me, then, lay down two or three principles by which I propose to be guided. (1) For the first principle of all I put to you that in studying any work of genius we should begin by taking it _absolutely_; that is to say, with minds intent on discovering just what the author's mind intended; this being at once the obvious approach to its meaning (its [Greek: to ti en einai], the 'thing it was to be'), and the merest duty of politeness we owe to the great man addressing us. We should lay our minds open to what he wishes to tell, and if what he has to tell be noble and high and beautiful, we should surrender and let soak our minds in it. Pray understand that in claiming, even insisting upon, the first place for this _absolute_ study of a great work I use no disrespect towards those learned scholars whose labours will help you, Gentlemen, to enjoy it afterwards in other ways and from other aspects; since I hold there is no surer sign of intellectual ill-breeding than to speak, even to feel, slightingly of any knowledge oneself does not happen to possess. Still less do I aim to persuade you that anyone should be able to earn a Cambridge degree by the process (to borrow Macaulay's phrase) of reading our great authors 'with his feet on the hob,' a posture I have not even tried, to recommend it for a contemplative man's recreation. These editors not only set us the priceless example of learning for learning's sake: but even in practice they clear our texts for us, and afterwards--when we go more minutely into our author's acquaintance, wishing to learn all we can about him--by increasing our knowledge of detail they enchance our delight. Nay, with certain early writers--say Chaucer or Dunbar, as with certain highly allusive ones--Bacon, or Milton, or Sir Thomas Browne--some apparatus must be supplied from the start. But on the whole I think it a fair contention that such helps to studying an author are secondary and subsidiary; that, for example, with any author who by consent is less of his age than for all time, to study the relation he bore to his age may be important indeed, and even highly important, yet must in the nature of things be of secondary importance, not of the first. But let us examine this principle a little more attentively--for it is the palmary one. As I conceive it, that understanding of literature which we desire in our Euphues, our gracefully-minded youth, will include knowledge in varying degree, yet is itself something distinct from knowledge. Let us illustrate this upon Poetry, which the most of us will allow to be the highest form of literary expression, if not of all artistic expression. Of all the testimony paid to Poetry, none commands better witness than this--that, as Johnson said of Gray's Elegy 'it abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every heart returns an echo.' When George Eliot said, 'I never before met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I should like them,' she but repeated of Wordsworth (in homelier, more familiar fashion) what Johnson said of Gray; and the same testimony lies implicit in Emerson's fine remark that 'Universal history, the poets, the romancers'--all good writers, in short--'do not anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for our betters. Rather it is true that, in their greatest strokes, there we feel most at home.' The mass of evidence, of which these are samples, may be summarised thus:--As we dwell here between two mysteries, of a soul within and an ordered Universe without, so among us are granted to dwell certain men of more delicate intellectual fibre than their fellows--men whose minds have, as it were, filaments to intercept, apprehend, conduct, translate home to us stray messages between these two mysteries, as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch, gather home human messages astray over waste waters of the Ocean. If, then, the ordinary man be done this service by the poet, that (as Dr Johnson defines it) 'he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it _with a great increase of sensibility_'; or even if, though the message be unfamiliar, it suggests to us, in Wordsworth's phrase, to 'feel that we are greater than we know,' I submit that we respond to it less by anything that usually passes for knowledge, than by an improvement of sensibility, a tuning up of the mind to the poet's pitch; so that the man we are proud to send forth from our Schools will be remarkable less for something he can take out of his wallet and exhibit for knowledge, than for _being_ something, and that 'something,' a man of unmistakable intellectual breeding, whose trained judgment we can trust to choose the better and reject the worse. But since this refining of the critical judgment happens to be less easy of practice than the memorising of much that passes for knowledge--of what happened to Harriet or what Blake said to the soldier--and far less easy to examine on, the pedagogic mind (which I implore you not to suppose me confusing with the scholarly) for avoidance of trouble tends all the while to dodge or obfuscate what is essential, piling up accidents and irrelevancies before it until its very face is hidden. And we should be the more watchful not to confuse the pedagogic mind with the scholarly since it is from the scholar that the pedagogue pretends to derive his sanction; ransacking the great genuine commentators--be it a Skeat or a Masson or (may I add for old reverence' sake?) an Aldis Wright--fetching home bits of erudition, _non sua poma_, and announcing 'This _must_ be the true Sion, for we found it in a wood.' Hence a swarm of little school books pullulates annually, all upside down and wrong from beginning to end; and hence a worse evil afflicts us, that the English schoolboy starts with a false perspective of any given masterpiece, his pedagogue urging, obtruding lesser things upon his vision until what is really important, the poem or the play itself, is seen in distorted glimpses, if not quite blocked out of view. This same temptation--to remove a work of art from the category for which the author designed it into another where it can be more conveniently studied--reaches even above the schoolmaster to assail some very eminent critics. I cite an example from a book of which I shall hereafter have to speak with gratitude as I shall always name it with respect--"The History of English Poetry," by Dr Courthope, sometime Professor of Poetry at Oxford. In his fourth volume, and in his estimate of Fletcher as a dramatist, I find this passage:-- But the crucial test of a play's quality is only applied when it is read. So long as the illusion of the stage gives credit to the action, and the words and gestures of the actor impose themselves on the imagination of the spectator, the latter will pass over a thousand imperfections, which reveal themselves to the reader, who, as he has to satisfy himself with the drama of silent images, will nor be content if this or that in any way fall short of his conception of truth and nature, --which seems equivalent to saying that the crucial test of the frieze of the Parthenon is its adaptability to an apartment in Bloomsbury. So long as the illusion of the Acropolis gave credit to Pheidias' design, and the sunlight of Attica imposed its delicate intended shadows edging the reliefs, the countrymen of Pericles might be tricked; but the visitor to the British Museum, as he has to satisfy himself with what happens indoors in the atmosphere of the West Central Postal Division of London, will not be content if Pheidias in any way fall short of _his_ conception of truth and nature. Yet Fletcher (I take it) constructed his plays as plays; the illusion of the stage, the persuasiveness of the actor's voice, were conditions for which he wrought, and on which he had a right to rely; and, in short, any critic behaves uncritically who, distrusting his imagination to recreate the play as a play, elects to consider it in the category of something else. In sum, if the great authors never oppress us with airs of condescension, but, like the great lords they are, put the meanest of us at our ease in their presence, I see no reason why we should pay to any commentator a servility not demanded by his master. My next two principles may be more briefly stated. (2) I propose next, then, that since our investigations will deal largely with style, that curiously personal thing; and since (as I have said) they cannot in their nature be readily brought to rule-of-thumb tests, and may therefore so easily be suspected of evading all tests, of being mere dilettantism; I propose (I say) that my pupils and I rebuke this suspicion by constantly aiming at the concrete, at the study of such definite beauties as we can see presented in print under our eyes; always seeking the author's intention, but eschewing, for the present at any rate, all general definitions and theories, through the sieve of which the particular achievement of genius is so apt to slip. And having excluded them at first in prudence, I make little doubt we shall go on to exclude them in pride. Definitions, formulæ (some would add, creeds) have their use in any society in that they restrain the ordinary unintellectual man from making himself a public nuisance with his private opinions. But they go a very little way in helping the man who has a real sense of prose or verse. In other words, they are good discipline for some thyrsus-bearers, but the initiated have little use for them. As Thomas à Kempis 'would rather feel compunction than understand the definition thereof,' so the initiated man will say of the 'Grand Style,' for example--'Why define it for me?' When Viola says simply: I am all the daughters of my father's house, And all the brothers too, or Macbeth demands of the Doctor Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow..? or Hamlet greets Ophelia, reading her Book of Hours, with Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remembered! or when Milton tells of his dead friend how Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield, or describes the battalions of Heaven On they move Indissolubly firm: nor obvious hill, Nor strait'ning vale, nor wood, nor stream divide Their perfect ranks, or when Gray exalts the great commonplace The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave, or when Keats casually drops us such a line as The journey homeward to habitual self, or, to come down to our own times and to a living poet, when I open on a page of William Watson and read O ancient streams, O far descended woods, Full of the fluttering of melodious souls!... 'why then (will say the initiated one), why worry me with any definition of the Grand Style in English, when here, and here, and again here--in all these lines, simple or intense or exquisite or solemn--I recognise and feel the _thing_?' Indeed, Sir, the long and the short of the argument lie just here. Literature is not an abstract Science, to which exact definitions can be applied. It is an Art rather, the success of which depends on personal persuasiveness, on the author's skill to give as on ours to receive. (3) For our third principle I will ask you to go back with me to Plato's wayfarers, whom we have left so long under the cypresses; and loth as we must be to lay hands on our father Parmenides, I feel we must treat the gifted Athenian stranger to a little manhandling. For did you not observe--though Greek was a living language and to his metropolitan mind the only language--how envious he showed himself to seal up the well, or allow it to trickle only under permit of a public analyst: to treat all innovation as suspect, even as, a hundred odd years ago, the Lyrical Ballads were suspect? But the very hope of this Chair, Sir (as I conceive it), relies on the courage of the young. As Literature is an Art and therefore not to be pondered only, but practised, so ours is a living language and therefore to be kept alive, supple, active in all honourable use. The orator can yet sway men, the poet ravish them, the dramatist fill their lungs with salutary laughter or purge their emotions by pity or terror. The historian 'superinduces upon events the charm of order.' The novelist--well, even the novelist has his uses; and I would warn you against despising any form of art which is alive and pliant in the hands of men. For my part, I believe, bearing in mind Mr. Barrie's "Peter Pan" and the old bottles he renovated to hold that joyous wine, that even Musical Comedy, in the hands of a master, might become a thing of beauty. Of the Novel, at any rate--whether we like it or not--we have to admit that it does hold a commanding position in the literature of our times, and to consider how far Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie was right the other day when he claimed, on the first page of his brilliant study of Thomas Hardy, that 'the right to such a position is not to be disputed; for here, as elsewhere, the right to a position is no more than the power to maintain it.' You may agree with that or you may not; you may or may not deplore the forms that literature is choosing now-a-days; but there is no gainsaying that it is still very much alive. And I would say to you, Gentlemen, 'Believe, and be glad that Literature and the English tongue are both alive.' Carlyle, in his explosive way, once demanded of his countrymen, 'Shakespeare or India? If you had to surrender one to retain the other, which would you choose?' Well, our Indian Empire is yet in the making, while the works of Shakespeare are complete and purchasable in whole calf; so the alternatives are scarcely _in pari materia_; and moreover let us not be in a hurry to meet trouble half way. But in English Literature, which, like India, is still in the making, you have at once an Empire and an Emprise. In that alone you have inherited something greater than Sparta. Let us strive, each in his little way, to adorn it. But here at the close of my hour, the double argument, that Literature is an Art and English a living tongue, has led me right up to a fourth principle, the plunge into which (though I foresaw it from the first) all the coward in me rejoices at having to defer to another lecture. I conclude then, Gentlemen, by answering two suspicions, which very likely have been shaping themselves in your minds. In the first place, you will say, 'It is all very well for this man to talk about "cultivating an increased sensibility," and the like; but we know what that leads to--to quackery, to aesthetic chatter: "Isn't this pretty? Don't you admire that?"' Well, I am not greatly frightened. To begin with, when we come to particular criticism I shall endeavour to exchange it with you in plain terms; a manner which (to quote Mr Robert Bridges' "Essay on Keats") 'I prefer, because by obliging the lecturer to say definitely what he means, it makes his mistakes easy to point out, and in this way the true business of criticism is advanced.' But I have a second safeguard, more to be trusted: that here in Cambridge, with all her traditions of austere scholarship, anyone who indulges in loose distinct talk will be quickly recalled to his tether. Though at the time Athene be not kind enough to descend from heaven and pluck him backward by the hair, yet the very _genius loci_ will walk home with him from the lecture room, whispering monitions, cruel to be kind. 'But,' you will say alternatively, 'if we avoid loose talk on these matters we are embarking on a mighty difficult business.' Why, to be sure we are; and that, I hope, will be half the enjoyment. After all, we have a number of critics among whose methods we may search for help--from the Persian monarch who, having to adjudicate upon two poems, caused the one to be read to him, and at once, without ado, awarded the prize to the other, up to the great Frenchman whom I shall finally invoke to sustain my hope of building something; that is if you, Gentlemen, will be content to accept me less as a Professor than as an Elder Brother. The Frenchman is Sainte-Beuve, and I pay a debt, perhaps appropriately here, by quoting him as translated by the friend of mine, now dead, who first invited me to Cambridge and taught me to admire her--one Arthur John Butler, sometime a Fellow of Trinity, and later a great pioneer among Englishmen in the study of Dante. Thus while you listen to the appeal of Sainte-Beuve, I can hear beneath it a more intimate voice, not for the first time, encouraging me. Sainte-Beuve then--_si magna licet componere parvis_--is delivering an Inaugural Lecture in the École Normale, the date being April 12th, 1858. 'Gentlemen,' he begins, 'I have written a good deal in the last thirty years; that is, I have scattered myself a good deal; so that I need to gather myself together, in order that my words may come before you with all the more freedom and confidence.' That is his opening; and he ends:-- As time goes on, you will make me believe that I can for my part be of some good to you: and with the generosity of your age you will repay me, in this feeling alone, far more than I shall be able to give you in intellectual freedom, in literary thought. If in one sense I bestow on you some of my experience, you will requite me, and in a more profitable manner, by the sight of your ardour for what is noble: you will accustom me to turn oftener and more willingly towards the future in your company. You will teach me again to hope. LECTURE II. THE PRACTICE OF WRITING. Wednesday, February 12 We found, Gentlemen, towards the close of our first lecture, that the argument had drawn us, as by a double chain, up to the edge of a bold leap, over which I deferred asking you to take the plunge with me. Yet the plunge must be taken, and to-day I see nothing for it but to harden our hearts. Well, then, I propose to you that, English Literature being (as we agreed) an Art, with a living and therefore improvable language for its medium or vehicle, a part--and no small part--of our business is _to practise it._ Yes, I seriously propose to you that here in Cambridge we _practise writing_: that we practise it not only for our own improvement, but to make, or at least try to make, appropriate, perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a recognisable hall-mark of anything turned out by our English School. By all means let us study the great writers of the past for their own sakes; but let us study them for our guidance; that we, in our turn, having (it is to be hoped) something to say in our span of time, say it worthily, not dwindling out the large utterance of Shakespeare or of Burke. Portraits of other great ones look down on you in your college halls: but while you are young and sit at the brief feast, what avails their serene gaze if it do not lift up your hearts and movingly persuade you to match your manhood to its inheritance? I protest, Gentlemen, that if our eyes had not been sealed, as with wax, by the pedagogues of whom I spoke a fortnight ago, this one habit of regarding our own literature as a _hortus siccus_, this our neglect to practise good writing as the constant auxiliary of an Englishman's liberal education, would be amazing to you seated here to-day as it will be starkly incredible to the future historian of our times. Tell me, pray; if it concerned _Painting_--an art in which Englishmen boast a record far briefer, far less distinguished--what would you think of a similar acquiescence in the past, a like haste to presume the dissolution of aptitude and to close accounts, a like precipitancy to divorce us from the past, to rob the future of hope and even the present of lively interest? Consider, for reproof of these null men, the Discourses addressed (in a pedantic age, too) by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the Members and Students of the Royal Academy. He has (as you might expect) enough to say of Tintoretto, of Titian, of Caracci, and of the duty of studying their work with patience, with humility. But why does he exhort his hearers to con them?--Why, because he is all the time _driving at practice_. Hear how he opens his second Discourse (his first to the Students). After congratulating the prize-winners of 1769, he desires 'to lead them into such a course of study as may render their future progress answerable to their past improvement'; and the great man goes on:-- I flatter myself that from the long experience I have had, and the necessary assiduity with which I have pursued these studies in which like you I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit.... Mark the noble modesty of that! To resume-- In speaking to you of the Theory of the Art, I shall only consider it as it has relation to the method of your studies. And then he proceeds to preach the Old Masters.--But how?--why?--to what end? Does he recite lists of names, dates, with formulae concerning styles? He does nothing of the sort. Does he recommend his old masters for copying, then?--for mere imitation? Not a bit of it!--he comes down like a hammer on copying. Then for what, in fine, will he have them studied? Listen:-- The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention. Yes, of _invention_, your power to make something new: --and what may appear still more like a paradox, _the more original will be your conceptions_. There spake Sir Joshua Reynolds: and I call that the voice of a true Elder Brother. He, standing face to face with the young, thought of the old masters mainly as spiritual begetters of practice. And will anyone in this room tell me that what Reynolds said of painting is not to-day, for us, applicable to writing? We accept it of Greek and Latin. An old Sixth Form master once said to me, 'You may give up Latin Verse for this term, if you will: but I warn you, no one can be a real scholar who does not constantly practise verse.' He was mistaken, belike. I hold, for my part, that in our Public Schools, we give up a quite disproportionate amount of time to 'composition' (of Latin Prose especially) and starve the boys' reading thereby. But at any rate we do give up a large share of the time to it. Then if we insist on this way with the tongues of Homer and Virgil, why do we avoid it with the tongue of Shakespeare, our own living tongue? I answer by quoting one of the simplest wisest sayings of Don Quixote (Gentlemen, you will easily, as time goes on, and we better our acquaintance, discover my favourite authors):-- The great Homer wrote not in Latin, for he was a Greek; and Virgil wrote not in Greek, because he was a Latin. In brief, all the ancient poets wrote in the tongue which they sucked in with their mother's milk, nor did they go forth to seek for strange ones to express the greatness of their conceptions: and, this being so, it should be a reason for the fashion to extend to all nations. Does the difference, then, perchance lie in ourselves? Will you tell me, 'Oh, painting is a special art, whereas anyone can write prose passably well'? Can he, indeed?... Can _you,_ sir? Nay, believe me, you are either an archangel or a very bourgeois gentleman indeed if you admit to having spoken English prose all your life without knowing it. Indeed, when we try to speak prose without having practised it the result is apt to be worse than our own vernacular. How often have I heard some worthy fellow addressing a public audience!--say a Parliamentary candidate who believes himself a Liberal Home Ruler, and for the moment is addressing himself to meet some criticism of the financial proposals of a Home Rule Bill. His own vernacular would be somewhat as follows:-- Oh, rot! Give the Irish their heads and they'll run straight enough. Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as the Irish. Look at Irish horses, too. Eh? What? But this, he is conscious, would hardly suit the occasion. He therefore amends it thus:-- Mr Chairman--er--as regards the financial proposals of His Majesty's Government, I am of the deliberate--er--opinion that our national security--I may say, our Imperial security--our security as--er--a governing people--lies in trusting the Irish as we did in the--er --case of the Boers--H'm Mr Gladstone, Mr Chairman--Mr Chairman, Mr Gladstone---- and so on. You perceive that the style is actually worse than in the sample quoted before; it has become flabby whereas that other was at any rate nervous? But now suppose that, having practised it, our candidate was able to speak like this:-- 'But what (says the Financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan gives us no revenue.' No? But it does--for it secures to the subject the power of Refusal, the first of all Revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact is a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine of Revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you 152,750 pounds 11 shillings 2 3/4 pence, nor any other paltry limited sum--but it gives you the strong box itself, the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise among a people sensible of freedom: _Positâ luditur arcâ_.... Is this principle to be true in England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why should you presume that in any country a body duly constituted for any function will neglect to perform its duty and abdicate its trust? Such a presumption would go against all Governments in all nations. But in truth this dread of penury of supply, from a free assembly, has no foundation in nature. For first, observe that, besides the desire which all men have naturally of supporting the honour of their own Government, that sense of dignity, and that security to property, which ever attend freedom, have a tendency to increase the stock of a free community. Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the politic machinery in the world? That, whether you agree or disagree with its doctrine, is great prose. That is Burke. 'O Athenian stranger,' said the Cretan I quoted in my first lecture,--'inhabitant of Attica I will not call you, since you deserve the name of Athene herself, because you go back to first principles!' But, you may object, 'Burke is talking like a book, and I have no wish to talk like a book.' Well, as a fact, Burke is here at the culmen of a long sustained argument, and his language has soared with it, as his way was--logic and emotion lifting him together as upon two balanced majestic wings. But you are shy of such heights? Very well again, and all credit to your modesty! Yet at least (I appeal to that same modesty) when you talk or write, you would wish to _observe the occasion_; to say what you have to say without impertinence or ill-timed excess. You would not harangue a drawing-room or a subcommittee, or be facetious at a funeral, or play the skeleton at a banquet: for in all such conduct you would be mixing up things that differ. Be cheerful, then: for this desire of yours to be appropriate is really the root of the matter. Nor do I ask you to accept this on my sole word, but will cite you the most respectable witnesses. Take, for instance, a critic who should be old enough to impress you--Dionysius of Halicarnassus. After enumerating the qualities which lend charm and nobility to style, he closes the list with 'appropriateness, which all these need':-- As there is a charming diction, so there is another that is noble; as there is a polished rhythm, so there is another that is dignified; as variety adds grace in one passage, so in another it adds fulness; _and as for appropriation, it will prove the chief source of beauty, or else of nothing at all_. Or listen to Cicero, how he sets appropriateness in the very heart of his teaching, as the master secret:-- Is erit eloquens qui poterit parva summisse, modica temperate, magna graviter dicere.... Qui ad id quodcunque decebit poterit accommodare orationem. Quod quum statuerit, tum, ut quidque erit dicendum, ita dicet, nec satura jejune, nec grandia minute, nec item contra, sed erit rebus ipsis par et aequalis oratio. 'Whatever his theme he will speak as becomes it; neither meagrely where it is copious, nor meanly where it is ample, nor in _this_ way where it demands _that_; but keeping his speech level with the actual subject and adequate to it.' I might quote another great man, Quintilian, to you on the first importance of this appropriateness, or 'propriety'; of speaking not only to the purpose but _becomingly_--though the two as (he rightly says) are often enough one and the same thing. But I will pass on to what has ever seemed, since I found it in one of Jowett's 'Introductions' to Plato, the best definition known to me of good style in literature:-- The perfection of style is variety in unity, freedom, ease, clearness, the power of saying anything, and of striking any note in the scale of human feelings, without impropriety. You see, O my modest friend! that your gamut needs not to be very wide, to begin with. The point is that within it you learn to play becomingly. Now I started by proposing that we try together to make appropriate, perspicuous, accurate, persuasive writing a hall-mark of anything turned out by our English School here, and I would add (growing somewhat hardier) a hall-mark of all Cambridge style so far as our English School can influence it. I chose these four epithets _accurate, perspicuous, persuasive, appropriate_, with some care, of course as my duty was; and will assume that by this time we are agreed to desire _appropriateness_. Now for the other three:-- _Perspicuity._--I shall waste no words on the need of this: since the first aim of speech is to be understood. The more clearly you write the more easily and surely you will be understood. I propose to demonstrate to you further, in a minute or so, that the more clearly you write the more clearly you will understand yourself. But a sufficient reason has been given in ten words why you should desire perspicuity. _Accuracy._--Did I not remind myself in my first lecture, that Cambridge is the home of accurate scholarship? Surely no Cambridge man would willingly be a sloven in speech, oral or written? Surely here, if anywhere, should be acknowledged of all what Newman says of the classics, that 'a certain unaffected neatness and propriety and grace of diction may be required of any author, for the same reason that a certain attention to dress is expected of every gentleman.' After all, what are the chief differentiae between man and the brute creation but that he clothes himself, that he cooks his food, that he uses articulate speech? Let us cherish and improve all these distinctions. But shall we now look more carefully into these twin questions of perspicuity and accuracy: for I think pursuing them, we may almost reach the philosophic kernel of good writing. I quoted Newman playfully a moment ago. I am going to quote him in strong earnest. And here let me say that of all the books written in these hundred years there is perhaps none you can more profitably thumb and ponder than that volume of his in which, under the title of "The Idea of a University," he collected nine discourses addressed to the Roman Catholics of Dublin with some lectures delivered to the Catholic University there. It is fragmentary, because its themes were occasional. It has missed to be appraised at its true worth, partly no doubt by reason of the colour it derives from a religion still unpopular in England. But in fact it may be read without offence by the strictest Protestant; and the book is so wise--so eminently wise--as to deserve being bound by the young student of literature for a frontlet on his brow and a talisman on his writing wrist. Now you will find much pretty swordsmanship in its pages, but nothing more trenchant than the passage in which Newman assails and puts to rout the Persian host of infidels--I regret to say, for the most part Men of Science--who would persuade us that good writing, that style, is something extrinsic to the subject, a kind of ornamentation laid on to tickle the taste, a study for the _dilettante_, but beneath the notice of _their_ stern and masculine minds. Such a view, as he justly points out, belongs rather to the Oriental mind than to our civilisation: it reminds him of the way young gentlemen go to work in the East when they would engage in correspondence with the object of their affection. The enamoured one cannot write a sentence himself: _he_ is the specialist in passion (for the moment); but thought and words are two things to him, and for words he must go to another specialist, the professional letter-writer. Thus there is a division of labour. The man of words, duly instructed, dips the pen of desire in the ink of devotedness and proceeds to spread it over the page of desolation. Then the nightingale of affection is heard to warble to the rose of loveliness, while the breeze of anxiety plays around the brow of expectation. That is what the Easterns are said to consider fine writing; and it seems pretty much the idea of the school of critics to which I have been referring. Now hear this fine passage:-- Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language. That is what I have been laying down, and this is literature; not _things_, but the verbal symbols of things; not on the other hand mere _words_; but thoughts expressed in language. Call to mind, gentlemen, the meaning of the Greek word which expresses this special prerogative of man over the feeble intelligence of the lower animals. It is called Logos; what does Logos mean? it stands both for _reason_ and for _speech_, and it is difficult to say which it means more properly. It means both at once: why? because really they cannot be divided.... When we can separate light and illumination, life and motion, the convex and the concave of a curve, then will it be possible for thought to tread speech under foot and to hope to do without it--then will it be conceivable that the vigorous and fertile intellect should renounce its own double, its instrument of expression and the channel of its speculations and emotions. 'As if,' he exclaims finely, 'language were the hired servant, the mere mistress of reason, and not the lawful wife in her own house!' If you need further argument (but what serves it to slay the slain?) let me remind you that you cannot use the briefest, the humblest process of thought, cannot so much as resolve to take your bath hot or cold, or decide what to order for breakfast, without forecasting it to yourself in some form of words. Words are, in fine, the only currency in which we can exchange thought even with ourselves. Does it not follow, then, that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall give to our thoughts? Does it not follow that by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously we train our minds to clarify their thought? Does it not follow that some practice in the deft use of words, with its correspondent defining of thought, may well be ancillary even to the study of Natural Science in a University? But I have another word for our men of science. It was inevitable, perhaps, that Latin--so long the Universal Language--should cease in time to be that in which scientific works were written. It was impossible, perhaps, to substitute, by consent, some equally neat and austere modern language, such as French. But when it became an accepted custom for each nation to use its own language in scientific treatises, it certainly was not foreseen that men of science would soon be making discoveries at a rate which left their skill in words outstripped; that having to invent their terms as they went along, yet being careless and contemptuous of a science in which they have no training, they would bombast out our dictionaries with monstrously invented words that not only would have made Quintilian stare and gasp, but would affront the decently literate of any age. After all, and though we must sigh and acquiesce in the building of Babel, we have some right to examine the bricks. I was waiting, the other day, in a doctor's anteroom, and picked up one of those books--it was a work on pathology--so thoughtfully left lying in such places; to persuade us, no doubt, to bear the ills we have rather than fly to others capable of being illustrated. I found myself engaged in following the manoeuvres of certain well-meaning bacilli generically described as 'Antibodies.' I do not accuse the author (who seemed to be a learned man) of having invented this abominable term: apparently it passed current among physiologists and he had accepted it for honest coin. I found it, later on, in Webster's invaluable dictionary: Etymology, 'anti' up against 'body', some noxious 'foreign body' inside your body or mine. Now gin a body meet a body for our protection and in this gallant spirit, need a body reward him with this hybrid label? Gratitude apart, I say that for our own self-respect, whilst we retain any sense of intellectual pedigree, 'antibody' is no word to throw at a friendly bacillus. Is it consonant with the high dignity of science to make her talk like a cheap showman advertising a 'picture-drome'? The man who eats peas with his knife can at least claim a historical throwback to the days when forks had but two prongs and the spoons had been removed with the soup. But 'antibody' has no such respectable derivation. It is, in fact, a barbarism, and a mongrel at that. The man who uses it debases the currency of learning: and I suggest to you that it is one of the many functions of a great University to maintain the standard of that currency, to guard the _jus et norma loquendi_, to protect us from such hasty fellows or, rather, to suppeditate them in their haste. Let me revert to our list of the qualities necessary to good writing, and come to the last--_Persuasiveness_; of which you may say, indeed, that it embraces the whole--not only the qualities of propriety, perspicuity, accuracy, we have been considering, but many another, such as harmony, order, sublimity, beauty of diction; all in short that--writing being an art, not a science, and therefore so personal a thing--may be summed up under the word _Charm_. Who, at any rate, does not seek after Persuasion? It is the aim of all the arts and, I suppose, of all exposition of the sciences; nay, of all useful exchange of converse in our daily life. It is what Velasquez attempts in a picture, Euclid in a proposition, the Prime Minister at the Treasury box, the journalist in a leading article, our Vicar in his sermon. Persuasion, as Matthew Arnold once said, is the only true intellectual process. The mere cult of it occupied many of the best intellects of the ancients, such as Longinus and Quintilian, whose writings have been preserved to us just because they were prized. Nor can I imagine an earthly gift more covetable by you, Gentlemen, than that of persuading your fellows to listen to your views and attend to what you have at heart. Suppose, sir, that you wish to become a journalist? Well, and why not? Is it a small thing to desire the power of influencing day by day to better citizenship an unguessed number of men, using the best thought and applying it in the best language at your command?... Or are you, perhaps, overawed by the printed book? On that, too, I might have a good deal to say; but for the moment would keep the question as practical as I can. Well, it is sometimes said that Oxford men make better journalists than Cambridge men, and some attribute this to the discipline of their great School of _Literae Humaniores_, which obliges them to bring up a weekly essay to their tutor, who discusses it. Cambridge men retort that all Oxford men are journalists, and throw, of course, some accent of scorn on the word. But may I urge--and remember please that my credit is pledged to _you_ now--may I urge that this is not a wholly convincing answer? For, to begin with, Oxford men have not changed their natures since leaving school, but are, by process upon lines not widely divergent from your own, much the same pleasant sensible fellows you remember. And, next, if you truly despise journalism, why then despise it, have done with it and leave it alone. But I pray you, do not despise it if you mean to practise it, though it be but as a step to something better. For while the ways of art are hard at the best, they will break you if you go unsustained by belief in what you are trying to do. In asking you to practise the written word, I began with such low but necessary things as propriety, perspicuity, accuracy. But _persuasion_--the highest form of persuasion at any rate--cannot be achieved without a sense of beauty. And now I shoot a second rapid--_I want you to practise verse, and to practise it assiduously_.... I am quite serious. Let me remind you that, if there ever was an ancient state of which we of Great Britain have great right and should have greater ambition to claim ourselves the spiritual heirs, that state was Imperial Rome. And of the Romans (whom you will allow to have been a practical people) nothing is more certain than the value they set upon acquiring verse. To them it was not only (as Dr Johnson said of Greek) 'like old lace--you can never have too much of it.' They cultivated it with a straight eye to national improvement. Among them, as a scholar reminded us the other day, you find 'an educational system deliberately and steadily directed towards the development of poetical talent. They were not a people of whom we can say, as we can of the Greeks, that they were born to art and literature.... The characteristic Roman triumphs are the triumphs of a material civilisation.' Rome's rôle in the world was 'the absorption of outlying genius.' Themselves an unimaginative race with a language not too tractable to poetry, they made great poetry, and they made it of patient set purpose, of hard practice. I shall revert to this and maybe amplify reasons in another lecture. For the moment I content myself with stating the fact that no nation ever believed in poetry so deeply as the Romans. Perpend this then, and do not too hastily deride my plea that you should practise verse-writing. I know most of the objections, though I may not remember all. _Mediocribus esse poetis_, etc.--that summarises most of them: yet of an infliction of much bad verse from you, if I am prepared to endure it, why should anyone else complain? I say that the youth of a University ought to practise verse-writing; and will try to bring this home to you by an argument convincing to me, though I have never seen it in print. What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne--we may stop there. Of these all but Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men; and of these three Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well-to-do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those twelve were University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well-to-do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well-to-do, he would no more have attained to writing "Saul" or "The Ring and the Book" than Ruskin would have attained to writing "Modern Painters" if his father had not dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income; and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats; whom Atropos slew young, as she slew John Clare in a madhouse, and James Thomson by the laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but let us face them. It is--however dishonouring to us as a nation--certain that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog's chance. Believe me--and I have spent a great part of the last ten years in watching some 320 Elementary Schools--we may prate of democracy, but actually a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born. What do I argue from this? I argue that until we can bring more intellectual freedom into our State, more 'joy in widest commonalty spread,' upon you, a few favoured ones, rests an obligation to see that the springs of English poetry do not fail. I put it to you that of this glory of our birth and state _you_ are the temporary stewards. I put it to the University, considered as a dispenser of intellectual light, that to treat English poetry as though it had died with Tennyson and your lecturers had but to compose the features of a corpse, is to abnegate high hope for the sake of a barren convenience. I put it to the Colleges, considered as disciplinary bodies, that the old way of letting Coleridge slip, chasing forth Shelley, is, after all, not the wisest way. Recollect that in Poesy as in every other human business, the more there are who practise it the greater will be the chance of _someone's_ reaching perfection. It is the impetus of the undistinguished host that flings forward a Diomed or a Hector. And when you point with pride to Milton's and those other mulberry trees in your Academe, bethink you 'What poets are they shading to-day? Or are their leaves but feeding worms to spin gowns to drape Doctors of Letters?' In the life of Benvenuto Cellini you will find this passage worth your pondering.--He is telling how, while giving the last touches to his Perseus in the great square of Florence, he and his workmen inhabited a shed built around the statue. He goes on:-- The folk kept on attaching sonnets to the posts of the door....I believe that, on the day when I opened it for a few hours to the public, more than twenty were nailed up, all of them overflowing with the highest panegyrics. Afterwards, when I once more shut it off from view, everyone brought sonnets, with Latin and Greek verses: for the University of Pisa was then in vacation, and all the doctors and scholars kept vying with each other who could produce the best. I may not live to see the doctors and scholars of this University thus employing the Long Vacation; as perhaps we shall wait some time for another Perseus to excite them to it. But I do ask you to consider that the Perseus was not entirely cause nor the sonnets entirely effect; that the age when men are eager about great work is the age when great work gets itself done; nor need it disturb us that most of the sonnets were, likely enough, very bad ones--in Charles Lamb's phrase, very like what Petrarch might have written if Petrarch had been born a fool. It is the impetus that I ask of you: the will to try. Lastly, Gentlemen, do not set me down as one who girds at your preoccupation, up here, with bodily games; for, indeed, I hold 'gymnastic' to be necessary as 'music' (using both words in the Greek sense) for the training of such youths as we desire to send forth from Cambridge. But I plead that they should be balanced, as they were in the perfect young knight with whose words I will conclude to-day:-- Having this day my horse, my hand, my lance Guided so well that I obtained the prize, Both by the judgment of the English eyes And of some sent by that sweet enemy France; Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance, Town-folk my strength, a daintier judge applies His praise to sleight which from good use doth rise; Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; Others, because of both sides I do take My blood from them who did excel in this, Think Nature me a man-at-arms did make. How far they shot awry! the true cause is, Stella looked on; and from her heavenly face Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 'Untrue,' you say? Well, there is truth of emotion as well as of fact; and who is there among you but would fain be able not only to win such a guerdon but to lay it in such wise at your lady's feet? That then was Philip Sidney, called the peerless one of his age; and perhaps no Englishman ever lived more graciously or, having used life, made a better end. But you have seen this morning's newspaper: you have read of Captain Scott and his comrades, and in particular of the death of Captain Oates; and you know that the breed of Sidney is not extinct. Gentlemen, let us keep our language noble: for we still have heroes to commemorate![1] [Footnote 1: The date of the above lecture was Wednesday, February 12th, 1913, the date on which our morning newspapers printed the first telegrams giving particulars of the fate of Captain Scott's heroic conquest of the South Pole, and still more glorious, though defeated, return. The first brief message concerning Captain Oates, ran as follows:-- 'From the records found in the tent where the bodies were discovered it appeared that Captain Oates's feet and hands were badly frost-bitten, and, although he struggled on heroically, his comrades knew on March 16 that his end was approaching. He had borne intense suffering for weeks without complaint, and he did not give up hope to the very end. "He was a brave soul. He slept through the night hoping not to wake; but he awoke in the morning. "It was blowing a blizzard. Oates said: 'I am just going outside, and I may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard, and we have not seen him since. "We knew that Oates was walking to his death, but though we tried to dissuade him, we knew it was the act of a brave man and an English gentleman."'] LECTURE III. ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VERSE AND PROSE Wednesday, February 26 You will forgive me, Gentlemen, that having in my second lecture encouraged you to the practice of verse as well as of prose, I seize the very next opportunity to warn you against confusing the two, which differ on some points essentially, and always so as to demand separate rules--or rather (since I am shy of the word 'rules') a different concept of what the writer should aim at and what avoid. But you must, pray, understand that what follows will be more useful to the tiro in prose than to the tiro in verse; for while even a lecturer may help you to avoid writing prose in the manner of Milton, only the gods--and they hardly--can cure a versifier of being prosaic. We started upon a promise to do without scientific definitions; and in drawing some distinctions to-day between verse and prose I shall use only a few rough ones; good, as I hope, so far as they go; not to be found contrary to your scientific ones, if ever, under another teacher you attain to them; yet for the moment used only as guides to practice, and pretending to be no more. Thus I go some way--though by no means all the way--towards defining literature when I remind you that its very name (_litterae_--letters) implies the written rather than the spoken word; that, for example, however closely they approximate one to the other as we trace them back, and even though we trace them back to identical beginnings, the Writer--the Man of Letters--does to-day differ from the Orator. There was a time, as you know, when the poet and the historian had no less than the orator, and in the most literal sense, to 'get a hearing.' Nay, he got it with more pains: for the orator had his senate-house or his law-court provided, whereas Thespis jogged to fairs in a cart, and the Muse of History, like any street acrobat, had to collect her own crowd. Herodotus in search of a public packed his history in a portmanteau, carted it to Olympia, found a favourable 'pitch,' as we should say, and wooed an audience to him much as on a racecourse nowadays do those philanthropic gentlemen who ply a dubious trade with three half-crowns and a gold chain. It would cost us an effort to imagine the late Bishop Stubbs thus trying his fortune with a bag full of select Charters at Queen's Club or at Kempton Park, and exerting his lungs to retrieve a crowd that showed some disposition to edge off towards the ring or the rails. The historian's conditions have improved; and like any other sensible man he has advanced his claim with them, and revised his method. He writes nowadays with his eye on the printed book. He may or may not be a dull fellow: being a dull fellow, he may or may not be aware of it; but at least he knows that, if you lay him upside down on your knee, you can on awaking pick him up, resume your absorption, and even turn back some pages to discover just where or why your interest flagged: whereas a Hellene who deserted Herodotus, having a bet on the Pentathlon, not only missed what he missed but missed it for life. The invention of print, of course, has made all, or almost all, the difference. I do not forget that the printed book--the written word--presupposes a speaking voice, and must ever have at its back some sense in us of the speaking voice. But in writing prose nowadays, while always recollecting that prose has its origin in speech--even as it behoves us to recollect that Homer intoned the Iliad to the harp and Sappho plucked her passion from the lyre--we have to take things as they are. Except Burns, Heine, Béranger (with Moore, if you will), and you will find it hard to compile in all the lyrical poetry of the last 150 years a list of half a dozen first-class or even second-class bards who wrote primarily to be sung. It may help you to estimate how far lyrical verse has travelled from its origins if you will but remind yourselves that a _sonnet_ and a _sonata_ were once the same thing, and that a _ballad_ meant a song accompanied by dancing--the word _ballata_ having been specialised down, on the one line to the _ballet_, in which Mademoiselle Genée or the Russian performers will dance for our delight, using no words at all; on the other to "Sir Patrick Spens" or "Clerk Saunders," 'ballads' to which no one in his senses would dream of pointing a toe. Thus with Verse the written (or printed) word has pretty thoroughly ousted the speaking voice and its auxiliaries--the pipe, the lute, the tabor, the chorus with its dance movements and swaying of the body; and in a quieter way much the same thing is happening to prose. In the Drama, to be sure, we still write (or we should) for the actors, reckon upon their intonations, their gestures, lay account with the tears in the heroine's eyes and her visible beauty: though even in the Drama to-day you may detect a tendency to substitute dialectic for action and paragraphs for the [Greek: Stichomuthia], the sharp outcries of passion in its give-and-take. Again we still--some of us--deliver sermons from pulpits and orations in Parliament or upon public platforms. Yet I am told that the vogue of the sermon is passing; and (by journalists) that the leading article has largely superseded it. On that point I can offer you no personal evidence; but of civil oratory I am very sure that the whole pitch has been sensibly lowered since the day of Chatham, Burke, Sheridan; since the day of Brougham and Canning; nay, ever since the day of Bright, Gladstone, Disraeli. Burke, as everyone knows, once brought down a Brummagem dagger and cast it on the floor of the House. Lord Chancellor Brougham in a peroration once knelt to the assembled peers, '_Here the noble lord inclined his knee to the Woolsack_' is, if I remember, the stage direction in Hansard. Gentlemen, though in the course of destiny one or another of you may be called upon to speak daggers to the Treasury Bench, I feel sure you will use none; while, as for Lord Brougham's genuflexions, we may agree that to emulate them would cost Lord Haldane an effort. These and even far less flagrant or flamboyant tricks of virtuosity have gone quite out of fashion. You could hardly revive them to-day and keep that propriety to which I exhorted you a fortnight ago. They would be out of tune; they would grate upon the nerves; they would offend against the whole style of modern oratory, which steadily tends to lower its key, to use the note of quiet business-like exposition, to adopt more and more the style of written prose. Let me help your sense of this change, by a further illustration. Burke, as we know, was never shy of declaiming--even of declaiming in a torrent--when he stood up to speak: but almost as little was he shy of it when he sat down to write. If you turn to his "Letters on the Regicide Peace" --no raw compositions, but penned in his latter days and closing, or almost closing, upon that tenderest of farewells to his country-- In this good old House, where everything at least is well aired, I shall be content to put up my fatigued horses and here take a bed for the long night that begins to darken upon me-- if, I say, you turn to these "Letters on the Regicide Peace" and consult the title-page, you will find them ostensibly addressed to 'a Member of the present Parliament'; and the opening paragraphs assume that Burke and his correspondent are in general agreement. But skim the pages and your eyes will be arrested again and again by sentences like these:-- The calculation of profit in all such wars is false. On balancing the account of such wars, ten thousand hogsheads of sugar are purchased at ten thousand times their price--the blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. Magnificent, truly! But your ear has doubtless detected the blank verse--three iambic lines:-- Are purchased at ten thousand times their price... Be shed but to redeem the blood of man... The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. Again Burke catches your eye by rhetorical inversions:-- But too often different is rational conjecture from melancholy fact, Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar, by repetitions:-- Never, no never, did Nature say one thing and Wisdom say another ... Algiers is not near; Algiers is not powerful; Algiers is not our neighbour; Algiers is not infectious. Algiers, whatever it may be, is an old creation; and we have good data to calculate all the mischief to be apprehended from it. When I find Algiers transferred to Calais, I will tell you what I think of that point-- by quick staccato utterances, such as:-- And is this example nothing? It is everything. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other-- or Our dignity? That is gone. I shall say no more about it. Light lie the earth on the ashes of English pride! I say that the eye or ear, caught by such tropes, must (if it be critical) recognise them at once as _rhetoric_, as the spoken word masquerading under guise of the written. Burke may pretend to be seated, penning a letter to a worthy man who will read it in his slippers: but actually Burke is up and pacing his library at Beaconsfield, now striding from fire-place to window with hands clasped under his coat tails, anon pausing to fling out an arm with some familiar accustomed gesture in a House of Commons that knows him no more, towards a Front Bench peopled by shades. In fine the pretence is Cicero writing to Atticus, but the style is Cicero denouncing Catiline. As such it is not for your imitation. Burke happened to be a genius, with a swoop and range of mind, as of language to interpret it, with a gift to enchant, a power to strike and astound, which together make him, to my thinking, the man in our literature most nearly comparable with Shakespeare. Others may be more to your taste; you may love others better: but no other two leave you so hopeless of discovering _how it is done_. Yet not for this reason only would I warn you against imitating either. For like all great artists they accepted their conditions and wrought for them, and those conditions have changed. When Jacques wished to recite to an Elizabethan audience that All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players-- or Hamlet to soliloquise To be, or not to be: that is the question-- the one did not stretch himself under a property oak, nor did the other cast himself back in a chair and dangle his legs. They both advanced boldly from the stage, down a narrow platform provided for such recitations and for that purpose built boldly forward into the auditorium, struck an attitude, declaimed the purple passage, and returned, covered with applause, to continue the action of the play. This was the theatrical convention; this the audience expected and understood; for this Shakespeare wrote. Similarly, though the device must have been wearing thin even in 1795-6, Burke cast a familiar epistle into language proper to be addressed to Mr Speaker of the House of Commons. Shakespeare wrote, as Burke wrote, for his audience; and their glory is that they have outlasted the conditions they observed. Yet it was by observing them that they gained the world's ear. Let us, who are less than they, beware of scorning to belong to our own time. For my part I have a great hankering to see English Literature feeling back through these old modes to its origins. I think, for example, that if we studied to write verse that could really be sung, or if we were more studious to write prose that could be read aloud with pleasure to the ear, we should be opening the pores to the ancient sap; since the roots are always the roots, and we can only reinvigorate our growth through them. Unhappily, however, I cannot preach this just yet; for we are aiming at practice, and at Cambridge (they tell me) while you speak well, you write less expertly. A contributor to "The Cambridge Review," a fortnight ago, lamented this at length: so you will not set the aspersion down to me, nor blame me if these early lectures too officiously offer a kind of 'First Aid': that, while all the time eager to descant on the _affinities_ of speech and writing, I dwell first on their _differences_; or that, in speaking of Burke, an author I adore only 'on this side idolatry,' I first present him in some aspects for your avoidance. Similarly I adore the prose of Sir Thomas Browne, yet should no more commend it to you for instant imitation than I could encourage you to walk with a feather in your cap and a sword under your gown. Let us observe proprieties. To return to Burke.--At his most flagrant, in these "Letters on the Regicide Peace," he boldly raids Shakespeare. You are all, I doubt not, conversant with the Prologue to "Henry the Fifth":-- O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars: and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should Famine, Sword and Fire Crouch for employment. Well, this passage Burke, assuming his correspondent to be familiar with it, boldly claps into prose and inserts into a long diatribe against Pitt for having tamely submitted to the rebuffs of the French Directory. Thus it becomes:-- On that day it was thought he would have assumed the port of Mars: that he would bid to be brought forth from their hideous Kennel (where his scrupulous tenderness had too long immured them) those impatient dogs of War, whose fierce regards affright even the minister of vengeance that feeds them; that he would let them loose in Famine, Plagues and Death, upon a guilty race to whose frame and to all whose habit, Order, Peace, Religion and Virtue, are alien and abhorrent. Now Shakespeare is but apologising for the shortcomings of his' play-house, whereas Burke is denouncing his country's shame and prophesying disaster to Europe. Yet do you not feel with me that while Shakespeare, using great words on the lowlier subject, contrives to make them appropriate, with Burke, writing on the loftier subject, the same or similar words have become tumid, turgid? Why? I am sure that the difference lies not in the two men: nor is it all the secret, or even half the secret, that Burke is mixing up the spoken with the written word, using the one while pretending to use the other. That has carried us some way; but now let us take an important step farther. The root of the matter lies in certain essential differences between verse and prose. We will keep, if you please, to our rough practical definitions. Literature--the written word--is a permanent record of memorable speech; a record, at any rate, intended to be permanent. We set a thing down in ink--we print it in a book--because we feel it to be memorable, to be worth preserving. But to set this memorable speech down we must choose one of two forms, verse or prose; and I define verse to be a record in metre and rhythm, prose to be a record which, dispensing with metre (abhorring it indeed), uses rhythm laxly, preferring it to be various and unconstrained, so always that it convey a certain pleasure to the ear. You observe that I avoid the term Poetry, over which the critics have waged, and still are waging, a war that promises to be endless. Is Walt Whitman a poet? Is the Song of Songs (which is not Solomon's)--is the Book of Job--are the Psalms--all of these as rendered in our Authorised Version of Holy Writ--are all of these poetry? Well 'yes,' if you want my opinion; and again 'yes,' I am sure. But truly on this field, though scores of great men have fought across it--Sidney, Shelley, Coleridge, Scaliger (I pour the names on you at random), Johnson, Wordsworth, the two Schlegels, Aristotle with Twining his translator, Corneille, Goethe, Warton, Whately, Hazlitt, Emerson, Hegel, Gummere--but our axles grow hot. Let us put on the brake: for in practice the dispute comes to very little: since literature is an art and treats scientific definitions as J. K. Stephen recommended. From them It finds out what it cannot do, And then it goes and does it. I am journeying, say, in the West of England. I cross a bridge over a stream dividing Devon from Cornwall. These two counties, each beautiful in its way, are quite unlike in their beauty: yet nothing happened as I stepped across the brook, and for a mile or two or even ten I am aware of no change. Sooner or later that change will break upon the mind and I shall be startled, awaking suddenly to a land of altered features. But at what turn of the road this will happen, just how long the small multiplied impressions will take to break into surmise, into conviction--that nobody can tell. So it is with poetry and prose. They are different realms, but between them lies a debatable land which a De Quincey or a Whitman or a Paul Fort or a Marinetti may attempt. I advise you who are beginners to keep well one side or other of the frontier, remembering that there is plenty of room and what happened to Tupper. If we restrict ourselves to the terms 'verse' and 'prose,' we shall find the line much easier to draw. Verse is memorable speech set down in metre with strict rhythms; prose is memorable speech set down without constraint of metre and in rhythms both lax and various--so lax, so various, that until quite recently no real attempt has been made to reduce them to rule. I doubt, for my part, if they can ever be reduced to rule; and after a perusal of Professor Saintsbury's latest work, "A History of English Prose Rhythm," I am left doubting. I commend this book to you as one that clears up large patches of forest. No one has yet so well explained what our prose writers, generation after generation, have tried to do with prose: and he has, by the way, furnished us with a capital anthology--or, as he puts it, with 'divers delectable draughts of example.' But the road still waits to be driven. Seeking practical guidance--help for our present purpose--I note first that many a passage he scans in one way may as readily be scanned in another; that when he has finished with one and can say proudly with Wordsworth:-- I've measured it from side to side, 'Tis three feet long and two feet wide, we still have a sensation of coming out (our good master with us) by that same door wherein we went; and I cannot as yet after arduous trial discover much profit in his table of feet--Paeons, Dochmiacs, Antispasts, Proceleusmatics and the rest--an Antispast being but an iamb followed by a trochee, and Proceleusmatic but two pyrrhics, or four consecutive short syllables--when I reflect that, your possible number of syllables being as many as five to a foot, you may label them (as Aristotle would say) until you come to infinity, where desire fails, without getting nearer any rule of application. Let us respect a genuine effort of learning, though we may not detect its immediate profit. In particular let us respect whatever Professor Saintsbury writes, who has done such splendid work upon English verse-prosody. I daresay he would retort upon my impatience grandly enough, quoting Walt Whitman:-- I am the teacher of athletes; He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own proves the width of my own; He most honours my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher. His speculations may lead to much in time; though for the present they yield us small instruction in the path we seek. It is time we harked back to our own sign-posts. Verse is written in metre and strict rhythm; prose, without metre and with the freest possible rhythm. That distinction seems simple enough, but it carries consequences very far from simple. Let me give you an illustration taken almost at hazard from Milton, from the Second Book of "Paradise Regained":-- Up to a hill anon his steps he reared From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. These few lines are verse, are obviously verse with the accent of poetry; while as obviously they are mere narrative and tell us of the simplest possible incident--how Christ climbed a hill to learn what could be seen from the top. Yet observe, line for line and almost word for word, how strangely they differ from prose. Mark the inversions: 'Up to a hill anon his steps he reared,' 'But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' Mark next the diction--'his steps he reared.' In prose we should not rear our steps up the Gog-magog hills, or even more Alpine fastnesses; nor, arrived at the top, should we 'ken' the prospect round; we might 'con,' but should more probably 'survey' it. Even 'anon' is a tricky word in prose, though I deliberately palmed it off on you a few minutes ago. Mark thirdly the varied repetition, 'if cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd--but cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw.' Lastly compare the whole with such an account as you or I or Cluvienus would write in plain prose:-- Thereupon he climbed a hill on the chance that the view from its summit might disclose some sign of human habitation--a herd, a sheep-cote, a cottage perhaps. But he could see nothing of the sort. But you will ask, '_Why_ should verse and prose employ diction so different? _Why_ should the one invert the order of words in a fashion not permitted to the other?' and I shall endeavour to answer these questions together with a third which, I dare say, you have sometimes been minded to put when you have been told--and truthfully told--by your manuals and histories, that when a nation of men starts making literature it invariably starts on the difficult emprise of verse, and goes on to prose as by an afterthought. Why should men start upon the more difficult form and proceed to the easier? It is not their usual way. In learning to skate, for instance, they do not cut figures before practising loose and easy propulsion. The answer is fairly simple. Literature (once more) is a record of memorable speech; it preserves in words a record of such thoughts or of such deeds as we deem worth preserving. Now if you will imagine yourself a very primitive man, lacking paper or parchment; or a slightly less primitive, but very poor, man to whom the price of parchment and ink is prohibitive; you have two ways of going to work. You can carve your words upon trees or stones (a laborious process) or you can commit them to memory and carry them about in your head; which is cheaper and handier. For an illustration, you find it useful, anticipating the tax-collector, to know how many days there are in the current month. But further you find it a nuisance and a ruinous waste of time to run off to the tribal tree or monolith whenever the calculation comes up; so you invent a formula, and you cast that formula into _verse_ for the simple reason that verse, with its tags, alliterations, beat of syllables, jingle of rhymes (however your tribe has chosen to invent it), has a knack, not possessed by prose, of sticking in your head. You do not say, 'Quick thy tablets, memory! Let me see--January has 31 days, February 28 days, March 31 days, April 30 days.' You invent a verse:-- Thirty days hath September, April, June and November... Nay, it has been whispered to me, Gentlemen, that in this University some such process of memorising in verse has been applied by bold bad irreverently-minded men even to the "Evidences" of our cherished Paley. This, you will say, is mere verse, and not yet within measurable distance of poetry. But wait! The men who said the more memorable things, or sang them--the men who recounted deeds and genealogies of heroes, plagues and famines, assassinations, escapes from captivity, wanderings and conquests of the clan, all the 'old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago'--the men who sang these things for their living, for a supper, a bed in the great hall, and something in their wallet to carry them on to the next lordship--these were gentlemen, scôps, bards, minstrels (call them how you will), a professional class who had great need of a full repertory in a land swarming with petty chieftains, and to adapt their strains to the particular hall of entertainment. It would never do, for example, to flatter the prowess of the Billings in the house of the Hoppings, their hereditary foes, or to bore the Wokings (who lived where the crematorium now is) with the complicated genealogy of the Tootings: for this would have been to miss that appropriateness which I preached to you in my second lecture as a preliminary rule of good writing. Nay, when the Billings intermarried with the Tootings--when the Billings took to cooing, so to speak--a hasty blend of excerpts would be required for the "Epithalamium." So it was all a highly difficult business, needing adaptability, a quick wit, a goodly stock of songs, a retentive memory and every artifice to assist it. Take "Widsith," for example, the 'far-travelled man.' He begins:-- Widsith spake: he unlocked his word-hoard. So he had a hoard of words, you see: and he must have needed them, for he goes on:-- Forthon ic maeg singan and secgan spell, Maenan fore mengo in meoduhealle, Hu me cynegode cystum dohten. Ic waes mid Hunum and mid Hreth-gotum, Mid Sweom and mid Geatum, and mid Suth-Denum. Mid Wenlum ic waes and mid Waernum and mid Wicingum. Mid Gefthum ic waes and mid Winedum.... (Therefore I can sing and tell a tale, recount in the Mead Hall, how men of high race gave rich gifts to me. I was with Huns and with Hreth Goths, with the Swedes, and with the Geats, and with the South Danes; I was with the Wenlas, and with the Waernas, and with the Vikings; I was with the Gefthas and with the Winedae....) and so on for a full dozen lines. I say that the memory of such men must have needed every artifice to help it: and the chief artifice to their hand was one which also delighted the ears of their listeners. They sang or intoned to the harp. There you get it, Gentlemen. I have purposely, skimming a wide subject, discarded much ballast; but you may read and scan and read again, and always you must come back to this, that the first poets sang their words to the harp or to some such instrument: and just there lies the secret why poetry differs from prose. The moment you introduce music you let in emotion with all its sway upon speech. From that moment you change everything, down to the order of the words--the _natural_ order of the words: and (remember this) though the harp be superseded, the voice never forgets it. You may take up a Barrack Room Ballad of Kipling's, and it is there, though you affect to despise it for a banjo or concertina:-- Ford--ford--ford of Kabul river... 'Bang, whang, whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife.' From the moment men introduced music they made verse a thing essentially separate from prose, from its natural key of emotion to its natural ordering of words. Do not for one moment imagine that when Milton writes:-- But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. or Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree... --where you must seek down five lines before you come to the verb, and then find it in the imperative mood--do not suppose for a moment that he is here fantastically shifting words, inverting phrases out of their natural order. For, as St Paul might say, there is a natural order of prose and there is a natural order of verse. The natural order of prose is:-- I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that county; my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first in Hull.--[_Defoe._] or Further I avow to your Highness that with these eyes I have beheld the person of William Wooton, B.D., who has written a good sizeable volume against a friend of your Governor (from whom, alas! he must therefore look for little favour) in a most gentlemanly style, adorned with the utmost politeness and civility.--[_Swift._] The natural order of poetry is:-- Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer's Rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine. or But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. and this basal difference you must have clear in your minds before, in dealing with prose or verse, you can practise either with profit or read either with intelligent delight. LECTURE IV. ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF VERSE Thursday, April 17 In our last lecture, Gentlemen, we discussed the difference between verse, or metrical writing, and prose. We traced that difference (as you will remember) to Music--to the harp, the lyre, the dance, the chorus, all those first necessary accompaniments which verse never quite forgets; and we concluded that, as Music ever introduces emotion, which is indeed her proper and only means of persuading, so the natural language of verse will be keyed higher than the natural language of prose; will be keyed higher throughout and even for its most ordinary purposes--as for example, to tell us that So-and-so sailed to Troy with so many ships. I grant you that our steps to this conclusion were lightly and rapidly taken: yet the stepping-stones are historically firm. Verse does precede prose in literature; verse does start with musical accompaniment; musical accompaniment does introduce emotion; and emotion does introduce an order of its own into speech. I grant you that we have travelled far from the days when a prose-writer, Herodotus, labelled the books of his history by the names of the nine Muses. I grant you that if you go to the Vatican and there study the statues of the Muses (noble, but of no early date) you may note that Calliope, Muse of the Epic--unlike her sisters Euterpe, Erato, Thalia--holds for symbol no instrument of music, but a stylus and a tablet. Yet the earlier Calliope, the Calliope of Homer, was a Muse of Song. [Greek: Menin aeide, Thea--] 'Had I a thousand tongues, a thousand hands.'--For what purpose does the poet wish for a thousand tongues, but to sing? for what purpose a thousand hands, but to pluck the wires? not to dip a thousand pens in a thousand inkpots. I doubt, in fine, if your most learned studies will discover much amiss with the frontier we drew between verse and prose, cursorily though we ran its line. Nor am I daunted on comparing it with Coleridge's more philosophical one, which you will find in the "Biographia Literaria" (c. XVIII)-- And first for the origin of metre. This I would trace to the balance in the mind effected by that spontaneous effort which strives to hold in check the workings of passion. It might be easily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is assisted by the very state which it counteracts, and how this balance of antagonism becomes organised into metre (in the usual acceptation of that term) by a supervening act of the will and judgment consciously and for the foreseen purpose of pleasure. I will not swear to understand precisely what Coleridge means here, though I believe that I do. But at any rate, and on the principle that of two hypotheses, each in itself adequate, we should choose the simpler, I suggest in all modesty that we shall do better with our own than with Coleridge's, which has the further disadvantage of being scarcely amenable to positive evidence. We can say with historical warrant that Sappho struck the lyre, and argue therefrom, still within close range of correction, that her singing responded to the instrument: whereas to assert that Sappho's mind 'was balanced by a spontaneous effort which strove to hold in check the workings of passion' is to say something for which positive evidence will be less handily found, whether to contradict or to support. Yet if you choose to prefer Coleridge's explanation, no great harm will be done: since Coleridge, who may be presumed to have understood it, promptly goes on to deduce that, as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the natural language of excitement. which is precisely where we found ourselves, save that where Coleridge uses the word 'excitement' we used the word 'emotion.' Shall we employ an illustration before proceeding?--some sentence easily handled, some commonplace of the moralist, some copybook maxim, I care not what. 'Contentment breeds Happiness'--That is a proposition with which you can hardly quarrel; sententious, sedate, obviously true; provoking delirious advocacy as little as controversial heat; in short a very fair touchstone. Now hear how the lyric treats it, in these lines of Dekker-- Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? O sweet content! Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplex'd? O punishment! Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vex'd To add to golden numbers golden numbers? O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labour wears a lovely face; Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! Canst drink the waters of the crystal spring? O sweet content! Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears? O punishment! Then he that patiently want's burden bears No burden bears, but is a king, a king! O sweet content! O sweet, O sweet content! Work apace, apace, apace, apace; Honest labour wears a lovely face; Then hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny! There, in lines obviously written for music, you have our sedate sentence, 'Contentment breeds Happiness,' converted to mere emotion. Note (to use Coleridge's word) the 'excitement' of it. There are but two plain indicative sentences in the two stanzas--(1) 'Honest labour wears a lovely face' (used as a refrain), and (2) 'Then he that patiently want's burden bears no burden bears, but is a king, a king!' (heightened emotionally by inversion and double repetition). Mark throughout how broken is the utterance; antithetical question answered by exclamations: both doubled and made more antithetical in the second stanza: with cunning reduplicated inversions to follow, and each stanza wound up by an outburst of emotional nonsense--'hey, nonny nonny--hey, nonny nonny!'--as a man might skip or whistle to himself for want of thought. Now (still keeping to our same subject of Contentment) let us _prosify_ the lyrical order of language down to the lowest pitch to which genius has been able to reduce it and still make noble verse. You have all read Wordsworth's famous Introduction to the "Lyrical Ballads," and you know that Wordsworth's was a genius working on a theory that the languages of verse and of prose are identical. You know, too, I dare say, into what banalities that theory over and over again betrayed him: banalities such as-- His widowed mother, for a second mate Espoused the teacher of the village school: Who on her offspring zealously bestowed Needful instruction. --and the rest. Nevertheless Wordsworth was a genius; and genius working persistently on a narrow theory will now and again 'bring it off' (as they say). So he, amid the flat waste of his later compositions, did undoubtedly 'bring it off' in the following sonnet:-- These times strike monied worldlings with dismay: Ev'n rich men, brave by nature, taint the air With words of apprehension and despair; While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, Men unto whom sufficient for the day And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven, Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. What do we gather hence but firmer faith That every gift of noble origin Is breath'd upon by Hope's perpetual breath; That Virtue and the faculties within Are vital; and that riches are akin To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death? Here, I grant, are no repetitions, no inversions. The sentences, though metrical, run straightforwardly, verb following subject, object verb, as in strict prose. In short here you have verse reduced to the order and structure of prose as nearly as a man of genius, working on a set theory, could reduce it while yet maintaining its proper emotional key. But first let me say that you will find very few like instances of success even in Wordsworth; and few indeed to set against innumerable passages wherein either his verse defies his theory and triumphs, or succumbs to it and, succumbing, either drops sheer to bathos or spreads itself over dead flats of commonplace. Let me tell you next that the instances you will find in other poets are so few and so far between as to be negligible; and lastly that even such verse as the above has only to be compared with a passage of prose and its emotional pitch is at once betrayed. Take this, for example, from Jeremy Taylor:-- Since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing between the object and the appetite, as when a man hath what he desires not, or desires what he hath not, or desires amiss, he that compares his spirit to the present accident hath variety of instance for his virtue, but none to trouble him, because his desires enlarge not beyond his present fortune: and a wise man is placed in a variety of chances, like the nave or centre of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which part is up, and which is down; for there is some virtue or other to be exercised whatever happens--either patience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness. Or, take this from Samuel Johnson:-- The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he purposes to remove. Now, to be frank, I do not call that first passage very good prose. Like much of Jeremy Taylor's writing it is prose tricked out with the trappings and odds-and-ends of verse. It starts off, for example, with a brace of heroics--'Since all the evil in the world consists'...'between the object and the appetite.' You may say, further, that the simile of the wheel, though proper enough to prose, is poetical too: that Homer might have used it ('As in a wheel the rim turns violently, while the nave, though it turns also, yet seems to be at rest'--something of that sort). Nevertheless you will agree with me that, in exchanging Wordsworth for Taylor and Johnson, we have relaxed something with the metre, something that the metre kept taut; and this something we discover to be the emotional pitch. But let me give you another illustration, supplied (I dare say quite unconsciously) by one who combined a genuine love of verse--in which, however, he was no adept--with a sure instinct for beautiful prose. Contentment was a favourite theme with Isaak Walton: "The Compleat Angler" is packed with praise of it: and in "The Compleat Angler" occurs this well-known passage:-- But, master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were absent from me, I sat down under a willow tree by the waterside, and considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in which you then had left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a heart to think so; that he had at this time many law-suits depending, and that they both damped his mirth and took up so much of his time and thoughts that he had no leisure to take the sweet content that I, who pretended no title to them, took in his fields: for I could there sit quietly; and looking on the water, see some fishes sport themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and colours; looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods and groves; looking down the meadows, could see, here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverlocks and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May. These and many other field-flowers so perfumed the air that I thought that very meadow like that field in Sicily of which Diodorus speaks, where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that hunt in it to fall off and lose their hottest scent. I say, as I thus sat, joying in my own happy condition, and pitying this poor rich man that owned this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess the earth; or rather they enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not; for Anglers and meek quiet-spirited men are free from those high, those restless thoughts which corrode the sweets of life; and they, and they only can say as the poet has happily exprest it: 'Hail, blest estate of lowliness! Happy enjoyments of such minds As, rich in self-contentedness, Can, like the reeds in roughest winds, By yielding make that blow but small At which proud oaks and cedars fall.' There you have a passage of felicitous prose culminating in a stanza of trite and fifth-rate verse. Yes, Walton's instinct is sound; for he is keying up the pitch; and verse, even when mediocre in quality, has its pitch naturally set above that of prose. So, if you will turn to your Walton and read the page following this passage, you will see that, still by a sure instinct, he proceeds from this scrap of reflective verse to a mere rollicking 'catch': Man's life is but vain, for 'tis subject to pain And sorrow, and short as a bubble; 'Tis a hodge-podge of business and money and care, And care, and money and trouble... --which is even worse rubbish, and yet a step upwards in emotion because Venator actually sings it to music. 'Ay marry, sir, this is music indeed,' approves Brother Peter; 'this cheers the heart.' In this and the preceding lecture, Gentlemen, I have enforced at some length the opinion that to understand the many essential differences between verse and prose we must constantly bear in mind that verse, being metrical, keeps the character originally imposed on it by musical accompaniment and must always, however far the remove, be referred back to its origin and to the emotion which music excites. Mr George Bernard Shaw having to commit his novel "Cashel Byron's Profession" to paper in a hurry, chose to cast it in blank verse as being more easily and readily written so: a performance which brilliantly illuminates a half-truth. Verse--or at any rate, unrhymed iambic verse--is easier to write than prose, if you care to leave out the emotion which makes verse characteristic and worth writing. I have little doubt that, had he chosen to attempt it, Mr Shaw would have found his story still more ductile in the metre of "Hiawatha." But the experiment proves nothing: or no more than that, all fine art costing labour, it may cost less if burlesqued in a category not its own. Let me take an example from a work with which you are all familiar--"The Student's Handbook to the University and Colleges of Cambridge." On p. 405 we read:-- The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos is divided into ten sections, A, A2, B, C, D, E, F, G, H and I. A student may take either one or two sections at the end of his second year of residence, and either one or two more sections at the end of his third or fourth year of residence; or he may take two sections at the end of his third year only. Thus this Tripos can be treated either as a divided or as an undivided Tripos at the option of the candidate. Now I do not hold that up to you for a model of prose. Still, lucidity rather than emotion being its aim, I doubt not that the composer spent pains on it; more pains than it would have cost him to convey his information metrically, thus:-- There is a Tripos that aspires to blend The Medieval and the Modern tongues In one red burial (Sing Heavenly Muse!) Divided into sections A, A2, B, C, D, E, F, G and H and I. A student may take either one or two (With some restrictions mention'd in a footnote) At th' expiration of his second year: Or of his third, or of his fourth again Take one or two; or of his third alone Take two together. Thus this tripos is (Like nothing in the Athanasian Creed) Divisible or indivisible At the option of the candidate--Gadzooks! This method has even some advantage over the method of prose in that it is more easily memorised; but it has, as you will admit, the one fatal flaw that it imports emotion into a theme which does not properly admit of emotion, and that so it offends against our first rule of writing--that it should be appropriate. Now if you accept the argument so far as we have led it--that verse is by nature more emotional than prose--certain consequences would seem to follow: of which the first is that while the capital difficulty of verse consists in saying ordinary things the capital difficulty of prose consists in saying extraordinary things; that while with verse, keyed for high moments, the trouble is to manage the intervals, with prose the trouble is to manage the high moments. Let us dwell awhile on this difference, for it is important. You remember my quoting to you in my last lecture these lines of Milton's:-- Up to a hill anon his steps he reared From whose high top to ken the prospect round, If cottage were in view, sheep-cote or herd; But cottage, herd, or sheep-cote, none he saw. We agreed that these were good lines, with the accent of poetry: but we allowed it to be a highly exalted way of telling how So-and-so climbed a hill for a better view but found none. Now obviously this exaltation does not arise immediately out of the action described (which is as ordinary as it well could be), but is _derivative_. It borrows its wings, its impetus, from a previous high moment, from the emotion proper to that moment, from the speech proper to that emotion: and these sustain us across to the next height as with the glide of an aeroplane. Your own sense will tell you at once that the passage would be merely bombastic if the poet were starting to set forth how So-and-so climbed a hill for the view--just that, and nothing else: as your own sense tells you that the swoop is from one height to another. For if bathos lay ahead, if Milton had but to relate how the Duke of York, with twenty thousand men, 'marched up a hill and then marched down again,' he certainly would not use diction such as:-- Up to a hill anon his steps he reared. Even as it is, I think we must all detect a certain artificiality in the passage, and confess to some relief when Satan is introduced to us, ten lines lower down, to revivify the story. For let us note that, in the nature of things, the more adorned and involved our style (and Milton's is both ornate and involved) the more difficulty we must find with these flat pedestrian intervals. Milton may 'bring it off,' largely through knowing how to dodge the interval and contrive that it shall at any rate be brief: but, as Bagehot noted, when we come to Tennyson and find Tennyson in "Enoch Arden" informing us of a fish-jowter, that:-- Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean-spoil In ocean-smelling osier-- (_i.e._ in a fish-basket) --and his face Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market town were known, But in the leafy lanes beyond the down Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp And peacock yewtree of the lonely Hall Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering, why, then we feel that the vehicle is altogether too pompous for its load, and those who make speech too pompous for its content commit, albeit in varying degrees, the error of Defoe's religious lady who, seeing a bottle of over-ripe beer explode and cork and froth fly up to the ceiling, cried out, 'O, the wonders of Omnipotent Power!' The poet who commends fresh fish to us as 'ocean-spoil' can cast no stone at his brother who writes of them as 'the finny denizens of the deep,' or even at his cousin the journalist, who exalts the oyster into a 'succulent bivalve'-- The feathered tribes on pinions cleave the air; Not so the mackerel, and, still less, the bear! I believe this difficulty, which verse, by nature and origin emotional, encounters in dealing with ordinary unemotional narrative, to lie as a technical reason at the bottom of Horace's advice to the writer of Epic to plunge _in medias res_, thus avoiding flat preparative and catching at once a high wind which shall carry him hereafter across dull levels and intervals. I believe that it lay--though whether consciously or not he scarcely tells us--at the bottom of Matthew Arnold's mind when, selecting certain qualities for which to praise Homer, he chose, for the very first, Homer's _rapidity_. 'First,' he says, 'Homer is eminently rapid; and,' he adds justly, 'to this rapidity the elaborate movement of Miltonic blank verse is alien.' Now until one studies writing as an art, trying to discover what this or that form of it accomplishes with ease and what with difficulty, and why verse can do one thing and prose another, Arnold's choice of _rapidity_ to put in the forefront of Homer's merits may seem merely capricious. 'Homer (we say) has other great qualities. Arnold himself indicates Homer's simplicity, directness, nobility. Surely either one of these should be mentioned before rapidity, in itself not comparable as a virtue with either?' But when we see that the difficulty of verse-narrative lies just _here_; that the epic poet who is rapid has met, and has overcome, the capital difficulty of his form, then we begin to do justice not only to Arnold as a critic but (which is of far higher moment) to Homer as a craftsman. The genius of Homer in this matter is in fact something daemonic. He seems to shirk nothing: and the effect of this upon critics is bewildering. The acutest of them are left wondering how on earth an ordinary tale--say of how some mariners beached ship, stowed sail, walked ashore and cooked their dinner--can be made so poetical. They are inclined to divide the credit between the poet and his fortunate age--'a time' suggests Pater 'in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without making a picture "in the great style" against a sky charged with marvels.' Well, the object of these lectures is not to explain genius. Just here it is rather to state a difficulty; to admit that, once in history, genius overcame it; yet warn you how rare in the tale of poetical achievement is such a success. Homer, indeed, stands first, if not unmatched, among poets in this technical triumph over the capital disability of annihilating flat passages. I omit Shakespeare and the dramatists; because they have only to give a stage direction 'Enter Cassius, looking lean,' and Cassius comes in looking leaner than nature; whereas Homer has in his narrative to walk Hector or Thersites on to the scene, describe him, walk him off. I grant the rapidity of Dante. It is amazing; and we may yield him all the credit for choosing (it was his genius that chose it) a subject which allowed of the very highest rapidity; since Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, though they differ in other respects, have this in common, that they are populous and the inhabitants of each so compendiously shepherded together that the visitor can turn from one person to another without loss of time. But Homer does not escort us around a menagerie in which we can move expeditiously from one cage to another. He proposes at least, both in the "Iliad" and in the "Odyssey," to unfold a story; and he _seems_ to unfold it so artlessly that we linger on the most pedestrian intervals while he tells us, for example, what the heroes ate and how they cooked it. A modern writer would serve us a far better dinner. Homer brings us to his with our appetite all the keener for having waited and watched the spitting and roasting. I would point out to you what art this genius conceals; how cunning is this apparent simplicity: and for this purpose let me take Homer at the extreme of his difficulty--when he has to describe a long sea-voyage. Some years ago, in his last Oxford lectures, Mr Froude lamented that no poet in this country had arisen to write a national epic of the great Elizabethan seamen, to culminate (I suppose) as his History culminated, in the defeat of the Armada: and one of our younger poets; Mr Alfred Noyes, acting on this hint has since given us an epic poem on "Drake," in twelve books. But Froude probably overlooked, as Mr Noyes has not overcome, this difficulty of the flat interval which, while ever the bugbear of Epic, is magnified tenfold when our action takes place on the sea. For whereas the verse should be rapid and the high moments frequent, the business of seafaring is undeniably monotonous, as the intervals between port and port, sea-fight and sea-fight, must be long and lazy. Matters move more briskly in an occasional gale; but even a gale lasts, and must be ridden out; and the process of riding to a gale of wind:-- For ever climbing up the climbing wave --your ship taking one wave much as she takes another--is in its nature monotonous. Nay, you have only to read Falconer's "Shipwreck" to discover how much of dulness may lie enwrapped, to discharge itself, even in a first-class tempest. Courses, reckonings, trimmings of canvas--these occur in real life and amuse the simple mariner at the time. But to the reader, if he be a landsman, their repetition in narrative may easily become intolerable; and when we get down to the 'trades,' even the seaman sets his sail for a long spell of weather and goes to sleep. In short you cannot upon the wide Atlantic push action and reaction to and fro as upon the plains of windy Troy: nor could any but a superhuman genius make sustained poetry (say) out of Nelson's untiring pursuit of Villeneuve, which none the less was one of the most heroic feats in history. This difficulty, inherent in navigation as a subject for the Epic Muse, has, I think, been very shrewdly detected and hit off in a parody of Mr Noyes' poem by a young friend of mine, Mr Wilfred Blair:-- Meanwhile the wind had changed, and Francis Drake Put down the helm and drove against the seas-- Once more the wind changed, and the simple seaman, Full fraught with weather wisdom, once again Put down the helm and so drove on--_et cetera_. Now Homer actually has performed this feat which we declare to be next to impossible. He actually does convey Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca, by a ten years' voyage too; he actually has narrated that voyage to us in plain straightforward words; and, what is more, he actually has made a superb epic of it. Yes, but when you come to dissect the Odyssey, what amazing artifice is found under that apparently straightforward tale!--eight years of the ten sliced out, to start with, and magnificently presented to Circe Where that Aeaean isle forgets the main --and (one may add), so forgetting, avoids the technical difficulties connected therewith. Note the space given to Telemachus and his active search for the lost hero: note too how the mass of Odysseus' seafaring adventures is condensed into a reported speech--a traveller's tale at the court of Alcinoüs. Virgil borrowed this trick, you remember; and I dare to swear that had it fallen to Homer to attempt the impossible saga of Nelson's pursuit after Villeneuve he would have achieved it triumphantly--by means of a tale told in the first person by a survivor to Lady Hamilton. Note, again, how boldly (being free to deal with an itinerary of which his audience knew nothing but surmised that it comprehended a vast deal of the marvellous, spaced at irregular distances) Homer works in a shipwreck or a miracle wherever the action threatens to flag. Lessing, as you know, devoted several pages of the "Laoköon" to the shield of Achilles; to Homer's craft in depicting it as it grew under Hephaestus' hammer: so that we are intrigued by the process of manufacture instead of being wearied by a description of the ready-made article; so also (if one may presume to add anything to Lessing) that we are cunningly flattered in a sense that the shield is being made for _us._ Well, that is one artifice out of many: but if you would gauge at all Homer's resource and subtlety in technique I recommend you to analyse the first twelve books of the "Odyssey" and count for yourselves the device by which the poet--[Greek: polutropos] as was never his hero--evades or hurries over each flat interval as he happens upon it. These things, Ulysses, The wise bards also Behold and sing. But O, what labour! O Prince, what pain! You may be thinking, Gentlemen, that I take up a disproportionate amount of your time on such technical matters at these. But literature being an art (forgive the reiteration!) and therefore to be practised, I want us to be seeking all the time _how it is done_; to hunt out the principles on which the great artists wrought; to face, to rationalise, the difficulties by which they were confronted, and learn how they overcame the particular obstacle. Surely even for mere criticism, apart from practice, we shall equip ourselves better by seeking, so far as we may, how the thing is done than by standing at gaze before this or that masterpiece and murmuring 'Isn't that beautiful! How in the world, now...!' I am told that these lectures are criticised as tending to make you conceited: to encourage in you a belief that you can do things, when it were better that you merely admired. Well I would not dishearten you by telling to what a shred of conceit, even of hope, a man can be reduced after twenty-odd years of the discipline. But I can, and do, affirm that the farther you penetrate in these discoveries the more sacred the ultimate mystery will become for you: that the better you understand the great authors as exemplars of practice, the more certainly you will realise what is the condescension of the gods. Next time, then, we will attempt an enquiry into the capital difficulty of Prose. LECTURE V. INTERLUDE: ON JARGON Thursday, May 1 We parted, Gentlemen, upon a promise to discuss the capital difficulty of Prose, as we have discussed the capital difficulty of Verse. But, although we shall come to it, on second thoughts I ask leave to break the order of my argument and to interpose some words upon a kind of writing which, from a superficial likeness, commonly passes for prose in these days, and by lazy folk is commonly written for prose, yet actually is not prose at all; my excuse being the simple practical one that, by first clearing this sham prose out of the way, we shall the better deal with honest prose when we come to it. The proper difficulties of prose will remain: but we shall be agreed in understanding what it is, or at any rate what it is not, that we talk about. I remember to have heard somewhere of a religious body in the United States of America which had reason to suspect one of its churches of accepting Spiritual consolation from a coloured preacher--an offence against the laws of the Synod--and despatched a Disciplinary Committee with power to act; and of the Committee's returning to report itself unable to take any action under its terms of reference, for that while a person undoubtedly coloured had undoubtedly occupied the pulpit and had audibly spoken from it in the Committee's presence, the performance could be brought within no definition of preaching known or discoverable. So it is with that infirmity of speech--that flux, that determination of words to the mouth, or to the pen--which, though it be familiar to you in parliamentary debates, in newspapers, and as the staple language of Blue Books, Committees, Official Reports, I take leave to introduce to you as prose which is not prose and under its real name of Jargon. You must not confuse this Jargon with what is called Journalese. The two overlap, indeed, and have a knack of assimilating each other's vices. But Jargon finds, maybe, the most of its votaries among good douce people who have never written to or for a newspaper in their life, who would never talk of 'adverse climatic conditions' when they mean 'bad weather'; who have never trifled with verbs such as 'obsess,' 'recrudesce,' 'envisage,' 'adumbrate,' or with phrases such as 'the psychological moment,' 'the true inwardness,' 'it gives furiously to think.' It dallies with Latinity--'sub silentio,' 'de die in diem,' 'cui bono?' (always in the sense, unsuspected by Cicero, of 'What is the profit?')--but not for the sake of style. Your journalist at the worst is an artist in his way: he daubs paint of this kind upon the lily with a professional zeal; the more flagrant (or, to use his own word, arresting) the pigment, the happier is his soul. Like the Babu he is trying all the while to embellish our poor language, to make it more floriferous, more poetical--like the Babu for example who, reporting his mother's death, wrote, 'Regret to inform you, the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket.' _There_ is metaphor: _there_ is ornament: _there_ is a sense of poetry, though as yet groping in a world unrealised. No such gusto marks--no such zeal, artistic or professional, animates--the practitioners of Jargon, who are, most of them (I repeat), douce respectable persons. Caution is its father: the instinct to save everything and especially trouble: its mother, Indolence. It looks precise, but it is not. It is, in these times, _safe_: a thousand men have said it before and not one to your knowledge had been prosecuted for it. And so, like respectability in Chicago, Jargon stalks unchecked in our midst. It is becoming the language of Parliament: it has become the medium through which Boards of Government, County Councils, Syndicates, Committees, Commercial Firms, express the processes as well as the conclusions of their thought and so voice the reason of their being. Has a Minister to say 'No' in the House of Commons? Some men are constitutionally incapable of saying no: but the Minister conveys it thus--'The answer to the question is in the negative.' That means 'no.' Can you discover it to mean anything less, or anything more except that the speaker is a pompous person?--which was no part of the information demanded. That is Jargon, and it happens to be accurate. But as a rule Jargon is by no means accurate, its method being to walk circumspectly around its target; and its faith, that having done so it has either hit the bull's-eye or at least achieved something equivalent, and safer. Thus the Clerk of a Board of Guardians will minute that-- In the case of John Jenkins deceased the coffin provided was of the usual character. Now this is not accurate. 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased,' for whom a coffin was supplied, it is wholly superfluous to tell us that he is deceased. But actually John Jenkins never had more than one case, and that was the coffin. The Clerk says he had two,--a coffin in a case: but I suspect the Clerk to be mistaken, and I am sure he errs in telling us that the coffin was of the usual character: for coffins have no character, usual or unusual. For another example (I shall not tell you whence derived)-- In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class [So you see the lucky fellow gets a case as well as a first-class. He might be a stuffed animal: perhaps he is] In the case of every candidate who is placed in the first class the class-list will show by some convenient mark (1) the Section or Sections for proficiency in which he is placed in the first class and (2) the Section or Sections (if any) in which he has passed with special distinction. 'The Section or Sections (if any)'--But, how, if they are not any, could they be indicated by a mark however convenient? The Examiners will have regard to the style and method of the candidate's answers, and will give credit for excellence _in these respects_. Have you begun to detect the two main vices of Jargon? The first is that it uses circumlocution rather than short straight speech. It says 'In the case of John Jenkins deceased, the coffin' when it means 'John Jenkins's coffin': and its yea is not yea, neither is its nay nay: but its answer is in the affirmative or in the negative, as the foolish and superfluous 'case' may be. The second vice is that it habitually chooses vague woolly abstract nouns rather than concrete ones. I shall have something to say by-and-by about the concrete noun, and how you should ever be struggling for it whether in prose or in verse. For the moment I content myself with advising you, if you would write masculine English, never to forget the old tag of your Latin Grammar-- Masculine will only be Things that you can touch and see. But since these lectures are meant to be a course in First Aid to writing, I will content myself with one or two extremely rough rules: yet I shall be disappointed if you do not find them serviceable. The first is:--Whenever in your reading you come across one of these words, _case, instance, character, nature, condition, persuasion, degree_--whenever in writing your pen betrays you to one or another of them--pull yourself up and take thought. If it be 'case' (I choose it as Jargon's dearest child--'in Heaven yclept Metonomy') turn to the dictionary, if you will, and seek out what meaning can be derived from _casus_, its Latin ancestor: then try how, with a little trouble, you can extricate yourself from that case. The odds are, you will feel like a butterfly who has discarded his chrysalis. Here are some specimens to try your hand on-- (1) All those tears which inundated Lord Hugh Cecil's head were dry in the case of Mr Harold Cox. Poor Mr Cox! left gasping in his aquarium! (2) [From a cigar-merchant] In any case, let us send you a case on approval. (3) It is contended that Consols have fallen in consequence: but such is by no means the case. 'Such,' by the way, is another spoilt child of Jargon, especially in Committee's Rules--'Co-opted members may be eligible as such; such members to continue to serve for such time as'--and so on. (4) Even in the purely Celtic areas, only in two or three cases do the Bishops bear Celtic names. For 'cases' read 'dioceses.' _Instance._ In most instances the players were below their form. But what were they playing at? Instances? _Character--Nature._ There can be no doubt that the accident was caused through the dangerous nature of the spot, the hidden character of the by-road, and the utter absence of any warning or danger signal. Mark the foggy wording of it all! And yet the man hit something and broke his neck! Contrast that explanation with the verdict of a coroner's jury in the West of England on a drowned postman--'We find that deceased met his death by an act of God, caused by sudden overflowing of the river Walkhan and helped out by the scandalous neglect of the way-wardens.' The Aintree course is notoriously of a trying nature. On account of its light character, purity and age, Usher's whiskey is a whiskey that will agree with you. _Order._ The mésalliance was of a pronounced order. _Condition._ He was conveyed to his place of residence in an intoxicated condition. 'He was carried home drunk.' _Quality and Section._ Mr ----, exhibiting no less than five works, all of a superior quality, figures prominently in the oil section. This was written of an exhibition of pictures. _Degree._ A singular degree of rarity prevails in the earlier editions of this romance. That is Jargon. In prose it runs simply 'The earlier editions of this romance are rare'--or 'are very rare'--or even (if you believe what I take leave to doubt), 'are singularly rare'; which should mean that they are rarer than the editions of any other work in the world. Now what I ask you to consider about these quotations is that in each the writer was using Jargon to shirk prose, palming off periphrases upon us when with a little trouble he could have gone straight to the point. 'A singular degree of rarity prevails,' 'the accident was caused through the dangerous nature of the spot,' 'but such is by no means the case.' We may not be capable of much; but we can all write better than that, if we take a little trouble. In place of, 'the Aintree course is of a trying nature' we can surely say 'Aintree is a trying course' or 'the Aintree course is a trying one'--just that and nothing more. Next, having trained yourself to keep a look-out for these worst offenders (and you will be surprised to find how quickly you get into the way of it), proceed to push your suspicions out among the whole cloudy host of abstract terms. 'How excellent a thing is sleep,' sighed Sancho Panza; 'it wraps a man round like a cloak'--an excellent example, by the way, of how to say a thing concretely: a Jargoneer would have said that 'among the beneficent qualities of sleep its capacity for withdrawing the human consciousness from the contemplation of immediate circumstances may perhaps be accounted not the least remarkable.' How vile a thing--shall we say?--is the abstract noun! It wraps a man's thoughts round like cotton wool. Here is a pretty little nest of specimens, found in "The Times" newspaper by Messrs. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, authors of that capital little book "The King's English":-- One of the most important reforms mentioned in the rescript is the unification of the organisation of judicial institutions and the guarantee for all the tribunals of the independence necessary for securing to all classes of the community equality before the law. I do not dwell on the cacophony; but, to convey a straightforward piece of news, might not the Editor of "The Times" as well employ a man to write:-- One of the most important reforms is that of the Courts, which need a uniform system and to be made independent. In this way only can men be assured that all are equal before the law. I think he might. A day or two ago the musical critic of the "Standard" wrote this:-- MR LAMOND IN BEETHOVEN Mr Frederick Lamond, the Scottish pianist, as an interpreter of Beethoven has few rivals. At his second recital of the composer's works at Bechstein Hall on Saturday afternoon he again displayed a complete sympathy and understanding of his material that extracted the very essence of aesthetic and musical value from each selection he undertook. The delightful intimacy of his playing and his unusual force of individual expression are invaluable assets, which, allied to his technical brilliancy, enable him to achieve an artistic triumph. The two lengthy Variations in E flat major (Op. 35) and in D major, the latter on the Turkish March from 'The Ruins of Athens,' when included in the same programme, require a master hand to provide continuity of interest. _To say that Mr Lamond successfully avoided moments that might at times, in these works, have inclined to comparative disinterestedness, would be but a moderate way of expressing the remarkable fascination with which his versatile playing endowed them_, but _at the same time_ two of the sonatas given included a similar form of composition, and no matter how intellectually brilliant may be the interpretation, the extravagant use of a certain mode is bound in time to become somewhat ineffective. In the Three Sonatas, the E major (Op. 109), the A major (Op. 2), No. 2, and the C minor (Op. 111), Mr Lamond signalised his perfect insight into the composer's varying moods. Will you not agree with me that here is no writing, here is no prose, here is not even English, but merely a flux of words to the pen? Here again is a string, a concatenation--say, rather, a tiara--of gems of purest ray serene from the dark unfathomed caves of a Scottish newspaper:-- The Chinese viewpoint, as indicated in this letter, may not be without interest to your readers, because it evidently is suggestive of more than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate in disaster resembling the Chang-Sha riots. It also ventures to illustrate incidents having their inception in recent premature endeavours to accelerate the development of Protestant missions in China; but we would hope for the sake of the interests involved that what my correspondent describes as 'the irresponsible ruffian element' may be known by their various religious designations only within very restricted areas. Well, the Chinese have given it up, poor fellows! and are asking the Christians--as to-day's newspapers inform us--to pray for them. Do you wonder? But that is, or was, the Chinese 'viewpoint,'--and what a willow-pattern viewpoint! Observe its delicacy. It does not venture to interest or be interesting; merely 'to be not without interest.' But it does 'venture to illustrate incidents'--which, for a viewpoint, is brave enough: and this illustration 'is suggestive of something more than an academic attempt to explain an unpleasant aspect of things which, if allowed to materialise, might suddenly culminate.' What materialises? The unpleasant aspect? or the things? Grammar says the 'things,' 'things which if allowed to materialise.' But things are materialised already, and as a condition of their being things. It must be the aspect, then, that materialises. But, if so, it is also the aspect that culminates, and an aspect, however unpleasant, can hardly do that, or at worst cannot culminate in anything resembling the Chang-Sha riots.... I give it up. Let us turn to another trick of Jargon: the trick of Elegant Variation, so rampant in the Sporting Press that there, without needing to attend these lectures, the Undergraduate detects it for laughter:-- Hayward and C. B. Fry now faced the bowling; which apparently had no terrors for the Surrey crack. The old Oxonian, however, took some time in settling to work.... Yes, you all recognise it and laugh at it. But why do you practise it in your Essays? An undergraduate brings me an essay on Byron. In an essay on Byron, Byron is (or ought to be) mentioned many times. I expect, nay exact, that Bryon shall be mentioned again and again. But my undergraduate has a blushing sense that to call Byron Byron twice on one page is indelicate. So Byron, after starting bravely as Byron, in the second sentence turns into 'that great but unequal poet' and thenceforward I have as much trouble with Byron as ever Telemachus with Proteus to hold and pin him back to his proper self. Half-way down the page he becomes 'the gloomy master of Newstead': overleaf he is reincarnated into 'the meteoric darling of society': and so proceeds through successive avatars--'this arch-rebel,' 'the author of Childe Harold,' 'the apostle of scorn,' 'the ex-Harrovian, proud, but abnormally sensitive of his club-foot,' 'the martyr of Missolonghi,' 'the pageant-monger of a bleeding heart.' Now this again is Jargon. It does not, as most Jargon does, come of laziness; but it comes of timidity, which is worse. In literature as in life he makes himself felt who not only calls a spade a spade but has the pluck to double spades and re-double. For another rule--just as rough and ready, but just as useful: Train your suspicions to bristle up whenever you come upon 'as regards,' 'with regard to,' 'in respect of,' 'in connection with,' 'according as to whether,' and the like. They are all dodges of Jargon, circumlocutions for evading this or that simple statement: and I say that it is not enough to avoid them nine times out of ten, or nine-and-ninety times out of a hundred. You should never use them. That is positive enough, I hope? Though I cannot admire his style, I admire the man who wrote to me, 'Re Tennyson--your remarks anent his "In Memoriam" make me sick': for though re is not a preposition of the first water, and 'anent' has enjoyed its day, the finish crowned the work. But here are a few specimens far, very far, worse:-- The special difficulty in Professor Minocelsi's case [our old friend 'case' again] arose _in connexion with_ the view he holds _relative to_ the historical value of the opening pages of Genesis. That is Jargon. In prose, even taking the miserable sentence as it stands constructed, we should write 'the difficulty arose over the views he holds about the historical value,' etc. From a popular novelist:-- I was entirely indifferent _as to_ the results of the game, caring nothing at all _as to_ whether _I had losses or gains_-- Cut out the first 'as' in 'as to,' and the second 'as to' altogether, and the sentence begins to be prose--'I was indifferent to the results of the game, caring nothing whether I had losses or gains.' But why, like Dogberry, have 'had losses'? Why not simply 'lose.' Let us try again. 'I was entirely indifferent to the results of the game, caring nothing at all whether I won or lost.' Still the sentence remains absurd: for the second clause but repeats the first without adding one jot. For if you care not at all whether you win or lose, you must be entirely indifferent to the results of the game. So why not say 'I was careless if I won or lost,' and have done with it? A man of simple and charming character, he was fitly _associated with_ the distinction of the Order of Merit. I take this gem with some others from a collection made three years ago, by the "Oxford Magazine"; and I hope you admire it as one beyond price. 'He was associated with the distinction of the Order of Merit' means 'he was given the Order of Merit.' If the members of that Order make a society then he was associated with them; but you cannot associate a man with a distinction. The inventor of such fine writing would doubtless have answered Canning's Needy Knife-grinder with:-- I associate thee with sixpence! I will see thee in another association first! But let us close our _florilegium_ and attempt to illustrate Jargon by the converse method of taking a famous piece of English (say Hamlet's soliloquy) and remoulding a few lines of it in this fashion:-- To be, or the contrary? Whether the former or the latter be preferable would seem to admit of some difference of opinion; the answer in the present case being of an affirmative or of a negative character according as to whether one elects on the one hand to mentally suffer the disfavour of fortune, albeit in an extreme degree, or on the other to boldly envisage adverse conditions in the prospect of eventually bringing them to a conclusion. The condition of sleep is similar to, if not indistinguishable from, that of death; and with the addition of finality the former might be considered identical with the latter: so that in this connection it might be argued with regard to sleep that, could the addition be effected, a termination would be put to the endurance of a multiplicity of inconveniences, not to mention a number of downright evils incidental to our fallen humanity, and thus a consummation achieved of a most gratifying nature. That is Jargon: and to write Jargon is to be perpetually shuffling around in the fog and cotton-wool of abstract terms; to be for ever hearkening, like Ibsen's Peer Gynt, to the voice of the Boyg exhorting you to circumvent the difficulty, to beat the air because it is easier than to flesh your sword in the thing. The first virtue, the touchstone of a masculine style, is its use of the active verb and the concrete noun. When you write in the active voice, 'They gave him a silver teapot,' you write as a man. When you write 'He was made the recipient of a silver teapot,' you write jargon. But at the beginning set even higher store on the concrete noun. Somebody--I think it was FitzGerald--once posited the question 'What would have become of Christianity if Jeremy Bentham had had the writing of the Parables?' Without pursuing that dreadful enquiry I ask you to note how carefully the Parables--those exquisite short stories--speak only of 'things which you can touch and see'--'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,'--and not the Parables only, but the Sermon on the Mount and almost every verse of the Gospel. The Gospel does not, like my young essayist, fear to repeat a word, if the word be good. The Gospel says 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's'--not 'Render unto Caesar the things that appertain to that potentate.' The Gospel does not say 'Consider the growth of the lilies,' or even 'Consider how the lilies grow.' It says, 'Consider the lilies, how they grow.' Or take Shakespeare. I wager you that no writer of English so constantly chooses the concrete word, in phrase after phrase forcing you to touch and see. No writer so insistently teaches the general through the particular. He does it even in "Venus and Adonis" (as Professor Wendell, of Harvard, pointed out in a brilliant little monograph on Shakespeare, published some ten years ago). Read any page of "Venus and Adonis" side by side with any page of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and you cannot but mark the contrast: in Shakespeare the definite, particular, visualised image, in Marlowe the beautiful generalisation, the abstract term, the thing seen at a literary remove. Take the two openings, both of which start out with the sunrise. Marlowe begins:-- Now had the Morn espied her lover's steeds: Whereat she starts, puts on her purple weeds, And, red for anger that he stay'd so long, All headlong throws herself the clouds among. Shakespeare wastes no words on Aurora and her feelings, but gets to his hero and to business without ado:-- Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face-- (You have the sun visualised at once), Even as the sun with purple-colour'd face Had ta'en his last leave of the weeping morn, Rose-cheek'd Adonis hied him to the chase; Hunting he loved, but love he laugh'd to scorn. When Shakespeare has to describe a horse, mark how definite he is:-- Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong; Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide. Or again, in a casual simile, how definite:-- Upon this promise did he raise his chin, Like a dive-dipper peering through a wave, Which, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. Or take, if you will, Marlowe's description of Hero's first meeting Leander:-- It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is over-ruled by fate..., and set against it Shakespeare's description of Venus' last meeting with Adonis, as she came on him lying in his blood:-- Or as a snail whose tender horns being hit Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain, And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, Long after fearing to creep forth again; So, at his bloody view-- I do not deny Marlowe's lines (if you will study the whole passage) to be lovely. You may even judge Shakespeare's to be crude by comparison. But you cannot help noting that whereas Marlowe steadily deals in abstract, nebulous terms, Shakespeare constantly uses concrete ones, which later on he learned to pack into verse, such as:-- Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care. Is it unfair to instance Marlowe, who died young? Then let us take Webster for the comparison; Webster, a man of genius or of something very like it, and commonly praised by the critics for his mastery over definite, detailed, and what I may call _solidified sensation_. Let us take this admired passage from his "Duchess of Malfy":-- _Ferdinand._ How doth our sister Duchess bear herself In her imprisonment? _Basola._ Nobly: I'll describe her. She's sad as one long used to 't, and she seems Rather to welcome the end of misery Than shun it: a behaviour so noble As gives a majesty to adversity (Note the abstract terms.) You may discern the shape of loveliness More perfect in her tears than in her smiles; She will muse for hours together; and her silence (Here we first come on the concrete: and beautiful it is.) Methinks expresseth more than if she spake. Now set against this the well-known passage from "Twelfth Night" where the Duke asks and Viola answers a question about someone unknown to him and invented by her--a mere phantasm, in short: yet note how much more definite is the language:-- _Viola._ My father had a daughter lov'd a man; As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, _I_ should your lordship. _Duke._ And what's her history? _Viola._ A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like Patience on a monument Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? Observe (apart from the dramatic skill of it) how, when Shakespeare _has_ to use the abstract noun 'concealment,' on an instant it turns into a visible worm 'feeding' on the visible rose; how, having to use a second abstract word 'patience,' at once he solidifies it in tangible stone. Turning to prose, you may easily assure yourselves that men who have written learnedly on the art agree in treating our maxim--to prefer the concrete term to the abstract, the particular to the general, the definite to the vague--as a canon of rhetoric. Whately has much to say on it. The late Mr E. J. Payne, in one of his admirable prefaces to Burke (prefaces too little known and valued, as too often happens to scholarship hidden away in a schoolbook), illustrated the maxim by setting a passage from Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America" alongside a passage of like purport from Lord Brougham's "Inquiry into the Policy of the European Powers." Here is the deadly parallel:-- BURKE. In large bodies the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The Turk cannot govern Ægypt and Arabia and Curdistan as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigour of his authority in his centre is derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. BROUGHAM. In all the despotisms of the East, it has been observed that the further any part of the empire is removed from the capital, the more do its inhabitants enjoy some sort of rights and privileges: the more inefficacious is the power of the monarch; and the more feeble and easily decayed is the organisation of the government. You perceive that Brougham has transferred Burke's thought to his own page: but will you not also perceive how pitiably, by dissolving Burke's vivid particulars into smooth generalities, he has enervated its hold on the mind? 'This particularising style,' comments Mr Payne, 'is the essence of Poetry; and in Prose it is impossible not to be struck with the energy it produces. Brougham's passage is excellent in its way: but it pales before the flashing lights of Burke's sentences. The best instances of this energy of style, he adds, are to be found in the classical writers of the seventeenth century. 'When South says, "An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise," he communicates more effectually the notion of the difference between the intellect of fallen and of unfallen humanity than in all the philosophy of his sermons put together.' You may agree with me, or you may not, that South in this passage is expounding trash; but you will agree with Mr Payne and me that he uttered it vividly. Let me quote to you, as a final example of this vivid style of writing, a passage from Dr John Donne far beyond and above anything that ever lay within South's compass:-- The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney are no epitaph of that Oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves is speechless, too; it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a prince whom thou couldest not look upon will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirle-wind hath blown the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flowre [flour], this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran? So is the death of Iesabel (Iesabel was a Queen) expressed. They shall not say _This is Iesabel_; not only not wonder that it is, nor pity that it should be; but they shall not say, they shall not know, _This is Iesabel._ Carlyle noted of Goethe, 'his emblematic intellect, his never-failing tendency to transform into _shape_, into _life_, the feeling that may dwell in him. Everything has form, has visual excellence: the poet's imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, and his pen turns them into shape.' Perpend this, Gentlemen, and maybe you will not hereafter set it down to my reproach that I wasted an hour of a May morning in a denunciation of Jargon, and in exhorting you upon a technical matter at first sight so trivial as the choice between abstract and definite words. A lesson about writing your language may go deeper than language; for language (as in a former lecture I tried to preach to you) is your reason, your [Greek: logos]. So long as you prefer abstract words, which express other men's summarised concepts of things, to concrete ones which as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at second-hand. If your language be Jargon, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should go straight, it will dodge: the difficulties it should approach with a fair front and grip with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or circumvent. For the Style is the Man, and where a man's treasure is there his heart, and his brain, and his writing, will be also. LECTURE VI. ON THE CAPITAL DIFFICULTY OF PROSE Thursday, May 15 To-day, Gentlemen, leaving the Vanity Fair of Jargon behind us, we have to essay a difficult country; of which, though fairly confident of his compass-bearings, your guide confesses, that wide tracts lie outside his knowledge--outside of anything that can properly be called his knowledge. I feel indeed somewhat as Gideon must have felt when he divided his host on the slopes of Mount Gilead, warning back all who were afraid. In asking the remnant to follow as attentively as they can, I promise only that, if Heaven carry us safely across, we shall have 'broken the back' of the desert. In my last lecture but one, then,--and before our small interlude with Jargon--the argument had carried us, more or less neatly, up to this point: that the capital difficulty of verse consisted in saying ordinary unemotional things, of bridging the flat intervals between high moments. This point, I believe, we made effectively enough. Now, for logical neatness, we should be able to oppose a corresponding point, that the capital difficulty of prose consists in saying extraordinary things, in running it up from its proper level to these high emotional, musical, moments. And mightily convenient that would be, Gentlemen, if I were here to help you to answer scientific questions about prose and verse instead of helping you, in what small degree I can, to write. But in Literature (which, let me remind you yet once again, is an art) you cannot classify as in a science. Pray attend while I impress on you this most necessary warning. In studying literature, and still more in studying to write it, distrust all classification! All classifying of literature intrudes 'science' upon an art, and is artificially 'scientific'; a trick of pedants, that they may make it the easier to examine you on things with which no man should have any earthly concern, as I am sure he will never have a heavenly one. Beetles, minerals, gases, may be classified; and to have them classified is not only convenient but a genuine advance of knowledge. But if you had to _make_ a beetle, as men are making poetry, how much would classification help? To classify in a science is necessary for the purpose of that science: to classify when you come to art is at the best an expedient, useful to some critics and to a multitude of examiners. It serves the art-critic to talk about Tuscan, Flemish, Pre-Raphaelite, schools of painting. The expressions are handy, and we know more or less what they intend. Just so handily it may serve us to talk about 'Renaissance poets,' 'the Elizabethans,' 'the Augustan age.' But such terms at best cannot be scientific, precise, determinate, as for examples the terms 'inorganic,' 'mammal,' 'univalve,' 'Old Red Sandstone' are scientific, precise, determinate. An animal is either a mammal or it is not: you cannot say as assuredly that a man is or is not an Elizabethan. We call Shakespeare an Elizabethan and the greatest of Elizabethans, though as a fact he wrote his most famous plays when Elizabeth was dead. Shirley was but seven years old when Elizabeth died; yet (if 'Elizabethan' have any meaning but a chronological one) Shirley belongs to the Elizabethan firmament, albeit but as a pale star low on the horizon: whereas Donne--a post-Elizabethan if ever there was one--had by 1603 reached his thirtieth year and written almost every line of those wonderful lyrics which for a good sixty years gave the dominant note to Jacobean and Caroline poetry. In treating of an art we classify for handiness, not for purposes of exact knowledge; and man (_improbus homo_) with his wicked inventions is for ever making fools of our formulae. Be consoled--and, if you are wise, thank Heaven--that genius uses our best-laid logic to explode it. Be consoled, at any rate, on finding that after deciding the capital difficulty of prose to lie in saying extraordinary things, in running up to the high emotional moments, the prose-writers explode and blow our admirable conclusions to ruins. You see, we gave them the chance to astonish us when we defined prose as 'a record of human thought, dispensing with metre and using rhythm laxly.' When you give genius leave to use something laxly, at its will, genius will pretty surely get the better of you. Observe, now, following the story of English prose, what has happened. Its difficulty--the inherent, the native disability of prose--is to handle the high emotional moments which more properly belong to verse. Well, we strike into the line of our prose-writers, say as early as Malory. We come on this; of the Passing of Arthur:-- 'My time hieth fast,' said the king. Therefore said Arthur unto Sir Bedivere, 'Take thou Excalibur my good sword, and go with it to yonder water side; and when thou comest there I charge thee throw my sword in that water and come again and tell me what there thou seest.' 'My lord,' said Bedivere, 'Your commandment shall be done; and lightly bring you word again.' So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and the haft was all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' And then Sir Bedivere hid Excaliber under a tree. And so, as soon as he might, he came again unto the king, and said he had been at the water and had thrown the sword into the water, 'What saw thou there?' said the king, 'Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing but waves and winds.' Now I might say a dozen things of this and of the whole passage that follows, down to Arthur's last words. Specially might I speak to you of the music of its monosyllables--'"What sawest you there?" said the king... "Do as well as thou mayest; for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I will into the Vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul."' But, before making comment at all, I shall quote you another passage; this from Lord Berners' translation of Froissart, of the death of Robert Bruce:-- It fortuned that King Robert of Scotland was right sore aged and feeble: for he was greatly charged with the great sickness, so that there was no way for him but death. And when he felt that his end drew near, he sent for such barons and lords of his realm as he trusted best, and shewed them how there was no remedy with him, but he must needs leave this transitory life.... Then he called to him the gentle knight, Sir William Douglas, and said before all the lords, 'Sir William, my dear friend, ye know well that I have had much ado in my days to uphold and sustain the right of this realm; and when I had most ado I made a solemn vow, the which as yet I have not accomplished, whereof I am right sorry; the which was, if I might achieve and make an end of all my wars, so that I might once have brought this realm in rest and peace, then I promised in my mind to have gone and warred on Christ's enemies, adversaries to our holy Christian faith. To this purpose mine heart hath ever intended, but our Lord would not consent thereto... And sith it is so that my body can not go, nor achieve that my heart desireth, I will send the heart instead of the body, to accomplish mine avow... I will, that as soon as I am trespassed out of this world, that ye take my heart out of my body, and embalm it, and take of my treasure as ye shall think sufficient for that enterprise, both for yourself and such company as ye will take with you, and present my heart to the Holy Sepulchre, whereas our Lord lay, seeing my body can not come there. And take with you such company and purveyance as shall be appertaining to your estate. And, wheresoever ye come, let it be known how ye carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, at his instance and desire to be presented to the Holy Sepulchre.' Then all the lords, that heard these words, wept for pity. There, in the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth, you have Malory and Berners writing beautiful English prose; prose the emotion of which (I dare to say) you must recognise if you have ears to hear. So you see that already our English prose not only achieves the 'high moment,' but seems to obey it rather and be lifted by it, until we ask ourselves, 'Who could help writing nobly, having to tell how King Arthur died or how the Bruce?' Yes, but I bid you observe that Malory and Berners are both relating what, however noble, is quite simple, quite straightforward. It is when prose attempts to _philosophise_, to _express thoughts_ as well as to relate simple sayings and doings--it is then that the trouble begins. When Malory has to philosophise death, to _think_ about it, this is as far as he attains:-- 'Ah, Sir Lancelot,' said he, 'thou wert head of all Christian Knights! And now I dare say,' said Sir Ector, 'that, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou were never matched of none earthly hands; and thou were the curtiest knight that ever bare shield: and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever strood horse, and thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou were the kindest man that ever strooke with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and gentlest that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.' Beautiful again, I grant! But note you that, eloquent as he can be on the virtues of his dead friend, when Sir Ector comes to the thought of death itself all he can accomplish is, 'And now I dare say that, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest.' Let us make a leap in time and contrast this with Tyndale and the translators of our Bible, how they are able to make St Paul speak of death:-- So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? There you have something clean beyond what Malory or Berners could compass: there you have a different kind of high moment--a high moment of philosophising: there you have emotion impregnated with thought. It was necessary that our English verse even after Chaucer, our English prose after Malory and Berners, should overcome this most difficult gap (which stands for a real intellectual difference) if it aspired to be what to-day it is--a language of the first class, comparable with Greek and certainly no whit inferior to Latin or French. * * * * * Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over the gap. If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress' Prologue:-- O moder mayde! O maydë moder fre! O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses' sight! in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her children:-- O tendre, O dere, O yongë children myne, Your woful moder wendë stedfastly That cruel houndës or some foul vermyne Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy And your benignë fader tendrely Hath doon you kept... You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of that time:-- He came al so still There his mother was, As dew in April That falleth on the grass. He came al so still To his mother's bour, As dew in April That falleth on the flour. He came al so still There his mother lay, As dew in April That falleth on the spray. Mother and maiden Was never none but she; Well may such a lady Goddes mother be. You get the most emotional note of the Ballad in such a stanza as this, from "The Nut-Brown Maid":-- Though it be sung of old and young That I should be to blame, Their's be the charge that speak so large In hurting of my name; For I will prove that faithful love It is devoid of shame; In your distress and heaviness To part with you the same: And sure all tho that do not so True lovers are they none: For, in my mind, of all mankind I love but you alone. All these notes, again, you will admit to be exquisite: but they gush straight from the unsophisticated heart: they are nowise deep save in innocent emotion: they are not _thoughtful_. So when Barbour breaks out in praise of Freedom, he cries A! Fredome is a noble thing! And that is really as far as he gets. He goes on Fredome mayse man to hafe liking. (Freedom makes man to choose what he likes; that is, makes him free) Fredome all solace to man giffis, He livis at ese that frely livis! A noble hart may haif nane ese, Na ellys nocht that may him plese, Gif fredome fail'th: for fre liking Is yharnit ouer all othir thing... --and so on for many lines; all saying the same thing, that man yearns for Freedom and is glad when he gets it, because then he is free; all hammering out the same observed fact, but all knocking vainly on the door of thought, which never opens to explain what Freedom _is_. Now let us take a leap as we did with prose, and 'taking off' from the Nut-Brown Maid's artless confession, in my mind, of all mankind I love but you alone, let us alight on a sonnet of Shakespeare's-- Thy bosom is endearéd with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposéd dead: And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buriéd. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye As interest of the dead!--which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give; That due of many now is mine alone: Their images I loved I view in thee, And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. What a new way of talking about love! Not a happier way--there is less of heart's-ease in these doubts, delicacies, subtleties--but how much more thoughtful! How has our Nut-Brown Maid eaten of the tree of knowledge! Well, there happened a Shakespeare, to do this for English Verse: and Shakespeare was a miracle which I cheerfully leave others to rationalise for you, having, for my own part and so far as I have fared in life, found more profit in a capacity for simple wonder. But I can tell you how the path was made straight to that miracle. The shock of the New Learning upon Europe awoke men and unsealed men's eyes--unsealed the eyes of Englishmen in particular--to discover a literature, and the finest in the world, which _habitually philosophised life_: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking _Why?_ 'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose? his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers--call them the gods, or whatever you will--that guide and thwart, provoke, madden, control him so mysteriously?' 'What are these things we call good and evil, life, love, death?' These are questions which, once raised, haunt Man until he finds an answer--some sort of answer to satisfy him. Englishmen, hitherto content with the Church's answers but now aware of this great literature which answered so differently--and having other reasons to suspect what the Church said and did--grew aware that their literature had been as a child at play. It had never philosophised good and evil, life, love or death: it had no literary forms for doing this; it had not even the vocabulary. So our ancestors saw that to catch up their lee-way--to make their report worthy of this wonderful, alluring discovery--new literary forms had to be invented--new, that is, in English: the sonnet, the drama, the verse in which the actors were to declaim, the essay, the invented tale. Then, for the vocabulary, obviously our fathers had either to go to Greek, which had invented the A.B.C. of philosophising; or to seek in the other languages which were already ahead of English in adapting that alphabet; or to give our English Words new contents, new connotations, new meanings; or lastly, to do all three together. Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course to many men, but thanks to two especially--to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast its classical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove--that Wyat is one of the heroes of our literature--I will give you three brief reasons why we should honour his memory:-- (1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself with quoting a passage from Newman:-- When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is almost a work of genius. It is like crossing a country before roads are made communicating between place and place. The authors of that age deserve to be Classics both because of what they do and because they can do it. It requires the courage and force of great talent to compose in the language at all; and the composition, when effected, makes a permanent impression on it. This Wyat did. He was a pioneer and opened up a new country to Englishmen. But he did more. (2) Secondly, he had the instinct to perceive that the lyric, if it would philosophise life, love, and the rest, must boldly introduce the personal note: since in fact when man asks questions about his fortune or destiny he asks them most effectively in the first person. 'What am _I_ doing? Why are _we_ mortal? Why do _I_ love _thee_?' This again Wyat did: and again he did more. For (3) thirdly--and because of this I am surest of his genius--again and again, using new thoughts in unfamiliar forms, he wrought out the result in language so direct, economical, natural, easy, that I know to this day no one who can better Wyat's best in combining straight speech with melodious cadence. Take the lines _Is it possible?_-- Is it possible? For to turn so oft; To bring that lowest that was most aloft: And to fall highest, yet to light soft? Is it possible? All is possible! Whoso list believe; Trust therefore first, and after preve; As men wed ladies by licence and leave, All is possible! or again-- Forget not! O forget not this!-- How long ago hath been, and is, The mind that never meant amiss: Forget not yet! or again (can personal note go straighter?)-- And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay, say nay, for shame! To save thee from the blame --Of all my grief and grame. And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! say nay! (Say 'nay,' say 'nay'; and don't say, 'the answer is in the negative.') No: I have yet to mention the straightest, most natural of them all, and will read it to you in full-- What should I say? Since Faith is dead And Truth away From you is fled? Should I be led With doubleness? Nay! nay! mistress. I promised you And you promised me To be as true As I would be: But since I see Your double heart, Farewell my part! Thought for to take Is not my mind; But to forsake One so unkind; And as I find, So will I trust, Farewell, unjust! Can ye say nay But that you said That I alway Should be obeyed? And--thus betrayed Or that I wist! Farewell, unkist! I observe it noted on p. 169 of Volume iii of "The Cambridge History of English Literature" that Wyat 'was a pioneer and perfection was not to be expected of him. He has been described as a man stumbling over obstacles, continually falling but always pressing forward.' I know not to what wiseacre we owe that pronouncement: but what do you think of it, after the lyric I have just quoted? I observe, further, on p. 23 of the same volume of the same work, that the Rev. T. M. Lindsay, D.D., Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland, informs us of Wilson's "Arte of Rhetorique" that there is little or no originality in the volume, save, perhaps, the author's condemnation of the use of French and Italian phrases and idioms, which he complains are 'counterfeiting the kinges Englishe.' The warnings of Wilson will not seem untimely if to be remembered that the earlier English poets of the period--Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and the Earl of Surrey--drew their inspiration from Petrarch and Ariosto, that their earlier attempts at poetry were translations from Italian sonnets, and that their maturer efforts were imitations of the sweet and stately measures and style of Italian poesie. The polish which men like Wyatt and Surrey were praised for giving to our 'rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie' might have led to some degeneration. Might it, indeed? As another Dominie would have said, 'Pro-digious.' (Thought for to take Is not my mind; But to forsake This Principal of the Glasgow College of the United Free Church of Scotland-- Farewell unkiss'd!) But I have lingered too long with this favourite poet of mine and left myself room only to hand you the thread by following which you will come to the melodious philosophising of Shakespeare's Sonnets-- Let me not to the marriage of true Minds Admit impediment. Love is not love Which alters where it alteration finds Or bends with the remover to remove. Note the Latin words 'impediment,' 'alteration,' 'remove.' We are using the language of philosophy here or, rather, the 'universal language,' which had taken over the legacy of Greek. You may trace the use of it growing as, for example, you trace it through the Elizabethan song-books: and then (as I said) comes Shakespeare, and with Shakespeare the miracle. The education of Prose was more difficult, and went through more violent convulsions. I suppose that the most of us--if, after reading a quantity of Elizabethan prose, we had the courage to tell plain truth, undaunted by the name of a great epoch--would confess to finding the mass of it clotted in sense as well as unmusical in sound, a disappointment almost intolerable after the simple melodious clarity of Malory and Berners. I, at any rate, must own that the most of Elizabethan prose pleases me little; and I speak not of Elizabethan prose at its worst, of such stuff as disgraced the already disgraceful Martin Marprelate Controversy, but of such as a really ingenious and ingenuous man like Thomas Nashe could write at his average. For a sample:-- English Seneca read by candle-light yields many good sentences such as 'Blood is a beggar' and so forth; and if you entreat him fair on a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches.... Sufficeth them [that is, modern followers of Seneca] to bodge up a blank verse with if's and and's, and others, while for recreation after their candle-stuff, having starched their beards most curiously, to make a peripatetical path into the inner parts of the city, and spend two or three hours in turning over the French _Doudie_, where they attract more infection in one minute than they can do eloquence all the days of their life by conversing with any authors of like argument. This may be worth studying historically, to understand the difficulties our prose had to encounter and overcome. But no one would seriously propose it as a model for those who would write well, which is our present business. I have called it 'clotted.' It is, to use a word of the time, 'farced' with conceits; it needs straining. Its one merit consists in this, that it is struggling, fumbling, to say something: that is, to _make_ something. It is not, like modern Jargon, trying to dodge something. English prose, in short, just here is passing through a period of puberty, of green sickness: and, looking at it historically, we may own that its throes are commensurate with the stature of the grown man to be. These throes tear it every way. On the one hand we have Ascham, pendantically enough, apologising that he writes in the English tongue (yet with a sure instinct he does it):-- If any man would blame me, either for taking such a matter in hand, or else for writing it in the English tongue, this answer I may make him, that what the best of the realm think it honest for them to use, I, one of the meanest sort, ought not to suppose it vile for me to write... And as for the Latin or Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in them that none can do better. In the English tongue, contrary, everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and the handling, that no man can do worse. On the other hand you have Euphuism with its antithetical tricks and poises, taking all prose by storm for a time: Euphuism, to be revived two hundred years later, and find a new avatar in the Johnsonian balance; Euphuism, dead now, yet alive enough in its day. For all these writers were alive: and I tell you it is an inspiriting thing to be alive and trying to write English. All these authors were alive and trying to _do_ something. Unconsciously for the most part they were striving to philosophise the vocabulary of English prose and find a rhythm for its periods. And then, as already had happened to our Verse, to our Prose too there befel a miracle. You will not ask me 'What miracle?' I mean, of course, the Authorised Version of the Bible. I grant you, to be sure, that the path to the Authorised Version was made straight by previous translators, notably by William Tyndale. I grant you that Tyndale was a man of genius, and Wyclif before him a man of genius. I grant you that the forty-seven men who produced the Authorised Version worked in the main upon Tyndale's version, taking that for their basis. Nay, if you choose to say that Tyndale was a miracle in himself, I cheerfully grant you that as well. But, in a lecture one must not multiply miracles _praeter necessitatem_; and when Tyndale has been granted you have yet to face the miracle that forty-seven men--not one of them known, outside of this performance, for any superlative talent--sat in committee and almost consistently, over a vast extent of work--improved upon what Genius had done. I give you the word of an old committee-man that this is not the way of committees--that only by miracle is it the way of any committee. Doubtless the forty-seven were all good men and godly: but doubtless also good and godly were the Dean and Chapter who dealt with Alfred Steven's tomb of the Duke of Wellington in St Paul's Cathedral; and you know what _they_ did. Individual genius such as Tyndale's or even Shakespeare's, though we cannot explain it, we may admit as occurring somehow, and not incredibly, in the course of nature. But that a large committee of forty-seven should have gone steadily through the great mass of Holy Writ, seldom interfering with genius, yet, when interfering, seldom missing to improve: that a committee of forty-seven should have captured (or even, let us say, should have retained and improved) a rhythm so personal, so constant, that our Bible has the voice of one author speaking through its many mouths: that, Gentlemen, is a wonder before which I can only stand humble and aghast. Does it or does it not strike you as queer that the people who set you 'courses of study' in English Literature never include the Authorised Version, which not only intrinsically but historically is out and away the greatest book of English Prose. Perhaps they can pay you the silent compliment of supposing that you are perfectly acquainted with it?... I wonder. It seems as if they thought the Martin Marprelate Controversy, for example, more important somehow. 'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality...' 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.' 'The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.' 'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.' 'And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, those rhythms for its dearest beliefs, a literature is surely established. Just there I find the effective miracle, making the blind to see, the lame to leap. Wyclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and others before the forty-seven had wrought. The Authorised Version, setting a seal on all, set a seal on our national style, thinking and speaking. It has cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonises them that the voice is always one. Simple men--holy and humble men of heart like Isaak Walton or Bunyan--have their lips touched and speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars,--Milton, Sir Thomas Browne--practice the rolling Latin sentence; but upon the rhythms of our Bible they, too, fall back. 'The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs.' 'Acquaint thyself with the Choragium of the stars.' 'There is nothing immortal but immortality.' The precise man Addison cannot excel one parable in brevity or in heavenly clarity: the two parts of Johnson's antithesis come to no more than this 'Our Lord has gone up to the sound of a trump: with the sound of a trump our Lord has gone up.' The Bible controls its enemy Gibbon as surely as it haunts the curious music of a light sentence of Thackeray's. It is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in our blood. What madman, then, will say 'Thus or thus far shalt thou go' to a prose thus invented and thus with its free rhythms, after three hundred years, working on the imagination of Englishmen? Or who shall determine its range, whether of thought or of music? You have received it by inheritance, Gentlemen: it is yours, freely yours--to direct your words through life as well as your hearts. LECTURE VII SOME PRINCIPLES REAFFIRMED Thursday, May 29 Let me begin to-day, Gentlemen, with a footnote to my last lecture. It ended, as you may remember, upon an earnest appeal to you, if you would write good English, to study the Authorised Version of the Scriptures; to learn from it, moreover, how by mastering _rhythm_, our Prose overcame the capital difficulty of Prose and attuned itself to rival its twin instrument, Verse; compassing almost equally with Verse man's thought however sublime, his emotion however profound. Now in the course of my remarks I happened--maybe a little incautiously--to call the Authorised Version a 'miracle'; using that word in a colloquial sense, in which no doubt you accepted it; meaning no more than that the thing passed my understanding. I have allowed that the famous forty-seven owed an immense deal to earlier translators--to the Bishops, to Tyndale, to the Wyclif Version, as themselves allowed it eagerly in their preface:-- Truly (good Christian reader) wee never thought from the beginning that we should needs to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one ... but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principall good one, not justly to be excepted against: that hath bene our indeavour, that our marke. (See [Footnote 1] at the end of this lecture.) Nevertheless the Authorised Version astounds me, as I believe it will astound you when you compare it with earlier translations. Aristotle (it has been said) invented Chance to cover the astonishing fact that there were certain phenomena for which he found himself wholly unable to account. Just so, if one may compare very small things with very great, I spoke of the Authorised Version as a 'miracle.' It was, it remains, marvellous to me. Should these deciduous discourses ever come to be pressed within the leaves of a book, I believe their general meaning will be as clear to readers as I hope it is to you who give me so much pleasure by pursuing them--almost (shall I say?) like Wordsworth's Kitten with those other falling leaves:-- That almost I could repine That your transports are not mine. But meanwhile certain writers in the newspapers are assuming that by this word 'miracle' I meant to suggest to you a something like plenary inspiration at once supernatural and so authoritative that it were sacrilege now to alter their text by one jot or tittle. Believe me, I intended nothing of the sort: for that, in my plain opinion, would be to make a fetish of the book. One of these days I hope to discuss with you what inspiration is: with what accuracy--with what meaning, if any--we can say of a poet that he is inspired; questions which have puzzled many wise men from Plato downwards. But certainly I never dreamt of claiming plenary inspiration for the forty-seven. Nay, if you will have it, they now and again wrote stark nonsense. Remember that I used this very same word 'miracle' of Shakespeare, meaning again that the total Shakespeare quite outpasses my comprehension; yet Shakespeare, too, on occasion talks stark nonsense, or at any rate stark bombast. He never blotted a line--'I would he had blotted a thousand' says Ben Jonson: and Ben Jonson was right. Shakespeare could have blotted out two or three thousand lines: he was great enough to afford it. Somewhere Matthew Arnold supposes us as challenging Shakespeare over this and that weak or bombastic passage, and Shakespeare answering with his tolerant smile, that no doubt we were right, but after all, 'Did it greatly matter?' So we offer no real derogation to the forty-seven in asserting that here and there they wrote nonsense. They could afford it. But we do stultify criticism if, adoring the grand total of wisdom and beauty, we prostrate ourselves indiscriminately before what is good and what is bad, what is sublime sense and what is nonsense, and forbid any reviser to put forth a hand to the ark. The most of us Christians go to church on Christmas Day, and there we listen to this from Isaiah, chapter ix, verses 1-7:-- Nevertheless the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterwards did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The forty-seven keep their majestic rhythm. But have you ever, sitting in church on a Christmas morning, asked yourself what it all means, or if it mean anything more than a sing-song according somehow with the holly and ivy around the pillars? _'Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest,'_ But why--if the joy be not increased? _'For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood: but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.'_ Granted the rhythmical antithesis, where is the real antithesis, the difference, the improvement? If a battle there must be, how is burning better than garments rolled in blood? And, in fine, what is it all about? Now let us turn to the Revised Version:-- But there shall be no gloom to her that was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath he made it glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, thou hast increased their joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, thou hast broken as in the day of Midian. For all the armour of the armed man in the tumult, and the garments rolled in blood, shall even be for burning, for fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I say (knowing no Hebrew, merely assuming our Revisers to be at least no worse scholars than the forty-seven) that here, with the old cadences kept so far as possible, we are given sense in place of nonsense: and I ask you to come to the Revised Version with a fair mind. I myself came to it with some prejudice; in complete ignorance of Hebrew, and with no more than the usual amount of Hellenistic Greek. I grant at once that the Revised New Testament was a literary fiasco; largely due (if gossip may be trusted) to trouble with the Greek Aorist, and an unwise decision--in my opinion the most gratuitously unwise a translator can take--to use one and the same English word, always and in every connotation, as representing one and the same Greek word: for in any two languages few words are precisely equivalent. A fiasco at any rate the Revised New Testament was, deserving in a dozen ways and in a thousand passages the scorn which Professor Saintsbury has recently heaped on it. But I protest against the injustice of treating the two Revisions--of the New Testament and of the Old--as a single work, and saddling the whole with the sins of a part. For two years I spent half-an-hour daily in reading the Authorised and Revised Versions side by side, marking as I went, and in this way worked through the whole--Old Testament, Apocrypha, New Testament. I came to it (as I have said) with some prejudice; but I closed the books on a conviction, which my notes sustain for me, that the Revisers of the Old Testament performed their task delicately, scrupulously, on the whole with great good judgment; that the critic does a wrong who brings them under his indiscriminate censure; that on the whole they have clarified the sense of the Authorised Version while respecting its consecrated rhythms; and that--to name an example, that you may test my words and judge for yourselves--the solemn splendour of that most wonderful poem, the story of Job, [Greek: dialampei], 'shines through' the new translation as it never shone through the old. * * * * * And now Gentlemen (as George Herbert said on a famous occasion), let us tune our instruments. Before discussing with you another and highly important question of style in writing, I will ask you to look back for a few moments on the road we have travelled. We have agreed that our writing should be _appropriate_: that it should fit the occasion; that it should rise and fall with the subject, be grave where that is serious, where it is light not afraid of what Stevenson in "The Wrong Box" calls 'a little judicious levity.' If your writing observe these precepts, it will be well-mannered writing. To be sure, much in addition will depend on yourself--on what you are or have made yourself, since in writing the style can never be separated from the man. But neither can it in the practice of virtue: yet, though men differ in character, I do not observe that moralists forbear from laying down general rules of excellence. Now if you will recall our further conclusion, that writing to be good must be persuasive (since persuasion is the only true intellectual process), and will test this by a passage of Newman's I am presently to quote to you, from his famous 'definition of a gentleman,' I think you will guess pretty accurately the general law of excellence I would have you, as Cambridge men, tribally and particularly obey. Newman says of a gentleman that among other things: He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out.... If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they found it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion: but he is too clear-sighted to be unjust. He is simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Enough for the moment on this subject: but commit these words to your hearts, and you will not only triumph in newspaper controversy. You will do better: you will avoid it. To proceed.--We found further that our writing should be _accurate_: because language expresses thought--is, indeed, the only expression of thought--and if we lack the skill to speak precisely, our thought will remain confused, ill-defined. The editor of a mining paper in Denver, U.S.A., boldly the other day laid down this law, that niceties of language were mere 'frills': all a man needed was to 'get there,' that is, to say what he wished in his own way. But just here, we found, lies the mischief. You will not get there by hammering away on your own untutored impulse. You must first be your own reader, chiselling out the thought definitely for yourself: and, after that, must carve out the intaglio yet more sharply and neatly, if you would impress its image accurately upon the wax of other men's minds. We found that even for Men of Science this neat clean carving of words was a very necessary accomplishment. As Sir James Barrie once observed, 'The Man of Science appears to be the only man who has something to say, just now--and the only man who does not know how to say it.' But the trouble by no means ends with Science. Our poets--those gifted strangely prehensile men who, as I said in my first lecture, seem to be born with filaments by which they apprehend, and along which they conduct, the half-secrets of life to us ordinary mortals--our poets would appear to be scamping artistic labour, neglecting to reduce the vague impressions to the clearly cut image which is, after all, what helps. It may be a triumph that they have taught modern French poetry to be suggestive. I think it would be more profitable could they learn from France--that nation of fine workmen--to be definite. But about 'getting there'--I ask you to remember Wolfe, with the seal of his fate on him, stepping into his bateau on the dark St. Lawrence River and quoting as they tided him over:-- The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike th' inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 'I had rather have written those lines,' said Wolfe, 'than conquer Canada.' That is how our forefathers valued noble writing. The Denver editor holds that you may write as you please so long as you get there. Well, Wolfe got there: and so, in Wolfe's opinion, did Gray: but perhaps to Wolfe and Gray, and to the Denver editor, 'there' happened to mean two different places. Wolfe got to the Heights of Abraham. Further, it was against this loose adaptation of words to thought and to things that we protested in our interpolated lecture on Jargon, which is not so much bad writing as the avoidance of writing. The man who employs Jargon does not get 'there' at all, even in a raw rough pioneering fashion: he just walks around 'there' in the ambient tracks of others. Let me fly as high as I can and quote you two recent achievements by Cabinet Ministers, as reported in the Press:--(1) 'Mr McKenna's reasons for releasing from Holloway Prison Miss Lenton while on remand charged _in connexion with_ (sweet phrase!) the firing of the tea pavilion in Kew Gardens are given in a letter which he has _caused to be forwarded_ to a correspondent who inquired _as to_ the circumstances of the release. The letter says "I am desired by the Home Secretary to say that Lilian Lenton was reported by the medical officer at Holloway Prison to be in a state of collapse and in imminent danger of death _consequent upon_ her refusal to take food. Three courses were open--(1) To leave her to die; (2) To attempt to feed her forcibly, which the medical officer advised would probably entail death in her existing condition: (3) To release her. The Home Secretary adopted the last course."' 'Would probably entail death in her existing condition'! Will anyone tell me how Mr McKenna or anyone else could kill, or (as he prefers to put it) entail death upon, Miss Lenton in a non-existing condition? (2) Next take the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As we know, the Chancellor of the Exchequer can use incisive speech when he chooses. On May 8th as reported in next day's "Morning Post," Mr Lloyd George, answering a question, delivered himself of this to an attentive Senate:-- With regard to Mr Noel Buxton's questions, I cannot answer for an enquiry which is _of a private and confidential character_, for although I am associated with it I am not associated with it as a Minister of the Crown.... Those enquiries are of a very careful systematic and scientific character, and are being conducted by the ablest investigators in this country, some of whom have reputations of international character. I am glad to think that the investigation is of a most impartial character. It must be a comforting thought, that an inquiry of a private and confidential character is also of a very systematic and scientific character, and besides being of a most impartial character, is conducted by men of international character--whatever that may happen to mean. What _is_ an international character, and what would you give for one? We found that this way of talking, while pretending to be something pontifical, is really not prose at all, nor reputable speech at all, but Jargon; nor is the offence to be excused by pleading, as I have heard it pleaded, that Mr Lloyd George was not using his own phraseology but quoting from a paper supplied him by some permanent official of the Treasury: since we select our civil servants among men of decent education and their salaries warrant our stipulating that they shall be able, at least, to speak and write their mother tongue. We laid down certain rules to help us in the way of straight Prose:-- (1) _Always always prefer the concrete word to the abstract._ (2) _Almost always prefer the direct word to the circumlocution._ (3) _Generally, use transitive verbs, that strike their object; and use them in the active voice, eschewing the stationary passive, with its little auxiliary its's and was's, and its participles getting into the light of your adjectives, which should be few. For, as a rough law, by his use of the straight verb and by his economy of adjectives you can tell a man's style, if it be masculine or neuter, writing or 'composition.'_ The authors of that capital handbook "The King's English," which I have already recommended to you, add two rules:-- (4) _Prefer the short word to the long._ (5) _Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance._ But these two precepts you would have to modify by so long a string of exceptions that I do not commend them to you. In fact I think them false in theory and likely to be fatal in practice. For, as my last lecture tried to show, you no sooner begin to philosophise things instead of merely telling a tale of them than you must go to the Mediterranean languages: because in these man first learnt to discuss his 'why' and 'how,' and these languages yet guard the vocabulary. Lastly, we saw how, by experimenting with rhythm, our prose 'broke its birth's invidious bar' and learnt to scale the forbidden heights. Now by attending to the few plain rules given above you may train yourselves to write sound, straightforward, work-a-day English. But if you would write melodious English, I fear the gods will require of you what they ought to have given you at birth--something of an ear. Yet the most of us have ears, of sorts; and I believe that, though we can only acquire it by assiduous practice, the most of us can wonderfully improve our talent of the ear. If you will possess yourselves of a copy of Quintilian or borrow one from any library (Bohn's translation will do) and turn to his 9th book, you will find a hundred ways indicated, illustrated, classified, in which a writer or speaker can vary his Style, modulate it, lift or depress it, regulate its balance. All these rules, separately worth studying, if taken together may easily bewilder and dishearten you. Let me choose just two, and try to hearten you by showing that, even with these two only, you can go a long way. Take the use of right emphasis. What Quintilian says of right emphasis--or the most important thing he says--is this:-- There is sometimes an extraordinary force in some particular word, which, if it be placed in no very conspicuous position in the middle part of a sentence, is likely to escape the attention of the hearer and to be obscured by the words surrounding it; but if it be put at the end of the sentence is urged upon the reader's sense and imprinted on his mind. That seems obvious enough, for English use as well as for Latin. 'The wages of sin is Death'--anyone can see how much more emphatic that is than 'Death is the wages of sin.' But let your minds work on this matter of emphasis, and discover how emphasis has always its right point somewhere, though it be not at all necessarily at the end of the sentence. Take a sentence in which the strong words actually repeat themselves for emphasis:-- Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city. Our first impulse would be to place the emphasis at the end:-- Babylon, that great city, is fallen, is fallen. The Latin puts it at the beginning:-- Cecidit, cecidit, Babylonia illa magna. Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city. The forty-seven preserved the 'falling close' so exquisite in the Latin; the emphasis, already secured by repetition, they accentuated by lengthening the pause. I would urge on you that in every sentence there is just a right point of emphasis which you must train your ears to detect. So your writing will acquire not only emphasis, but balance, and you will instinctively avoid such an ill-emphasised sentence as this, which, not naming the author, I will quote for your delectation:-- 'Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this?' asked the man in the light tweed suit of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits round their broad Terai hats. Explore, next, what (though critics have strangely neglected it) to my mind stands the first, or almost the first, secret of beautiful writing in English, whether in prose or in verse; I mean that inter-play of vowel-sounds in which no language can match us. We have so many vowel sounds indeed, and so few vowels to express them, that the foreigner, mistaking our modesty, complains against God's plenty. We alone, for example, sound by a natural vowel that noble _I_, which other nations can only compass by diphthongs. Let us consider that vowel for a moment or two and mark how it leads off the dance of the Graces, its sisters:-- Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Mark how expressively it drops to the solemn vowel 'O,' and anon how expressively it reasserts itself to express rearisen delight:-- Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and Kings to the brightness of thy rising. Take another passage in which the first lift of this _I_ vowel yields to its graver sisters as though the sound sank into the very heart of the sense. I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.' 'And am no more worthy to be called thy son.' Mark the deep O's. 'For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' 'O my son, my son Absalom'--observe the I and O how they interchime, until the O of sorrow tolls the lighter note down:-- O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absolom, my son, my son! Or take this lyric, by admission one of the loveliest written in this present age, and mark here too how the vowels play and ring and chime and toll. I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.[2] And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake-water lapping, with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. I think if you will but open your ears to this beautiful vowel-play which runs through all the best of our prose and poetry, whether you ever learn to master it or not, you will have acquired a new delight, and one various enough to last you though you live to a very old age. All this of which I am speaking is Art: and Literature being an Art, do you not see how personal a thing it is--how it cannot escape being personal? No two men (unless they talk Jargon) say the same thing in the same way. As is a man's imagination, as is his character, as is the harmony in himself, as is his ear, as is his skill, so and not otherwise he will speak, so and not otherwise than they can respond to that imagination, that character, that order of his intellect, that harmony of his soul, his hearers will hear him. Let me conclude with this great passage from Newman which I beg you, having heard it, to ponder:-- If then the power of speech is as great as any that can be named, --if the origin of language is by many philosophers considered nothing short of divine--if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,--if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,--if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and the prophets of the human family--it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study: rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others--be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life--who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence. [Footnote 1: I append the following specimen translations of the famous passage in St Paul's "First Epistle to the Corinthians" xv. 51 sqq. I choose this because (1) it is an important passage; (2) it touches a high moment of philosophising; (3) the comparison seems to me to represent with great fairness to Tyndale the extent of the forty-seven's debt to him; (4) it shows that they meant exactly what they said in their Preface; and (5) it illustrates, towards the close, their genius for improvement. From the Greek, Wyclif translates:-- Lo, I seie to you pryvyte of holi thingis | and alle we schulen rise agen | but not alle we schuln be chaungid | in a moment in the twynkelynge of an yë, in the last trumpe | for the trumpe schal sowne: and deed men schulen rise agen with out corrupcion, and we schuln be changid | for it bihoveth this corruptible thing to clothe uncorropcion and this deedly thing to putte aweye undeedlynesse. But whanne this deedli thing schal clothe undeedlynesse | thanne schal the word be don that is written | deeth is sopun up in victorie | deeth, where is thi victorie? deeth, where is thi pricke? Tyndale:-- Beholde I shewe you a mystery. We shall not all slepe: but we shall all be chaunged | and that in a moment | and in the twinclinge of an eye | at the sounde of the last trompe. For the trompe shall blowe, and the deed shall ryse incorruptible and we shalbe chaunged. For this corruptible must put on incorruptibilite: and this mortall must put on immortalite. When this corruptible hath put on incorruptibilite | and this mortall hath put on immortalite: than shalbe brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Deeth is consumed in to victory.' Deeth, where is thy stynge? Hell, where is thy victory? The Authorised Version:-- Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleepe, but wee shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinckling of an eye, at the last trumpe, (for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed). For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortall must put on immortalitie. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortall shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to passe the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?] [Footnote 2: I E O : I O E I O : E OU A 'As musing slow, I hail ('as m_u_sing sl_o_w _I_ ha_i_l) Thy genial loved return.' (Th_y_ g_e_nial l_o_ved ret_u_rn.') COLLINS, "Ode to Evening."] LECTURE VIII. ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (I) Wednesday, October 22 You may think it strange, Gentlemen, that of a course of ten lectures which aim to treat English Literature as an affair of practice, I should propose to spend two in discussing our literary lineage: a man's lineage and geniture being reckoned, as a rule, among the things he cannot be reasonably asked to amend. But since of high breeding is begotten (as most of us believe) a disposition to high thoughts, high deeds; since to have it and be modestly conscious of it is to carry within us a faithful monitor persuading us to whatsoever in conduct is gentle, honourable, of good repute, and so silently dissuading us from base thoughts, low ends, ignoble gains; seeing, moreover, that a man will often do more to match his father's virtue than he would to improve himself; I shall endeavour, in this and my next lecture, to scour that spur of ancestry and present it to you as so bright and sharp an incentive that you, who read English Literature and practise writing here in Cambridge, shall not pass out from her insensible of the dignity of your studies, or without pride or remorse according as you have interpreted in practice the motto, _Noblesse oblige_. 'Tis wisdom, and that high, For men to use their fortune reverently Even in youth. Let me add that, just as a knowledge of his family failings will help one man in economising his estate, or warn another to shun for his health the pleasures of the table, so some knowledge of our lineage in letters may put us, as Englishmen, on the watch for certain national defects (for such we have), on our guard against certain sins which too easily beset us. Nay, this watchfulness may well reach down from matters of great moment to seeming trifles. It is good for us to recognise with Wordsworth that We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. But, though less important, it is good also to recognise that, as sons of Cambridge, we equally offend against her breeding when in our scientific writings we allow ourselves to talk of a microbe as an 'antibody.' Now, because a great deal of what I have to say this morning, if not heretical, will yet run contrary to the vogue and practice of the Schools for these thirty years, I will take the leap into my subject over a greater man's back and ask you to listen with particular attention to the following long passage from a writer whose opinion you may challenge, but whose authority to speak as a master of English prose no one in this room will deny. When (says Cardinal Newman) we survey the stream of human affairs for the last three thousand years, we find it to run thus:--At first sight there is so much fluctuation, agitation, ebbing and flowing, that we may despair to discern any law in its movements, taking the earth as its bed and mankind as its contents; but on looking more closely and attentively we shall discern, in spite of the heterogeneous materials and the various histories and fortunes which are found in the race of man during the long period I have mentioned, a certain formation amid the chaos--one and one only,--and extending, though not over the whole earth, yet through a very considerable portion of it. Man is a social being and can hardly exist without society, and in matter of fact societies have ever existed all over the habitable earth. The greater part of these associations have been political or religious, and have been comparatively limited in extent and temporary. They have been formed and dissolved by the force of accidents, or by inevitable circumstances; and when we have enumerated them one by one we have made of them all that can be made. But there is one remarkable association which attracts the attention of the philosopher, not political nor religious--or at least only partially and not essentially such--which began in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age till it reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and unwearied, and still remains as definite and as firm as ever it was. Its bond is a _common civilisation_: and though there are other civilisations in the world, as there are other societies, yet _this_ civilisation, together with the society which is its creation and its home, is so distinctive and luminous in its character, so imperial in its extent, so imposing in its duration, and so utterly without rival on the face of the earth, that the association may fitly assume to itself the title of 'Human Society,' and _its_ civilisation the abstract term 'Civilisation.' There are indeed great outlying portions of mankind which are not, perhaps never have been, included in this Human Society; still they are outlying portions and nothing else, fragmentary, unsociable, solitary and unmeaning, protesting and revolting against the grand central formation of which I am speaking, but not uniting with each other into a second whole. I am not denying, of course, the civilisation of the Chinese, for instance, though it be not our civilisation; but it is a huge, stationary, unattractive, morose civilisation. Nor do I deny a civilisation to the Hindoos, nor to the ancient Mexicans, nor to the Saracens, nor (in a certain sense) to the Turks; but each of these races has its own civilisation, as separate from one another as from ours. I do not see how they can be all brought under one idea.... Gentlemen, let me here observe that I am not entering upon the question of races, or upon their history. I have nothing to do with ethnology; I take things as I find them on the surface of history and am but classifying phenomena. Looking, then, at the countries which surround the Mediterranean Sea as a whole, I see them to be from time immemorial, the seat of an association of intellect and mind such as to deserve to be called the Intellect and the Mind of the Human Kind. Starting as it does, and advancing from certain centres, till their respective influences intersect and conflict, and then at length intermingle and combine, a common Thought has been generated, and a common Civilisation defined and established. Egypt is one such starting point, Syria, another, Greece a third, Italy a fourth and North Africa a fifth--afterwards France and Spain. As time goes on, and as colonisation and conquest work their changes, we see a great association of nations formed, of which the Roman Empire is the maturity and the most intelligible expression: an association, however, not political but mental, based on the same intellectual ideas and advancing by common intellectual methods.... In its earliest age it included far more of the Eastern world than it has since; in these later times it has taken into its compass a new hemisphere; in the Middle Ages it lost Africa, Egypt and Syria, and extended itself to Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles. At one time its territory was flooded by strange and barbarous races, but the existing civilisation was vigorous enough to vivify what threatened to stifle it, and to assimilate to the old social forms what came to expel them: and thus the civilisation of modern times remains what it was of old; not Chinese, or Hindoo, or Mexican, or Saracen ... but the lineal descendant, or rather the continuation--_mutatis mutandis_--of the civilisation which began in Palestine and Greece. To omit, then, all minor debts such as what of arithmetic, what of astronomy, what of geography, we owe to the Saracen, from Palestine we derive the faith of Europe shared (in the language of the Bidding Prayer) by all Christian people dispersed throughout the world; as to Greece we owe the rudiments of our Western art, philosophy, letters; and not only the rudiments but the continuing inspiration, so that--though entirely superseded in worship, as even in the Athens of Pericles they were worshipped only by an easy, urbane, more than half humorous tolerance--Apollo and the Muses, Zeus and the great ones of Olympus, Hermes and Hephaestus, Athene in her armour, with her vanquisher the foam-born irresistible Aphrodite, these remain the authentic gods of our literature, beside whom the gods of northern Europe--Odin, Thor, Freya--are strangers, unhomely, uncanny as the shadows of unfamiliar furniture on the walls of an inn. Sprung though great numbers of us are from the loins of Northmen, it is in these gracious deities of the South that we find the familiar and the real, as from the heroes of the sister-island, Cucullain and Concobar, we turn to Hercules, to Perseus, to Bellerophon, even to actual men of history, saying 'Give us Leonidas, give us Horatius, give us Regulus. These are the mighty ones we understand, and from whom, in a direct line of tradition, we understand Harry of Agincourt, Philip Sidney and our Nelson.' Now since, of the Mediterranean peoples, the Hebrews discovered the Unseen God whom the body of Western civilisation has learnt to worship; since the Greeks invented art, philosophy, letters; since Rome found and developed the idea of imperial government, of imperial colonies as superseding merely fissiparous ones, of settling where she conquered (_ubi Romanus vicit ibi habitat_) and so extending with Government that system of law which Europe still obeys; we cannot be surprised that Israel, Greece, Rome--each in turn--set store on a pure ancestry. Though Christ be the veritable Son of God, his ancestry must be traced back through his supposed father Joseph to the stem of Jesse, and so to Abraham, father of the race. Again, as jealously as the Evangelist claimed Jesus for a Hebrew of the Hebrews, so, if you will turn to the "Menexenus" of Plato in the Oration of Aspasia over the dead who perished in battle, you hear her claim that 'No Pelopes nor Cadmians, nor Egyptians, nor Dauni, nor the rest of the crowd of born foreigners dwell with us; but ours is the land of pure Hellenes, free from admixture.' These proud Athenians, as you know, wore brooches in the shape of golden grasshoppers, to signify that they were [Greek: autochthones], children of Attica, sprung direct from her soil. And so, again, the true Roman, while enlarging Rome's citizenship over Asia, Africa, Gaul, to our remote Britain, insisted, even in days of the later Empire, on his pure descent from Æneas and Romulus-- Unde Remnes et Quirites proque prole posterum Romuli matrem crearet et nepotem Cæsarem. With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Cæsar-last, best of that blood, of that threw. Here is a boast that we English must be content to forgo. We may wear a rose on St George's day, if we are clever enough to grow one. The Welsh, I dare say, have less difficulty with the leek. But April the 23rd is not a time of roses that we can pluck them as we pass, nor can we claim St George as a compatriot--_Cappadocius nostras_. We have, to be sure, a few legendary heroes, of whom King Arthur and Robin Hood are (I suppose) the greatest; but, save in some Celtic corners of the land, we have few fairies, and these no great matter; while, as for tutelary gods, our springs, our wells, our groves, cliffs, mountain-sides, either never possessed them or possess them no longer. Not of our landscape did it happen that The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; From haunted spring and dale Edg'd with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent. --for the sufficient reason that no tutelary gods of importance were ever here to be dispersed. Let me press this home upon you by an illustration which I choose with the double purpose of enforcing my argument and sending you to make acquaintance (if you have not already made it) with one of the loveliest poems written in our time. In one of Pliny's letters you will find a very pleasant description of the source of the Clitumnus, a small Umbrian river which, springing from a rock in a grove of cypresses, descends into the Tinia, a tributary of the Tiber. 'Have you ever,' writes Pliny to his friend Romanus-- Have you ever seen the source of the Clitumnus? I suppose not, as I never heard you mention it. Let me advise you to go there at once. I have just visited it and am sorry that I put off my visit so long. At the foot of a little hill, covered with old and shady cypress trees, a spring gushes and bursts into a number of streamlets of various size. Breaking, so to speak, forth from its imprisonment, it expands into a broad basin, so clear and transparent that you may count the pebbles and little pieces of money which are thrown into it. From this point the force and weight of the water, rather than the slope of the ground, hurry it onward. What was a mere spring becomes a noble river, broad enough to allow vessels to pass each other as they sail with or against the stream. The current is so strong, though the ground is level, that barges of beam, as they go down, require no assistance of oars; while to go up is as much as can be done with oars and long poles.... The banks are clothed with abundant ash and poplar, so distinctly reflected in the transparent waters that they seem to be growing at the bottom of the river and can be counted with ease. The water is as cold as snow and as pure in colour. Hard by the spring stands an ancient and venerable temple with a statue of the river-god Clitumnus, clothed in the customary robe of state. The Oracles here delivered attest the presence of the deity. Close in the precinct stand several little chapels dedicated to particular gods, each of whom owns his distinctive name and special worship, and is the tutelary deity of a runlet. For beside the principal spring, which is, as it were, the parent of all the rest, there are several smaller ones which have their distinct sources but unite their waters with the Clitumnus, over which a bridge is thrown, separating the sacred part of the river from that which is open to general use. Above the bridge you may only go in a boat; below it, you may swim. The people of the town of Hispallum, to whom Augustus gave this place, furnish baths and lodgings at the public expense. There are several small dwelling-houses on the banks, in specially picturesque situations, and they stand quite close to the waterside. In short, everything in the neighbourhood will give you pleasure. You may also amuse yourself with numberless inscriptions on the pillars and walls, celebrating the praises of the stream and of its tutelary god. Many of these you will admire, and some will make you laugh. But no! You are too well cultivated to laugh at such things. Farewell. Clitumnus still gushes from its rocks among the cypresses, as in Pliny's day. The god has gone from his temple, on the frieze of which you may read this later inscription--'_Deus Angelorum, qui fecit Resurrectionem._' After many centuries and almost in our day, by the brain of Cavour and the sword of Garibaldi, he has made a resurrection for Italy. As part of that resurrection (for no nation can live and be great without its poet) was born a true poet, Carducci. He visited the bountiful, everlasting source, and of what did he sing? Possess yourselves, as for a shilling you may, of his Ode "Alle fonte del Clitumno," and read: for few nobler poems have adorned our time. He sang of the weeping willow, the ilex, ivy, cypress and the presence of the god still immanent among them. He sang of Umbria, of the ensigns of Rome, of Hannibal swooping down over the Alps; he sang of the nuptials of Janus and Comesena, progenitors of the Italian people; of nymphs, naiads, and the moonlight dances of Oreads; of flocks descending to the river at dusk, of the homestead, the bare-footed mother, the clinging child, the father, clad in goat-skins, guiding the ox-wagon; and he ends on the very note of Virgil's famous apostrophe _Sed neque Medorum silvae, ditissima terra..._ with an invocation of Italy--Italy, mother of bullocks for agriculture, of wild colts for battle, mother of corn and of the vine, Roman mother of enduring laws and mediaeval mother of illustrious arts. The mountains, woods and waters of green Umbria applaud the song, and across their applause is heard the whistle of the railway train bearing promise of new industries and a new national life. E tu, pia madre di giovenchi invitti a franger glebe e rintegrar maggesi e d' annitrenti in guerra aspri polledri, Italia madre, madre di biade e viti e leggi eterne ed incliti arti a raddolcir la vita salve! a te i canti de l' antica lode io rinovello. Plaudono i monti al carme e i boschi e l' acque de l' Umbria verde: in faccia a noi fumando ed anelando nuove industrie in corsa fischia il vapore. And thou, O pious mother of unvanquished Bullocks to break glebe, to restore the fallow, And of fierce colts for neighing in the battle: Italy, mother, Mother of corn and vines and of eternal Laws and illustrious arts the life to sweeten, Hail, hail, all hail! The song of ancient praises Renew I to thee! The mountains, woods and waters of green Umbria Applaud the song: and here before us fuming And longing for new industries, a-racing Whistles the white steam. (I quote from a translation by Mr E.J. Watson, recently published by Messrs J.W. Arrowsmith, of Bristol.) I put it to you, Gentlemen, that, worthy as are the glories of England to be sung, this note of Carducci's we cannot decently or honestly strike. Great lives have been bled away into Tweed and Avon: great spirits have been oared down the Thames to Traitor's Gate and the Tower. Deeds done on the Cam have found their way into history. But I once traced the Avon to its source under Naseby battlefield, and found it issuing from the fragments of a stucco swan. No god mounts guard over the head-water of the Thames; and the only Englishman who boldly claims a divine descent is (I understand) an impostor who runs an Agapemone. In short we are a mixed race, and our literature is derivative. Let us confine our pride to those virtues, not few, which are honestly ours. A Roman noble, even to-day, has some excuse for reckoning a god in his ancestry, or at least a wolf among its wet-nurses: but of us English even those who came over with William the Norman have the son of a tanner's daughter for escort. I very well remember that, the other day, writers who vindicated our hereditary House of Lords against a certain Parliament Act commonly did so on the ground that since the Reform Bill of 1832, by inclusion of all that was eminent in politics, war and commerce, the Peerage had been so changed as to know itself no longer for the same thing. That is our practical way. At all events, the men who made our literature had never a doubt, as they were careless to dissimulate, that they were conquering our tongue to bring it into the great European comity, the civilisation of Greece and Rome. An Elizabethan writer, for example, would begin almost as with a formula by begging to be forgiven that he has sought to render the divine accent of Plato, the sugared music of Ovid, into our uncouth and barbarous tongue. There may have been some mock-modesty in this, but it rested on a base of belief. Much of the glory of English Literature was achieved by men who, with the splendour of the Renaissance in their eyes, supposed themselves to be working all the while upon pale and borrowed shadows. Let us pass the enthusiasms of days when 'bliss was it in that dawn to be alive' and come down to Alexander Pope and the Age of Reason. Pope at one time proposed to write a History of English Poetry, and the draft scheme of that History has been preserved. How does it begin? Why thus:-- ERA I. 1. School of Provence Chaucer's Visions. _Romaunt of the Rose._ _Piers Plowman._ Tales from Boccace. Gower. 2. School of Chaucer Lydgate. T. Occleve. Walt. de Mapes (a bad error, that!). Skelton. 3. School of Petrarch E. of Surrey. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Sir Philip Sidney. G. Gascoyn. 4. School of Dante Lord Buckhurst's _Induction. Gorboduc._ Original of Good Tragedy. Seneca his model. --and so on. The scheme after Pope's death came into the hands of Gray, who for a time was fired with the notion of writing the History in collaboration with his friend Mason. Knowing Gray's congenital self-distrust, you will not be surprised that in the end he declined the task and handed it over to Warton. But, says Mant in his Life of Warton, 'their design'--that is, Gray's design with Mason--'was to introduce specimens of the Proveçal poetry, and of the Scaldic, British and Saxon, as preliminary to what first deserved to be called English poetry, about the time of Chaucer, from whence their history properly so called was to commence.' A letter of Gray's on the whole subject, addressed to Warton, is extant, and you may read it in Dr Courthope's "History of English Poetry." Few in this room are old enough to remember the shock of awed surmise which fell upon young minds presented, in the late 'seventies or early 'eighties of the last century, with Freeman's "Norman Conquest" or Green's "Short History of the English People"; in which as through paring clouds of darkness, we beheld our ancestry, literary as well as political, radiantly legitimised; though not, to be sure, in the England that we knew--but far away in Sleswick, happy Sleswick! 'Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little townships looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with sunless woodland, broken here and there with meadows which crept down to the marshes and to the sea.' But what of that? There--surely there, in Sleswick--had been discovered for us our august mother's marriage lines; and if the most of that bright assurance came out of an old political skit, the "Germania" of Tacitus, who recked at the time? For along followed Mr Stopford Brooke with an admirable little Primer published at one shilling, to instruct the meanest of us in our common father's actual name--Beowulf. _Beowulf_ is an old English Epic.... There is not one word about our England in the poem.... The whole poem, pagan as it is, is English to its very root. It is sacred to us; our Genesis, the book of our origins. Now I am not only incompetent to discuss with you the more recondite beauties of "Beowulf" but providentially forbidden the attempt by the conditions laid down for this Chair. I gather--and my own perusal of the poem and of much writing about it confirms the belief--that it has been largely over-praised by some critics, who have thus naturally provoked others to underrate it. Such things happen. I note, but without subscribing to it, the opinion of Vigfússon and York Powell, the learned editors of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," that in the "Beowulf" we have 'an epic completely metamorphosed in form, blown out with long-winded empty repetitions and comments by a book poet, so that one must be careful not to take it as a type of the old poetry,' and I seem to hear as from the grave the very voice of my old friend the younger editor in that unfaltering pronouncement. But on the whole I rather incline to accept the cautious surmise of Professor W. P. Ker that 'a reasonable view of the merit of Beowulf is not impossible, though rash enthusiasm may have made too much of it; while a correct and sober taste may have too contemptuously refused to attend to Grendel and the Firedrake,' and to leave it at that. I speak very cautiously because the manner of the late Professor Freeman, in especial, had a knack of provoking in gentle breasts a resentment which the mind in its frailty too easily converted to a prejudice against his matter: while to men trained to admire Thucydides and Tacitus and acquainted with Lucian's 'Way to Write History' ([Greek: Pos dei istorian suggraphein]) his loud insistence that the art was not an art but a science, and moreover recently invented by Bishop Stubbs, was a perpetual irritant. But to return to "Beowulf"--You have just heard the opinions of scholars whose names you must respect. I, who construe Anglo-Saxon with difficulty, must admit the poem to contain many fine, even noble, passages. Take for example Hrothgar's lament for Æschere:-- Hróthgar mathelode, helm Scyldinga: 'Ne frin thú æfter sælum; sorh is geniwod Denigea leódum; deád is Æschere, Yrmenláfes yldra bróthor, Mín rún-wita, ond min ræd-bora; Eaxl-gestealla, thonne we on orlege Hafelan wéredon, thonne hniton fethan, Eoferas cnysedan: swylc scolde eorl wesan Ætheling ær-gód, swylc Æschere wæs.' (Hrothgar spake, helm of the Scyldings: 'Ask not after good tidings. Sorrow is renewed among the Dane-folk. Dead is Æschere, Yrmenlaf's elder brother, who read me rune and bore me rede; comrade at shoulder when we fended our heads in war and the boar-helms rang. Even so should we each be an atheling passing good, as Æschere was.') This is simple, manly, dignified. It avoids the besetting sin of the Anglo-Saxon gleeman--the pretentious trick of calling things 'out of their right names' for the sake of literary effect (as if e.g. the sea could be improved by being phrased into 'the seals' domain'). Its Anglo-Saxon _staccato_, so tiresome in sustained narrative, here happens to suit the broken utterance of mourning. In short, it exhibits the Anglo-Saxon Muse at her best, not at her customary. But set beside it a passage in which Homer tells of a fallen warrior--at haphazard, as it were, a single corpse chosen from the press of battle-- [Greek: polla de chermadia megal aspidas estuphelixam marnamenon amph auton o d en strophaliggi konies keito megas megalosti, lelasmenos ipposunaom.] Can you--can anyone--compare the two passages and miss to see that they belong to two different kingdoms of poetry? I lay no stress here on 'architectonics.' I waive that the "Iliad" is a well-knit epic and the story of "Beowulf" a shapeless monstrosity. I ask you but to note the difference of note, of accent, of mere music. And I have quoted you but a passage of the habitual Homer. To assure yourselves that he can rise even from this habitual height to express the extreme of majesty and of human anguish in poetry which betrays no false note, no strain upon the store of emotion man may own with self-respect and exhibit without derogation of dignity, turn to the last book of the "Iliad" and read of Priam raising to his lips the hand that has murdered his son. I say confidently that no one unable to distinguish this, as poetry, from the very best of "Beowulf" is fit to engage upon business as a literary critic. In "Beowulf" then, as an imported poem, let us allow much barbarian merit. It came of dubious ancestry, and it had no progeny. The pretence that our glorious literature derives its lineage from "Beowulf" is in vulgar phrase 'a put up job'; a falsehood grafted upon our text-books by Teutonic and Teutonising professors who can bring less evidence for it than will cover a threepenny-piece. Its run for something like that money, in small educational manuals, has been in its way a triumph of pedagogic _réclame_. Our rude forefathers--the author of "The Rape of the Lock" and of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard"--knew nothing of the Exeter and Vercelli Books, nothing of the Ruthwell Cross. But they were poets, practitioners of our literature in the true line of descent, and they knew certain things which all such artists know by instinct. So, before our historians of thirty-odd years ago started to make Chaucer and Beowulf one, these rude forefathers made them two. 'Nor am I confident they erred.' Rather I am confident, and hope in succeeding lectures to convince you, that, venerable as Anglo-Saxon is, and worthy to be studied as the mother of our vernacular speech (as for a dozen other reasons which my friend Professor Chadwick will give you), its value is historical rather than literary, since from it our Literature is not descended. Let me repeat it in words that admit of no misunderstanding--_From Anglo-Saxon Prose, from Anglo-Saxon Poetry our living Prose and Poetry have, save linguistically, no derivation_. I shall attempt to demonstrate that, whether or not Anglo-Saxon literature, such as it was, died of inherent weakness, die it did, and of its collapse the "Vision of Piers Plowman" may be regarded as the last dying spasm. I shall attempt to convince you that Chaucer did not inherit any secret from Caedmon or Cynewulf, but deserves his old title, 'Father of English Poetry,' because through Dante, through Boccaccio, through the lays and songs of Provence, he explored back to the Mediterranean, and opened for Englishmen a commerce in the true intellectual mart of Europe. I shall attempt to heap proof on you that whatever the agency--whether through Wyat or Spenser, Marlowe or Shakespeare, or Donne, or Milton, or Dryden, or Pope, or Johnson, or even Wordsworth--always our literature has obeyed, however unconsciously, the precept _Antiquam exquirite matrem_, 'Seek back to the ancient mother'; always it has recreated itself, has kept itself pure and strong, by harking back to bathe in those native--yes, _native_--Mediterranean springs. Do not presume me to be right in this. Rather, if you will, presume me to be wrong until the evidence is laid out for your judgment. But at least understand to-day how profoundly a man, holding that view, must deplore the whole course of academical literary study during these thirty years or so, and how distrust what he holds to be its basal fallacies. For, literature being written in language, yet being something quite distinct, and the development of our language having been fairly continuous, while the literature of our nation exhibits a false start--a break, silence, repentance, then a renewal on right glorious lines--our students of literature have been drilled to follow the specious continuance while ignoring the actual break, and so to commit the one most fatal error in any study; that of mistaking the inessential for the essential. As I tried to persuade you in my Inaugural Lecture, our first duty to Literature is to study it absolutely, to understand, in Aristotelian phrase, its [Greek: to ti en einae]; what it _is_ and what it _means_. If that be our quest, and the height of it be realised, it is nothing to us--or almost nothing--to know of a certain alleged poet of the fifteenth century, that he helped us over a local or temporary disturbance in our vowel-endings. It is everything to have acquired and to possess such a norm of Poetry within us that we know whether or not what he wrote was POETRY. Do not think this easy. The study of right literary criticism is much more difficult than the false path usually trodden; so difficult, indeed, that you may easily count the men who have attempted to grasp the great rules and apply them to writing as an art to be practised. But the names include some very great ones--Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian, Corneille, Boileau, Dryden, Johnson, Lessing, Coleridge, Goethe, Sainte-Beuve, Arnold: and the study, though it may not find its pattern in our time, is not unworthy to be proposed for another attempt before a great University. LECTURE IX. ON THE LINEAGE OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (II) Wednesday, November 5 Some of you whose avocations call them, from time to time, to Newmarket may have noted, at a little distance out from Cambridge, a by-road advertised as leading to Quy and Swaffham. It also leads to the site of an old Roman villa; but you need not interrupt your business to visit this, since the best thing discovered there--a piece of tessellated pavement--has been removed and deposited in the Geological Museum here in Downing Street, where you may study it very conveniently. It is not at all a first-class specimen of its kind: not to be compared, for example, with the wonderful pavement at Dorchester, or with that (measuring 35 feet by 20) of the great villa unearthed, a hundred years ago, at Stonesfield in Oxfordshire: but I take it as the handiest, and am going to build a small conjecture upon it, or rather a small suggestion of a guess. Remember there is no harm in guessing so long as we do not pretend our guess-work to be something else. I will ask you to consider first that in these pavements, laid bare for us as 'the whistling rustic tends his plough,' we have work dating somewhere between the first and fifth centuries, work of unchallengeable beauty, work of a beauty certainly not rivalled until we come to the Norman builders of five or six hundred years later. I want you to let your minds dwell on these long stretches of time--four hundred years or so of Roman occupation (counting, not from Cæsar's raids, but from the serious invasion of 43 A.D. under Aulus Plautius, say to some while after the famous letter of Honorius, calling home the legions). You may safely put it at four hundred years, and then count six hundred as the space before the Normans arrive--a thousand years altogether, or but a fraction--one short generation--less than the interval of time that separates us from King Alfred. In the great Cathedral of Winchester (where sleep, by the way, two gentle writers specially beloved, Isaak Walton and Jane Austen) above the choir-screen to the south, you may see a line of painted chests, of which the inscription on one tells you that it holds what was mortal of King Canute. Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropp'd from the ruin'd sides of Kings. But if you walk around to the north of the altar you will find yourself treading on tiles not so very far short of twice that antiquity. Gentlemen, do not think that I would ever speak lightly of our lineage: only let us make as certain as we may what that lineage is. I want you to-day to understand just what such a pavement as that preserved for your inspection in Downing Street meant to the man who saw it laid and owned it these fifteen hundred years--more or less--ago. _Ubi Romanus vicit, ibi habitat_--'where the Roman has conquered, there he settles': but whether he conquered or settled he carried these small tiles, these _tessellæ_, as religiously as ever Rachel stole her teraphin. 'Wherever his feet went there went the tessellated pavement for them to stand on. Even generals on foreign service carried in panniers on muleback the little coloured cubes or _tessellæ_ for laying down a pavement in each camping-place, to be taken up again when they moved forward. In England the same sweet emblems of the younger gods of poetic legend, of love, youth, plenty, and all their happy naturalism, are found constantly repeated.'[1] I am quoting these sentences from a local historian, but you see how these relics have a knack of inspiring prose at once scholarly and imaginative, as (for a more famous instance) the urns disinterred at Walsingham once inspired Sir Thomas Browne's. To continue and adapt the quotation-- Bacchus with his wild rout, Orpheus playing to a spell-bound audience, Apollo singing to the lyre, Venus in Mars' embrace, Neptune with a host of seamen, scollops, and trumpets, Narcissus by the fountain, Jove and Ganymede, Leda and the swan, wood-nymphs and naiads, satyrs and fauns, masks, hautboys, cornucopiæ, flowers and baskets of golden fruit--what touches of home they must have seemed to these old dwellers in the Cambridgeshire wilds! Yes, touches of home! For the owner of this villa (you may conceive) is the grandson or even great-great-grandson of the colonist who first built it, following in the wake of the legionaries. The family has prospered and our man is now a considerable landowner. He was born in Britain: his children have been born here: and here he lives a comfortable, well-to-do, out-of-door life, in its essentials I daresay not so very unlike the life of an English country squire to-day. Instead of chasing foxes or hares he hunts the wolf and the wild boar; but the sport is good and he returns with an appetite. He has added a summer parlour to the house, with a northern aspect and no heating-flues: for the old parlour he has enlarged the præfurnium, and through the long winter evenings sits far better warmed than many a master of a modern country-house. A belt of trees on the brow of the rise protects him from the worst winds, and to the south his daughters have planted violet-beds which will breathe odorously in the spring. He has rebuilt and enlarged the slave-quarters and outhouses, replaced the stucco pillars around the atrium with a colonnade of polished stone, and, where stucco remains, has repainted it in fresh colours. He knows that there are no gaps or weak spots in his stockade fence--wood is always cheap. In a word he has improved the estate; is modestly proud of it; and will be content, like the old Athenian, to leave his patrimony not worse but something better than he found it. Sensible men--and the Romans were eminently that--as a rule contrive to live decently, or, at least, tolerably. What struck Arthur Young more than anything else in his travels through France on the very eve of the Revolution seems to have been the general good-tempered happiness of the French gentry on their estates. We may moralise of the Roman colonists as of the French proprietors that 'unconscious of their doom the little victims played'; but we have no right to throw back on them the shadow of what was to come or to cloud the picture of a useful, peaceable, maybe more than moderately happy life, with our later knowledge of disaster mercifully hidden from it. Although our colonist and his family have all been born in Britain, are happy enough here on the whole, and talk without more than half meaning it, and to amuse themselves with speculations half-wistful, of daring the tremendous journey and setting eyes on Rome some day, their pride is to belong to her, to Rome, the imperial City, the city afar: their windows open back towards her as Daniel's did towards Jerusalem--_Urbs quam dicunt Roman--the_ City. Along the great road, hard by, her imperial writ runs. They have never subscribed to the vow of Ruth, 'Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.' They dwell under the Pax Romana, not merely protected by it but as _citizens_. Theirs are the ancestral deities portrayed on that unfading pavement in the very centre of the villa--Apollo and Daphne, Bacchus and Ariadne-- For ever warm and still to be enjoyed, For ever panting, and for ever young. Parcels come to them, forwarded from the near military station; come by those trade-routes, mysterious to us, concerning which a most illuminating book waits to be written by somebody. There are parcels of seeds--useful vegetables and potherbs, helichryse (marigold as we call them now) for the flower garden, for the colonnade even roses with real Italian earth damp about their roots. There are parcels of books, too--rolls rather, or tablets--wherein the family reads about Rome; of its wealth, the uproar of its traffic, the innumerable chimneys smoking, _fumum et opes strepitumque_. For they are always reading of Rome; feeling themselves, as they read, to belong to it, to be neither savage nor even rustic, but by birthright _of the city_, urbane; and what these exiles read is of how Horace met a bore on the Sacred Road (which would correspond, more or less, with our Piccadilly)-- Along the Sacred Road I strolled one day Deep in some bagatelle (you know my way) When up comes one whose face I scarcely knew-- 'The dearest of dear fellows! how d'ye do?' --He grasped my hand. 'Well, thanks! The same to you?' --or of how Horace apologises for protracting a summer jaunt to his country seat:-- Five days I told you at my farm I'd stay, And lo! the whole of August I'm away. Well but, Maecenas, you would have me live, And, were I sick, my absence you'd forgive. So let me crave indulgence for the fear Of falling ill at this bad time of year. When, thanks to early figs and sultry heat, The undertaker figures with his suite; When fathers all and fond mammas grow pale At what may happen to their young heirs male, And courts and levees, town-bred mortals' ills, Bring fevers on, and break the seals of wills. (Conington's translation.) Consider those lines; then consider how long it took the inhabitants of this island--the cultured ones who count as readers or writers--to recapture just that note of urbanity. Other things our forefathers --Britons, Saxons, Normans, Dutch or French refugees--discovered by the way; worthier things if you will; but not until the eighteenth century do you find just that note recaptured; the note of easy confidence that our London had become what Rome had been, the Capital city. You begin to meet it in Dryden; with Addison it is fairly established. Pass a few years, and with Samuel Johnson it is taken for granted. His _London_ is Juvenal's Rome, and the same satire applies to one as applied to the other. But against the urbane lines written by one Horace some while before Juvenal let us set a passage from another Horace--Horace Walpole, seventeen hundred years later and some little while ahead of Johnson. He, like our Roman colonist, is a settler in a new country, Twickenham; and like Flaccus he loves to escape from town life. TWICKENHAM, June 8th, 1747. To the Hon. H. S. CONWAY. You perceive by my date that I am got into a new camp, and have left my tub at Windsor. It is a little plaything-house that I got out of Mrs Chevenix's shop, and the prettiest bauble you ever saw. It is set in enamelled meadows with filagree hedges: A small Euphrates through the place is roll'd, And little finches wave their wings of gold. Two delightful roads; that you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises: barges as solemn as Barons of the Exchequer move under my window; Richmond Hill and Ham Walks bound my prospect; but, thank God! the Thames is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry. Dowagers as plenty as flounders inhabit all around, and Pope's ghost is just now skimming under my window by the most poetical moonlight.... The Chevenixes had tricked it out for themselves; up two pairs of stairs is what they call Mr Chevenix's library, furnished with three maps, one shelf, a bust of Sir Isaac Newton and a lame telescope without any glasses. Lord John Sackville _predeceased_ me here and instituted certain games called _cricketalia_, which has been celebrated this very evening in honour of him in a neighbouring meadow. You will think I have removed my philosophy from Windsor with my tea-things hither; for I am writing to you in all tranquility while a Parliament is bursting about my ears. You know it is going to be dissolved.... They say the Prince has taken up two hundred thousand pounds, to carry elections which he won't carry--he had much better have saved it to buy the Parliament after it is chosen. There you have Horatio Walpole, the man-about-town, almost precisely echoing Horatius Flaccus, the man-about-town; and this (if you will bring your minds to it) is just the sort of passage a Roman colonist in Britain would open upon, out of his parcel of new books, and read, _and understand_, some eighteen hundred years ago. What became of it all?--of that easy colonial life, of the men and women who trod those tessellated pavements? 'Wiped out,' say the historians, knowing nothing, merely guessing: for you may with small trouble assure yourselves that the fifth and sixth centuries in the story of this island are a blind spot, concerning which one man's guess may be as good as another's. 'Wiped out,' they will commonly agree; for while, as I warned you in another lecture, the pedantic mind, faced with a difficulty, tends to remove it conveniently into a category to which it does not belong, still more prone is the pedantic mind to remove it out of existence altogether. So 'wiped out' is the theory; and upon it a sympathetic imagination can invent what sorrowful pictures it will of departing legions, the last little cloud of dust down the highway, the lovers by the gate watching it, not comprehending; the peaceful homestead in the background, ripe for doom--and what-not. Or, stay! There is another theory to which the late Professor Freeman inclined (if so sturdy a figure could be said to incline), laying stress on a passage in Gildas, that the Romans in Britain, faced by the Saxon invader, got together their money, and bolted away into Gaul. 'The Romans that were in Britain gathered together their gold-hoard, hid part in the ground and carried the rest over to Gaul,' writes Gildas. 'The hiding in the ground,' says Freeman, 'is of course a guess to explain the frequent finding of Roman coins'--which indeed it _does_ explain better than the guess that they were carried away, and perhaps better than the schoolboy's suggestion that during their occupation of Britain the Romans spent most of their time in dropping money about. Likely enough, large numbers of the colonists did gather up what they could and flee before the approaching storm; but by no means all, I think. For (since, where all is uncertain, we must reason from what is probable of human nature) in the first place men with large estates do not behave in that way before a danger which creeps upon them little by little, as this Saxon danger did. These colonists could not dig up their fields and carry them over to Gaul. They did not keep banking accounts; and in the course of four hundred years their main wealth had certainly been sunk in the land. They could not carry away their villas. We know that many of them did not carry away the _tessellæ_ for which (as we have seen) they had so peculiar a veneration; for these remain. Secondly, if the colonists left Britain in a mass, when in the middle of the sixth century we find Belisarius offering the Goths to trade Britain for Sicily, as being 'much larger and this long time subservient to Roman rule,'[2] we must suppose either (as Freeman appears to suppose) that Belisarius did not know what he was offering, or that he was attempting a gigantic 'bluff,' or lastly that he really was offering an exchange not flatly derisory; of which three possible suppositions I prefer the last as the likeliest. Nor am I the less inclined to choose it, because these very English historians go on to clear the ground in a like convenient way of the Celtic inhabitants, exterminating them as they exterminated the Romans, with a wave of the hand, quite in the fashion of Mr Podsnap. 'This is un-English: therefore for me it merely ceases to exist.' '_Probable extirpation of the Celtic inhabitants_' jots down Freeman in his margin, and proceeds to write: In short, though the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the end of the sixth century had been as nearly extinguished as a nation could be. The women doubtless would be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is concerned we may feel sure that death, emigration, or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands of our fathers. Upon this passage, if brought to me in an undergraduate essay, I should have much to say. The style, with its abstract nouns ('the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility'), its padding and periphrasis ('there is every reason to believe' ... 'as far as the male sex is concerned we may feel sure') betrays the loose thought. It begins with 'in short' and proceeds to be long-winded. It commits what even schoolboys know to be a solecism by inviting us to consider three 'alternatives'; and what can I say of 'the women doubtless would be largely spared,' save that besides scanning in iambics it says what Freeman never meant and what no-one outside of an Aristophanic comedy could ever suggest? 'The women doubtless would be largely spared'! It reminds me of the young lady in Cornwall who, asked by her vicar if she had been confirmed, admitted blushingly that 'she had reason to believe, partially so.' 'The women doubtless would be largely spared'!--But I thank the Professor for teaching me that phrase, because it tries to convey just what I am driving at. The Jutes, Angles, Saxons, did not extirpate the Britons, whatever you may hold concerning the Romans. For, once again, men do not behave in that way, and certainly will not when a live slave is worth money. Secondly, the very horror with which men spoke, centuries after, of Anderida quite plainly indicates that such a wholesale massacre was exceptional, monstrous. If not exceptional, monstrous, why should this particular slaughter have lingered so ineffaceably in their memories? Finally,--and to be as curt as the question deserves--the Celtic Briton in the island was not exterminated and never came near to being exterminated: but on the contrary, remains equipollent with the Saxon in our blood, and perhaps equipollent with that mysterious race we call Iberian, which came before either and endures in this island to-day, as anyone travelling it with eyes in his head can see. Pict, Dane, Norman, Frisian, Huguenot French--these and others come in. If mixture of blood be a shame, we have purchased at the price of that shame the glory of catholicism; and I know of nothing more false in science or more actively poisonous in politics or in the arts than the assumption that we belong as a race to the Teutonic family. Dane, Norman, Frisian, French Huguenot--they all come in. And will you refuse a hearing when I claim that the Roman came in too? Bethink you how deeply Rome engraved itself on this island and its features. Bethink you that, as human nature is, no conquering race ever lived or could live--even in garrison--among a tributary one without begetting children on it. Bethink you yet further of Freeman's admission that in the wholesale (and quite hypothetical) general massacre 'the women doubtless would be largely spared'; and you advance nearer to my point. I see a people which for four hundred years was permeated by Rome. If you insist on its being a Teutonic people (which I flatly deny) then you have one which _alone of Teutonic peoples_ has inherited the Roman gift of consolidating conquest, of colonising in the wake of its armies; of driving the road, bridging the ford, bringing the lawless under its sense of law. I see that this nation of ours concurrently, when it seeks back to what alone can inspire and glorify these activities, seeks back, not to any supposed native North, but south to the Middle Sea of our civilisation and steadily to Italy, which we understand far more easily than France--though France has helped us times and again. Putting these things together, I retort upon the ethnologists--for I come from the West of England, where we suffer incredible things from them--_'Semper ego auditor tantum?'_ I hazard that the most important thing in our blood is that purple drop of the imperial murex we derive from Rome. You must, of course, take this for nothing more than it pretends to be--a conjecture, a suggestion. I will follow it up with two statements of fact, neither doubtful nor disputable. The first is, that when English poetry awoke, long after the Conquest (or, as I should prefer to put it, after the Crusades) it awoke a new thing; in its vocabulary as much like Anglo-Saxon poetry as ever you will, but in metre, rhythm, lilt--and more, in style, feeling, imaginative play--and yet more again, in knowledge of what it aimed to be, in the essentials, in the qualities that make Poetry Poetry--as different from Anglo-Saxon poetry as cheese is from chalk, and as much more nutritious. Listen to this-- Bytuene Mershe ant Averil When spray biginnith to spring, The lutel foul hath hire wyl On hire lud to synge: Ich libbe in love-longinge For semlokest of alle thynge, He may me blisse bringe, Icham in hire bandoun. An hendy hap ichabbe y-hent, Ichot from hevene it is me sent, From alle wymmen my love is lent, And lyht on Alisoun. Here you have alliteration in plenty; you even have what some hold to be the pattern of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse (though in practice disregarded, may be, as often as not), the chosen initial used twice in the first line and once at least in the second: From alle wymmen my _l_ove is _l_ent, And _l_yht on A_l_isoun. But if a man cannot see a difference infinitely deeper than any similarity between this song of Alison and the old Anglo-Saxon verse--_a difference of nature_--I must despair of his literary sense. What has happened? Well, in Normandy, too, and in another tongue, men are singing much the same thing in the same way: A la fontenelle Qui sort seur l'araine, Trouvai pastorella Qui n'iert pas vilaine... Merci, merci, douce Marote, N'oçiez pas vostre ami doux, and this Norman and the Englishman were singing to a new tune, which was yet an old tune re-set to Europe by the Provence, the Roman Province; by the troubadours--Pons de Capdeuil, Bernard de Ventadour, Bertrand de Born, Pierre Vidal, and the rest, with William of Poitou, William of Poitiers. Read and compare; you will perceive that the note then set persists and has never perished. Take Giraud de Borneil-- Bel companhos, si dormetz o velhatz Non dortmatz plus, qu'el jorn es apropchatz-- and set it beside a lyric of our day, written without a thought of Giraud de Borneil-- Heigh! Brother mine, art a-waking or a-sleeping: Mind'st thou the merry moon a many summers fled? Mind'st thou the green and the dancing and the leaping? Mind'st thou the haycocks and the moon above them creeping?... Or take Bernard de Ventadour's-- Quand erba vertz, e fuelha par E'l flor brotonon per verjan, E'l rossinhols autet e clar Leva sa votz e mov son chan, Joy ai de luy, e joy ai de la flor, Joy ai de me, e de me dons maior. Why, it runs straight off into English verse-- When grass is green and leaves appear With flowers in bud the meads among, And nightingale aloft and clear Lifts up his voice and pricks his song, Joy, joy have I in song and flower, Joy in myself, and in my lady more. And that may be doggerel; yet what is it but It was a lover and his lass, With a hey and a ho and a hey nonino, That o'er the green cornfield did pass In the spring-time, the only pretty ring-time-- or When daffodils begin to peer, With heigh! the doxy over the dale, Why then comes in the sweet o' the year; For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. Nay, flatter the Anglo-Saxon tradition by picking its very best--and I suppose it hard to find better than the much-admired opening of Piers Plowman, in which that tradition shot up like the flame of a dying candle: Bote in a Mayes Morwnynge--on Malverne hulles Me bi-fel a ferly--a Feyrie me thouhte; I was weori of wandringe--and wente me to reste Under a brod banke--bi a Bourne syde, And as I lay and leonede--and lokede on the watres, I slumberde in a slepynge--hit sownede so murie. This is good, solid stuff, no doubt: but tame, inert, if not actually lifeless. As M. Jusserand says of Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, it is like the river Saône--one doubts which way it flows. How tame in comparison with this, for example!-- In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyre foreste To here the foulys song: To se the dere draw to the dale And leve the hilles hee, And shadow hem in the leves grene Under the grene-wode tre. Hit befel on Whitsontide, Erly in a May mornyng, The Son up feyre can shyne, And the briddis mery can syng. 'This is a mery mornyng,' said litell John, 'Be Hym that dyed on tre; A more mery man than I am one Lyves not in Cristianté. 'Pluk up thi hert, my dere mayster,' Litull John can sey, 'And thynk hit is a full fayre tyme In a mornyng of May.' There is no doubting which way _that_ flows! And this vivacity, this new beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the Provençal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke through the hedge of briers and kissed Beauty awake again. You will urge that he wakened Poetry not in England alone but all over Europe, in Dante before our Chaucer, in the trouvères and minnesingers as well as in our ballad-writers. To that I might easily retort, 'So much the better for Europe, and the more of it the merrier, to win their way into the great comity.' But here I put in my second assertion, that we English have had above all nations lying wide of the Mediterranean, the instinct to refresh and renew ourselves at Mediterranean wells; that again and again our writers--our poets especially--have sought them as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. If you accept this assertion, and if you believe as well that our literature, surpassing Rome's, may vie with that of Athens--if you believe that a literature which includes Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley--the Authorised Version of Holy Writ, with Browne, Bunyan, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Arnold, Newman--has entered the circle to take its seat with the first-- why then, heartily believing this with you, I leave you to find some better explanation than mine if you can. But what I content myself with asserting here you can scarcely deny. Chaucer's initial and enormous debt to Dante and Boccaccio stands in as little dispute as Dunbar's to Chaucer. On that favourite poet of mine, Sir Thomas Wyat, I descanted in a former lecture. He is one of your glories here, having entered St. John's College at the age of twelve (which must have been precocious even for those days.) Anthony Wood asserts that after finishing his course here, he proceeded to Cardinal Wolsey's new College at Oxford; but, as Christchurch was not founded until 1524, and Wyat, still precocious, had married a wife two years before that, the statement (to quote Dr Courthope) 'seems no better founded than many others advanced by that patriotic but not very scrupulous author.' It is more to the point that he went travelling, and brought home from France, Italy, afterwards Spain--always from Latin altars--the flame of lyrical poetry to England; the flame of the Petrarchists, caught from the Troubadours, clarified (so to speak) by the salt of humane letters. On what our Elizabethan literature owes to the Classical revival hundreds of volumes have been written and hundreds more will be written; I will but remind you of what Spencer talked about with Gabriel Harvey, what Daniel disputed with Campion; that Marlowe tried to re-incarnate Machiavelli, that Jonson was a sworn Latinist and the 'tribe of Ben' a classical tribe; while, as for Shakespeare, go and reckon the proportion of Italian and Roman names in his _dramatis personæ_. Of Donne's debt to France, Italy, Rome, Greece, you may read much in Professor Grierson's great edition, and I daresay Professor Grierson would be the first to allow that all has not yet been computed. You know how Milton prepared himself to be a poet. Have you realised that, in those somewhat strangely constructed sonnets of his, Milton was deliberately modelling upon the "Horatian Ode," as his confrère, Andrew Marvell, was avowedly attempting the like in his famous Horation Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland; so that if Cromwell had returned (like Mr Quilp), walked in and caught his pair of Latin Secretaries scribbling verse, one at either end of the office table, both might colourably have pleaded that they were, after all, writing Latin. Waller's task in poetry was to labour true classical polish where Cowley laboured sham-classical form. Put together Dryden's various Prefaces and you will find them one solid monument to his classical faith. Of Pope, Gray, Collins, you will not ask me to speak. What is salt in Cowper you can taste only when you have detected that by a stroke of madness he missed, or barely missed, being our true English Horace, that almost more nearly than the rest he hit what the rest had been seeking. Then, of the 'romantic revival'-- enemy of false classicism, not of classicism--bethink you what, in his few great years, Wordsworth owed directly to France of the early Revolution; what Keats drew forth out of Lemprière: and again bethink you how Tennyson wrought upon Theocritus, Virgil, Catullus; upon what Arnold constantly shaped his verse; how Browning returned ever upon Italy to inspire his best and correct his worse. Of Anglo-Saxon prose I know little indeed, but enough of the world to feel reasonably sure that if it contained any single masterpiece--or anything that could be paraded as a masterpiece--we should have heard enough about it long before now. It was invented by King Alfred for excellent political reasons; but, like other ready-made political inventions in this country, it refused to thrive. I think it can be demonstrated, that the true line of intellectual descent in prose lies through Bede (who wrote in Latin, the 'universal language'), and not through the Blickling Homilies, or, Ælfric, or the Saxon Chronicle. And I am sure that Freeman is perversely wrong when he laments as a 'great mistake' that the first Christian missionaries from Rome did not teach their converts to pray and give praise in the vernacular. The vernacular being what it was, these men did better to teach the religion of the civilised world--_orbis terrarum_--in the language of the civilised world. I am not thinking of its efficiency for spreading the faith; but neither is Freeman; and, for that, we must allow these old missionaries to have known their own business. I am thinking only of how this 'great mistake' affected our literature; and if you will read Professor Saintsbury's "History of English Prose Rhythm" (pioneer work, which yet wonderfully succeeds in illustrating what our prose-writers from time to time were trying to do); if you will study the Psalms in the Authorised Version; if you will consider what Milton, Clarendon, Sir Thomas Browne, were aiming at; what Addison, Gibbon, Johnson; what Landor, Thackeray, Newman, Arnold, Pater; I doubt not your rising from the perusal convinced that our nation, in this storehouse of Latin to refresh and replenish its most sacred thoughts, has enjoyed a continuous blessing: that the Latin of the Vulgate and the Offices has been a background giving depth and, as the painters say, 'value' to nine-tenths of our serious writing. And now, since this and the previous lecture run something counter to a great deal of that teaching in English Literature which nowadays passes most acceptably, let me avoid offence, so far as may be, by defining one or two things I am _not_ trying to do. I am not persuading you to despise your linguistic descent. English is English--our language; and all its history to be venerated by us. I am not persuading you to despise linguistic study. _All_ learning is venerable. I am not persuading you to behave like Ascham, and turn English prose into pedantic Latin; nor would I have you doubt that in the set quarrel between Campion, who wished to divert English verse into strict classical channels, and Daniel, who vindicated our free English way (derived from Latin through the Provençal), Daniel was on the whole, right, Campion on the whole, wrong: though I believe that both ways yet lie open, and we may learn, if we study them intelligently, a hundred things from the old classical metres. I do not ask you to forget what there is of the Northmen in your blood. If I desired this, I could not worship William Morris as I do, among the later poets. I do not ask you to doubt that the barbarian invaders from the north, with their myths and legends, brought new and most necessary blood of imagination into the literary material--for the time almost exhausted--of Greece and Rome. Nevertheless, I do contend that when Britain (or, if you prefer it, Sleswick) When Sleswick first at Heaven's command Arose from out the azure main, she differed from Aphrodite, that other foam-born, in sundry important features of ear, of lip, of eye. Lastly, if vehement assertions on the one side have driven me into too vehement dissent on the other, I crave pardon; not for the dissent but for the vehemence, as sinning against the very principle I would hold up to your admiration--the old Greek principle of avoiding excess. But I _do_ commend the patient study of Greek and Latin authors--in the original or in translation--to all of you who would write English; and for three reasons. (1) In the first place they will correct your insularity of mind; or, rather, will teach you to forget it. The Anglo-Saxon, it has been noted, ever left an empty space around his houses; and that, no doubt, is good for a house. It is not so good for the mind. (2) Secondly, we have a tribal habit, confirmed by Protestant meditation upon a Hebraic religion, of confining our literary enjoyment to the written word and frowning down the drama, the song, the dance. A fairly attentive study of modern lyrical verse has persuaded me that this exclusiveness may be carried too far, and threatens to be deadening. 'I will sing and give praise,' says the Scripture, 'with the best member that I have'--meaning the tongue. But the old Greek was an 'all-round man' as we say. He sought to praise and give thanks with all his members, and to tune each to perfection. I think his way worth your considering. (3) Lastly, and chiefly, I commend these classical authors to you because they, in the European civilisation which we all inherit, conserve the norm of literature; the steady grip on the essential; the clean outline at which in verse or in prose--in epic, drama, history, or philosophical treatise--a writer should aim. So sure am I of this, and of its importance to those who think of writing, that were this University to limit me to three texts on which to preach English Literature to you, I should choose the Bible in our Authorised Version, Shakespeare, and Homer (though it were but in a prose translation). Two of these lie outside my marked province. Only one of them finds a place in your English school. But Homer, who comes neither within my map, nor within the ambit of the Tripos, would--because he most evidently holds the norm, the essence, the secret of all--rank first of the three for my purpose. [Footnote 1: From "A History of Oxfordshire," by Mr J. Meade Falkner, author of Murray's excellent Handbook of Oxfordshire.] LECTURE X. ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES (I) Wednesday, November 19 All lectures are too long. Towards the close of my last, Gentlemen, I let fall a sentence which, heard by you in a moment of exhausted or languid interest, has since, like enough, escaped your memory even if it earned passing attention. So let me repeat it, for a fresh start. Having quoted to you the words of our Holy Writ, 'I will sing and give praise with the best member that I have,' I added 'But the old Greek was an "all-round" man; he sought to praise and give thanks with all his members, and to tune each to perfection.' Now a great many instructive lectures might be written on that text: nevertheless you may think it a strange one, and obscure, for the discourse on 'English Literature in our Universities' which, according to promise, I must now attempt. The term 'an all-round man' may easily mislead you unless you take it with the rest of the sentence and particularly with the words 'praise and give thanks.' Praise whom? Give thanks to whom? To _whom_ did our Greek train all his members to render adoration? Why, to the gods--his gods: to Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite; and from them down to the lesser guardian deities of the hearth, the field, the farmstead. We modern men suffer a double temptation to misunderstand, by belittling, the reverence in which Hellas and Rome held their gods. To start with, our religion has superseded theirs. We approach the Olympians with no bent towards venerating them; with minds easy, detached, to which a great deal of their theology--the amativeness of Zeus for example--must needs seem broadly comic, and a great deal of it not only comic but childish. We are encouraged in this, moreover, when we read such writers as Aristophanes and Lucian, and observe how they poked fun at the gods. We assume--so modern he seems--Aristophanes' attitude towards his immortals to be ours; that when, for example, Prometheus walks on to the stage under an umbrella, to hide himself from the gaze of all-seeing Zeus, the Athenian audience laughed just as we laugh who have read Voltaire. Believe me, they laughed quite differently; believe me, Aristophanes and Voltaire had remarkably different minds and worked on utterly different backgrounds. Believe me, you will understand Aristophanes only less than you will understand Æschylus himself if you confuse Aristophanes' mockery of Olympus with modern mockery. But, if you will not take my word for it, let me quote what Professor Gilbert Murray said, the other day, speaking before the English Association on Greek poetry, how constantly connected it is with religion: 'All thoughts, all passions, all desires' ... In our Art it is true, no doubt, that they are 'the ministers of love'; in Greek they are as a whole the ministers of religion, and this is what in a curious degree makes Greek poetry matter, makes it relevant. There is a sense in each song of a relation to the whole of things, and it was apt to be expressed with the whole body, or, one may say, the whole being.[1] To a Greek, in short, his gods mattered enormously; and to a Roman. To a Roman they continued to matter enormously, down to the end. Do you remember that tessellated pavement with its emblems and images of the younger gods? and how I told you that a Roman general on foreign service would carry the little cubes in panniers on mule-back, to be laid down for his feet at the next camping place? Will you suggest that he did this because they were pretty? You know that practical men--conquering generals--don't behave in that way. He did it because they were sacred; because, like most practical men, he was religious, and his gods must go with him. They filled his literature: for why? He believed himself to be sprung from their loins. Where would Latin literature be, for example, if you could cut Venus out of it? Consider Lucretius' grand invocation: Æneadum genetrix, hominum divumque voluptas, Alma Venus! Consider the part Virgil makes her play as moving spirit of his whole great poem. So follow her down to the days of the later Empire and open the "Pervigilium Veneris" and discover her, under the name of Dione, still the eternal Aphrodite sprung from the foam amid the churning hooves of the sea-horses--_inter et bipedes equos_:-- Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep, 'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stampeding the dolphins as sheep. Lo! arose of that bridal Dione, rainbow'd and besprent of its dew! _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew!_ Her favour it was fill'd the sails of the Trojan for Latium bound, Her favour that won her Æneas a bride on Laurentian ground, And anon from the cloister inveigled the Virgin, the Vestal, to Mars; As her wit by the wild Sabine rape recreated her Rome for its wars With the Ramnes, Quirites, together ancestrally proud as they drew From Romulus down to our Cæsar--last, best of that blood, of that thew. _Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew!_ 'Last, best of that blood'--her blood, _fusa Paphies de cruore_, and the blood of Teucer, _revocato a sanguine Teucri_, 'of that thew'--the thew of Tros and of Mars. Of these and no less than these our Roman believed himself the son and inheritor. If we grasp this, that the old literature was packed with the old religion, and not only packed with it but permeated by it, we have within our ten fingers the secret of the 'Dark Ages,' the real reason why the Christian Fathers fought down literature and almost prevailed to the point of stamping it out. They hated it, not as literature; or at any rate, not to begin with; nor, to begin with, because it happened to be voluptuous and they austere: but they hated it because it held in its very texture, not to be separated, a religion over which they had hardly triumphed, a religion actively inimical to that of Christ, inimical to truth; so that for the sake of truth and in the name of Christ they had to fight it, accepting no compromise, yielding no quarter, foreseeing no issue save that one of the twain--Jupiter or Christ, Deus Optimus Maximus or the carpenter's son of Nazareth--must go under. It all ended in compromise, to be sure; as all struggles must between adversaries so tremendous. To-day, in Dr Smith's "Classical Dictionary," Origen rubs shoulders with Orpheus and Orcus; Tertullian reposes cheek by jowl with Terpsichore. But we are not concerned, here, with what happened in the end. We are concerned with what these forthright Christian fighters had in their minds--to trample out the old literature _because_ of the false religion. Milton understood this, and was thinking of it when he wrote of the effect of Christ's Nativity-- The Oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No mighty trance, or breathèd spell Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell. The lonely mountains o'er, And the resounding shore, A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament; From haunted spring, and dale Edg'd with poplar pale, The parting Genius is with sighing sent; With flower-inwoven tresses torn The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn. as Swinburne understands and expresses it in his "Hymn to Proserpine," supposed to be chanted by a Roman of the 'old profession' on the morrow of Constantine's proclaiming the Christian faith-- O Gods dethroned and deceased, cast forth, wiped out in a day! From your wrath is the world released, redeem'd from your chains, men say. New Gods are crown'd in the city; their flowers have broken your rods; They are merciful, clothed with pity, the young compassionate Gods. But for me their new device is barren, the days are bare; Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were... Wilt thou yet take all, Galilean? but these thou shalt not take, The laurel, the palms and the paean, the breasts of the nymphs in the brake; Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death. 'Thou hast conquer'd, O pale Galilean!' However the struggle might sway in this or that other part of the field, Literature had to be beaten to her knees, and still beaten flat until the breath left her body. You will not be surprised that the heavy hand of these Christian fathers fell first upon the Theatre: for the actor in Rome was by legal definition an 'infamous' man, even as in England until the other day he was by legal definition a vagabond and liable to whipping. The policy of religious reformers has ever been to close the theatres, as our Puritans did in 1642; and a recent pronouncement by the Bishop of Kensington would seem to show that the instinct survives to this day. Queen Elizabeth--like her brother, King Edward VI--signalized the opening of a new reign by inhibiting stage-plays; and I invite you to share with me the pensive speculation, 'How much of English Literature, had she not relented, would exist to-day for a King Edward VII Professor to talk about?' Certainly the works of Shakespeare would not; and that seems to me a thought so impressive as to deserve the attention of Bishops as well as of Kings. Apart from this instinct the Christian Fathers, it would appear, had plenty of provocation. For the actors, who had jested with the Old Religion on a ground of accepted understanding--much as a good husband (if you will permit the simile) may gently tease his wife, not loving her one whit the less, taught by affection to play without offending--had mocked at the New Religion in a very different way: savagely, as enemies, holding up to ridicule the Church's most sacred mysteries. Tertullian, in an uncompromising treatise "De Spectaculis," denounces stage-plays root and branch; tells of a demon who entered into a woman in a theatre and on being exorcised pleaded that the mistake might well be excused, since he had found her in his own demesne. Christians should avoid these shows and await the greatest _spectaculum_ of all--the Last Judgment. 'Then,' he promises genially, 'will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose lamentations will be more poignant, for their proper pain. Then will the comedians turn and twist in capers rendered nimbler than ever by the sting of the fire that is not quenched.' By 400 A.D. Augustine cries triumphantly that the theatres are falling--the very walls of them tumbling--throughout the Empire. _'Per omnes paene civitates cadunt theatra ... cadunt et fora vel moenia in quibus demonia colebantur'_; the very walls within which these devilments were practised. But the fury is unabated and goes on stamping down the embers. In the eighth century our own Alcuin (as the school of Freeman would affectionately call him) is no less fierce. All plays are anathema to him, and he even disapproves of dancing bears--though not, it would appear, of bad puns: _'nec tibi sit ursorum saltantium cura, sed clericorum psallentium.'_[2] The banning of _all_ literature you will find harder to understand; nay impossible, I believe, unless you accept the explanation I gave you. Yet there it is, an historical fact. 'What hath it profited posterity--_quid posteritas emolumenti tulit,_' wrote Sulpicius Severus, about 400 A.D., 'to read of Hector's fighting or Socrates' philosophising?' Pope Gregory the Great--St Gregory, who sent us the Roman missionaries--made no bones about it at all. '_Quoniam non cognovi literaturam,_' he quoted approvingly from the 70th Psalm, '_introibo in potentias Domini_': 'Because I know nothing of literature I shall enter into the strength of the Lord.' 'The praises of Christ cannot be uttered in the same tongue as those of Jove,' writes this same Gregory to Desiderius, Archbishop of Vienne, who had been rash enough to introduce some of his young men to the ancient authors, with no worse purpose than to teach them a little grammar. Yet no one was prouder than this Pope of the historical Rome which he had inherited. Alcuin, again, forbade the reading of Virgil in the monastery over which he presided: it would sully his disciples' imagination. 'How is this, _Virgilian!_' he cried out upon one taken in the damnable act,--'that without my knowledge and against my order thou hast taken to studying Virgil?' To put a stop to this unhallowed indulgence the clergy solemnly taught that Virgil was a wizard. To us, long used as we are to the innocent gaieties of the Classical Tripos, these measures to discourage the study of Virgil may appear drastic, as the mental attitude of Gregory and Alcuin towards the Latin hexameter (so closely resembling that of Byron towards the waltz) not far removed from foolishness. But there you have in its quiddity the mediaeval mind: and the point I now put to you is, that _out of this soil our Universities grew._ We, who claim Oxford and Cambridge for our nursing mothers, have of all men least excuse to forget it. A man of Leyden, of Louvain, of Liepzig, of Berlin, may be pardoned that he passes it by. More than a hundred years ago Salamanca had the most of her stones torn down to make defences against Wellington's cannon. Paris, greatest of all, has kept her renown; but you shall search the slums of the Latin Quarter in vain for the sixty or seventy Colleges that, before the close of the fifteenth century, had arisen to adorn her, the intellectual Queen of Europe. In Bologna, the ancient and stately, almost alone among the continental Universities, survive a few relics of the old collegiate system--the College of Spain, harbouring some five or six students, and a little house founded for Flemings in 1650: and in Bologna the system never attained to real importance. But in England where, great as London is, the national mind has always harked to the country for the graces of life, so that we seem by instinct to see it as only desirable in a green setting, our Universities, planted by the same instinct on lawns watered by pastoral streams, have suffered so little and received as much from the years that now we can hardly conceive of Oxford or Cambridge as ruined save by 'the unimaginable touch of Time.' Of all the secular Colleges bequeathed to Oxford, she has lost not one; while Cambridge (I believe) has parted only with Cavendish. Some have been subsumed into newer foundations; but always the process has been one of merging, of blending, of justifying the new bottle by the old wine. The vengeance of civil war--always very much of a family affair in England--has dealt tenderly with Oxford and Cambridge; the more calculating malignity of Royal Commissions not harshly on the whole. University reformers may accuse both Oxford and Cambridge of Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade: but with those sour men we have nothing here to do: like Isaak Walton's milkmaid we will not 'load our minds with any fears of many things that will never be.' But, as they stand, Oxford and Cambridge--so amazingly alike while they play at differences, and both so amazingly unlike anything else in the wide world--do by a hundred daily reminders connect us with the Middle Age, or, if you prefer Arnold's phrase, whisper its lost enchantments. The cloister, the grave grace in hall, the chapel bell, the men hurrying into their surplices or to lectures 'with the wind in their gowns,' the staircase, the nest of chambers within the oak--all these softly reverberate over our life here, as from belfries, the mediaeval mind. And that mediaeval mind actively hated (of partial acquaintance or by anticipation) almost everything we now study! Between it and us, except these memorials, nothing survives to-day but the dreadful temptation to learn, the dreadful instinct in men, as they grow older and wiser, to trust learning after all and endow it--that, and the confidence of a steady stream of youth. The Universities, then, sprang out of mediaeval life, out of the mediaeval mind; and the mediaeval mind had for centuries been taught to abominate literature. I would not exaggerate or darken the 'Dark Ages' for you by throwing too much bitumen into the picture. I know that at the beginning there had been a school of Origen which advocated the study of Greek poetry and philosophy, as well as the school of Tertullian which condemned it. There is evidence that the 'humanities' were cultivated here and there and after a fashion behind Gregory's august back. I grant that, while in Alcuin's cloister (and Alcuin, remember, became a sort of Imperial Director of Studies in Charlemagne's court) the wretched monk who loved Virgil had to study him with an illicit candle, to copy him with numbed fingers in a corner of the bitter-cold cloister, on the other hand many beautiful manuscripts preserved to us bear witness of cloisters where literature was tolerated if not officially honoured. I would not have you so uncritical as to blame the Church or its clergy for what happened; as I would have you remember that if the Church killed literature, she--and, one may say, she alone--kept it alive. Yet, and after all these reservations, it remains true that Literature had gone down disastrously. Even philosophy, unless you count the pale work of Boethius--_real_ philosophy had so nearly perished that men possessed no more of Aristotle than a fragment of his Logic, and '_the_ Philosopher' had to creep back into Western Europe through translations from the Arabic! But this is the point I wish to make clear.--Philosophy came back in the great intellectual revival of the twelfth century; Literature did not. Literature's hour had not come. Men had to catch up on a dreadful leeway of ignorance. The form did not matter as yet: they wanted science--to know. I should say, rather, that as yet form _seemed_ not to matter: for in fact form always matters: the personal always matters: and you cannot explain the vast crowds Abelard drew to Paris save by the fascination in the man, the fire communicated by the living voice. Moreover (as in a previous lecture I tried to prove) you cannot divorce accurate thought from accurate speech; but for accuracy, even for hair-splitting accuracy, of speech the Universities had the definitions of the Schoolmen. In literature they had yet to discover a concern. Literature was a thing of the past, inanimate. Nowhere in Europe could it be felt even to breathe. To borrow a beautiful phrase of Wordsworth's, men numbered it among 'things silently gone out of mind or things violently destroyed.' Nobody quite knows how these Universities began. Least of all can anybody tell how Oxford and Cambridge began. In Bede, for instance--that is, in England as the eighth century opens--we see scholarship already moving towards the _thing_, treading with sure instinct towards the light. Though a hundred historians have quoted it, I doubt if a feeling man who loves scholarship can read the famous letter of Cuthbert describing Bede's end and not come nigh to tears. And Bede's story contains no less wonder than beauty, when you consider how the fame of this holy and humble man of heart, who never left his cloisters at Jarrow, spread over Europe, so that, though it sound incredible, our Northumbria narrowly missed in its day to become the pole-star of Western culture. But he was a disinterested genius, and his pupil, Alcuin, a pushing dull man and a born reactionary; so that, while Alcuin scored the personal success and went off to teach in the court of Charlemagne, the great chance was lost. No one knows when the great Universities were founded, or precisely out of what schools they grew; and you may derive amusement from the historians when they start to explain how Oxford and Cambridge in particular came to be chosen for sites. My own conjecture, that they were chosen for the extraordinary salubrity of their climates, has met (I regret to say) with derision, and may be set down to the caprice of one who ever inclines to think the weather good where he is happy. Our own learned historian, indeed--Mr J. Bass Mullinger--devotes some closely reasoned pages to proving that Cambridge was chosen as the unlikeliest spot in the world, and is driven to quote the learned Poggio's opinion that the unhealthiness of a locality recommended it as a place of education for youth; as Plato, knowing naught of Christianity, but gifted with a soul naturally Christian, '_had selected a noisome spot for his Academe, in order that the mind might be strengthened by the weakness of the body._' So difficult still it is for the modern mind to interpret the mediaeval! Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by chance of the wind. It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less fortuitous. The schools of Remigius and of William of Champeaux (we will say) have given Paris a certain prestige, when Abelard, a pupil of William's, springs into fame and draws a horde of students from all over Europe to sit at his feet. These 'nations' of young men have to be organised, brought under some sort of discipline, if only to make the citizens' lives endurable: and lo! the thing is done. In like manner Irnerius at Bologna, Vacarius at Oxford, and at Cambridge some innominate teacher, 'of importance,' as Browning would put it, 'in his day,' possibly set the ball rolling; or again it is suggested that a body of scholars dissatisfied with Oxford (such dissatisfaction has been known even in historical times) migrated hither--a laborious journey, even nowadays--and that so A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far! These young or nascent bodies had a trick of breaking away after this fashion. For reasons no longer obvious they hankered specially towards Stamford or Northampton. Until quite recently, within living memory, all candidates for a Mastership of Arts at Oxford had to promise never to lecture at Stamford. A flood here in 1520, which swept away Garret Hostel Bridge, put Cambridge in like mind and started a prophecy (to which you may find allusion in the fourth book of "The Faerie Queene") that both Universities would meet in the end, and kiss, at Stamford. Each in turn broke away for Northampton, and the worthy Fuller (a Northamptonshire man) has recorded his wonder that so eligible a spot was not finally chosen. I have mentioned a flood: but the immediate causes of the migrations or attempted migrations were not usually respectable enough to rank with any such act of God. They started as a rule with some Town and Gown row, or some bloody affray between scholars of the North and of the South. Without diminishing your sense of the real fervour for learning which drew young men from the remotest parts of Europe to these centres, but having for my immediate object to make clear to you that, whatever these young men sought, it was not literature, I wish you first to have in your minds a vivid picture of what a University town was like, and what its students were like during the greater part of the 12th and 13th centuries; that is to say, after the first enthusiasm had died down, when Oxford or Cambridge had organised itself into a _Studium Generale_, or _Universitas_ (which, of course, has nothing to do with Universality, whether of teaching or of frequenting, but simply means a Society. _Universitas_ = all of us). To begin with, the town was of wood, often on fire in places; with the alleviation of frequent winter floods, which in return, in the words of a modern poet, would 'leave a lot of little things behind them.' It requires but a small effort of the imagination in Cambridge to picture the streets as narrow, dark, almost meeting overhead in gables out of which the house slops would be discharged after casual warning down into a central gutter. That these narrow streets were populous with students remains certain, however much discount we allow on contemporary bills of reckoning. And the crowd was noisy. Men have always been ingenious in their ways of celebrating academical success. Pythagoras, for example, sacrificed an ox on solving the theorem numbered 47 in the first book of Euclid; and even to-day a Professor in his solitary lodge may be encouraged to believe now and then, from certain evidences in the sky, that the spirit of Pythagoras is not dead but translated. But of the mediaeval University the lawlessness, though well attested, can scarcely be conceived. When in the streets 'nation' drew the knife upon 'nation,' 'town' upon 'gown'; when the city bell started to answer the clang of St. Mary's; horrible deeds were done. I pass over massacres, tumults such as the famous one of St Scholastica's Day at Oxford, and choose one at a decent distance (yet entirely typical) exhumed from the annals of the University of Toulouse, in the year 1332. In that year Five brothers of the noble family de la Penne lived together in a Hospicium at Toulouse as students of the Civil and Canon Law. One of them was Provost of a Monastery, another Archdeacon of Albi, another an Archpriest, another Canon of Toledo. A bastard son of their father, named Peter, lived with them as squire to the Canon. On Easter Day, Peter, with another squire of the household named Aimery Béranger and other students, having dined at a tavern, were dancing with women, singing, shouting, and beating 'metallic vessels and iron culinary instruments' in the street before their masters' house. The Provost and the Archpriest were sympathetically watching the jovial scene from a window, until it was disturbed by the appearance of a Capitoul and his officers, who summoned some of the party to surrender the prohibited arms which they were wearing. '_Ben Senhor, non fassat_' was the impudent reply. The Capitoul attempted to arrest one of the offenders; whereupon the ecclesiastical party made a combined attack upon the official. Aimery Béranger struck him in the face with a poignard, cutting off his nose and part of his chin and lips, and knocking out or breaking no less than eleven teeth. The surgeons deposed that if he recovered (he eventually did recover) he would never be able to speak intelligibly. One of the watch was killed outright by Peter de la Penne. That night the murderer slept, just as if nothing had happened, in the house of his ecclesiastical masters. The whole household, masters and servants alike, were, however, surprised by the other Capitouls and a crowd of 200 citizens, and led off to prison, and the house is alleged to have been pillaged. The Archbishop's Official demanded their surrender. In the case of the superior ecclesiastics this, after a short delay, was granted. But Aimery, who dressed like a layman in 'divided and striped clothes' and wore a long beard, they refused to treat as a clerk, though it was afterwards alleged that the tonsure was plainly discernible upon his head until it was shaved by order of the Capitouls. Aimery was put to the torture, admitted his crime, and was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out by hanging, after he had had his hand cut off on the scene of the crime, and been dragged by horses to the place of execution. The Capitouls were then excommunicated by the Official, and the ecclesiastical side of the quarrel was eventually transferred to the Roman Court. Before the Parlement of Paris the University complained of the violation of the Royal privilege exempting scholars' servants from the ordinary tribunals. The Capitouls were imprisoned, and after long litigation sentenced to pay enormous damages to the ruffian's family and erect a chapel for the good of his soul. The city was condemned for a time to the forfeiture of all its privileges. The body was cut down from the gibbet on which it had been hanging for three years, and accorded a solemn funeral. Four Capitouls bore the pall, and all fathers of families were required to walk in the procession. When they came to the Schools, the citizens solemnly begged pardon of the University, and the cortège was joined by 3000 scholars. Finally, it cost the city 15,000 livres tournois or more to regain their civic privileges.[3] The late Mr Cecil Rhodes once summarized all Fellows of Colleges as children in matters of finance. Be that as it may, you will find nothing more constant in history than the talent of the Universities for extracting money or money's worth out of a riot. Time (I speak as a parent) has scarcely blunted that faculty; and still--since where young men congregate, noise there must be--our Universities like Wordsworth's Happy Warrior turn their necessity to glorious gain. These were the excesses of young 'bloods,' and their servants: but with them mingled scholars not less ferocious in their habits because almost desperately poor. You all know, I dare say, that very poor scholars would be granted licences to beg by the Chancellor. The sleeve of this gown in which I address you represents the purse or pocket of a Master of Arts, and may hint to you by its amplitude how many crusts he was prepared to receive from the charitable. Now, choosing to ignore (because it has been challenged as overpainted) a picture of penury endured by the scholars of St John's College in this University, let me tell you two stories, one well attested, the other fiction if you will, but both agreeable as testifying to the spirit of youth which, ever blowing upon their sacred embers, has kept Oxford and Cambridge perennially alive. My first is of three scholars so poor that they possessed but one 'cappa' and gown between them. They took it in turns therefore, and when one went to lecture the other two kept to their lodgings. I invite you even to reflect on the joy of the lucky one, in a winter lecture room, dark, with unglazed windows, as he listened and shuffled his feet for warmth in the straw of the floor. [No one, by the way, can understand the incessant harping of our early poets upon May-time and the return of summer until he has pictured to himself the dark and cold discomfort of a Middle-English winter.] These three poor scholars fed habitually on bread, with soup and a little wine, tasting meat only on Sundays and feasts of the Church. Yet one of them, Richard of Chichester, who lived to become a saint, _saepe retulit quod nunquam in vita sua tam jucundam, tam delectabilem duxerat vitam_--that never had he lived so jollily, so delectably. That is youth, youth blessed by friendship. Now for my second story, which is also of youth and friendship.-- Two poor scholars, who had with pains become Masters of Arts and saved their pence to purchase the coveted garb, on the afternoon of their admission took a country walk in it, together flaunting their new finery. But, the day being gusty, on their return across the bridge, a puff of wind caught the _biretta_ of one and blew it into the river. The loss was irrecoverable, since neither could swim. The poor fellow looked at his friend. His friend looked at him. 'Between us two,' he said, 'it is all or naught,' and cast his own cap to float and sink with the other down stream. You will never begin to understand literature until you understand something of life. These young men, your forerunners, understood something of life while as yet completely careless of literature. After the impulse of Abelard and others had died down, the mass of students betook themselves to the Universities, no doubt, for quite ordinary, mercenary reasons. The University led to the Church, and the Church, in England at any rate, was the door to professional life. Nearly all the civil servants of the Crown--I am here quoting freely--the diplomatists, the secretaries or advisers of great nobles, the physicians, the architects, at one time the secular law-givers, all through the Middle Ages the then large tribe of ecclesiastical lawyers, were ecclesiastics.... Clerkship did not necessarily involve even minor orders. But as it was cheaper to a King or a Bishop or a temporal magnate to reward his physician, his legal adviser, his secretary, or his agent by a Canonry or a Rectory than by large salaries, the average student of Paris or Oxford or Cambridge looked toward the Church as the 'main chance' as we say, and small blame to him! He never at any rate looked towards Literature: nor did the Universities, wise in their generation, encourage him to do anything of the sort. You may realise, Gentlemen, how tardily, even in later and more enlightened times, the study of Literature has crept its way into official Cambridge, if you will take down your "University Calendar" and study the list of Professorships there set forth in order of foundation. It begins in 1502 with the Lady Margaret's Chair of Divinity, founded by the mother of Henry VII. Five Regius Professorships follow: of Divinity, Civil Law, Physic, Hebrew, Greek, all of 1540. So Greek comes in upon the flush of the Renaissance; and the Calendar bravely, yet not committing itself to a date, heads with Erasmus the noble roll which concludes (as may it long conclude) with Henry Jackson. But Greek comes in last of the five. Close on a hundred years elapse before the foundation of the next chair--it is of Arabic; and more than a hundred before we arrive at Mathematics. So Sir William Hamilton was not without historical excuse when he declared the study of Mathematics to be no part of the business of this University! Then follow Moral Philosophy (1683), Music (1684), Chemistry (1702), Astronomy (1704), Anatomy (1707), Modern History and more Arabic, with Botany (1724), Geology (1727), closely followed by Mr Hulse's Christian Advocate, more Astronomy (1749), more Divinity (1777), Experimental Philosophy (1783): then in the nineteenth century more Law, more Medicine, Mineralogy, Archaeology, Political Economy, Pure Mathematics, Comparative Anatomy, Sanskrit and yet again more Law, before we arrive in 1869 at a Chair of Latin. Faint yet pursuing, we have yet to pass chairs of Fine Art (belated), Experimental Physics, Applied Mechanics, Anglo-Saxon, Animal Morphology, Surgery, Physiology, Pathology, Ecclesiastical History, Chinese, more Divinity, Mental Philosophy, Ancient History, Agriculture, Biology, Agricultural Botany, more Biology, Astrophysics, and German, before arriving in 1910 at a Chair of English Literature which by this time I have not breath to defend. The enumeration has, I hope, been instructive. If it has also plunged you in gloom, to that atmosphere (as the clock warns me) for a fortnight I must leave you: with a promise, however, in another lecture to cheer you, if it may be, with some broken gleams of hope. [Footnote 1: "What English Poetry may still learn from Greek": a paper read before the English Association on Nov. 17, 1911.] [Footnote 2: See Mr E. K. Chambers' "Mediaeval Stage", Dr Courthope's "History of English Poetry," and Professor W. P. Ker's "The Dark Ages".] [Footnote 3: Rashdall, "The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages", vol. ii, p. 684, from documents printed in Fournier's collection.] LECTURE XI. ENGLISH LITERATURE IN OUR UNIVERSITIES nglish Literature in Our Universities (II) Wednesday, December 3 We broke off, Gentlemen, upon the somewhat painful conclusion that our Universities were not founded for the study of literature, and tardily admitted it. The dates of our three literary chairs in Cambridge--I speak of our Western literature only, and omit Arabic, Sanskrit, and Chinese--clenched that conclusion for us. Greek in 1540, Latin not until 1869, English but three years ago--from the lesson of these intervals there is no getting away. Now I do not propose to dwell on the Renaissance and how Greek came in: for a number of writers in our time have been busy with the Renaissance, and have--I was going to say 'over-written the subject,' but no--it is better to say that they have focussed the period so as to distort the general perspective at the cost of other periods which have earned less attention; the twelfth century, for example. At any rate their efforts, with the amount they claim of your reading, absolve me from doing more than remind you that the Renaissance brought in the study of Greek, and Greek necessarily brought in the study of literature: since no man can read what the Greeks wrote and not have his eyes unsealed to what I have called a norm of human expression; a guide to conduct, a standard to correct our efforts, whether in poetry, or in philosophy, or in art. For the rest, I need only quote to you Gibbon's magnificent saying, that the Greek language gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics. [May I add, in parenthesis, that, while no believer in compulsory Greek, holding, indeed, that you can hardly reconcile learning with compulsion, and still more hardly force them to be compatibles, I subscribe with all my heart to Bagehot's shrewd saying, 'while a knowledge of Greek and Latin is not necessary to a writer of English, he should at least have a firm conviction that those two languages existed.'] But, assuming you to know something of the Renaissance, and how it brought Greek into Oxford and Cambridge, I find that in the course of the argument two things fall to be said, and both to be said with some emphasis. In the first place, without officially acknowledging their native tongue or its literature, our two Universities had no sooner acquired Greek than their members became immensely interested in English. Take, for one witness out of many, Gabriel Harvey, Fellow of Pembroke Hall. His letters to Edmund Spenser have been preserved, as you know. Now Gabriel Harvey was a man whom few will praise, and very few could have loved. Few will quarrel with Dr Courthope's description of him as 'a person of considerable intellectual force, but intolerably arrogant and conceited, and with a taste vitiated by all the affectations of Italian humanism,' or deny that 'his tone in his published correspondence with Spenser is that of an intellectual bully.'[1] None will refuse him the title of fool for attempting to mislead Spenser into writing hexameters. But all you can urge against Gabriel Harvey, on this count or that or the other, but accumulates proof that this donnish man was all the while giving thought--giving even ferocious thought--to the business of making an English Literature. Let me adduce more pleasing evidence. At or about Christmas, in the year 1597, there was enacted here in Cambridge, in the hall of St John's College, a play called "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus," a skittish work, having for subject the 'discontent of scholars'; the misery attending those who, unsupported by a private purse, would follow after Apollo and the Nine. No one knows the author's name: but he had a wit which has kept something of its salt to this day, and in Christmas, 1597, it took Cambridge by storm. The public demanded a sequel, and "The Return from Parnassus" made its appearance on the following Christmas (again in St John's College hall); to be followed by a "Second Part of the Return from Parnassus," the author's overflow of wit, three years later. Of the popularity of the first and second plays--"The Pilgrimage" and "The Return, Part I"--we have good evidence in the prologue to "The Return, Part II," where the author makes Momus say, before an audience which knew the truth: "The Pilgrimage to Parnassus" and "The Returne from Parnassus" have stood the honest Stagekeepers in many a crowne's expense for linckes and vizards: purchased many a Sophister a knocke with a clubbe: hindred the butler's box, and emptied the Colledge barrells; and now, unlesse you have heard the former, you may returne home as wise as you came: for this last is the last part of The Returne from Parnassus; that is, the last time that the Author's wit will turne upon the toe in this vaine. In other words, these plays had set everybody in Cambridge agog, had been acted by link-light, had led to brawls--either between literary factions or through offensive personal allusions to which we have lost all clue--had swept into the box-office much money usually spent on Christmas gambling, and had set up an inappeasable thirst for College ale. The point for us is that (in 1597-1601) they abound in topical allusions to the London theatres: that Shakespeare is obviously just as much a concern to these young men of Cambridge as Mr Shaw (say) is to our young men to-day, and an allusion to him is dropped in confidence that it will be aptly taken. For instance, one of the characters, Gullio, will have some love-verses recited to him 'in two or three diverse veins, in Chaucer's, Gower's and Spenser's and Mr Shakespeare's.' Having listened to Chaucer, he cries, 'Tush! Chaucer is a foole'; but coming to some lines of Mr Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," he cries, 'Ey, marry, Sir! these have some life in them! Let this duncified world esteeme of Spenser and Chaucer, I'le worship sweet Mr Shakespeare, and to honoure him I will lay his "Venus and Adonis" under my pillowe.' For another allusion--'Few of the University pen plaies well,' says the actor Kempe in Part II of the "Returne"; 'they smell too much of that writer _Ovid_ and that writer _Metamorphosis_, and talke too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why here's our fellow _Shakespeare_ puts them all downe, ay and _Ben Jonson_, too.' Here you have Cambridge assembling at Christmas-tide to laugh at well-understood hits upon the theatrical taste of London. Here you have, to make Cambridge laugh, three farcical quasi-Aristophanic plays all hinging on the tribulations of scholars who depart to pursue literature for a livelihood. For a piece of definite corroborative evidence you have a statute of Queens' College (quoted by Mr Bass Mullinger) which directs that 'any student refusing to take part in the acting of a comedy or tragedy in the College and absenting himself from the performance, contrary to the injunctions of the President, shall be expelled from the Society'--which seems drastic. And on top of all this, you have evidence enough and to spare of the part played in Elizabethan drama by the 'University Wits.' Why, Marlowe (of Corpus Christi) may be held to have invented its form--blank verse; Ben Jonson (of St John's) to have carried it on past its meridian and through its decline, into the masque. Both Universities claim Lyly and Chapman. Marston, Peel, Massinger, hailed from Oxford. But Greene and Nashe were of Cambridge--of St John's both, and Day of Caius. They sought to London, and there (for tragic truth underlay that Christmas comedy of "The Pilgrimage of Parnassus") many of them came to bitter ends: but before reaching their sordid personal ruin--and let the deaths of Marlowe and Greene be remembered--they built the Elizabethan drama, as some of them lived to add its last ornaments. We know what, meanwhile, Spenser had done. I think it scarcely needs further proof that Cambridge, towards the end of the sixteenth century, was fermenting with a desire to read, criticise, yes and write, English literature, albeit officially the University recognised no such thing. There remains a second question--How happened it that Cambridge, after admitting Greek, took more than three hundred years to establish a Chair of Latin, and that a Chair of English is, so to speak, a mushroom (call it not toadstool!) of yesterday? Why simply enough. Latin continued to be the working language of Science. In Latin Bacon naturally composed his "Novum Organum" and indeed almost all his scientific and philosophical work, although a central figure of his age among English prose-writers. In Latin, in the eighteenth century, Newton wrote his "Principia": and I suppose that of no two books written by Englishmen before the close of that century, or indeed before Darwin's "Origin of Species," can it be less extravagantly said than of the "Novum Organum" and the "Principia" that they shook the world. Now, without forgetting our Classical Tripos (founded in 1822), as without forgetting the great names of Bentley and Porson, we may observe it as generally true, that whenever and wherever large numbers of scientific men use a particular language as their working instrument, they have a disposition to look askance on its refinements; to be jealous of its literary professors; to accuse these of treating as an end in itself what is properly a means. Like the Denver editor I quoted to you in a previous lecture, these scientific workers want to 'get there' in a hurry, forgetting that (to use another Americanism) the sharper the chisel the more ice it is likely to cut. You may observe this disposition--this suspicion of 'literature,' this thinly veiled contempt--in many a scientific man to-day; though because his language has changed from Latin to English, it is English he now chooses to cheapen. Well, we cannot help it, perhaps. Perhaps he cannot help it. It is human nature. We must go on persuading him, not losing our tempers. None the less we should not shut our eyes to the fact that while a language is the working instrument of scientific men there will always be a number of them to decry any study of it for its beauty, and even any study of it for the sake of accuracy--its beauty and its accuracy being indeed scarcely distinguishable. I fear, Gentlemen, you may go on from this to the dreadful conclusion that the date 1869, when Cambridge at length came to possess a Chair of Latin, marks definitely the hour at which Latin closed its eyes and became a dead language; that you may proceed to a yet more dreadful application of this to the Chair of English founded in 1910: and that henceforward (to misquote what Mr Max Beerbohm once wickedly said of Walter Pater) you will be apt to regard Professor Housman and me as two widowers engaged, while the undertaker waits, in composing the features of our belovèds. But (to speak seriously) that is what I stand here to controvert: and I derive no small encouragement when--as has more than once happened--A, a scientific man, comes to me and complains that he for his part cannot understand B, another scientific man, 'because the fellow can't express himself.' And the need to study precision in writing has grown far more instant since men of science have abandoned the 'universal language' and taken to writing in their own tongues. Let us, while not on the whole regretting the change, at least recognise some dangers, some possible disadvantages. I will confine myself to English, considered as a substitute for Latin. In Latin you have a language which may be thin in its vocabulary and inelastic for modern use; but a language which at all events compels a man to clear his thought and communicate it to other men precisely. Thoughts hardly to be packed Into the narrow act --may be all impossible of compression into the Latin speech. In English, on the other hand, you have a language which by its very copiousness and elasticity tempts you to believe that you can do without packing, without compression, arrangement, order; that, with the Denver editor, all you need is to 'get there'--though it be with all your intellectual belongings in a jumble, overflowing the portmanteau. Rather I preach to you that having proudly inherited English with its _copia fandi_, you should keep your estate in order by constantly applying to it that _jus et norma loquendi_ of which, if you seek to the great models, you will likewise find yourselves inheritors. 'But,' it is sometimes urged, 'why not leave this new study of English to the younger Universities now being set up all over the country?' 'Ours is an age of specialising. Let these newcomers have something--what better than English?--to specialise upon.' I might respond by asking if the fame of Cambridge would stand where it stands to-day had she followed a like counsel concerning other studies and, resting upon Mathematics, given over this or that branch of Natural Science to be grasped by new hands. What of Electricity, for example? Or what of Physiology? Yes, and among the unnatural sciences, what of Political Economy? But I will use a more philosophical argument. Some years ago I happened on a collection of Bulgarian proverbs of which my memory retains but two, yet each an abiding joy. In a lecture on English Literature in our Universities you will certainly not miss to apply the first, which runs, 'Many an ass has entered Jerusalem.' The application of the second may elude you for a moment. It voices the impatience of an honest Bulgar who has been worried overmuch to subscribe to what, in this England of ours, we call Church Purposes; and it runs, 'All these two-penny saints will be the ruin of the Church.' Now far be it from me to apply the term 'two-penny saint' to any existing University. To avoid the accusation I hereby solemnly declare my deep conviction that every single University at this moment in England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland has reasons--strong in all, in some overwhelmingly strong--for its existence. That is plainly said, I hope? Yet I do maintain that if we go on multiplying Universities we shall not increase the joy; that the reign of two-penny saints lies not far off and will soon lie within measurable distance; and that it will be a pestilent reign. As we saw in out last lecture the word 'University'--_Universitas_--had, in its origin, nothing to do with Universality: it meant no more than a Society, organised (as it happened) to promote learning. But words, like institutions, often rise above their beginnings, and in time acquire a proud secondary connotation. For an instance let me give you the beautiful Wykehamist motto _Manners Makyeth Man_, wherein 'manners' originally meant no more than 'morals.' So there has grown around our two great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge a connotation (secondary, if you will, but valuable above price) of universality; of standing like great beacons of light, to attract the young wings of all who would seek learning for their sustenance. Thousands have singed, thousands have burned themselves, no doubt: but what thousands of thousands have caught the sacred fire into their souls as they passed through and passed out, to carry it, to drop it, still as from wings, upon waste places of the world! Think of country vicarages, of Australian or Himalayan outposts, where men have nourished out lives of duty upon the fire of three transient, priceless years. Think of the generations of children to whom their fathers' lives, prosaic enough, could always be re-illumined if someone let fall the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge,' so that they themselves came to surmise an aura about the name as of a land very far off; and then say if the ineffable spell of those two words do not lie somewhere in the conflux of generous youth with its rivalries and clash of minds, ere it disperses, generation after generation, to the duller business of life. Would you have your mother University, Gentlemen, undecorated by some true study of your mother-English? I think not, having been there, and known such thoughts as you will carry away, and having been against expectation called back to report them. And sometimes I remember days of old When fellowship seem'd not so far to seek, And all the world and I seem'd far less cold, And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold, And hope was strong, and life itself not weak. My purpose here (and I cannot too often recur to it) is to wean your minds from hankering after false Germanic standards and persuade you, or at least point out to you, in what direction that true study lies if you are men enough to take up your inheritance and believe in it as a glory to be improved. Neither Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University on earth can study English Literature truthfully or worthily, or even at all profitably, unless by studying it in the category for which Heaven, or Nature (call the ultimate cause what you will), intended it; or, to put the assertion more concretely, in any other category than that for which the particular author--be his name Chaucer or Chesterton, Shakespeare or Shaw--designed it; as neither can Oxford nor Cambridge nor any University study English Literature, to understand it, unless by bracing itself to consider a living art. Origins, roots, all the gropings towards light--let these be granted as accessories; let those who search in them be granted all honour, all respect. It is only when they preach or teach these preliminaries, these accessories, to be more important than Literature itself--it is only when they, owing all their excuse in life to the established daylight, din upon us that the precedent darkness claims precedence in honour, that one is driven to utter upon them this dialogue, in monosyllables: _And God said, 'Let there be light': and there was light. 'Oh, thank you, Sir,' said the Bat and the Owl; 'then we are off!'_ I grant you, Gentlemen, that there must always inhere a difficulty in correlating for the purposes of a Tripos a study of Literature itself with a study of these accessories; the thing itself being _naturally_ so much more difficult: being so difficult indeed that (to take literary criticism alone and leave for a moment the actual practice of writing out of the question) though some of the first intellects in the world--Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, Boileau, Dryden, Lessing, Goethe, Coleridge, Sainte-Beuve--have broken into parcels of that territory, the mass of it remains unexplored, and nobody as yet has found courage to reduce the reports of these great explorers to any system; so that a very eminent person indeed found it easy to write to me the other day, 'The principles of Criticism? What are they? Who made them?' To this I could only answer that I did not know Who made them; but that Aristotle, Dryden, Lessing, had, as it was credibly reported, discovered five or, it might be, six. And this difficulty of appraising literature absolutely inheres in your study of it from the beginning. No one can have set a General Paper on Literature and examined on it, setting it and marking the written answers, alongside of papers about language, inflexions and the rest, without having borne in upon him that _here_ the student finds his difficulty. While in a paper set about inflexions, etc., a pupil with a moderately retentive memory will easily obtain sixty or seventy per cent. of the total marks, in a paper on the book or play considered critically an examiner, even after setting his paper with a view to some certain inferiority of average, has to be lenient before he can award fifty, forty, or even thirty per cent. of the total. You will find a somewhat illuminating passage--illuminating, that is, if you choose to interpret and apply it to our subject--in Lucian's "True History," where the veracious traveller, who tells the tale, affirms that he visited Hades among other places, and had some conversation with Homer, among its many inhabitants-- Before many days had passed, I accosted the poet Homer, when we were both disengaged, and asked him, among other things, where he came from; it was still a burning question with us, I explained. He said he was aware that some derived him from Chios, others from Smyrna, and others again from Colophon; but in fact he was a Babylonian, generally known not as Homer but as Tigranes; but when later in life he was given as a homer or hostage to the Greeks, that name clung to him. Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his head that way. Even so diverse are the questions that may be asked concerning any great work of art. But to discover its full intent is always the most difficult task of all. That task, however, and nothing less difficult, will always be the one worthiest of a great University. On that, and on that alone, Gentlemen, do I base all claims for our School of English Literature. And yet in conclusion I will ask you, reminding yourselves how fortunate is your lot in Cambridge, to think of fellow-Englishmen far less fortunate. Years ago I took some pains to examine the examination papers set by a renowned Examining Body and I found this--'I humbly solicit' (to use a phrase of Lucian's) 'my hearers' incredulity'--that in a paper set upon three Acts of "Hamlet"--three Acts of "Hamlet"!--the first question started with 'G.tt. p..cha' 'Al..g.tor' and invited the candidate to fill in the missing letters correctly. Now I was morally certain that the words 'gutta-percha' and 'alligator' did not occur in the first three Acts of "Hamlet"; but having carefully re-read them I invited this examining body to explain itself. The answer I got was that, to understand Shakespeare, a student must first understand the English Language! Some of you on leaving Cambridge will go out--a company of Christian folk dispersed throughout the world--to tell English children of English Literature. Such are the pedagogic fetters you will have to knock off their young minds before they can stand and walk. Gentlemen, on a day early in this term I sought the mound which is the old Castle of Cambridge. Access to it, as perhaps you know, lies through the precincts of the County Prison. An iron railing encloses the mound, having a small gate, for the key of which a notice-board advised me to ring the prison bell. I rang. A very courteous gaoler answered the bell and opened the gate, which stands just against his wicket. I thanked him, but could not forbear asking 'Why do they keep this gate closed?' 'I don't know, sir,' he answered, 'but I suppose if they didn't the children might get in and play.' So with his answer I went up the hill and from the top saw Cambridge spread at my feet; Magdalene below me, and the bridge which--poor product as it is of the municipal taste--has given its name to so many bridges all over the world; the river on its long ambit to Chesterton; the tower of St John's, and beyond it the unpretentious but more beautiful tower of Jesus College. To my right the magnificent chine of King's College Chapel made its own horizon above the yellowing elms. I looked down on the streets--the narrow streets--the very streets which, a fortnight ago, I tried to people for you with that mediaeval throng which has passed as we shall pass. Still in my ear the gaoler's answer repeated itself--_'I suppose, if they didn't keep it locked, the children might get in and play'_: and a broken echo seemed to take it up, in words that for a while had no more coherence than the scattered jangle of bells in the town below. But as I turned to leave, they chimed into an articulate sentence and the voice was the voice of Francis Bacon--_Regnum Scientiae ut regnum Coeli non nisi sub persona infantis intratur.--Into the Kingdom of Knowledge, as into the Kingdom of Heaven, whoso would enter must become as a little child._ [Footnote 1: "Cambridge History of English Literature", vol. iii, p. 213.] LECTURE XII. ON STYLE Wednesday, January 28, 1914 Should Providence, Gentlemen, destine any one of you to write books for his living, he will find experimentally true what I here promise him, that few pleasures sooner cloy than reading what the reviewers say. This promise I hand on with the better confidence since it was endorsed for me once in conversation by that eminently good man the late Henry Sidgwick; who added, however, 'Perhaps I ought to make a single exception. There was a critic who called one of my books "epoch-making." Being anonymous, he would have been hard to find and thank, perhaps; but I ought to have made the effort.' May I follow up this experience of his with one of my own, as a preface or brief apology for this lecture? Short-lived as is the author's joy in his critics, far-spent as may be his hope of fame, mournful his consent with Sir Thomas Browne that 'there is nothing immortal but immortality,' he cannot hide from certain sanguine men of business, who in England call themselves 'Press-Cutting Agencies,' in America 'Press-Clipping Bureaux,' and, as each successive child of his invention comes to birth, unbecomingly presume in him an almost virginal trepidation. 'Your book,' they write falsely, 'is exciting much comment. May we collect and send you notices of it appearing in the World's Press? We submit a specimen cutting with our terms; and are, dear Sir,' etc. Now, although steadily unresponsive to this wile, I am sometimes guilty of taking the enclosed specimen review and thrusting it for preservation among the scarcely less deciduous leaves of the book it was written to appraise. So it happened that having this vacation, to dust--not to read--a line of obsolete or obsolescent works on a shelf, I happened on a review signed by no smaller a man than Mr Gilbert Chesterton and informing the world that the author of my obsolete book was full of good stories as a kindly uncle, but had a careless or impatient way of stopping short and leaving his readers to guess what they most wanted to know: that, reaching the last chapter, or what he chose to make the last chapter, instead of winding up and telling 'how everybody lived ever after,' he (so to speak) slid you off his avuncular knee with a blessing and the remark that nine o'clock was striking and all good children should be in their beds. That criticism has haunted me during the vacation. Looking back on a course of lectures which I deemed to be accomplished; correcting them in print; revising them with all the nervousness of a beginner; I have seemed to hear you complain--'He has exhorted us to write accurately, appropriately; to eschew Jargon; to be bold and essay Verse. He has insisted that Literature is a living art, to be practised. But just what we most needed he has not told. At the final doorway to the secret he turned his back and left us. Accuracy, propriety, perspicuity--these we may achieve. But where has he helped us to write with beauty, with charm, with distinction? Where has he given us rules for what is called _Style_ in short?--having attained which an author may count himself set up in business.' Thus, Gentlemen, with my mind's ear I heard you reproaching me. I beg you to accept what follows for my apology. To begin with, let me plead that you have been told of one or two things which Style is _not_; which have little or nothing to do with Style, though sometimes vulgarly mistaken for it. Style, for example, is not--can never be--extraneous Ornament. You remember, may be, the Persian lover whom I quoted to you out of Newman: how to convey his passion he sought a professional letter-writer and purchased a vocabulary charged with ornament, wherewith to attract the fair one as with a basket of jewels. Well, in this extraneous, professional, purchased ornamentation, you have something which Style is not: and if you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: 'Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it --whole-heartedly--and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. _Murder your darlings._' But let me plead further that you have not been left altogether without clue to the secret of what Style is. That you must master the secret for yourselves lay implicit in our bargain, and you were never promised that a writer's training would be easy. Yet a clue was certainly put in your hands when, having insisted that Literature is a living art, I added that therefore it must be personal and of its essence personal. This goes very deep: it conditions all our criticism of art. Yet it conceals no mystery. You may see its meaning most easily and clearly, perhaps, by contrasting Science and Art at their two extremes--say Pure Mathematics with Acting. Science as a rule deals with things, Art with man's thought and emotion about things. In Pure Mathematics things are rarefied into ideas, numbers, concepts, but still farther and farther away from the individual man. Two and two make four, and fourpence is not ninepence (or at any rate four is not nine) whether Alcibiades or Cleon keep the tally. In Acting on the other hand almost everything depends on personal interpretation--on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of a Siddons, the _rusé_ smile of a Coquelin, the exquisite, vibrant intonation of a Bernhardt. 'English Art?' exclaimed Whistler, 'there is no such thing! Art is art and mathematics is mathematics.' Whistler erred. Precisely because Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics and a Science, Art being Art can be English or French; and, more than this, must be the personal expression of an Englishman or a Frenchman, as a 'Constable' differs from a 'Corot' and a 'Whistler' from both. Surely I need not labour this. But what is true of the extremes of Art and Science is true also, though sometimes less recognisably true, of the mean: and where they meet and seem to conflict (as in History) the impact is that of the personal or individual mind upon universal truth, and the question becomes whether what happened in the Sicilian Expedition, or at the trial of Charles I, can be set forth naked as an alegebraical sum, serene in its certainty, indifferent to opinion, uncoloured in the telling as in the hearing by sympathy or dislike, by passion or by character. I doubt, while we should strive in history as in all things to be fair, if history can be written in that colourless way, to interest men in human doings. I am sure that nothing which lies further towards imaginative, creative, Art can be written in that way. It follows then that Literature, being by its nature personal, must be by its nature almost infinitely various. 'Two persons cannot be the authors of the sounds which strike our ear; and as they cannot be speaking one and the same speech, neither can they be writing one and the same lecture or discourse.' _Quot homines tot sententiae._ You may translate that, if you will, 'Every man of us constructs his sentence differently'; and if there be indeed any quarrel between Literature and Science (as I never can see why there should be), I for one will readily grant Science all her cold superiority, her ease in Sion with universal facts, so it be mine to serve among the multifarious race who have to adjust, as best they may, Science's cold conclusions (and much else) to the brotherly give-and-take of human life. _Quicquid agunt homines, votum, timor, ira, voluptas..._ Is it possible, Gentlemen, that you can have read one, two, three or more of the acknowledged masterpieces of literature without having it borne in on you that they are great because they are alive, and traffic not with cold celestial certainties, but with men's hopes, aspirations, doubts, loves, hates, breakings of the heart; the glory and vanity of human endeavour, the transience of beauty, the capricious uncertain lease on which you and I hold life, the dark coast to which we inevitably steer; all that amuses or vexes, all that gladdens, saddens, maddens us men and women on this brief and mutable traject which yet must be home for a while, the anchorage of our hearts? For an instance:-- Here lies a most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she: I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country. But beauty vanishes, beauty passes, However rare, rare it be; And when I crumble who shall remember That lady of the West Country? (Walter de la Mare.) Or take a critic--a literary critic--such as Samuel Johnson, of whom we are used to think as of a man artificial in phrase and pedantic in judgment. He lives, and why? Because, if you test his criticism, he never saw literature but as a part of life, nor would allow in literature what was false to life, as he saw it. He could be wrong-headed, perverse; could damn Milton because he hated Milton's politics; on any question of passion or prejudice could make injustice his daily food. But he could not, even in a friend's epitaph, let pass a phrase (however well turned) which struck him as empty of life or false to it. All Boswell testifies to this: and this is why Samuel Johnson survives. Now let me carry this contention--that all Literature is personal and therefore various--into a field much exploited by the pedant, and fenced about with many notice-boards and public warnings. _'Neologisms not allowed here,' 'All persons using slang, or trespassing in pursuit of originality....'_ Well, I answer these notice-boards by saying that, literature being personal, and men various--and even the "Oxford English Dictionary" being no Canonical book--man's use or defiance of the dictionary depends for its justification on nothing but his success: adding that, since it takes all kinds to make a world, or a literature, his success will probably depend on the occasion. A few months ago I found myself seated at a bump-supper next to a cheerful youth who, towards the close, suggested thoughtfully, as I arose to make a speech, that, the bonfire (which of course he called the 'bonner') being due at nine-thirty o'clock, there was little more than bare time left for 'langers and godders.' It cost me, who think slowly, some seconds to interpret that by 'langers' he meant 'Auld Lang Syne' and by 'godders' 'God Save the King.' I thought at the time, and still think, and will maintain against any schoolmaster, that the neologisms of my young neighbour, though not to be recommended for essays or sermons, did admirably suit the time, place, and occasion. Seeing that in human discourse, infinitely varied as it is, so much must ever depend on _who_ speaks, and to _whom_, in what mood and upon what occasion; and seeing that Literature must needs take account of all manner of writers, audiences, moods, occasions; I hold it a sin against the light to put up a warning against any word that comes to us in the fair way of use and wont (as 'wire,' for instance, for a telegram), even as surely as we should warn off hybrids or deliberately pedantic impostors, such as 'antibody' and 'picture-drome'; and that, generally, it is better to err on the side of liberty than on the side of the censor: since by the manumitting of new words we infuse new blood into a tongue of which (or we have learnt nothing from Shakespeare's audacity) our first pride should be that it is flexible, alive, capable of responding to new demands of man's untiring quest after knowledge and experience. Not because it was an ugly thing did I denounce Jargon to you, the other day: but because it was a dead thing, leading no-whither, meaning naught. There is _wickedness_ in human speech, sometimes. You will detect it all the better for having ruled out what is _naughty_. Let us err, then, if we err, on the side of liberty. I came, the other day, upon this passage in Mr Frank Harris's study of 'The Man Shakespeare':-- In the last hundred years the language of Molière has grown fourfold; the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of the engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it may deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb instrument, while English is positively poorer than it was in the time of Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle class.[1] Well, let us not lose our heads over this, any more than over other prophecies of our national decadence. The "Oxford English Dictionary" has not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted in his Essay on Shelley:-- Theoretically, of course, one ought always to try for the best word. But practically, the habit of excessive care in word-selection frequently results in loss of spontaneity; and, still worse, the habit of always taking the best word too easily becomes the habit of always taking the most ornate word, the word most removed from ordinary speech. In consequence of this, poetic diction has become latterly a kaleidoscope, and one's chief curiosity is as to the precise combinations into which the pieces will be shifted. There is, in fact, a certain band of words, the Praetorian cohorts of Poetry, whose prescriptive aid is invoked by every aspirant to the poetic purple.... Against these it is time some banner should be raised.... It is at any rate curious to note that the literary revolution against the despotic diction of Pope seems issuing, like political revolutions, in a despotism of his own making; and he adds a note that this is the more surprising to him because so many Victorian poets were prose-writers as well. Now, according to our theory, the practice of prose should maintain fresh and comprehensive a poet's diction, should save him from falling into the hands of an exclusive coterie of poetic words. It should react upon his metrical vocabulary to its beneficial expansion, by taking him outside his aristocratic circle of language, and keeping him in touch with the great commonalty, the proletariat of speech. For it is with words as with men: constant intermarriage within the limits of a patrician clan begets effete refinement; and to reinvigorate the stock, its veins must be replenished from hardy plebeian blood. In diction, then, let us acquire all the store we can, rejecting no coin for its minting but only if its metal be base. So shall we bring out of our treasuries new things and old. Diction, however, is but a part of Style, and perhaps not the most important part. So I revert to the larger question, 'What is Style? What its [Greek: to ti en einai], its essence, the law of its being?' Now, as I sat down to write this lecture, memory evoked a scene and with the scene a chance word of boyish slang, both of which may seem to you irrelevant until, or unless, I can make you feel how they hold for me the heart of the matter. I once happened to be standing in a corner of a ball-room when there entered the most beautiful girl these eyes have ever seen or now--since they grow dull--ever will see. It was, I believe, her first ball, and by some freak or in some premonition she wore black: and not pearls--which, I am told, maidens are wont to wear on these occasions--but one crescent of diamonds in her black hair. _Et vera incessu patuit dea._ Here, I say, was absolute beauty. It startled. I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country. But beauty vanishes, beauty passes.... She died a year or two later. She may have been too beautiful to live long. I have a thought that she may also have been too good. For I saw her with the crowd about her: I saw led up and presented among others the man who was to be, for a few months, her husband: and then, as the men bowed, pencilling on their programmes, over their shoulders I saw her eyes travel to an awkward young naval cadet (Do you remember Crossjay in Meredith's "The Egoist"? It was just such a boy) who sat abashed and glowering sulkily beside me on the far bench. Promptly with a laugh, she advanced, claimed him, and swept him off into the first waltz. When it was over he came back, a trifle flushed, and I felicitated him; my remark (which I forget) being no doubt 'just the sort of banality, you know, one does come out with'--as maybe that the British Navy kept its old knack of cutting out. But he looked at me almost in tears and blurted, 'It isn't her beauty, sir. You saw? It's--it's--my God, it's the _style_!' Now you may think that a somewhat cheap, or at any rate inadequate, cry of the heart in my young seaman; as you may think it inadequate in me, and moreover a trifle capricious, to assure you (as I do) that the first and last secret of a good Style consists in thinking with the heart as well as with the head. But let us philosophise a little. You have been told, I daresay often enough, that the business of writing demands _two_--the author and the reader. Add to this what is equally obvious, that the obligation of courtesy rests first with the author, who invites the séance, and commonly charges for it. What follows, but that in speaking or writing we have an obligation to put ourselves into the hearer's or reader's place? It is _his_ comfort, _his_ convenience, we have to consult. To _express_ ourselves is a very small part of the business: very small and almost unimportant as compared with _impressing_ ourselves: the aim of the whole process being to persuade. All reading demands an effort. The energy, the good-will which a reader brings to the book is, and must be, partly expended in the labour of reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting what the author means. The more difficulties, then, we authors obtrude on him by obscure or careless writing, the more we blunt the edge of his attention: so that if only in our own interest--though I had rather keep it on the ground of courtesy--we should study to anticipate his comfort. But let me go a little deeper. You all know that a great part of Lessing's argument in his "Laoköon", on the essentials of Literature as opposed to Pictorial Art or Sculpture, depends on this--that in Pictorial Art or in Sculpture the eye sees, the mind apprehends, the whole in a moment of time, with the correspondent disadvantage that this moment of time is fixed and stationary; whereas in writing, whether in prose or in verse, we can only produce our effect by a series of successive small impressions, dripping our meaning (so to speak) into the reader's mind--with the correspondent advantage, in point of vivacity, that our picture keeps moving all the while. Now obviously this throws a greater strain on his patience whom we address. Man at the best is a narrow-mouthed bottle. Through the conduit of speech he can utter--as you, my hearers, can receive--only one word at a time. In writing (as my old friend Professor Minto used to say) you are as a commander filing out his battalion through a narrow gate that allows only one man at a time to pass; and your reader, as he receives the troops, has to re-form and reconstruct them. No matter how large or how involved the subject, it can be communicated only in that way. You see, then, what an obligation we owe to him of order and arrangement; and why, apart from felicities and curiosities of diction, the old rhetoricians laid such stress upon order and arrangement as duties we owe to those who honour us with their attention. '_La clarté,_' says a French writer, '_est la politesse._' [Greek: Charisi kai sapheneia thue], recommends Lucian. Pay your sacrifice to the Graces, and to [Greek: sapheneia]--Clarity--first among the Graces. What am I urging? 'That Style in writing is much the same thing as good manners in other human intercourse?' Well, and why not? At all events we have reached a point where Buffon's often-quoted saying that 'Style is the man himself' touches and coincides with William of Wykeham's old motto that 'Manners makyth Man': and before you condemn my doctrine as inadequate listen to this from Coventry Patmore, still bearing in mind that a writer's main object is to _impress_ his thought or vision upon his hearer. 'There is nothing comparable _for moral force_ to the charm of truly noble manners....' I grant you, to be sure, that the claim to possess a Style must be conceded to many writers--Carlyle is one--who take no care to put listeners at their ease, but rely rather on native force of genius to shock and astound. Nor will I grudge them your admiration. But I do say that, as more and more you grow to value truth and the modest grace of truth, it is less and less to such writers that you will turn: and I say even more confidently that the qualities of Style we allow them are not the qualities we should seek as a norm, for they one and all offend against Art's true maxim of avoiding excess. And this brings me to the two great _paradoxes_ of Style. For the first (1),--although Style is so curiously personal and individual, and although men are so variously built that no two in the world carry away the same impressions from a show, there is always a norm somewhere; in literature and art, as in morality. Yes, even in man's most terrific, most potent inventions--when, for example, in "Hamlet" or in "Lear" Shakespeare seems to be breaking up the solid earth under our feet--there is always some point and standard of sanity--a Kent or an Horatio--to which all enormities and passionate errors may be referred; to which the agitated mind of the spectator settles back as upon its centre of gravity, its pivot of repose. (2) The second paradox, though it is equally true, you may find a little subtler. Yet it but applies to Art the simple truth of the Gospel, that he who would save his soul must first lose it. Though personality pervades Style and cannot be escaped, the first sin against Style as against good Manners is to obtrude or exploit personality. The very greatest work in Literature--the "Iliad," the "Odyssey," the "Purgatorio," "The Tempest," "Paradise Lost," the "Republic," "Don Quixote"--is all Seraphically free From taint of personality. And Flaubert, that gladiator among artists, held that, at its highest, literary art could be carried into pure science. 'I believe,' said he, 'that great art is scientific and impersonal. You should by an intellectual effort transport yourself into characters, not draw _them_ into _yourself_. That at least is the method.' On the other hand, says Goethe, 'We should endeavour to use words that correspond as closely as possible with what we feel, see, think, imagine, experience, and reason. It is an endeavour we cannot evade and must daily renew.' I call Flaubert's the better counsel, even though I have spent a part of this lecture in attempting to prove it impossible. It at least is noble, encouraging us to what is difficult. The shrewder Goethe encourages us to exploit ourselves to the top of our bent. I think Flaubert would have hit the mark if for 'impersonal' he had substituted 'disinterested.' For--believe me, Gentlemen--so far as Handel stands above Chopin, as Velasquez above Greuze, even so far stand the great masculine objective writers above all who appeal to you by parade of personality or private sentiment. Mention of these great masculine 'objective' writers brings me to my last word: which is, 'Steep yourselves in _them_: habitually bring all to the test of _them_: for while you cannot escape the fate of all style, which is to be personal, the more of catholic manhood you inherit from those great loins the more you will assuredly beget.' This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion. But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeavouring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself--of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best. Yet, like 'character' it has its altar within; to that retires for counsel, from that fetches its illumination, to ray outwards. Cultivate, Gentlemen, that habit of withdrawing to be advised by the best. So, says Fénelon, 'you will find yourself infinitely quieter, your words will be fewer and more effectual; and while you make less ado, what you do will be more profitable.' [Footnote 1: 'An oration,' says Quintilian, 'may find room for almost any word saving a few indecent ones (_quae sunt parum verecunda_).' He adds that writers of the Old Comedy were often commended even for these: 'but it is enough for us to mind our present business--_sed nobis nostrum opus intueri sat est._'] INDEX Abelard 203, 205, 212 Abercrombie, Lascelles 18 Addison, Joseph 124, 172 Alcuin 199, 200, 204, 205 Alfred, King 186 Aristophanes 192 Aristotle 128, 203, 227 Arnold, Matthew 35, 76, 139, 186, 202 "Arte of Rhetorique," Wilson's 118 Ascham, Roger 121, 188 Augustine 199 Bacon, Lord 6, 7, 10, 220, 231 Bagehot, Walter 216 "Ballata" 45 Barbour, John 112 Barrie, Sir James Matthew 17, 135 Bede 204 Beerbohm, Max 222 Belisarius 175 Bentham, Jeremy 97 "Beowulf" 159-165 Béranger, Pierre-Jean de 45 Berners, Lord 108-110,120 Bible, The: Authorised Version 53, 97, 110, 122 et seq., 141, 143, 190 Revised Version 131-133 Blair, Wilfred 80 Blake, William 12 Boccaccio 184 Boethius 203 Bologna, University of 200-1, 206 Borneil, Giraud de 181 Boswell, James 238 Bridges, Robert 19 Brooke, the Rev. Stopford A. 159 Brougham, Ld 47, 101 Browne, Sir Thomas 10, 51, 124, 168, 232 Browning, Robert 39, 186 Buffon 245 Bunyan, John 124 Burke, Edmund 27, 28, 46, 47-52, 101 Burns, Robert 45 Butler, Arthur John 20 Caedmon 163 Cambridge 201 _et seqq._ Campion, Thomas 185, 188 Carducci, Giosué 154-5 Carlyle, Thomas 18, 103, 245 Cellini, Benvenuto 41 Cervantes 7, 25 Chadwick, Professor H. M. 163 Chair of English Literature, University Ordinance 7 Chambers, E. K. 199 Champeaux, William of 205 Chaucer, Geoffrey 10, 110-111, 163, 183, 184, 219 Chesterton, Gilbert K. 233 Chichester, Richard of 211 Cicero 28, 49 Clare, John 39 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 41, 64, 65 Conington, John 171-2 Courthope, W. J. 13, 158, 184, 199 Coverdale, Miles 124 Cowley, Abraham 185 Cowper, William 186 Crewe, Ld Chief Justice 7 Cynewulf 163 Daniel, Samuel 185, 188 Dante 77, 184 Darwin, Charles 221 Defoe, Daniel 61, 75. Dekker, Thomas 65 De La Mare, Walter 237 De Quincey, Thomas 54 Desiderius, Archbishop 199 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 28 Donne, John 102, 106, 185 Dryden, John 172, 186, 227 "Duchess of Malfy," Webster's 99 Dunbar 10 'Eliot, George' 11 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 11 Falconer, William 79 Falkner, J. Meade 168-9 Fénelon 248 FitzGerald, Edward 97 Flaubert, Gustave 247 Fletcher, John 13 Fowler, W. H. and F. G. 90, 137 Freeman, Professor E. A. 158, 160, 174-179, 186 "Froissart," Berners' 108 Froude, James Anthony 78 Fuller, Thomas 206 Gibbon, Edward 124, 216 Gildas 175 Goethe 103, 247 Gray, Thomas 11, 16, 136, 157-8, 162 Green, J. R. 158 Green, T. H. 8 Gregory the Great, Pope 199 Grierson, Professor H. J. C. 185 Hamilton, Sir William 213 Hardy, Thomas 18 Harris, Frank 240 Harvey, Gabriel 185, 216-7 Heine, Heinrich 45 Herbert, George 133 "Hero and Leander," Marlowe's 98 Herodotus 44, 63 Homer 25, 64, 69, 76-78, 80, 81, 161, 190, 228 Horace 171-2 Housman, Professor A. E. 222 Ibsen 96 Irnerius 206 Isaiah 130-133 Jackson, Dr Henry 213 Johnson, Samuel 11, 37, 69, 121, 172, 238 Jonson, Ben 129, 146, 185, 219, 220 Jowett, Benjamin 29 Jusserand, J. J. 182 Juvenal, 172 Keats, John 16, 39, 186 Kempis, Thomas à 15 Ker, Professor W. P. 160, 199 Kipling, Rudyard 61 Lamb, Charles 41 Lessing 81, 227, 244 Lindsay, the Rev. T. M., D.D. 118 Lloyd George, the Right Hon. David 137-8 Lucian 6, 160, 192, 228, 245 Lucretius 193 Malory, Sir Thomas 107-110, 120 Marlowe, Christopher 98-9, 185, 220 Marvell, Andrew 185 Mason, William 157 Masson, David 12 McKenna, the Right Hon. Reginald 137-8 Meredith, George 243, 247 Milton, John 1, 10, 16, 43, 56-62, 74-76, 124, 152, 185, 195, 238 Minto, Professor William 245 Moore, Thomas 45 Morris, William 188 Mullinger, J. Bass 205, 219 Murray, Professor Gilbert 193 Nashe, Thomas 120 Newman, Cardinal 5, 30, 31-2, 115, 134, 144, 147, 234 Newton, Sir Isaac 221 Noyes, Alfred 78 "Nut-Brown Maid, The" 111 Oates, Captain 42 Origen 195, 202 Oxford 201 _et seq._ Paris, University of 200, 205 Pater, Walter 77, 222 Patmore, Coventry 245 Payne, E. J. 100-103 "Pervigilium Veneris" 151, 194 Pheidias 14 Philosophy and Poetry 1 Piers Plowman 163, 182 "Pilgrimage to Parnassus, The" 217-220 Plato 1-4, 150, 205 Pliny 152-3 Podsnap (_see_ Freeman) Poggio 205 Pope, Alexander 157, 162 Powell, F. York 159 Provençal Song 181-183 Pythagoras 208 Quintilian 29, 140, 240 Raleigh, Professor Sir Walter 9 Rashdall, Hastings 208-213 Remigius 206 Renan 1 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 23-25 Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustus 20 Saintsbury, Prof. George 55, 56, 187 Salamanca, University of 200 Scott, The Antarctic Expedition 42 Severus, Sulpicius 199 Shakespeare, William 15, 41, 50, 51-2, 97-100, 113, 129, 185, 190, 197, 219, 229, 246 Shaw, George Bernard 72 Shelley 40 Shirley, James 106 Sidgwick, Henry 232 Sidney, Sir Philip 41-2 Skeat, Walter W. 12 "Sonata" 45 South, Robert 102 Spenser, Edmund 185, 206, 217, 219 Stevenson, Robert Louis 133 Stubbs, Bishop W. 44 'Student's Handbook, The' 72-3 Swift, Jonathan 61 Swinburne, Algernon 196 Taylor, Jeremy 68-9 Tennyson, Lord 75, 186 Tertullian 195, 198, 202 Thackeray, William Makepeace 124 Thompson, Francis 241 Thomson, James 39 Toulouse, University of 208 Tyndale, William 122, 126, 127 Vacarius 206 Ventadour, Bernard de 181 "Venus and Adonis" 98-9 Verrall, Dr A. W. 7 Vigfússon, Gudbrand 159 Virgil 25, 80, 194, 200 Voltaire 192 Waller, Edmund 85 Walpole, Horatio 173 Walton, Isaak 70-1, 124, 201 Warton, Thomas 158 Watson, E. J. 155 Watson, William 16 Webster, John 99 Wendell, Barrett 97 Whistler, James McNeill 236 Whitman, Walt 53, 56 "Widsith" 60 Wolfe, General 134 Wood, Anthony 184 Wordsworth, William 11, 12, 55, 67, 68, 129, 146, 186, 204, 210 Wright, Aldis 12 Wyat, Sir Thomas 115-118, 184 Wyclif, John 124, 127 Yeats, William Butler 143 Young, Arthur 171 Cambridge: Printed by J. B. Peace, M.A., at the University Press. 
26056	----	[Transcriber's Notes: About this book: _A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike_ was published in 1563. Only five copies of the original are known to exist. This e-book was transcribed from microfiche scans of the original in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. The scans can be viewed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France website at http://gallica.bnf.fr.</p> Typography: The original line and paragraph breaks, hyphenation, spelling, capitalization, punctuation, inconsistent use of an acute accent over "ee", the use of u for v and vice versa, and the use of i for j and vice versa, have been preserved. All apparent printer errors have also been preserved, and are listed at the end of this document. The following alterations have been made: 1. Long-s has been regularized as s. 2. The paragraph symbol, resembling a C in the original, is rendered as ¶. 3. Missing punctuation, hyphens, and paragraph symbols have been added in brackets, e.g. [-]. 4. A decorative capital followed by a capital letter is represented here as two capital letters, e.g. NAture. 5. Except for the dedication, which is in modern italics, the majority of the original book is in blackletter font, with some words in a modern non-italic font. All modern-font passages are marked by underscores. 6. Sidenotes have been placed in-line, approximately where they appear in the original. 7. Incorrect page numbers have been corrected, but are included in the list of printer errors at the end of this e-book. 8. Abbreviations and contractions represented as special characters in the original have been expanded as noted in the table below. A "macron" means a horizontal line over a letter. "Supralinear" means directly over a letter; "sublinear" means directly under a letter. The "y" referred to below is an Early Modern English form of the Anglo-Saxon thorn character, representing "th," but identical in appearance to the letter "y." Original Expansion vowel with macron vowel[m] or vowel[n] y with supralinear e y^e (i.e., the) accented q with semicolon q[ue] w with supralinear curve w[ith] e with sublinear hook [ae] Pagination: This book was paginated using folio numbers in a recto-verso scheme. The front of each folio is the recto page (the right-hand page); the back of each folio is the verso page (the left-hand page in a book). In the original, folio numbers (beginning after the table of contents) are printed only on the recto side of each leaf. For the reader's convenience, all folio pages in this e-book, including the verso pages, have been numbered in brackets according to the original format, with the addition of "r" for recto and "v" for verso, e.g., [Fol. x.r] is Folio 10 recto, [Fol. x.v] is Folio 10 verso. Sources consulted: The uneven quality of the microfiche scans, as well as the blackletter font and some ink bleed-through in the original, made the scans difficult to read in some places. To ensure accuracy, the transcriber has consulted the facsimile reprint edited by Francis R. Johnson (Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, New York, 1945). The facsimile reprint was prepared primarily from the Bodleian copy, with several pages reproduced from the copy in the Chapin Library at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, where the Bodleian copy was unclear.] ¶ A booke cal- _led the Foundacion of Rhetorike, be-_ cause all other partes of _Rhetorike_ are grounded thereupon, euery parte sette forthe in an Oracion vpon questions, verie profitable to bee knowen and redde: Made by Ri- chard Rainolde Maister of Arte, of the Uniuersitie of Cambridge. 1563. _Mens. Marcij. vj._ _¶ Imprinted at London, by Ihon Kingston._ THE EPISTLE DEDICATORIE ¶ _To the right honorable and my singuler good Lorde,_ my Lorde Robert Dudley, Maister of the Queenes Maiesties horse, one of her highes pri- uie Counsaile, and knight of the moste honou- rable order of the Garter: Richard Rai- nolde wisheth longe life, with increase of honour. _ARISTOTLE the famous Phi- losopher, writing a boke to king Alexa[n]der, the great and migh- tie conquerour, began the Epi- stle of his Booke in these woor- des. Twoo thynges moued me chieflie, O King, to betake to thy Maiesties handes, this worke of my trauile and labour, thy nobilitie and vertue, of the whiche thy nobilitie encouraged me, thy greate and singuler vertue, indued with all humanitie, forced and draue me thereto. The same twoo in your good Lordshippe, Nobilitie and Vertue, as twoo migh- tie Pillers staied me, in this bolde enterprise, to make your good Lordshippe, beyng a Pere of honour, indued with all nobilitie and vertue: a patrone and possessoure of this my booke. In the whiche although copious and aboundaunte eloquence wanteth, to adorne and beau- tifie thesame, yet I doubte not for the profite, that is in this my trauaile conteined, your honour indued with all singuler humanitie, will vouchsaufe to accepte my willyng harte, my profitable purpose herein. Many fa- mous menne and greate learned, haue in the Greke tongue and otherwise trauailed, to profite all tymes their countrie and common wealthe. This also was my ende and purpose, to plante a worke profitable to all ty- mes, my countrie and common wealthe._ _And because your Lordshippe studieth all singula- ritie to vertue, and wholie is incensed thereto: I haue compiled this woorke, and dedicated it to your Lorde- shippe, as vnto who[m] moste noble and vertuous. Wher- in are set forthe soche Oracions, as are right profitable to bee redde, for knowledge also necessarie. The duetie of a subiecte, the worthie state of nobilitie, the prehe- minent dignitie and Maiestie of a Prince, the office of counsailours, worthie chiefe veneracion, the office of a Iudge or Magestrate are here set foorthe. In moste for- tunate state is the kyngdome and Common wealthe, where the Nobles and Peres, not onelie daiely doe stu- die to vertue, for that is the wisedome, that all the graue and wise Philophers searched to attaine to. For the ende of all artes and sciences, and of all noble actes and enterprises is vertue, but also to fauour and vphold the studentes of learnyng, whiche also is a greate ver- tue. Whoso is adorned with nobilitie and vertue, of necessitie nobilitie and vertue, will moue and allure the[m] to fauour and support vertue in any other, yea, as Tul- lie the moste famous Oratour dooeth saie, euen to loue those who[m] we neuer sawe, but by good fame and brute beutified to vs. For the encrease of vertue, God dooeth nobilitate with honour worthie menne, to be aboue other in dignitie and state, thereupon vertue doeth encrease your Lordshipps honor, beyng a louer of vertue and worthie no- bilitie._ Your lordshippes humble ser- uaunt Richard Rainolde. _To the Reader._ APHTHONIVS a famous man, wrote in Greke of soche declamacions, to en- structe the studentes thereof, with all fa- cilitée to grounde in them, a moste plenti- ous and riche vein of eloquence. No man is able to inuente a more profitable waie and order, to instructe any one in the ex- quisite and absolute perfeccion, of wisedome and eloquence, then _Aphthonius Quintilianus_ and _Hermogenes_. Tullie al- so as a moste excellente Orator, in the like sorte trauailed, whose Eloquence and vertue all tymes extolled, and the of- spryng of all ages worthilie aduaunceth. And because as yet the verie grounde of Rhetorike, is not heretofore intreated of, as concernyng these exercises, though in fewe yeres past, a learned woorke of Rhetorike is compiled and made in the Englishe toungue, of one, who floweth in all excellencie of arte, who in iudgement is profounde, in wisedome and elo- quence moste famous. In these therefore my diligence is em- ploied, to profite many, although not with like Eloquence, beutified and adorned, as the matter requireth. I haue cho- sen out in these Oracions soche questions, as are right ne- cessarie to be knowen and redde of all those, whose cogitacio[n] pondereth vertue and Godlines. I doubte not, but seyng my trauaile toucheth vertuous preceptes, and vttereth to light, many famous Histories, the order of arte obserued also, but that herein the matter it self, shall defende my purpose aga- inste the enuious, whiche seketh to depraue any good enter- prise, begon of any one persone. The enuious manne though learned, readeth to depraue that, which he readeth, the ignoraunt is no worthie Iudge, the learned and godlie pondereth vp- rightly & sincerely, that which he iudgeth, the order of these Oracions followeth afterward, and the names of the[m]. ¶ _The contentes of_ this Booke. AN Oracion made, vpon the Fable of the Shepher- des and the Wolues, the Wolues requestyng the Bandogges: wherein is set forthe the state of eue- ry subiecte, the dignitie of a Prince, the honoura- ble office of counsailours. An Oracion vpon the Fable of the Ante and the Gres- hopper, teachyng prouidence. An Oracion Historicall, howe Semiramis came to bee Quéene of Babilon. An Oracion Historicall, vpon Kyng Richard the thirde sometyme Duke of Glocester. An Oracion Historicall, of the commyng of Iulius Ce- ser into Englande. An Oracion Ciuill or Iudiciall, vpon Themistocles, of the walle buildyng at Athenes. An Oracion Poeticall vpon a redde Rose. A profitable Oracion, shewyng the decaie of kingdomes and nobilitie. An Oracion vpon a Sentence, preferryng a Monarchie, conteinyng all other states of common wealthe. The confutacion of the battaile of Troie. A confirmacion of the noble facte of Zopyrus. An Oracion called a Common place against Theues. The praise of Epaminundas Duke of Thebes, wherein the grounde of nobilitée is placed. The dispraise of Domicius Nero Emperour of Roome. A comparison betwene Demosthenes and Tullie. A lamentable Oracion of Hecuba Queene of Troie. A descripcion vpon Xerxes kyng of Persia. An Oracion called _Thesis_, as concerning the goodly state of Mariage. An Oracion confutyng a certaine lawe of Solon. [Fol. j.r] _The foundacion of_ Rhetorike. NAture hath indued euery man, with a certain eloquence, and also subtili- [Sidenote: Rhetorike and Logike giuen of na- ture.] tée to reason and discusse, of any que- stion or proposicion propounded, as _Aristotle_ the Philosopher, in his Booke of _Rhetorike_ dooeth shewe. These giftes of nature, singuler doe flowe and abounde in vs, accordyng to the greate and ample indumente and plentuousnes of witte and wisedome, lodged in vs, there- fore Nature it self beyng well framed, and afterward by arte [Sidenote: Arte furthe- reth nature.] and order of science, instructed and adorned, must be singular- lie furthered, helped, and aided to all excellencie, to exquisite [Sidenote: Logike.] inuencion, and profounde knowledge, bothe in _Logike_ and [Sidenote: Rhetorike.] _Rhetorike_. In the one, as a Oratour to pleate with all facili- tee, and copiouslie to dilate any matter or sentence: in the other to grounde profunde and subtill argument, to fortifie & make stronge our assercion or sentence, to proue and defende, by the [Sidenote: Logike.] force and power of arte, thinges passyng the compasse & reach of our capacitée and witte. Nothyng can bee more excellently [Sidenote: Eloquence.] giuen of nature then Eloquence, by the which the florishyng state of commonweales doe consiste: kyngdomes vniuersally are gouerned, the state of euery one priuatelie is maintained. The commonwealth also should be maimed, and debilitated, [Sidenote: Zeno.] except the other parte be associate to it. _Zeno_ the Philosopher comparing _Rhetorike_ and _Logike_, doeth assimilate and liken [Sidenote: Logike.] them to the hand of man. _Logike_ is like faith he to the fiste, for euen as the fiste closeth and shutteth into one, the iointes and partes of the hande, & with mightie force and strength, wrap- [Sidenote: Similitude[.] Logike.] peth and closeth in thynges apprehended: So _Logike_ for the deepe and profounde knowlege, that is reposed and buried in it, in soche sort of municion and strength fortified, in few wor- des taketh soche force and might by argumente, that excepte [Fol. j.v] like equalitée in like art and knowledge doe mate it, in vain the disputacion shalbe, and the repulse of thaduersarie readie. [Sidenote: Rhetorike like to the hande.] _Rhetorike_ is like to the hand set at large, wherein euery part and ioint is manifeste, and euery vaine as braunches of trées [Sidenote: Rhetorike.] sette at scope and libertee. So of like sorte, _Rhetorike_ in moste ample and large maner, dilateth and setteth out small thyn- ges or woordes, in soche sorte, with soche aboundaunce and plentuousnes, bothe of woordes and wittie inuencion, with soche goodlie disposicion, in soche a infinite sorte, with soche pleasauntnes of Oracion, that the moste stonie and hard har- tes, can not but bee incensed, inflamed, and moued thereto. [Sidenote: Logike and Rhetorike absolute in fewe.] These twoo singuler giftes of nature, are absolute and perfect in fewe: for many therebe, whiche are exquisite and profound in argument, by art to reason and discusse, of any question or proposicion propounded, who by nature are disabled, & smal- lie adorned to speake eloquently, in whom neuertheles more aboundaunt knowlege doeth somtymes remaine then in the other, if the cause shalbe in controuersie ioined, and examined to trie a manifeste truthe. But to whom nature hath giuen soche abilitée, and absolute excellencie, as that thei can bothe [Sidenote: The vertue of eloquence.] copiouslie dilate any matter or sentence, by pleasauntnes and swetenes of their wittie and ingenious oracion, to drawe vn- to theim the hartes of a multitude, to plucke doune and extir- pate affeccio[n]s and perturbacions of people, to moue pitee and compassion, to speake before Princes and rulers, and to per- swade theim in good causes and enterprises, to animate and incense them, to godlie affaires and busines, to alter the cou[n]- saill of kynges, by their wisedome and eloquence, to a better state, and also to be exquisite in thother, is a thing of all most [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes. Tisias. Gorgias. Eschines[.] Tullie. Cato.] noble and excellent. The eloquence of Demosthenes, Isocra- tes, Tisias, Gorgias, Eschines, were a great bulwarke and staie to Athens and all Grece, Rome also by the like vertue of Eloquence, in famous and wise orators vpholded: the wise and eloquente Oracions of Tullie againste Catiline. The graue and sentencious oracions of Cato in the Senate, haue [Fol. ij.r] [Sidenote: The Empe- rors of Rome famous in Eloquence.] been onelie the meane to vpholde the mightie state of Rome, in his strength and auncient fame and glorie. Also the Chro- nicles of auncient time doe shewe vnto vs, the state of Rome could by no meanes haue growen so meruailous mightie, but that God had indued the whole line of Cesars, with sin- guler vertues, with aboundaunt knowlege & singuler Elo- quence. Thusidides the famous Historiographer sheweth, [Sidenote: Thusidides.] how moche Eloquence auailed the citees of Grece, fallyng to [Sidenote: Corcurians.] dissencio[n]. How did the Corcurians saue them selues from the [Sidenote: Pelopone- sians.] inuasio[n] and might, of the Poloponesians, their cause pleated before the Athenians, so moche their eloquence in a truthe [Sidenote: Corinthians[.]] preuailed. The Ambassadours of Corinth, wanted not their copious, wittie, and ingenious Oracions, but thei pleated before mightie, wise, and graue Senators, whose cause, ac- cordyng to iudgeme[n]t, truthe, and integritée was ended. The [Sidenote: Lacedemo- nians. Vitulenia[n]s. Athenians.] eloque[n]t Embassages of the Corinthia[n]s, the Lacedemonia[n]s, & the Vituleneans, the Athenians, who so readeth, shall sone sée that of necessitee, a common wealth or kyngdome must be fortefied, with famous, graue, and wise counsailours. How [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes.] often did Demosthenes saue the co[m]mon wealthes of Athens, how moche also did that large dominion prospere and florish [Sidenote: Socrates. Cato. Crassus. Antonius. Catulus. Cesar.] by Isocrates. Tullie also by his Eloque[n]t please, Cato, Cras- sus, Antonius, Catulus Cesar, with many other, did support and vphold the state of that mightie kyngdo[m]. No doubte, but that Demosthenes made a wittie, copious, and ingenious o- racions, when the Athenians were minded to giue and be- [Sidenote: Philippe the kyng of the Macidonia[n]s[.]] take to the handes of Philip kyng of the Macedonians, their pestiferous enemie moste vile and subtell, the Orators of A- thens. This Philip forseyng the discorde of Grece, as he by subtill meanes compassed his enterprices, promised by the faithe of a Prince, to be at league with the Athenians, if so be thei would betake to his handes, the eloquente Oratours of [Sidenote: The saiyng of Philippe.] Athens, for as long saith he, as your Oratours are with you declaryng, so longe your heddes and counsaill are moued to variaunce and dissencion, this voice ones seased emong you, [Fol. ij.v] [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes.] in tranquilitée you shalbee gouerned. Demosthenes beyng eloquente and wise, foresawe the daungers and the mischie- uous intent of him, wherevpon he framed a goodly Oracion vpon a Fable, whereby he altered their counsaile, and repul- sed the enemie. This fable is afterward set forth in an Ora- cion, after the order of these exercises, profitable to _Rhetorike_. ¶ A Fable. [Sidenote: The ground of al learning[.]] FIrste it is good that the learner doe vnderstand what is a fable, for in all matters of learnyng, it is the firste grounde, as Tullie doeth saie, to knowe what the thing is, that we may the bet- [Sidenote: What is a fable.] ter perceiue whervpo[n] we doe intreate. A fable is a forged tale, co[n]taining in it by the colour of a lie, a matter [Sidenote: Morall.] of truthe. The moralle is called that, out of the whiche some godlie precepte, or admonicion to vertue is giuen, to frame and instruct our maners. Now that we knowe what a fable is, it is good to learne also, how manifolde or diuers thei be, [Sidenote: Three sortes of fables. i. A fable of reason.] I doe finde three maner of fables to be. The first of theim is, wherein a man being a creature of God indued with reason, is onely intreated of, as the Fable of the father and his chil- dren, he willing the[m] to concorde, and this is called _Rationalis fabula_, whiche is asmoche to saie, as a Fable of men indued [Sidenote: ii. Morall.] with reason, or women. The second is called a morall fable, but I sée no cause whie it is so called, but rather as the other is called a fable of reasonable creatures, so this is contrarilie named a fable of beastes, or of other thinges wanting reason or life, wanting reason as of the Ante and the Greshopper, or of this the beame caste doun, and the Frogges chosyng their [Sidenote: iii. Mixt.] king. The thirde is a mixt Fable so called, bicause in it bothe man hauyng reason, and a beaste wantyng reason, or any o- ther thing wanting life, is ioyned with it, as for the example, of the fable of the woodes and the housebandman, of whom [Sidenote: Poetes in- uentours of fables.] he desired a helue for his hatchet. Aucthours doe write, that Poetes firste inuented fables, the whiche Oratours also doe [Fol. iij.r] vse in their perswasions, and not without greate cause, both [Sidenote: Oratours vse fables.] Poetes and Oratours doe applie theim to their vse. For, fa- [Sidenote: Good doctrin in fables.] bles dooe conteine goodlie admonicion, vertuous preceptes [Sidenote: Hesiodus.] of life. Hesiodus the Poete, intreatyng of the iniurious dea- lyng of Princes and gouernours, against their subiectes, ad- monished them by the fable of the Goshauke, and the Nigh- [Sidenote: Ouide.] tyngale in his clause. Ouid also the Poete intreated of di- uers fables, wherein he giueth admonicion, and godly coun- [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes vsed fa- bles.] saile. Demosthenes the famous Oratour of Athens, vsed the fable of the Shepeherdes, and Wolues: how the Wol- ues on a tyme, instauntlie required of the Shepeherdes their bande dogges, and then thei would haue peace and concorde with theim, the Shepeherdes gaue ouer their Dogges, their Dogges deliuered and murdered, the shepe were immediat- ly deuoured: So saieth he, if ye shall ones deliuer to Philip, the king of the Macedonians your Oratours, by whose lear- nyng, knowlege and wisedome, the whole bodie of your do- minions is saued, for thei as Bandogges, doe repell all mis- cheuous enterprises and chaunses, no doubte, but that raue- nyng Wolfe Philip, will eate and consume your people, by this Fable he made an Oracion, he altered their counsailes and heddes of the Athenians, from so foolishe an enterprise. Also thesame Demosthenes, seyng the people careles, sloth- full, and lothsome to heare the Oratours, and all for the flo- rishing state of the kingdome: he ascended to the place or pul- pet, where the Oracions were made, and began with this fa- [Sidenote: The fable of Demosthe- nes, of the Asse and the shadowe.] ble. Ye men of Athens, saied he, it happened on a tyme, that a certaine man hired an Asse, and did take his iourney from Athens to Megara, as we would saie, fro[m] London to Yorke, the owner also of the Asse, did associate hymself in his iour- ney, to brynge backe the Asse againe, in the voyage the weather was extreame burning hotte, and the waie tedious the place also for barenes and sterilitée of trees, wanted sha- dowe in this long broyle of heate: he that satte one the Asse, lighted and tooke shadowe vnder the bellie of the Asse, and [Fol. iij.v] because the shadowe would not suffice bothe, the Asse beyng small, the owner saied, he muste haue the shadowe, because the Asse was his, I deny that saieth the other, the shadowe is myne, because I hired the Asse, thus thei were at greate con- tencion, the fable beyng recited, Demosthenes descended fro[m] his place, the whole multitude were inquisitiue, to knowe [Sidenote: The conten- cion vpon the shadowe and the Asse.] the ende about the shadowe, Demosthenes notyng their fol- lie, ascended to his place, and saied, O ye foolishe Athenians, whiles I and other, gaue to you counsaill and admonicio[n], of graue and profitable matters, your eares wer deafe, and your mindes slombred, but now I tell of a small trifeling matter, you throng to heare the reste of me. By this Fable he nipped their follie, and trapped them manifestlie, in their owne dol- tishenes. Herevpon I doe somwhat long, make copie of wor- [Sidenote: Fables well applied bee singuler.] des, to shewe the singularitee of fables well applied. In the tyme of Kyng Richard the thirde, Doctour Mourton, beyng Bishop of Elie, and prisoner in the Duke of Buckynghams house in Wales, was often tymes moued of the Duke, to speake his minde frelie, if king Richard wer lawfully king, and said to him of his fidelitée, to kepe close and secret his sen- tence: but the Bishop beyng a godlie man, and no lesse wise, waied the greate frendship, whiche was sometyme betwene the Duke & King Richard, aunswered in effect nothyng, but beyng daily troubled with his mocions & instigacions, spake a fable of Esope: My lorde saied he, I will aunswere you, by [Sidenote: The fable of the Bisshop of Elie, to the duke of Buc- kyngham.] a Fable of Esope. The Lion on a tyme gaue a commaunde- ment, that all horned beastes should flie from the woode, and none to remain there but vnhorned beastes. The Hare hea- ring of this commaundement, departed with the horned bea- stes from the woodde: The wilie Foxe metyng the Hare, de- maunded the cause of his haste, forthwith the Hare aunswe- red, a commaundemente is come from the Lion, that all hor- ned beastes should bee exiled, vpon paine of death, from the woode: why saied the Foxe, this commaundement toucheth not any sorte of beast as ye are, for thou haste no hornes but [Fol. iiij.r] knubbes: yea, but said the Hare, what, if thei saie I haue hor- nes, that is an other matter, my lorde I saie no more: what he ment, is euident to all men. In the time of king He[n]ry theight (a prince of famous me- morie) at what time as the small houses of religio[n], wer giuen ouer to the kinges hand, by the Parliament house: the bishop of Rochester, Doctour Fisher by name stepped forthe, beyng greued with the graunt, recited before them, a fable of Esope to shewe what discommoditee would followe in the Clergie. [Sidenote: The fable of the Bisshop of Rochester, againste the graunt of the Chauntries.] My lordes and maisters saieth he, Esope recited a fable: how that on a tyme, a housebande manne desired of the woodes, a small helue for his hatchet, all the woodes consented thereto waiyng the graunt to be small, and the thyng lesse, therevpo[n] the woodes consented, in fine the housbande man cut doune a small peece of woodde to make a helue, he framyng a helue to the hatchette, without leaue and graunt, he cut doune the mightie Okes and Cedars, and destroyed the whole woodd, then the woodes repented them to late. So saith he, the gift of these small houses, ar but a small graunt into the kinges ha[n]- des: but this small graunt, will bee a waie and meane to pull doune the greate mightie fatte Abbees, & so it happened. But there is repentau[n]ce to late: & no profite ensued of the graunte. ¶ An Oracion made by a fable, to the first exer- cise to declame by, the other, bee these, { A Fable, a Narracion. _Chria_, } { Sentence. Confutacion, } An Oracion { Confirmacion. Common place. } made by a { The praise. The dispraise. } { The Comparison, _Ethopeia_. } { A Discripcion. _Thesis, Legislatio_ } OF euery one of these, a goodlie Oracio[n] maie be made these excercises are called of the Grekes _Progimnas- mata_, of the Latines, profitable introduccions, or fore exercises, to attain greater arte and knowlege in _Rhetorike_, [Fol. iiij.v] and bicause, for the easie capacitée and facilitée of the learner, to attain greater knowledge in _Rhetorike_, thei are right pro- fitable and necessarie: Therefore I title this booke, to bee the foundacio[n] of _Rhetorike_, the exercises being _Progimnasmata_. I haue chosen out the fable of the Shepeherdes, and the Wolues, vpon the whiche fable, Demosthenes made an elo- quente, copious, and wittie Oracion before the Athenians, whiche fable was so well applied, that the citée and common wealth of Athens was saued. [Sidenote: The firste exercise.] ¶ A fable. These notes must be obserued, to make an Oracion by a Fable. ¶ Praise. 1. Firste, ye shall recite the fable, as the aucthour telleth it. 2. There in the seconde place, you shall praise the aucthoure who made the fable, whiche praise maie sone bee gotte of any studious scholer, if he reade the aucthours life and actes ther- in, or the Godlie preceptes in his fables, shall giue abundant praise. 3. Then thirdlie place the morall, whiche is the interpreta- cion annexed to the Fable, for the fable was inuented for the moralles sake. 4. Then orderlie in the fowerth place, declare the nature of thynges, conteined in the Fable, either of man, fishe, foule, beaste, plante, trées, stones, or whatsoeuer it be. There is no man of witte so dulle, or of so grosse capacitée, but either by his naturall witte, or by reading, or sences, he is hable to saie somwhat in the nature of any thyng. 5. In the fifte place, sette forthe the thynges, reasonyng one with an other, as the Ant with the Greshopper, or the Cocke with the precious stone. 6. The[n] in the vj. place, make a similitude of the like matter. 7. Then in the seuenth place, induce an exa[m]ple for thesame matter to bée proued by. 8. Laste of all make the _Epilogus_, whiche is called the con- clusion, and herein marke the notes folowyng, how to make [Fol. v.r] an Oracion thereby. ¶ An Oracion made vpon the fable of the Shepeherdes and the wolues. ¶ The fable. THe Wolues on a tyme perswaded the Shepeher- des, that thei would ioyne amitée, and make a league of concord and vnitee: the demaunde plea- sed the Shepeherdes, foorthwith the Wolues re- quested to haue custodie of the bande Dogges, because els thei would be as thei are alwaies, an occasion to breake their league and peace, the Dogges beyng giuen ouer, thei were one by one murthered, and then the Shepe were wearied. ¶ The praise of the aucthour. THe posteritee of tymes and ages, muste needes praise the wisedome and industrie, of all soche as haue lefte in monumentes of writyng, thynges worthie fame, [Sidenote: Inuentours of al excellent artes and sci- ences, com- mended to the posteritee.] what can bee more excellently set foorthe: or what deserueth chiefer fame and glorie, then the knowledge of artes and sci- ences, inuented by our learned, wise, and graue au[n]cestours: and so moche the more thei deserue honour, and perpetuall commendacions, because thei haue been the firste aucthours, and beginners to soche excellencies. The posteritée praiseth [Sidenote: Apelles. Parthesius. Polucletus.] and setteth forth the wittie and ingenious workes of Apelles, Parthesius, and Polucletus, and all soche as haue artificial- ly set forth their excellent giftes of nature. But if their praise for fame florishe perpetuallie, and increaseth for the wor- thines of theim, yet these thynges though moste excellent, are [Sidenote: The ende of all artes, is to godlie life.] inferiour to vertue: for the ende of artes and sciences, is ver- tue and godlines. Neither yet these thynges dissonaunt from vertue, and not associate, are commendable onely for vertues sake: and to the ende of vertue, the wittes of our auncestours were incensed to inuent these thynges. But herein Polucle- tus, Apelles, and Perthesius maie giue place, when greater [Sidenote: Esope wor- thie moche commendacio[n][.]] vertues come in place, then this my aucthour Esope, for his godly preceptes, wise counsaill and admonicion, is chiefly to [Fol. v.v] bée praised: For, our life maie learne all goodnes, all vertue, [Sidenote: Philophie in fables.] of his preceptes. The Philosophers did neuer so liuely sette forthe and teache in their scholes and audience, what vertue [Sidenote: Realmes maie learne concorde out of Esopes fables.] and godlie life were, as Esope did in his Fables, Citees, and common wealthes, maie learne out of his fables, godlie con- corde and vnitee, by the whiche meanes, common wealthes florisheth, and kingdoms are saued. Herein ample matter ri- seth to Princes, and gouernours, to rule their subiectes in all [Sidenote: Preceptes to Kynges and Subiectes. Preceptes to parentes and children.] godlie lawes, in faithfull obedience: the subiectes also to loue and serue their prince, in al his affaires and busines. The fa- ther maie learne to bring vp, and instructe his childe thereby. The child also to loue and obeie his parentes. The huge and monsterous vices, are by his vertuous doctrine defaced and extirpated: his Fables in effect contain the mightie volumes and bookes of all Philosophers, in morall preceptes, & the in- [Sidenote: The content of al Lawes.] finite monume[n]tes of lawes stablished. If I should not speake of his commendacion, the fruictes of his vertue would shewe his commendacions: but that praise surmounteth all fame of [Sidenote: A true praise comme[n]ded by fame it self.] glory, that commendeth by fame itself, the fruictes of fame in this one Fable, riseth to my aucthour, whiche he wrote of the Shepeherd, and the Wolues. ¶ The Morall. WHerein Esope wittely admonisheth all menne to be- ware and take heede, of cloked and fained frendship, of the wicked and vngodlie, whiche vnder a pretence and offer of frendship or of benefite, seeke the ruin, dammage, miserie or destruccion of man, toune, citée, region, or countree. ¶ The nature of the thyng. OF all beastes to the quantitée of his bodie, the [Sidenote: The Wolue moste raue- ning & cruell.] Wolue passeth in crueltee and desire of bloode, alwaies vnsaciable of deuouryng, neuer conten- ted with his pray. The Wolfe deuoureth and ea- teth of his praie all in feare, and therefore oftentymes he ca- steth his looke, to be safe from perill and daunger. And herein [Fol. vj.r] his nature is straunge fro[m] all beastes: the iyes of the Wolfe, tourned from his praie immediatlie, the praie prostrate vnder [Sidenote: The Wolues of all beastes, moste obliui- ous.] his foote is forgotten, and forthwith he seeketh a newe praie, so greate obliuion and debilitée of memorie, is giuen to that beaste, who chieflie seketh to deuoure his praie by night. The [Sidenote: The Wolue inferiour to the bandogge[.]] Wolues are moche inferior to the banddogges in strength, bi- cause nature hath framed the[m] in the hinder parts, moche more weaker, and as it were maimed, and therefore the bandogge dooeth ouermatche theim, and ouercome them in fight. The Wolues are not all so mightie of bodie as the Bandogges, of diuers colours, of fight more sharpe, of lesse heddes: but in [Sidenote: The Dogge passeth all creatures in smellyng.] smellyng, the nature of a Dogge passeth all beastes and creatures, whiche the historie of Plinie dooe shewe, and Ari- stotle in his booke of the historie of beastes, therein you shall knowe their excellente nature. The housholde wanteth not faithfull and trustie watche nor resistaunce, in the cause of the [Sidenote: Plinie.] maister, the Bandogge not wantyng. Plinie sheweth out of his historie, how Bandogges haue saued their Maister, by their resistaunce. The Dogge of all beastes sheweth moste loue, and neuer leaueth his maister: the worthines of the ba[n]- dogge is soche, that by the lawe in a certaine case, he is coun- ted accessarie of Felonie, who stealeth a Bandogge from his maister, a robberie immediatly folowing in thesame family. [Sidenote: The worthi- nes of Shepe[.]] As concernyng the Shepe, for their profite and wealthe, that riseth of theim, are for worthines, waiyng their smalle quantitie of bodie, aboue all beastes. Their fleshe nourisheth purely, beyng swete and pleasaunt: their skinne also serueth [Sidenote: The wolle of Shepe, riche and commo- dious.] to diuers vses, their Wolles in so large and ample maner, commmodious, seruyng all partes of common wealthes. No state or degrée of persone is, but that thei maie goe cladde and adorned with their wolles. So GOD in his creatures, hath [Sidenote: Man a chief creature.] created and made man, beyng a chief creatour, and moste ex- cellent of all other, all thinges to serue him: and therefore the [Sidenote: Stoike Phi- losophers.] Stoicke Philosophers doe herein shewe thexcellencie of man to be greate, when all thinges vpon the yearth, and from the [Fol. vj.v] yearth, doe serue the vse of man, yet emong men there is a di- uersitee of states, and a difference of persones, in office and co[n]- [Sidenote: The office of the shepeher- des, are pro- fitable and necessarie.] dicion of life. As concernyng the Shepherde, he is in his state and condicion of life, thoughe meane, he is a righte profi- table and necessarie member, to serue all states in the commo[n] wealthe, not onely to his maister whom he serueth: for by his diligence, and warie keping of the[m], not onely from rauenyng beastes, but otherwise he is a right profitable member, to all [Sidenote: Wealth, pro- fit, and riches riseth of the Wolles of Shepe.] partes of the common wealth. For, dailie wée féele the co[m]mo- ditie, wealth and riches, that riseth of theim, but the losse wée féele not, except flockes perishe. In the body of man God hath created & made diuerse partes, to make vp a whole and abso- lute man, whiche partes in office, qualitée and worthinesse, are moche differing. The bodie of man it self, for the excellent workemanship of God therein, & meruailous giftes of nature [Sidenote: Man called of the Philo- sophers, a lit- tle worlde.] and vertues, lodged and bestowed in thesame bodie, is called of the Philosophers _Microcosmos_, a little worlde. The body of man in all partes at co[n]cord, euery part executing his func- cion & office, florisheth, and in strength prospereth, otherwise [Sidenote: The bodie of man without concord of the partes, peri- sheth.] thesame bodie in partes disseuered, is feeble and weake, and thereby falleth to ruin, and perisheth. The singuler Fable of Esope, of the belie and handes, manifestlie sheweth thesame [Sidenote: The common wealthe like to the bodie of manne.] and herein a florishing kingdom or common wealth, is com- pared to the body, euery part vsing his pure vertue, stre[n]gth & [Sidenote: Menenius.] operacion. Menenius Agrippa, at what time as the Romai- were at diuision against the Senate, he vsed the Fable of E- sope, wherewith thei were perswaded to a concorde, and vni- [Sidenote: The baseste parte of the bodie moste necessarie.] tée. The vilest parte of the bodie, and baseste is so necessarie, that the whole bodie faileth and perisheth, thesame wantyng although nature remoueth them from our sight, and shame fastnes also hideth theim: take awaie the moste vilest parte of the bodie, either in substaunce, in operacion or function, and forthwith the principall faileth. So likewise in a kyngdome, or common wealth, the moste meane and basest state of man taken awaie, the more principall thereby ceaseth: So God to [Fol. vij.r] [Sidenote: The amiable parte of the body doe con- siste, by the baseste and moste defor- meste.] a mutuall concorde, frendship, and perpetuall societie of life, hath framed his creatures, that the moste principall faileth, it not vnited with partes more base and inferiour, so moche the might and force of thynges excellente, doe consiste by the moste inferiour, other partes of the bodie more amiable and pleasaunt to sight, doe remain by the force, vse and integritée of the simpliest. The Prince and chief peres doe decaie, and al the whole multitude dooe perishe: the baseste kinde of menne [Sidenote: The Shepe- herdes state necessarie.] wantyng. Remoue the Shepeherdes state, what good follo- weth, yea, what lacke and famine increaseth not: to all states [Sidenote: The state of the husbande manne, moste necessarie.] the belie ill fedde, our backes worse clad. The toilyng house- bandman is so necessarie, that his office ceasyng vniuersallie the whole bodie perisheth, where eche laboureth to further and aide one an other, this a common wealth, there is pro- sperous state of life. The wisest Prince, the richest, the migh- tiest and moste valianntes, had nede alwaies of the foolishe, the weake, the base and simplest, to vpholde his kingdomes, not onely in the affaires of his kyngdomes, but in his dome- sticall thinges, for prouisio[n] of victuall, as bread, drinke, meat[,] clothyng, and in all soche other thynges. Therefore, no office or state of life, be it neuer so méete, seruyng in any part of the [Sidenote: No meane state, to be contempned.] common wealthe, muste bée contemned, mocked, or skorned at, for thei are so necessarie, that the whole frame of the com- mon wealth faileth without theim: some are for their wicked behauiour so detestable, that a common wealthe muste séeke [Sidenote: Rotten mem[-] bers of the co[m][-] mon wealth.] meanes to deface and extirpate theim as wéedes, and rotten members of the bodie. These are thefes, murtherers, and ad- ulterers, and many other mischiuous persones. These godly Lawes, vpright and sincere Magistrates, will extirpate and cutte of, soche the commo wealth lacketh not, but rather ab- horreth as an infectiue plague and Pestilence, who in thende through their owne wickednesse, are brought to mischief. [Sidenote: Plato.] Read Plato in his booke, intiteled of the common wealth who sheweth the state of the Prince, and whole Realme, to stande and consiste by the vnitee of partes, all states of the co[m]- [Fol. vij.v] [Sidenote: A common wealth doe consiste by vnitie of all states.] mon wealth, in office diuers, for dignitée and worthines, bea- ring not equalitée in one consociatée and knit, doe raise a per- fite frame, and bodie of kingdome or common wealthe. [Sidenote: Aristotle. What is a co[m]- mon wealth.] Aristotle the Philosopher doeth saie, that a co[m]mon welth is a multitude gathered together in one Citée, or Region, in state and condicion of life differing, poore and riche, high and low, wise and foolishe, in inequalitee of minde and bodies dif- feryng, for els it can not bée a common wealthe. There must be nobles and peres, kyng and subiect: a multitude inferiour and more populous, in office, maners, worthines alteryng. [Sidenote: A liuely exa[m]- ple of commo[n] wealthe.] Manne needeth no better example, or paterne of a common wealthe, to frame hymself, to serue in his state and callyng, then to ponder his owne bodie. There is but one hedde, and many partes, handes, feete, fingers, toes, ioyntes, veines, si- newes, belie, and so forthe: and so likewise in a co[m]mon welth there muste be a diuersitee of states. ¶ The reasonyng of the thynges conteined in this Fable. THus might the Wolues reason with them sel- ues, of their Embassage: The Wolues dailie molested and wearied, with the fearce ragyng Masties, and ouercome in fight, of their power and might: one emong the reste, more politike and wise then the other, called an assemble and counsaill of [Sidenote: The counsail of Wolues.] Wolues, and thus he beganne his oracion. My felowes and compaignions, sithe nature hath from the beginnyng, made vs vnsaciable, cruell, liuyng alwaies by praies murthered, and bloodie spoiles, yet enemies wée haue, that séeke to kepe vnder, and tame our Woluishe natures, by greate mightie Bandogges, and Shepeherdes Curres. But nature at the firste, did so depely frame and set this his peruerse, cruell, and bloodie moulde in vs, that will thei, nill thei, our nature wil bruste out, and run to his owne course. I muse moche, wai- yng the line of our firste progenitour, from whence we came [Fol. viij.r] firste: for of a man wee came, yet men as a pestiferous poison doe exile vs, and abandon vs, and by Dogges and other sub- [Sidenote: Lycaon.] till meanes doe dailie destroie vs. Lycaon, as the Poetes doe faine, excedyng in all crueltées and murthers horrible, by the murther of straungers, that had accesse to his land: for he was king and gouernor ouer the Molossians, and in this we maie worthilie glorie of our firste blood and long auncientrée, that [Sidenote: The firste progenie of Wolues.] he was not onelie a man, but a kyng, a chief pere and gouer- nour: by his chaunge and transubstanciacion of bodie, wée loste by him the honour and dignitee due to him, but his ver- tues wée kepe, and daily practise to followe them. The fame [Sidenote: The inuen- cion of the Poet Ouide to compare a wicked man, to a Wolue.] of Lycaons horrible life, ascended before Iupiter, Iupiter the mightie God, moued with so horrible a facte, left his heauen- lie palace, came doune like an other mortall man, and passed doune by the high mountaine Minalus, by twilighte, and so to Licaons house, our firste auncestoure, to proue, if this [Sidenote: Lycaon.] thing was true. Lycaon receiued this straunger, as it semed doubtyng whether he were a God, or a manne, forthwith he feasted him with mannes fleshe baked, Iupiter as he can doe [Sidenote: Lycaon chau[n]- ged into a Wolue.] what he will, brought a ruine on his house, and transubstan- ciated hym, into this our shape & figure, wherein we are, and so sens that time, Wolues were firste generated, and that of manne, by the chaunge of Lycaon, although our shape is chaunged from the figure of other men, and men knoweth [Sidenote: Wolue. Manne.] vs not well, yet thesame maners that made Wolues, remai- neth vntill this daie, and perpetuallie in men: for thei robbe, thei steale, and liue by iniurious catching, we also robbe, al- so wée steale, and catche to our praie, what wee maie with murther come to. Thei murther, and wee also murther, and so in all poinctes like vnto wicked menne, doe we imitate the like fashion of life, and rather thei in shape of men, are Wol- ues, and wee in the shape of Wolues menne: Of all these thynges hauyng consideracion, I haue inuented a pollicie, whereby we maie woorke a slauter, and perpetuall ruine on the Shepe, by the murther of the Bandogges. And so wée [Fol. viij.v] shall haue free accesse to our bloodie praie, thus we will doe, wee will sende a Embassage to the Shepeherdes for peace, [Sidenote: The counsail of Wolues.] saiyng, that wee minde to ceasse of all bloodie spoile, so that thei will giue ouer to vs, the custodie of the Bandogges, for otherwise the Embassage sent, is in vaine: for their Dogges being in our handes, and murthered one by one, the daunger and enemie taken awaie, we maie the better obtain and en- ioye our bloodie life. This counsaill pleased well the assem- ble of the Wolues, and the pollicie moche liked theim, and with one voice thei houled thus, thus. Immediatlie co[m]muni- cacion was had with the Shepeherdes of peace, and of the gi- uyng ouer of their Bandogges, this offer pleased theim, thei co[n]cluded the peace, and gaue ouer their Bandogges, as pled- ges of thesame. The dogges one by one murthered, thei dis- solued the peace, and wearied the Shepe, then the Shepeher- des repented them of their rashe graunt, and foly committed: [Sidenote: The counsail of wicked me[n] to mischief.] So of like sorte it alwaies chaunceth, tyrauntes and bloodie menne, dooe seke alwaies a meane, and practise pollicies to destroye all soche as are godlie affected, and by wisedome and godlie life, doe seke to subuerte and destroie, the mischeuous [Sidenote: The cogita- cions of wic- ked men, and their kyngdo[m] bloodie.] enterprise of the wicked. For, by crueltie their Woluishe na- tures are knowen, their glorie, strength, kyngdome and re- nowne, cometh of blood, of murthers, and beastlie dealynges and by might so violent, it continueth not: for by violence and blooddie dealyng, their kyngdome at the last falleth by blood and bloodilie perisheth. The noble, wise, graue, and goodlie counsailes, are with all fidelitée, humblenes and sincere har- [Sidenote: The state of counsailours worthie chief honour and veneracion.] tes to be obeied, in worthines of their state and wisedome, to be embraced in chief honour and veneracion to bee taken, by whose industrie, knowledge and experience, the whole bodie of the common wealth and kyngdome, is supported and sa- ued. The state of euery one vniuersallie would come to par- dicion, if the inuasion of foraine Princes, by the wisedom and pollicie of counsailers, were not repelled. The horrible actes of wicked men would burste out, and a confusion ensue in al [Fol. ix.r] states, if the wisedom of politike gouernors, if good lawes if the power and sword of the magistrate, could uot take place. The peres and nobles, with the chief gouernour, standeth as [Sidenote: Plato.] Shepherds ouer the people: for so Plato alledgeth that name well and properlie giuen, to Princes and Gouernours, the [Sidenote: Homere.] which Homere the Poete attributeth, to Agamemnon king of Grece: to Menelaus, Ulisses, Nestor, Achillas, Diomedes, [Sidenote: The Shepe- herdes name giue[n] to the of- fice of kyngs.] Aiax, and al other. For, bothe the name and care of that state of office, can be titeled by no better name in all pointes, for di- ligent kepyng, for aide, succoryng, and with all equitie tem- peryng the multitude: thei are as Shepeherdes els the selie poore multitude, would by an oppression of pestiferous men. The commonaltee or base multitude, liueth more quietlie [Sidenote: The state or good counsai- lers, trou- blous.] then the state of soche as daily seke, to vpholde and maintaine the common wealthe, by counsaill and politike deliberacion, how troublous hath their state alwaies been: how vnquiete from time to time, whose heddes in verie deede, doeth seke for a publike wealth. Therefore, though their honor bée greater, and state aboue the reste, yet what care, what pensiuenesse of minde are thei driuen vnto, on whose heddes aucthoritée and regiment, the sauegard of innumerable people doeth depend. [Sidenote: A comparison from a lesse, to a greater.] If in our domesticall businesse, of matters pertainyng to our housholde, euery man by nature, for hym and his, is pensiue, moche more in so vaste, and infinite a bodie of co[m]mon wealth, greater must the care be, and more daungerous deliberacion. We desire peace, we reioyce of a tranquilitée, and quietnesse to ensue, we wishe, to consist in a hauen of securitée: our hou- ses not to be spoiled, our wiues and children, not to bee mur- [Sidenote: The worthie state of Prin- ces and coun- sailours.] thered. This the Prince and counsailours, by wisedome fore- sée, to kéepe of, all these calamitées, daungers, miseries, the whole multitude, and bodie of the Common wealthe, is without them maimed, weake and feable, a readie confusion to the enemie. Therefore, the state of peeres and nobles, is with all humilitée to be obaied, serued and honored, not with- out greate cause, the Athenians were drawen backe, by the [Fol. ix.v] wisedome of Demosthenes, when thei sawe the[m] selues a slau- ter and praie, to the enemie. ¶ A comparson of thynges. WHat can bée more rashly and foolishly doen, then the Shepeherdes, to giue ouer their Dogges, by whose might and strength, the Shepe were saued: on the o- ther side, what can be more subtlie doen and craftely, then the Wolues, vnder a colour of frendship and amitee, to séeke the [Sidenote: The amitie of wicked menne.] blood of the shepe, as all pestiferous men, vnder a fained pro- fer of amitée, profered to seeke their owne profite, commoditee and wealthe, though it be with ruine, calamitie, miserie, de- struccion of one, or many, toune, or citée, region and countree, whiche sort of men, are moste detestable and execrable. ¶ The contrarie. AS to moche simplicitie & lacke of discrecion, is a fur- theraunce to perill and daunger: so ofte[n]times, he ta- [Sidenote: To beleue lightly, afur- theraunce to perill.] steth of smarte and woe, who lightly beleueth: so con- trariwise, disimulacio[n] in mischeuous practises begon w[ith] fre[n]d- ly wordes, in the conclusion doeth frame & ende pernisiouslie. ¶ The _Epilogus_. THerefore fained offers of frendship, are to bee taken heede of, and the acte of euery man to bee examined, proued, and tried, for true frendship is a rare thyng, when as Tullie doth saie: in many ages there are fewe cou- ples of friendes to be found, Aristotle also co[n]cludeth thesame. ¶ The Fable of the Ante, and Greshopper. ¶ The praise of the aucthour. [Sidenote: The praise of Esope.] ESope who wrote these Fables, hath chief fame of all learned aucthours, for his Philosophie, and giuyng wisedome in preceptes: his Fables dooe shewe vnto all states moste wholsome doctrine of vertuous life. He who- ly extolleth vertue, and depresseth vice: he correcteth all states and setteth out preceptes to amende them. Although he was deformed and ill shaped, yet Nature wrought in hym soche [Fol. x.r] vertue, that he was in minde moste beautifull: and seing that the giftes of the body, are not equall in dignitie, with the ver- tue of the mynde, then in that Esope chiefly excelled, ha- uyng the moste excellente vertue of the minde. The wisedom [Sidenote: Cresus.] and witte of Esope semed singuler: for at what tyme as Cre- sus, the kyng of the Lidians, made warre against the Sami- ans, he with his wisedome and pollicie, so pacified the minde of Cresus, that all warre ceased, and the daunger of the coun- [Sidenote: Samians.] tree was taken awaie, the Samia[n]s deliuered of this destruc- cion and warre, receiued Esope at his retourne with many honours. After that Esope departyng from the Isle Samus, wandered to straunge regions, at the laste his wisedome be- [Sidenote: Licerus.] yng knowen: Licerus the kyng of that countrée, had hym in soche reuerence and honor, that he caused an Image of gold to be set vp in the honour of Esope. After that, he wanderyng [Sidenote: Delphos.] ouer Grece, to the citée of Delphos, of whom he beyng mur- thered, a greate plague and Pestilence fell vpon the citee, that reuenged his death: As in all his Fables, he is moche to bee commended, so in this Fable he is moche to be praised, which he wrote of the Ante and the Greshopper. ¶ The Fable. IN a hotte Sommer, the Grashoppers gaue them sel- ues to pleasaunt melodie, whose Musicke and melo- die, was harde from the pleasaunt Busshes: but the Ante in all this pleasaunt tyme, laboured with pain and tra- uaile, she scraped her liuyng, and with fore witte and wise- [Sidenote: Winter.] dome, preuented the barande and scarce tyme of Winter: for when Winter time aprocheth, the ground ceasseth fro[m] fruict, [Sidenote: The Ante.] then the Ante by his labour, doeth take the fruicte & enioyeth it: but hunger and miserie fell vpon the Greshoppers, who in the pleasaunt tyme of Sommer, when fruictes were aboun- dauute, ceassed by labour to put of necessitée, with the whiche the long colde and stormie tyme, killed them vp, wantyng al sustinaunce. [Fol. x.v] ¶ The Morall. HEre in example, all menne maie take to frame their owne life, and also to bryng vp in godlie educacion their children: that while age is tender and young, thei maie learne by example of the Ante, to prouide in their grene and lustie youth, some meane of art and science, wher- by thei maie staie their age and necessitée of life, al soche as do flie labour, and paine in youth, and seeke no waie of Arte and science, in age thei shall fall in extreme miserie and pouertée. ¶ The nature of the thyng. NOt without a cause, the Philosophers searchyng the nature and qualitee of euery beaste, dooe moche com- [Sidenote: The Ante.] mende the Ante, for prouidence and diligence, in that not oneie by nature thei excell in forewisedome to the[m] selues, [Sidenote: Manne.] but also thei be a example, and mirrour to all menne, in that thei iustlie followe the instincte of Nature: and moche more, where as men indued with reason, and all singulare vertues and excellent qualitées of the minde and body. Yet thei doe so moche leaue reason, vertue, & integritée of minde, as that thei had been framed without reason, indued with no vertue, nor adorned with any excellent qualitée. All creatures as nature hath wrought in them, doe applie them selues to followe na- ture their guide: the Ante is alwaies diligent in his busines, and prouident, and also fore séeth in Sommer, the sharpe sea- son of Winter: thei keepe order, and haue a kyng and a com- mon wealthe as it were, as nature hath taught them. And so haue all other creatures, as nature hath wrought in the[m] their giftes, man onelie leaueth reason, and neclecteth the chief or- namentes of the minde: and beyng as a God aboue all crea- tures, dooeth leese the excellent giftes. A beaste will not take excesse in feedyng, but man often tymes is without reason, and hauyng a pure mynde and soule giuen of God, and a face to beholde the heauens, yet he doeth abase hymself to yearth- [Sidenote: Greshopper.] lie thynges, as concernyng the Greshopper: as the Philoso- phers doe saie, is made altogether of dewe, and sone perisheth[.] [Fol. xj.r] The Greshopper maie well resemble, slothfull and sluggishe persones, who seke onely after a present pleasure, hauyng no fore witte and wisedom, to foresée tymes and ceasons: for it is [Sidenote: A poincte of wisedome.] the poinct of wisedo[m], to iudge thinges present, by thinges past and to take a co[n]iecture of thinges to come, by thinges present. ¶ The reasonyng of the twoo thynges. THus might the Ante reason with her self, althoughe the seasons of the yere doe seme now very hotte, plea- [Sidenote: A wise cogi- tacion.] saunt and fruictfull: yet so I do not trust time, as that like pleasure should alwaies remaine, or that fruictes should alwaies of like sorte abounde. Nature moueth me to worke, and wisedome herein sheweth me to prouide: for what hur- teth plentie, or aboundaunce of store, though greate plentie commeth thereon, for better it is to bee oppressed with plen- tie, and aboundaunce, then to bee vexed with lacke. For, to whom wealthe and plentie riseth, at their handes many bee releued, and helped, all soche as bee oppressed with necessi- tie and miserie, beyng caste from all helpe, reason and proui- dence maimed in theim: All arte and Science, and meane of life cutte of, to enlarge and maintain better state of life, their [Sidenote: Pouertie.] miserie, necessitie, and pouertie, shall continuallie encrease, who hopeth at other mennes handes, to craue relief, is decei- ued. Pouertie is so odious a thing, in al places & states reiected for where lacke is, there fanour, frendship, and acquaintance [Sidenote: Wisedome.] decreaseth, as in all states it is wisedome: so with my self I waie discritlie, to take tyme while tyme is, for this tyme as a [Sidenote: Housebande menne.] floure will sone fade awaie. The housebande manne, hath he not times diuers, to encrease his wealth, and to fill his barne, at one tyme and ceason: the housebande man doeth not bothe plante, plowe, and gather the fruicte of his labour, but in one tyme and season he ploweth, an other tyme serueth to sowe, and the laste to gather the fruictes of his labour. So then, I must forsee time and seasons, wherin I maie be able to beare of necessitie: for foolishly he hopeth, who of no wealth and no abundaunt store, trusteth to maintain his own state. For, no- [Fol. xj.v] [Sidenote: Frendship.] thyng soner faileth, then frendship, and the soner it faileth, as [Sidenote: Homere.] fortune is impouerished. Seyng that, as Homere doeth saie, a slothfull man, giuen to no arte or science, to helpe hymself, or an other, is an vnprofitable burdein to the yearth, and God dooeth sore plague, punishe, and ouerthrowe Citees, kyng- domes, and common wealthes, grounded in soche vices: that the wisedome of man maie well iudge, hym to be vnworthie of all helpe, and sustinaunce. He is worse then a beast, that is not able to liue to hymself & other: no man is of witte so vn- [Sidenote: Nature.] descrite, or of nature so dulle, but that in hym, nature alwa- yes coueteth some enterprise, or worke to frame relife, or help [Sidenote: The cause of our bearth.] to hymself, for all wée are not borne, onelie to our selues, but many waies to be profitable, as to our owne countrie, and all partes thereof. Especiallie to soche as by sickenes, or infirmi- tie of bodie are oppressed, that arte and Science can not take place to help the[m]. Soche as do folowe the life of the Greshop- per, are worthie of their miserie, who haue no witte to foresée seasons and tymes, but doe suffer tyme vndescretly to passe, [Sidenote: Ianus.] whiche fadeth as a floure, thold Romaines do picture Ianus with two faces, a face behind, & an other before, which resem- ble a wiseman, who alwaies ought to knowe thinges paste, thynges presente, and also to be experte, by the experience of many ages and tymes, and knowledge of thynges to come. ¶ The comparison betwene the twoo thynges. WHat can be more descritlie doen, then the Ante to be so prouident and politike: as that all daunger of life, & necessitie is excluded, the stormie times of Winter ceaseth of might, & honger battereth not his walles, hauyng [Sidenote: Prouidence.] soche plentie of foode, for vnlooked bitter stormes and seasons, happeneth in life, whiche when thei happen, neither wisedo[m] nor pollicie, is not able to kepe backe. Wisedome therefore, it is so to stande, that these thynges hurte not, the miserable ende of the Greshopper sheweth vnto vs, whiche maie be an example to all menne, of what degree, so euer thei bee, to flie [Fol. xij.r] slothe and idelnesse, to be wise and discrite. ¶ Of contraries. [Sidenote: Diligence.] AS diligence, prouidence, and discrete life is a singu- lare gift, whiche increaseth all vertues, a pillar, staie and a foundacion of all artes and science, of common wealthes, and kyngdomes. So contrarily sloth and sluggish- nesse, in all states and causes, defaseth, destroyeth, and pul- leth doune all vertue, all science and godlines. For, by it, the mightie kyngdome of the Lidia[n]s, was destroied, as it semeth [Sidenote: Idelnes.] no small vice, when the Lawes of Draco, dooe punishe with death idelnesse. ¶ The ende. [Sidenote: The Ante.] THerefore, the diligence of the Ante in this Fable, not onelie is moche to be commended, but also her example is to bee followed in life. Therefore, the wiseman doeth admonishe vs, to go vnto the Ant and learne prouidence: and also by the Greshopper, lette vs learne to auoide idelnes, leste the like miserie and calamitie fall vpon vs. ¶ Narratio. THis place followyng, is placed of Tullie, after the exordium or beginnyng of Oracion, as the seconde parte: whiche parte of _Rhetorike_, is as it were the light of all the Oracion folowing: conteining the cause, mat- ter, persone, tyme, with all breuitie, bothe of wordes, and in- uencion of matter. ¶ A Narracion. A Narracion is an exposicion, or declaracion of any thyng dooen in deede, or els a settyng forthe, for- ged of any thyng, but so declaimed and declared, as though it were doen. A narracion is of three sortes, either it is a narracion hi- storicall, of any thyng contained, in any aunciente storie, or true Chronicle. [Fol. xij.v] Or Poeticall, whiche is a exposicion fained, set forthe by inuencion of Poetes, or other. Or ciuill, otherwise called Iudiciall, whiche is a matter of controuersie in iudgement, to be dooen, or not dooen well or euill. In euery Narracion, ye must obserue sixe notes. 1. Firste, the persone, or doer of the thing, whereof you intreate. 2. The facte doen. 3. The place wherein it was doen. 4. The tyme in the whiche it was doen. 5. The maner must be shewed, how it was doen. 6. The cause wherevpon it was doen. There be in this Narracion, iiij. other properties belo[n]ging[.] 1. First, it must be plain and euident to the hearer, not obscure, 2. short and in as fewe wordes as it maie be, for soche amatter. 3. Probable, as not vnlike to be true. 4. In wordes fine and elegante. ¶ A narracion historicall, vpon Semiramis Queene of Babilon how and after what sort she obtained the gouernment thereof. [Sidenote: Tyme. Persone.] AFter the death of Ninus, somtime kyng of Ba- bilon, his soonne Ninus also by name, was left to succede hym, in all the Assirian Monarchie, Semiramis wife to Ninus the firste, feared the tender age of her sonne, wherupon she thought [Sidenote: The cause. The facte.] that those mightie nacions and kyngdomes, would not obaie so young and weake a Prince. Wherfore, she kept her sonne from the gouernmente: and moste of all she feared, that thei [Sidenote: The waie how.] would not obaie a woman, forthwith she fained her self, to be the soonne of Ninus, and bicause she would not be knowen to bee a woman, this Quene inuented a newe kinde of tire, the whiche all the Babilonians that were men, vsed by her commaundement. By this straunge disguised tire and appa- rell, she not knowen to bee a woman, ruled as a man, for the [Sidenote: The facte. The place.] space of twoo and fourtie yeres: she did marueilous actes, for she enlarged the mightie kyngdome of Babilon, and builded [Fol. xiij.r] thesame citée. Many other regions subdued, and valiauntlie ouerthrowen, she entered India, to the whiche neuer Prince came, sauing Alexander the greate: she passed not onely men in vertue, counsaill, and valiaunt stomacke, but also the fa- mous counsailours of Assiria, might not contende with her in Maiestie, pollicie, and roialnes. For, at what tyme as thei knewe her a woman, thei enuied not her state, but maruei- led at her wisedome, pollicie, and moderacion of life, at the laste she desiryng the vnnaturall lust, and loue of her soonne Ninus, was murthered of hym. ¶ A narracion historicall vpon kyng Ri- chard the third, the cruell tiraunt[.] [Sidenote: The persone[.]] RIchard duke of Glocester, after the death of Ed- ward the fowerth his brother king of England, vsurped the croune, moste traiterouslie and wic- kedlie: this kyng Richard was small of stature, deformed, and ill shaped, his shoulders beared not equalitee, a pulyng face, yet of countenaunce and looke cruell, malicious, deceiptfull, bityng and chawing his nether lippe: of minde vnquiet, pregnaunt of witte, quicke and liue- ly, a worde and a blowe, wilie, deceiptfull, proude, arrogant [Sidenote: The tyme. The place.] in life and cogitacion bloodie. The fowerth daie of Iulie, he entered the tower of London, with Anne his wife, doughter to Richard Erle of Warwick: and there in created Edward his onely soonne, a child of ten yeres of age, Prince of Wa- les. At thesame tyme, in thesame place, he created many no- ble peres, to high prefermente of honour and estate, and im- mediatly with feare and faint harte, bothe in himself, and his [Sidenote: The horrible murther of king Richard[.]] nobles and commons, was created king, alwaies a vnfortu- nate and vnluckie creacion, the harts of the nobles and com- mons thereto lackyng or faintyng, and no maruaile, he was a cruell murtherer, a wretched caitiffe, a moste tragicall ty- raunt, and blood succour, bothe of his nephewes, and brother George Duke of Clarence, whom he caused to bee drouned in a Butte of Malmsie, the staires sodainlie remoued, wher- [Fol. xiij.v] [Sidenote: The facte.] on he stepped, the death of the lorde Riuers, with many other nobles, compassed and wrought at the young Princes com- myng out of Wales, the .xix. daie of Iuly, in the yere of our lorde .1483. openly he toke vpon him to be king, who sekyng hastely to clime, fell according to his desart, sodainly and in- gloriously, whose Embassage for peace, Lewes the Frenche king, for his mischeuous & bloodie slaughter, so moche abhor- red, that he would neither sée the Embassador, nor heare the Embassage: for he murthered his .ij. nephues, by the handes [Sidenote: The tyme. The maner how.] of one Iames Tirrell, & .ij. vilaines more associate with him the Lieutenaunt refusyng so horrible a fact. This was doen he takyng his waie & progresse to Glocester, whereof he was before tymes Duke: the murther perpetrated, he doubed the good squire knight. Yet to kepe close this horrible murther, he caused a fame and rumour to be spread abrode, in all par- tes of the realme, that these twoo childre[n] died sodainly, there- [Sidenote: The cause.] by thinkyng the hartes of all people, to bee quietlie setteled, no heire male lefte a liue of kyng Edwardes children. His mischief was soche, that God shortened his vsurped raigne: he was al together in feare and dread, for he being feared and dreaded of other, did also feare & dread, neuer quiete of minde faint harted, his bloodie conscience by outward signes, conde[m]- pned hym: his iyes in euery place whirlyng and caste about, [Sidenote: The state of a wicked ma[n].] his hand moche on his Dagger, the infernall furies tormen- ted him by night, visions and horrible dreames, drawed him from his bedde, his vnquiet life shewed the state of his consci- ence, his close murther was vttered, fro[m] the hartes of the sub- iectes: thei called hym openlie, with horrible titles and na- mes, a horrible murtherer, and excecrable tiraunt. The peo- [Sidenote: A dolefull state of a quene.] ple sorowed the death of these twoo babes, the Queene, kyng Edwardes wife, beeyng in Sanctuarie, was bestraught of witte and sences, sounyng and falling doune to the grounde as dedde, the Quéene after reuiued, knéeled doune, and cal- led on God, to take vengaunce on this murtherer. The con- science of the people was so wounded, of the tolleracion of the [Fol. xiiij.r] [Sidenote: The wicked facte of kyng Richard, a horror and dread to the commons.] facte, that when any blustryng winde, or perilous thonder, or dreadfull tempest happened: with one voice thei cried out and quaked, least God would take vengauce of them, for it is al- waies séen the horrible life of wicked gouernors, bringeth to ruin their kyngdom and people, & also wicked people, the like daungers to the kyngdome and Prince: well he and his sup- porters with the Duke of Buckyngham, died shamefullie. [Sidenote: God permit meanes, to pull doune tyrauntes.] The knotte of mariage promised, betwene Henrie Erle of Richemonde, and Elizabeth doughter to kyng Edward the fowerth: caused diuerse nobles to aide and associate this erle, fledde out of this lande with all power, to the attainmente of the kyngdome by his wife. At Nottyngham newes came to kyng Richard, that the Erle of Richmonde, with a small co[m]- paignie of nobles and other, was arriued in Wales, forthe- with exploratours and spies were sent, who shewed the Erle [Sidenote: Lichefelde. Leicester.] to be encamped, at the toune of Litchfield, forthwith all pre- paracion of warre, was set forthe to Leicester on euery side, the Nobles and commons shranke from kyng Richarde, his [Sidenote: Bosworthe[.]] power more and more weakened. By a village called Bos- worthe, in a greate plaine, méete for twoo battailes: by Lei- cester this field was pitched, wherin king Richard manfully fightyng hande to hande, with the Erle of Richmonde, was [Sidenote: Kyng Ri- chard killed in Bosworth fielde.] slaine, his bodie caried shamefullie, to the toune of Leicester naked, without honor, as he deserued, trussed on a horse, be- hinde a Purseuaunte of Armes, like a hogge or a Calfe, his hedde and his armes hangyng on the one side, and his legges on the other side: caried through mire and durte, to the graie Friers churche, to all men a spectacle, and oprobrie of tiran- nie this was the cruell tirauntes ende. ¶ A narracion historicall, of the commyng of Iulius Cesar into Britaine. [Sidenote: The tyme. The persone.] WHen Iulius Cesar had ended his mightie and huge battailes, about the flood Rhene, he marched into the regio[n] of Fraunce: at thesame time repairing with a freshe multitude, his Legio[n]s, but the chief cause of his warre [Fol. xiiij.v] in Fraunce was, that of long time, he was moued in minde, [Sidenote: The cause. The fame and glorie of Britaine.] to see this noble Islande of Britain, whose fame for nobilitée was knowen and bruted, not onelie in Rome, but also in the vttermoste la[n]des. Iulius Cesar was wroth with the[m], because in his warre sturred in Fraunce, the fearce Britaines aided the Fenche men, and did mightilie encounter battaill with the Romaines: whose prowes and valiaunt fight, slaked the proude and loftie stomackes of the Romaines, and droue the[m] [Sidenote: The prowes of Iulius Cesar.] to diuerse hasardes of battaill. But Cesar as a noble warrier preferryng nobilitee, and worthinesse of fame, before money or cowardly quietnes: ceased not to enter on y^e fearce Britai- nes, and thereto prepared his Shippes, the Winter tyme fo- lowyng, that assone as oportunitee of the yere serued, to passe [Sidenote: The maner how. Cesars com- municacion with the mar[-] chauntes, as concernyng the lande of Britaine.] with all power against them. In the meane tyme, Cesar in- quired of the Marchauntes, who with marchaundise had ac- cesse to the Islande: as concernyng the qua[n]titée and bignes of it, the fashion and maner of the people, their lawes, their or- der, and kinde of gouernmente. As these thynges were in all poinctes, vnknowen to Cesar, so also the Marchau[n]tes knewe [Sidenote: The ware & politike go- uernement of y^e Britaines. Aliaunce in tyme traite- rous.] no more tha[n] the places bordring on the sea side. For, the Bri- taines fearing the traiterous and dissembled hartes of aliau[n]- ces, politikelie repelled them: for, no straunger was suffered to enter from his Shippe, on the lande, but their marchaun- dice were sold at the sea side. All nacions sought to this land, the felicitee of it was so greate, whereupon the Grekes kno- wyng and tastyng the commoditée of this Islande, called it by [Sidenote: Britain som- tyme called of the Grekes Olbion, not Albion.] a Greke name _Olbion_, whiche signifieth a happie and fortu- nate countrie, though of some called _Albion_, tyme chaunged the firste letter, as at this daie, London is called for the toune of kyng Lud. Cesar thereupon before he would marche with [Sidenote: Caius Uo- lusenus, Em[-] bassadour to Britaine.] his armie, to the people of Britain, he sent Caius Uolusenus a noble man of Rome, a valiaunte and hardie Capitaine, as Embassadour to the Britaines, who as he thoughte by his Embassage, should knowe the fashion of the Island, the ma- ner of the people, their gouernemente. But as it seemeth, the [Fol. xv.r] Embassadour was not welcome. For, he durste not enter fro[m] his Ship, to dooe his maisters Embassage, Cesar knewe no- [Sidenote: Comas A- trebas, seco[n]de Embassador from Cesar.] thing by him. Yet Cesar was not so contented, but sent an o- ther Embassadour, a man of more power, stomack, and more hardie, Comas Atrebas by name, who would enter as an Embassadour, to accomplish the will & expectacion of Cesar, Comas Atrebas was so welcome, that the Britains cast him in prison: Embassages was not common emong theim, nor the curteous vsage of Embassadours knowen. Al these thin- ges, made Cesar more wrothe, to assaie the vncourtous Bris[-] [Sidenote: Cassibelane king of Lon- don, at the a- riue of Cesar[.] Cassibelane a worthie Prince.] taines. In those daies Cassibelan was kyng of London, this Cassibelan was a prince of high wisedom, of manly stomacke and valiaunt in fight: and for power and valiauntnesse, was chosen of the Britaines, chief gouernour and kyng. Dissen- cion and cruell warre was emong the[m], through the diuersitie of diuers kinges in the lande. The Troinouau[n]tes enuied the [Sidenote: Imanue[n]cius[.]] state of Cassibelan, bicause Immanuencius, who was kyng of London, before Cassibelan, was put to death, by the coun- sail of Cassibelan. The sonne of Immanuencius, hearing of the commyng of Cesar, did flie traiterouslie to Cesar: The Troinouauntes fauoured Immanue[n]cius part, & thereupon [Sidenote: The Troy- nouauntes by treason let in Cesar.] promised, as moste vile traitours to their countrie, an ente- ryng to Cesar, seruice and homage, who through a self will, and priuate fauour of one, sought the ruine of their countrie, and in the ende, their own destruccion. But Cassibelan gaue many ouerthrowes to Cesar, and so mightelie encountred with hym, so inuincible was the parte of Cassibelane: but by treason of the Troinouauntes, not by manhod of Cesars po- wer, enteryng was giuen. What house can stande, where- [Sidenote: Treason a confusion to the mightiest dominions.] in discord broile? What small power, is not able to enter the mightiest dominions or regions: to ouercome the strongeste fortresse, treason open the gate, treason giuyng passage. Al- though Cesar by treason entered, so Cesar writeth. Yet the fame of Cesar was more commended, for his enterprise into Britain, and victorie: then of all his Conquest, either against [Fol. xv.v] [Sidenote: A sente[n]ce gra[-] uen of Bri- taine, in the commendaci- on of Cesar.] Pompey, or with any other nacion. For in a Piller at Rome this sentence was engrauen: Of all the dominions, Citees, and Regions, subdued by Cesar, his warre atte[m]pted against the fearce Britaines, passeth all other. After this sort Cesar entred our Islande of Britaine by treason. ¶ A narracion iudiciall, out of Theusidides, vpon the facte of Themistocles. THe Athenians brought vnder the thraldome of the Lacedemonians, soughte meanes to growe mightie, and to pull them from the yoke, vnder the Lacedemonians. Lacedemonia was a citee enuironed with walles. Athenes at thesame tyme without walles: whereby their state was more feeble, and power weakened. Themistocles a noble Sage, and a worthie pere of Athens: gaue the Athenia[n]s counsaile to wall their citée stro[n]gly, and so forthwith to be lordes and rulers by them selues, after their owne facion gouerning. In finishing this enterprise, in all poinctes, policie, and wittie conuei- aunce wanted not. The Lacedemonians harde of the pur- pose of the Athenians, & sent Embassadours, to knowe their doynges, and so to hinder them. Themistocles gaue counsaill to the Athenians, to kepe in safe custodie, the Embassadours of Lacedemonia, vntill soche tyme, as he from the Embas- sage was retourned fro[m] Lacedemonia. The Lacedemonians hearyng of the commyng of Themistocles, thought little of the walle buildyng at Athens. Themistocles was long loo- ked for of the[m], because Themistocles lingered in his Embas- sage, that or the matter were throughly knowen: the walle of Athens should be builded. The slowe commyng of The- mistocles, was blamed of the Lacedemonians: but Themi- stocles excused hymself, partly infirmitie of bodie, lettyng his commyng, and the expectacion of other, accompaignied with hym in this Embassage. The walle ended, necessitie not artificiall workemanship finishing it, with al hast it was ended: then Themistocles entered the Senate of Lacedemo- [Fol. xvj.r] nia, and saied: the walle whom ye sought to let, is builded at Athens, ye Lacedemonians, that wee maie be more strong. Then the Lacedemonians could saie nothyng to it, though thei enuied the Athenians state, the walle was builded, and leste thei should shewe violence or crueltie on Themistocles, their Embassabours were at Athens in custodie, whereby Themistocles came safe from his Embassage, and the Athe- nians made strong by their walle: this was politikely dooen of Themistocles. ¶ A narracion Poeticall vpon a Rose. WHo so doeth maruaile at the beautée and good- ly colour of the redde Rose, he must consider the blood, that came out of Uenus the Goddes foot. The Goddes Uenus, as foolishe Poetes dooe feigne, beyng the aucthour of Loue: loued Ado- nis the soonne of Cynara kyng of Cypres. But Mars called the God of battaile, loued Uenus, beyng nothyng loued of Uenus: but Mars loued Uenus as feruently, as Uenus lo- ued Adonis. Mars beyng a God, loued Uenus a goddes, but Uenus onely was inflamed with the loue of Adonis, a mor- tall man. Their loue was feruent, and exremely set on fire in bothe, but their kinde and nature were contrary, wherev- pon Mars beyng in gelousie, sought meanes to destroie, faire amiable, and beautifull Adonis, thinkyng by his death, the loue of Uenus to be slaked: Adonis and Mars fell to fighting Uenus as a louer, ranne to helpe Adonis her louer, and by chaunce she fell into a Rose bushe, and pricked with it her foote, the blood then ran out of her tender foote, did colour the Rose redde: wherevpon the Rose beyng white before, is v- pon that cause chaunged into redde. [¶] _Chria._ _CHria_, this profitable exercise of _Rhetorike_, is for the porfite of it so called: it is a rehersall in fewe wordes, of any ones fact, or of the saiyng of any man, vpo[n] the [Fol. xvj.v] whiche an oracion maie be made. As for example, Isocrates did say, that the roote of learnng was bitter, but the fruictes pleasaunt: and vpon this one sentence, you maie dilate a am- ple and great oracion, obseruyng these notes folowyng. The saiyng dooeth containe so greate matter, and minister soche plentie of argumente. Aucthors intreatyng of this exercise, doe note three sortes to bee of theim, one of theim a _Chria verball_, that is to saie, a profitable exercise, vpon the saiyng of any man, onely con- teinyng the wordes of the aucthour, as the sentence before. The seconde is, conteinyng the facte or deede of the per- sone: As Diogines beyng asked of Alexander the Greate, if he lacked any thyng, that he was able to giue hym, thinkyng his demau[n]de vnder his power, for Diogenes was at thesame tyme warmyng hymself in the beames of the Sunne: Dio- genes aunswered, ye take awaie that, that ye are not able to giue, meanyng that Alexander by his bodie, shadowed hym, and tooke awaie that, whiche was not in his power to giue, Alexander tourned hymself to his men, and saied, if I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes. The thirde is a _Chria_ mixt, bothe _verball_ and notyng the facte, as Diogenes seyng a boie wanton & dissolute, did strike his teacher with a staffe, vtteryng these woordes: why dooest thou teache thy scholer so dissolutlie. You shall learne to make this exercise, obseruyng these notes. Firste, you shall praise the aucthour, who wrote the sen- tence, waighing his life, if his life be vnknowen, and not easie to finde his sentence or sentences: for godlie preceptes will minister matter of praise, as if these saiynges bee recited, thei are sufficient of them selues, to praise the aucthour. Then in the seconde place, expounde the meanyng of the aucthour in that saiyng. Then shewe the cause, why he spake this sentence. Then compare the matter, by a contrary. [Fol. xvij.r] Then frame a similitude of thesame. Shewe the like example of some, that spake the like, or did the like. Then gather the testimonies of more writers of thesame[.] Then knit the conclusion. ¶ An Oracion. ISocrates did saie, that the roote of learnyng is was bit- ter, but the fruictes were pleasaunt. ¶ The praise. THis Oratour Isocrates, was an Athenian borne, [Sidenote: Lusimachus[.]] who florished in the time of Lusimachus the chief gouernor of Athens: this Isocrates was brought vp in all excelle[n]cie of learning, with the moste fa- [Sidenote: Prodicus. Gorgias Le- ontinus.] mous and excellent Oratour Prodicus, Gorgias Leontinus indued him with all singularitie of learnyng and eloquence. The eloque[n]ce of Isocrates was so famous, that Aristotle the [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes learned eloquence of Isocrates.] chief Pholosopher, enuied his vertue & praise therin: Demo- sthenes also, who emong the Grecians chieflie excelled, lear- ned his eloquence, of the Oracions whiche Isocrates wrote, to many mightie and puisaunt princes and kinges, do shewe his wisedome, & copious eloque[n]ce, as to Demonicus the king to Nicocles, Euagoras, against Philip the king of the Mace- donia[n]s, by his wisedome and counsaill, the Senate and vni- uersal state of Athens was ruled, & the commons and multi- tude thereby in euery part florished: chieflie what counsaill, what wisedome, what learnyng might bee required, in any man of high fame and excellencie: that fame was aboundant[-] ly in Isocrates, as in all his Oratio[n]s he is to be praised, so in this sentence, his fame importeth like commendacion. ¶ The exposicion. IN that he saieth, the roote of learnyng is bitter, and the fruictes pleasaunt: he signifieth no excellent qua- [Sidenote: All excellen- cie with labor is attained.] litie or gift, vertue, arte or science can bee attained, except paine, labour, diligence, doe plant and sette thesame: [Fol. xvij.v] but when that noble gift, either learnyng, or any excellente qualitee, is lodged and reposed in vs, then we gather by pain- full labours, greate profite, comforte, delectable pleasures, wealth, glorie, riches, whiche be the fruictes of it. ¶ The cause. AND seyng that of our owne nature, all men are en- clined from their tender yeres and infancie, to the ex- tirpacion of vertue, folowyng with all earnest studie and gréedie, the free passage to vice, and specially children, whose iudgementes and reason, are not of that strengthe, to rule their weake mindes and bodies, therefore, in them chief- lie, the roote of learning is bitter, because not onely many ye- res thei runne their race, in studie of arte and science. With care and paine also, with greuous chastisment and correccio[n], thei are compelled by their teachers and Maisters, to appre- hende thesame: the parentes no lesse dreaded, in the educacio[n] of their children, in chastisement and correction, so that by all [Sidenote: The roote of learnyng bit- ter.] meanes, the foundacion and roote of all learnyng, in what sort so euer it is, is at the firste vnpleasaunte, sower, and vn- sauerie. To folowe the times and seasons, appoincted for the same, is moste painfull, and in these painfull yeres: other greate pleasures, as the frailtie of youth, and the imbecilitie of nature iudgeth, dooeth passe by, but in miserable state is [Sidenote: Who is a vn- fortunate childe.] that childe, and vnfortunate, that passeth the flower of his youth and tender yeres, instructed with no arte or Science, whiche in tyme to come, shalbe the onelie staie, helpe, the pil- ler to beare of the sore brent, necessitie, and calamities of life. [Sidenote: Good educa- cion the foun- dacion of the Romaine Empire.] Herein the noble Romaines, laied the sure foundacion of their mightie dominion, in the descrite prouidente, and poli- tike educacion of children: to whom the Grecians gaue, that necessarie bulwarke and faundacion, to set vp all vertue, all arte and science. In Grece no man was knowen, to liue in that common wealth, but that his arte and science, gaue ma- nifest probacion and testimonie, how and after what sorte he liued. The Romaines in like sorte, the sworde and aucthori- [Fol. xviij.r] tie of the Magistrate, executyng thesame, did put forthe, and draw to the attainment of learnyng, art or science, all youth hauyng maturitie and ripenesse to it, and why, because that in a common wealth, where the parentes are vndescrete and foolishe, as in all common wealthes, there are not a fewe, but many, thei not ponderyng the state of the tyme to come, bringing vp their children without all ciuilitie, vnframed to vertue, ignoraunt of all arte and science: the children of their owne nature, vnbrideled, vntaught, wilfull, and heddie, doe run with free passage to all wickednes, thei fall into al kinde of follie, oppressed with all kinde of calamitie, miserie, and [Sidenote: Euill educa- cion bringeth to ruine migh[-] tie kingdoms[.]] vnfortunate chaunces, whiche happen in this life. Nothyng doeth soner pulle doune a kyngdome, or common wealthe, then the euill and leude educacion of youth, to whom neither substaunce, wealth, riches, nor possessions doe descende, from their auncestours and parentes, who also of them selues wa[n]t all art, science and meanes, to maintain them to liue, who of them selues are not able to get relief, for onely by this mea- nes, life is maintained, wealth and riches ar possessed to ma- ny greate siegniories, landes, and ample possessions, left by their parentes, and line of auncetours, haue by lacke of ver- tuous educacion, been brought to naught, thei fell into ex- treme miserie, pouertie, and wantyng learnyng, or wealth, to maintaine their state and delicate life, thei haue robbed, spoiled, murthered, to liue at their owne will. But then as rotten, dedde, and putride members fro[m] the common wealth thei are cutte of by the sworde, and aucthoritie of the Magi- strate. What kyngdome was more mightie and strong, then [Sidenote: Lydia.] the kyngdome of Lidia, whiche by no other meanes was brought to ruine and destruccion, but by idlenes: in that thei were kepte from all vertuous exercise, from the studie of ar- tes and sciences, so longe as thei meditated and liued in the schoole of vertuous life: no nacion was hable to ouerthrowe them, of them selues thei were prone and readie, to practise all [Sidenote: Cyrus.] excellencie. But Cyrus the kyng of Persians, by no other [Fol. xviij.v] meanes was able to bring them weaker. He toke from the[m] al furtherance to artes, destroied all occupacio[n]s of vertue wher- vpon by commaundeme[n]t aud terrour, wer driuen to practise [Sidenote: The decay of a kyngdome.] the vaine and pestiferous practise, of Cardes and Dice. Har- lottes then schooled them, and all vnhoneste pastyme nurte- red them, Tauernes an quaffyng houses, was their accusto- med and moste frequented vse of occupacion: by this meanes their nobilitie and strengthe was decaied, and kyngdome made thrall. Ill educacion or idlenes, is no small vice or euill when so mightie a prince, hauyng so large dominions, who[m] all the Easte serued and obaied. Whose regimente and go- uernemente was so infinite, that as Zenophon saieth, tyme [Sidenote: The mightie dominions of Cyrus.] would rather want, then matter to speake of his mightie and large gouernement, how many nacions, how diuerse people and valiaunte nacions were in subieccion to hym. If this mightie Prince, with all his power and populous nacions, was not hable to giue the ouerthrowe, to the kyngdome of [Sidenote: Euill educa- cion.] Lidia, but by ill educacion, not by marciall atte[m]ptes, sworde or battaill: but by giuyng them scope and libertie, to dooe as he would. No doubt but that Cyrus sawe, by the like exam- ple of other kyngdomes, this onelie pollicie to bee a ruine [Sidenote: Pithagoras.] of that kyngdome. Pythagoras the famous and godlie Phi- losopher, saued the kyngdome and people of Crotona, thei leauyng all studie of arte, vertue and science. This people of [Sidenote: Catona.] Crotona, was ouercome of the people of Locrus, thei left all exercise of vertue, neclectyng the feates of chiualrie, whervpo[n] Pythagoras hauyng the profitable and godlie lawes of Ly- curgus, which he brought from Lacedemonia: and the lawes of Minos kyng of Creta, came to the people of Crotona, and by his godlie teachyng and Philosophie, reuoked & brought backe the people, giuen ouer to the neglectyng of all vertue, declaryng to them the nobilitie and excellencie thereof, he li- uely set foorthe the beastlinesse of vice. Pithagoras recited to them, the fall and ruine of many regions, and mightie king- domes, whiche tooke after those vices. Idlenes beyng forsa- [Fol. xix.r] ken, vertue embrased, and good occupacions practised, the kyngdome and people grewe mightie. [Sidenote: Lycurgus.] Emong the godlie lawes of Lycurgus, Lycurgus omit- ted not to ordaine Lawes, for the educacion of youthe: in the whiche he cutte of all pamperyng of them, because in tender yeres, in whose bodies pleasure harboreth, their vertue, sci- ence, cunnyng rooteth not: labour, diligence, and industrie [Sidenote: Uertue. Uice.] onelie rooteth vertue, and excellencie. Uices as vnprofitable weedes, without labour, diligence and industrie growe vp, and thereby infecteth the minde and bodie, poisoneth all the mocions, incensed to vertue and singularitie. Who euer at- tained cunnyng, in any excellent arte or science, where idle- nes or pleasure helde the swaie. Philosophie sheweth, plea- [Sidenote: Pleasure. Idlenes. Ignoraunce.] sure to bée vnmete for any man of singularitie, for pleasure, idlenes, and ignoraunce, are so linked together, that the pos- session of the one, induceth the other. So many godlie monu- me[n]tes of learning, had not remained to this posteritie of ours and of all ages: if famous men in those ages and tymes, had hu[n]ted after immoderate pleasure. Thindustrie of soche, who left to the posteritie of all ages, the knowlege of Astronomie is knowen: the monumentes of all learnyng of lawes, and of all other woorkes of antiquitie, by vertue, noble, by indu- strie, labour, and moderacion of life in studie, not by plea- sure and wantones, was celebraied to all ages. The migh- tie volumes of Philosophers, bothe in morall preceptes, and in naturall causes, knewe not the delicate and dissolute life of these our daies. Palingenius enueighyng against the pa[m]- pered, and lasciuious life of man, vttereth a singulare sente[n]ce _Qui facere et qui nosce, cupit quam plurima et altum, In terris virtute aliqua sibi querere nomen: Hunc vigilare opus est, nam non preclara geruntur, Stertendo, et molles detrectat gloria plumas._ Who so coueteth to purchase fame by actes, or whose minde hunteth for aboundaunte knowledge, or by vertue in this life, to purchause good fame. He had not nede to slugge [Fol. xix.v] and slepe in his doynges: for good fame is not vpholded by gaie Pecockes feathers. Of this, Demosthenes the famous Oratour of Athens, vttereth a worthie saiyng to the Athe- nians in his Epistle: if any will iudge Alexander the greate, to be famous and happie, in that he had successe in all his do- [Sidenote: Alexander the great, co[m]- mended for diligence.] ynges, let this be his cogitacion, that Alexander the greate, alwaies did inure hymself to doe thynges, and manfullie to assaie that he enterprised. The felicitie of his successe came to hym not slepyng, or not cogitatyng thereof: Alexander the greate now dedde, Fortune seketh with whom she maie ac- companie, and associate her self. Thusidides comparyng the Lacedemonians, and the A- thenians together, shewed a rare moderacion, and tempera- ture of life, to be in the Athenians: wherupon thei are moste commended, and celebrated to the posteritie. ¶ The contrarie. EUen as idlenes and a sluggishe life, is moste pleasant to all soche, as neglecte vertuous exercises, and god- lie life. So paine, labour, and studie, bestowed and emploied, in the sekyng out of vertue, arte, or science is moste pleasaunt to well affected mindes: for no godlie thyng can be attained to, without diligence and labour. ¶ The similitude. EUen as housbandmen, with labour and trauaile, dooe labour in plantyng and tillyng the grounde, before thei receiue any fruicte of thesame. Euen so no vertue, arte, or science, or any other thyng of ex- cellencie is attained, without diligence and labour bestowed thereto. ¶ The example. LEt Demosthenes, the famous Oratour of Athenes, bee an example of diligence to vs, who to auoide all let from studie, vsed a meanes to kepe hymself ther- to: preuentyng also the industrie of artificers. Thesame De- [Fol. xx.r] mosthenes, wrote seuen tymes out the storie of Thusidides, to learne thereby his eloquence and wisedome. ¶ The testimonie. PLinie, Plato, and Aristotle, with many other mo, are like examples for diligence to vs: who wrote vpon vertue and learnyng like sentences. ¶ The conclusion. THerefore, Isocrates dooeth pronounce worthelie, the roote of learning and vertue to be bitter, and the fru- tes pleasaunte. ¶ A Sentence. THe Oracion, whiche must be made by a sente[n]ce is in al partes like to _Chria_, the profitable exer- cise, onelie that the Oracion made vpon a sen- tence, as aucthours do saie: hath not alwaie the name of the aucthour prefixed in the praise, a small matter of difference, who so can make the one, is ex- pert and exquisite in the other, aucthours doe define a sente[n]ce in this maner. A sentence is an Oracion, in fewe woordes, shewyng a godlie precept of life, exhorting or diswadyng: the [Sidenote: _Gnome._] Grekes dooe call godly preceptes, by the name of _Gnome_, or _Gnomon_, whiche is asmoche to saie, a rule or square, to direct any thyng by, for by them, the life of manne is framed to all singularitie. Thei are diuers sortes of sentences, one exhor- teth, an other diswadeth, some onely sheweth: there is a sen- tence simple, compounde, profitable, true, & soche like. Frame your Oracion vpon a sentence, as in the Oracion before. { 1. The praise of the aucthour. { 2. The exposicion of the sentence. { 3. A confirmacion in the strength of the cause. { 4. A conference, of the contrarie. { 5. A similitude. { 6. The example. { 7. The testimonie of aucthors, shewing y^e like. { 8. Then adde the conclusion. [Fol. xx.v] ¶ An Oracion vpon a sentence. ¶ The sentence. In a common wealthe or kyngdome, many kynges to beare rule, is verie euill, let there be but one kyng. ¶ The praise of the aucthour. HOmere, who of all the Poetes chiefly excelled, spake this sentence in the persone of Ulisses, vpon the king Agamemnon, kyng of Grece. This Homere intrea- ting of all princely affaires, and greate enterprices of the Grecians: and of the mightie warre againste the Troians, emong whom soche discorde rose, that not onely the warre, for lacke of vnitie and concorde, continued the space of tenne yeres. But also moche blood shed, hauocke, and destruccion, came vpon the Grecians, vttered this sente[n]ce. This Homere for his learnyng and wisedome remaineth, intteled in many monumentes of learnyng: with greate fame and commen- [Sidenote: The praise of Homere.] dacion to all ages. What Region, Isle, or nacion is not, by his inuencion set foorthe: who although he were blinde, his minde sawe all wisedome, the states of all good kyngdomes [Sidenote: The content of Homers bookes.] and common wealthes. The verie liuely Image of a Prince or gouernour, the faithfull and humble obedie[n]ce of a subiect, toward the prince, the state of a capitaine, the vertue and no- ble qualities, that are requisite, in soche a personage, be there set forthe. The perfite state of a wiseman, and politike, is in- treated of by hym. The Iustice, and equitie of a Prince, the strength of the bodie, all heroicall vertues: also are set forthe his eloquence and verse, floweth in soche sorte, with soche pleasauntnes: so copious, so aboundaunt, so graue and sen- tencious, that his singularitie therein excelleth, and passeth. [Sidenote: Alexander.] The mightie prince Alexander, in all his marciall enter- prices, and great conquestes, did continually night by night, [Sidenote: The Ilias of Homere, mete for prin- ces to looke vpon.] reade somewhat of the Ilias of the Poete Homere, before he slepte, and askyng for the booke, saied: giue me my pillowe. Alexander as it semeth, learned many heroical vertues, poli- cie, wisedome, & counsaill thereof, els he occupied in so migh- [Fol. xxj.r] tie and greate warres, would not emploied studie therein. Iulius Cesar the Emperour, commendeth this Poete, for his singularitie, his commendacion giueth, ample argu- ment, in this singulare sentence, whiche preferreth a Monar- chie aboue all states of common wealthes or kyngdome. ¶ The exposicion. HOmere the Poete, signified by this one sentence, no kyngdome or common wealthe can prospere, or flo- rishe to continue, where many holde gouernement as kynges. For, the mindes of many rulers and princes, doe moste affecte a priuate wealthe, commoditie and glorie: and where, many doe beare soche swaie and dominion, the com- mon wealth can not be good. For, thei priuatly to theim sel- ues, doe beare that regiment, and alwaie with the slaughter of many, do seke to attain and clime, to the whole gouerme[n]t[.] ¶ The cause. [Sidenote: The state of many kinges in one lande.] MAny occasions dooe rise, whereby many princes, and gouernours in a common wealth, be diuerslie affec- ted, so that the gouernme[n]t of many, can not prosper. For, bothe in quiete state, their counsailes must bee diuerse, and vncertaine: and where thei so differ, the kyngdome stan- deth in great ieopardy and daunger. Isocrates intreatyng of [Sidenote: Athenes.] a Monarchie, sheweth that the common wealth of Athenes, whiche detested and refused, that forme and state, after the ruine and fall of their citee: beyng vnder the thraldome of the Lacedemonia[n]s, bothe in their externall chiualrie and feates, bothe by sea and by lande, and also in regimente otherwise, their citee grewe mightie, and state stedfast. [Sidenote: Carthage in a monarchie.] The Carthagineans also, gouerned by one, had their go- uernment stedfaste, and kyngdome roiall: who in puisaunte actes, might compare with the noble Romaines. As the obe- dience to one ruler and chief gouernour, sekyng a common wealth, is in the hartes of the subiectes: feruent and maruei- lous with loue embraced, so the Maiestie of hym is dreade, [Fol. xxj.v] with loue serued, and with sincere harte, and fidelitie obeied, [Sidenote: The state of many kinges in one lande.] his maners folowed, his lawes imitated. Many gouernours bearyng regiment, as their maners be diuers, and fashion of life: euen so the people bee like affected, to the diuersitie of di- uers princes. And if we weigh the reuolucion of the heauens and the marueiles of God therein, the maker of thesame, who [Sidenote: A monarchie in heauen.] beyng one God, ruleth heauen and yearth, and all thynges co[n]tained in thesame. The heauen also adorned with many a [Sidenote: One Sunne[.]] starre, and cleare light, haue but one Sunne to gouerne the[m]: who being of a singulare vertue aboue the rest, by his vertue and power, giueth vertue to the reste. Also in small thynges [Sidenote: The Ante. The Bee.] the Ante and the Bee, who for prouidence and wisedome, ar moche commended: haue as it were a common wealth, and a king to gouerne the[m], so in all thinges as a confusion, the state of many kings is abhorred in gouernme[n]t. After the death of [Sidenote: Constancius[.] Licinius[.] Marabodius[.]] Constantinus the greate, Constancius his sonne was made Emperour, and Licinius with him, partaker in felowship of the Empire. But forthwith, what blood was shed in Italie, with all crueltie, vntill Constancius had slaine Licinius, partaker of the Empire, and Marabodius was slaine also, whom Licinius did associate with hym in the gouernment. So moche princes and chief gouernours, doe hate equalitie, [Sidenote: Pompey. Cesar. Marius. Silla.] or felowship in kingdomes. After thesame sort, in this migh- tie Monarchie of Rome, diuerse haue attempted at one and sondrie tymes, to beare the scepter and regiment therein, but that mightie Monarchie, could not suffer but one gouernor. The kyngdome of Thebes, was in miserable state, the twoo sonnes of Oedipus, Eteocles, and Polunices: striuing bothe [Sidenote: Assiria the first monar- chie.] to be Monarche, and onely kyng. The kyngdome of Assiria, whiche was the golden kyngdome, and the first Monarchie: hauyng .36. kynges by succession, continued .1239. yeres, this kyngdome for all nobilitie and roialnes excelled, and all in a Monarchie. The kyngdome of the Medes, in a Monarchie florished in wealthe and glorie and all felicitie: who in domi- nion had gouernmente .300. lackyng .8. yeres. After that, the [Fol. xxij.r] [Sidenote: The monar- chie of the Medes. The Persia[n]. Macedonia.] monarchie of the Medes ceased, the Persia[n] people rose migh- tie, bothe in people and Princes, and continued in that state 236 and 7 monethes. Macedonia rose from a base and meane people, to beare the whole regiment, and power ouer all king[-] domes. So God disposeth the state and seate of princes, ouer- throwyng often tymes mightier kyngdomes at his will: the continuaunce of this Monarchie was .157. and eight mone- [Sidenote: Asia[.] Siria[.]] thes, ten kynges linealie descendyng. Asia and Siria, was gouerned by one succedyng in a sole gouernement. Nicanor gouerned Siria .32. yeres. In the other Antigonus raigned, Demetrius Poliorchetes one yere, Antiochus Soter also, the scepter of gouernment, left to the succession of an other, then Antiochus Soter, ruled all Asia and Siria, hauyng .16. kin- [Sidenote: Egipte in a Monarchie[.]] ges whiche in a monarchie, co[n]tinued 189 yeres. The Egipci- ans, had famous, wise, and noble princes, whose kyngdome and large dominion, in all felicitée prospered: whiche was in the tyme of Ninus, the first king of the Assiria[n]s, who hauing 10. princes, one by one succedyng, Cleopatra their Quéene, gouerning, stoode in a monarchie .288. This one thyng she- weth, that kinde of gouernmente to bee roiall, and moste fa- mous, not onely for the felicitée and glory therof: but also for the permanent and stedfast state thereof. Aristotle and Plato setteth forthe, thother formes of gouernme[n]t. But in all those, no long co[n]tinuaunce of felicitee, nor of happy state can appere [Sidenote: Tirannis[.] Nero[.] Domicianus[.] Caligula.] in them, as for the contrarie to a Monarchie, is tirannis, pe- stiferous, and to be detested, where one man gouerneth to his priuate gaine, pillyng and polyng his subiectes, murderyng with all crueltie, neither Lawe nor reason, leadyng thereto: but will bearyng regiment ouer lawe, Iustice and equitee, whiche princes often tymes see not. How the wilfull rashe- nes, or tirannicall minde doeth abase them, and make them, though in vtter porte thesame princes, yet in verie déede, thei [Sidenote: What doeth beautifie the throne of a Prince[.]] bee thrall and slaue to beastlie affeccion. Nothyng dooeth so moche adorne and beautifie, the seate and throne of a prince, as not onely to beare dominion, ouer mightie people and re- [Fol. xxij.v] [Sidenote: Aristocratia.] gions, then to be lorde ouer hymself. The state of a fewe pée- res or nobles, to holde the chief and whole gouernment, who bothe in vertue, learnyng, and experience dooe excelle, is a goodlie state of common wealth. But the profe of that com- mon wealthe and ende sheweth, and the maner of Princes: who, although thei be, of life godlie, wise, graue, expert and politike. For, these vertues or ornamentes, ought to be repo- sed in soche noble personages, thei doe marueilously chaunge and alter: So honour and preeminente state, puffeth theim vp, and blindeth theim, that euery one in the ende, seeketh to climbe ouer all, as hed and gouernour. Shewe me one kinde of this state, and forme of gouernmente, whiche either longe prospered, or without bloodshed, and destruccion of the rest of the nobles and peres, haue not caught the whole regimente. Seyng that in all common wealthes and kingdomes, equa- litée or felowshippe, will not be suffred in gouernmente: for, it can not bee, that this forme of common wealthe maie bée [Sidenote: The ende of Aristocratia.] good, as Aristotle and Plato sheweth: The ende of this go- uernemente, fell euer to one, with a ruine of the kingdome [Sidenote: Politcia.] and people. The multitude to beare dominion, and though a publike wealth bée sought for a tyme, moche lesse thei conti- nue in any good state: for in the ende, their rule and gouerne- ment, will be without rule, order, reason, modestie, and their lawe must bee will. The other three states, are the refuse of good common wealthes, not to bée tollerated in any region. [Sidenote: Tirannis.] The one of them is a tyraunte, to bée gouernour onely to his owne glorie, with crueltie tormented his subiectes, onelie to [Sidenote: Oligarthia.] haue his will and lust, ouer all lawe, order, and reason. The nobilitée rulyng to them selues, euery one for his owne time[.] [Sidenote: Democratia.] The third, the base and rude multitude, euery one for hym- self, and at his will. This troublous state, all Regions and common wealthes, haue felte in open sedicions and tumul- tes, raised by theim, it is a plagued and pestiferous kinde of gouernemente. The example of a good Monarchie, is of greate force, to confounde the state of al other common weal- [Fol. xxiij.r] thes, and formes of Regimente. [Sidenote: A monarchie preferred of the Persians[.]] The nobilitée of Persia hauyng no kyng, linially des- cendyng, to rule that mightie dominion of Persia, Cambises beyng dedde, the vsurper murthered, thei tooke counsaill in their assemble, what state of gouernment was beste, thei ha- uyng the profe of a Monarchie: in their longe counsaill, thei knewe the felicitie of that state, thei knewe as it seemed, the perilous state of the other gouernmentes. If these noble and peres had been ambicious, and that eche of them would haue had felowshippe, or participacion in kyngdomes: thei would not haue preferred a Monarchie aboue the reste. The anti- quitie of that tyme sheweth, their personages, wisedome, grauitie, and maiestie was soche, that eche one of theim was mete for his vertues, to haue a whole kyngdome. If Aristo- cratia would haue contented them, then was tyme and occa- sion offered, no kyng remainyng to haue preferred that state. [Sidenote: The duetie of al noble peres[.]] But thei as vpright nobles, sincere and faithfull, hauyng al- together respecte to a publique wealthe: to a permanent state and felicitie of kingdome, sought no participacion by priuate wealthe, to dissolue this Monarchie. But thei beyng moste godlie, eche were content to proue, whose chaunce might be, to set vp againe that Monarchie. The kyngdome at the laste [Sidenote: Darius.] came to the handes of Darius, who was after kyng of the Persians. This is a goodly example, to shewe the worthines of a Monarchie, the Persian kingdome after many yeres de- clinyng, from his power and state, not for any faulte of go- [Sidenote: Kyngdomes rise and fall.] uernment, but God as he seeth tyme, raiseth vp kyngdomes and plucketh them doune. Afterward Darius the kyng, not able to make his parte good with Alexander the Greate: of- fered to hym the greatest parte of his kyngdome, euen to the flood of Euphrates, and offred his daughter to wife: Alexan- der was content to take the offer of Darius, so that he would bee seconde to hym, and not equall with hym in kyngdome. [Sidenote: The answer of Alexander to Darius, as co[n]cernyng a monarchie.] For, Alexander saied, that as the worlde can not bee gouer- ned with twoo Sunnes, neither the worlde can suffer twoo [Fol. xxiij.v] mightie kingdomes: wherupon it is manifest, that no king- dome will suffer equalitie or felowship, but that if the will & minde of Princes might brust out, the state of all the worlde, would bee in one mightie gouernours handes. For, alwaies [Sidenote: Alexa[n]der the great prefar- red a Mo- narchie.] Princes dooe seke to a sole regimente. Alexander the greate co[n]querour also, preferring for worthines a Monarchie, at the tyme of his death, demaunded who[m] he would haue to succede him in his mightie dominio[n]s, he by one signifiyng a Monar- chie, saiyng: _Dignissimus_, that is to saie, the worthiest. After [Sidenote: Alexanders monarchie fel by many kin- ges. Antipater. Crates. Meliagrus. Perdiccas. Ptolomeus. Learcus. Cassander. Menander. Leonatus. Lusimacus. Eumenes[.] Seleucus.] the death of Alexander, Antipater caught the gouernmente of Macedonia and Grece, and Crates was Treasurer. Me- leagrus and Perdiccas caught other of his dominions, then Ptolemeus possessed Egipte, Africa and a parte of Arabia, Learcus, Cassander, Mena[n]der, Leonatus, Lusimachus, Eu- menes, Seleucus and manie other, who were for their wor- thines in honor and estimacion with Alexander, caught in- to their handes other partes of his dominions, euerie one se- kyng for his time, his owne priuate glorie, dignitie, and ad- uauncemente, but not a publike wealthe, and so in fine, am- bicion broiled in their loftie stomackes, eche to attaine to o- thers honor. Whereupon bloodshed, destruction of the peo- ple and countries, the fall of these Princes ensued. So moche kingdomes hate equalitie or felowship: let vs laie before our [Sidenote: Fraunce. Spaine. Germanie. Britaine.] iyes, the kyngdomes nere at hand. Fraunce, from the tymes of Faramundus vntill this daie haue stoode, and did florishe in a Monarchie. The state of Spaine, from the tyme of the firste kyng, vntill this daie, hath florished continually in a Monarchie. The great seigniories of Germanie, by one suc- cedyng in gouernment, haue been permanent in that good- lie state. Our noble Isle of Britain from Brutus, hath stoode by a Monarchie: onely in those daies, the state of gouernme[n]t chaunged, at the commyng of Iulius Cesar, Emperour of Rome. The lande beyng at diuision, and discorde, through the diuersitie of diuerse kynges: so moche the state of diuerse kynges in one lande, is to be expelled, or the gouernment of [Fol. xxiiij.r] the base multitude, to haue vniuersally power of dominion, or the state of peres, to bee chief in regiment, no kyng lefte to commaunde ouer the people, and nobles, or els there can not be but discorde in thende, whiche pulleth doune moste migh- tie Regions and dominions, so that the beste state, the moste stedfaste and fortunate, is in all tymes, in all ages, in all la- wes, and common wealthes, where one king sekyng the ad- uauncement, wealthe, glorie, of hym and his people. ¶ The contrarie. THat housholde or familie, can not be well gouerned, where many and diuerse beareth gouernment, nec- lectyng the state prosperous vniuersallie: for where obedience is drawen to diuers and many, there can not bee good gouernment, nor faithfull obedience. And so in a king- dome where one chiefly gouerneth, and to a common wealth there the hartes of the subiectes, be moste knitte to obaie. ¶ The similitude. EUen as thei, whiche serue one maister, shall soneste with labour please, and with fidelitie, accomplishe his will and pleasure. For, the maners of many me[n] be diuerse, and variable, so in a Monarchie, the state of one is sone obaied, the minde and lawe of one Prince sone folowed, his Maiestie dreaded and loued. ¶ The example. LET the fower chief Monarchies of the Assirian, the Persian, Grecian, and the Romaine, whiche haue continued from the beginnyng mightie, moste hap- pie, bee an example herein. If that state of gouernement, had not been chiefe of all other, those mightie kyngdomes would not haue preferred, that kinde of gouernment. ¶ The testimonie of auncient writers. THerefore, Aristotle, Plato, and all the chief Philoso- phers, intreatyng of the administracion of a common wealthe: doe preferre before all states of gouernment [Fol. xxiiij.v] a Monarchie, bothe for the felicitie of it, and stedfaste state. ¶ The conclusion. HOmere therefore deserueth greate commendacion, for this one sentence, whiche preferreth a Monarchie before all states. ¶ The destruccion. THis exercise of _Rhetotike_, is called destruccion, or subuersion, because it is in a oracion, a certain re- prehension of any thyng declaimed, or dilated, in the whiche by order of art, the declaimer shall pro- cede to caste doune by force, and strengthe of reason, the con- trarie induced. In this exercise of _Rhetorike_, those proposicions are to be subuerted, whiche are not manifeste true, neither it so repu- gnaunt from reason, as that there can appere no holde, to in- duce a probable reason to confounde thesame. But soche pro- posicions are meete for this parte, as are probable in both si- des, to induce probabilitie of argument, to reason therupon. 1. It shall behoue you firste, for the entryng of this matter, to adde a reprehension there against those, whiche haue con- firmed as a truthe, that, whiche you will confute. 2. In thesame place, adde the exposion, and meanyng of his sentence. 3. Thirdly, shew the matter to be obsure, that is vncertain[.] 4. Incrediblie. 5. Impossible. 6. Not agreyng to any likelihode of truthe. 7. Uncomlie to be talked of. 8. Unprofitable. This exercise of _Rhetorike_ doeth contain in it al strength of arte, as who should saie, all partes of _Rhetorike_, maie co- piouslie be handled in this parte, called confutacion, so am- ple a matter Tullie doeth note this parte to be. ¶ The theme or proposicion of this Oracion. [Fol. xxv.r] It is not like to be true, that is said of the battaill of Troie. ¶ The reprehension of the auc- thor, and of all Poetes. NOt without a cause, the vanities of Poetes are to bee reproued, and their forged inuencions to bee reiected: in whose writynges, so manifestlie are set forthe as a truthe, and Chronicled to the posteritie of ages and times, soche forged mat- [Sidenote: The vanities of Poetes.] ters of their Poeticall and vain wittes. Who hath not heard of their monsterous lies against God, thei inuentyng a gene- alogie of many Goddes procreated, where as there is but one God. This vanitie also thei haue set forthe, in their mo- numentes and woorkes. How a conspiracie was sometyme emong the Goddes and Goddes, to binde the great God Iu- piter. How impudentlie doe thei set forthe the Goddes, to bee louers of women, and their adulterous luste: and how thei haue transformed theim selues, into diuers shapes of beastes and foules, to followe after beastly luste. The malice and en- uie of the Goddes, one to an other: The feigne also the heaue[n] to haue one God, the sea an other, helle an other, whiche are mere vanities, and false imaginacio[n]s of their Poeticall wit- tes. The like forged inuencion haue thei wrote, of the migh- [Sidenote: The battaill of Troie .x. yeres for a herlotte.] tie and terrible battaill bruted of Troie, for a beautifull har- lot susteined ten yeres. In the whiche, not onely men and no- ble péeres, gaue the combate of battaile, but the Goddes toke partes against Goddes, and men wounded Goddes: as their [Sidenote: The vain in- uention of Poetes.] lies exceade all nomber, because thei bee infinite, so also thei passe all truthe, reason, and iudgemente. These fewe exam- ples of their vanities and lies, doe shewe the feigned ground and aucthoritie of the reste. Accordyng to the folie and super- sticiousnes of those tymes, thei inuented and forged folie vp- pon folie, lye vpon lye, as in the battaill of Troie, thei aggra- uate the dolour of the battaill, by pitifull and lamentable in- [Sidenote: Plato reie- cteth Poetes from the com[-] mon wealth.] uencion. As for the Poetes them selues, Plato in his booke, made vpon the administracion of a common wealth, maketh [Fol. xxv.v] theim in the nomber of those, whiche are to bee banished out of all common wealthes. ¶ The exposicion. HOmere dooeth saie, and many other Poetes, that the warres of the Grecians against the Troians, was for beautifull Helena, and continued tenne yeres. The Goddes and Goddis toke partes, and all the people of Grece, aided Menelaus, and the kyng Aga- memnon, to bryng home again Helena, neclecting their own countrie, their wife and chidre[n], for one woma[n]. The Grekes inuentyng a huge and mightie horse made of Firre trée, and couered with brasse, as huge as a mou[n]tain, out of the whiche the Grecians by treason issuyng, brought Troie to ruine. ¶ The obscuritie of the matter. IT semeth a matter of folie, that so many people, so mightie nacions should bee bewitched, to raise so mightie a armie, hassardyng their liues, leauyng their countrie, their wiues, their children, for one [Sidenote: Helena.] woman: Be it so, that Helena passed all creatures, and that Nature with beautie had indued her with all vertue, and sin- gularitie: yet the Grecians would not be so foolishe, that vni- uersallie thei would seke to caste doune their owne wealthe, and moche more the common wealthe of Grece, and kyng- dome to stande in perill. Neither is it to be thought, the Gre- cians, sekyng to aduau[n]ce the beautie of Helena: would leaue [Sidenote: The cause of the forged in- uencion.] their owne state. But it is like, the wittes of Poetes did im- magine so forged a Chronicle, that the posteritie of ages fol- lowyng, should rather wounder at their forged inuencion, then to beleue any soche warre truly mencioned. There was no soche cause, seyng that the kyngdome of Grece, fell by no title of succession to Helena, for them to moue warre, for, the bringyng backe of that beutifull harlotte Helena. Neither in Helena was there vertue, or honestie of life, to moue and ex- asperate the Grecians, to spende so greate treasures, to raise [Fol. xxvj.r] [Sidenote: No commen- dacion in vp- holdyng and maintainyng of harlottes.] so mightie an armie on euery side. What comme[n]dacion had the Troians to aduaunce Helena, and with all roialnesse to entreate her, she beyng a harlotte: the folie of the Grecians and the Troians, is so on euery side so greate, that it can not be thought, soche a warre truely chronicled. If violence and power, had taken Helena from her housebande, and not her [Sidenote: Helena follo- wed Paris.] owne will and luste, caught with the adulterous loue of Pa- ris, beyng a straunger. If her moderacion of life had been so rare, as that the like facte for her chastitie, had not been in a- ny age or common wealthe, her vertues would haue giuen occasion: The Princes and nobles of Grece to stomacke the matter. The example of the facte, would with all praise and [Sidenote: Uertuous life, worthie commendaci- on in al ages. Lucrecia. Tarquinius the kyng ba- nished for ra- uishyng Lu- crecia, and all of his name banished.] commendacion be mencioned, and celebrated to al ages. Lu- cretia for her chastite, is perpetuallie to be aduanunced, wher- vpon the Romaines banished Tarquinius their kyng, his stocke and name from Rome. The rare chastite of Penelope, is remainyng as a example herein: So many snares laied to caste doune her vertuous loue towarde her housebande U- lisses. But Ulisses made hauocke by murder, on these gaie and gallante Ruffins, who in his absence sought to alienate [Sidenote: Penelopes chastitie.] and withdrawe, the chaste harte of Penelope, consumyng his substance. A greater example remaineth in no age, of the like chastite. As for the battaile of Troie, raised for Helena, could wise men, and the moste famous nobles of Grece: So occupie their heddes, and in thesame, bothe to hasarde their liues for a beautifull strumpet or harlot. The sage and wise [Sidenote: Nestor. Ulisses.] Nestor, whom Agamemnon for wisedome preferred, before the moste of the péeres of Grece, neither it Ulisses wanted at thesame tyme, hauyng a politike and subtill hedde, to with- drawe theim from so leude and foolishe a enterprise. Grece [Sidenote: Grece the lande of faire women.] wanted not beautifull creatures, Nature in other had besto- wed amiable faces, personage, and comelie behauiour. For, at those daies, Grece thei called _Achaida calligunaica_, that is, Grece the lande of faire women. The dolorous lamentacion of the Ladies and Matrons in Grece, would haue hindered [Fol. xxvj.v] soche a foolishe enterprise, seyng their owne beautie neclec- ted, their honestie of life caste vp to perilles, one harlot of in- [Sidenote: Uncomelie.] numerable people followed and hunted after, in whom neither honestie, vertue, nor chastite was harbored. ¶ Uncredible. ALthough the folie of men is greate, and the will of princes and gouernours beastlie and rashe, yet by no meanes it can be so many yeres, so greate folie to take roote in their hartes, and that the wisedom [Sidenote: Beautie without ver- tue, nothyng of valour.] of the Grecia[n]s, should not rather caste of as naught, the beau- tie of Helena: rather then the whole multitude, the state of the Prince, the welfare of the subiecte, to stande in perill for [Sidenote: Beautie a poison, in a adulterous mynde.] the beautie of one. What is beautie, when a beastlie and ad- ulterous minde is possessed: Beautie without chastitie, har- boreth a monsterous rabelmente of vices, a snare and baite, [Sidenote: Beautie sone fadeth.] to poison other. Beautie in fewe yeres, is not onely blemi- shed, but decaied, and wholie extinguished: it is vncredible, that the Grecians would seeke to bryng home Helena, who had loste the chaste loue toward her housband, beyng caught [Sidenote: Paris Hele- nas louer. Phrigia.] with the adulterous loue of Paris, soonne to Priamus kyng of Troie. The lande of Phrigia was a mightie Region, the people noble, puissaunte in warre: the kyng for nobilitie of actes famous. The Citee of Troie, wherein the kyng helde his Scepter of gouernement, was riche, mightie, and popu- lous: ruled and gouerned, by the wisedome and policie of fa- mous counsailours, so that by all meanes it is vncredible, [Sidenote: Uncomelie.] without any possibilitie. Thei neclectyng their owne state and kyngdo[m], so to preferre the beautie of one, that the whole multitude of Grece thereby to perishe. It is a matter vncre- [Sidenote: Grece the fountain of al learnyng.] dible in all Grece, whiche for the fame of wisedome, is moste celebrated emong all nacions, not one wiseman at thesame tyme to be therein: whose cou[n]saile and politike heddes, might ponder a better purpose. Grece, whiche was the mother and fountaine of all artes and sciences, all Eloquence, Philoso- phie, wisedome flowyng from theim, and yet wisedome to [Fol. xxvij.r] want in their breastes. Reason can not make any perswasion that any probabilitie can rise, of any soche matter enterpri- sed, what could the intent be of the Grecians, as concerning [Sidenote: Menelaus housbande to Helena.] Menelaus. In Menelaus there was no wisedom, to seke and hunte after Helena, or by any meanes to possesse her, she be- yng a harlotte, her loue alienated, her hart possessed with the loue of an other manne: foolishlie he hopeth to possesse loue, [Sidenote: Harlottes loue dissem- bled.] that seeketh to enioye the cloked, poisoned, and dissembled harte of a harlotte, Grece was well ridde of a harlotte, Troie [Sidenote: Troians.] harbouryng Helena. In the Troians it is not to be thought, that either the kyng, or nobles, for a harlotte, would see the the people murthered, their owne state, the king to be in dan- [Sidenote: Grecians.] ger of ruine. In the Grecians there was neither wisedome, neither commendacion, to pursue with a maine hoste, with a greate Nauie of Shippes, to bryng backe againe a harlotte, whose enterprise rather might better bee borne, to banishe & exile soche a beastlie disposed persone. The Troians mighte [Sidenote: Absurditie.] well scorne the Grecians, if that the possession of a beautifull moste amiable, and minsyng harlotte, was of soche valour, estimacion, and price with theim, not onely the beautie of all other to bee reiected. But moste of all the vertuous life, and chastitie of all their matrons and honourable Ladies, to bee caste of as naught. Grece that had the name of all wisedome, [Sidenote: The defence of Helena.] of all learnyng and singularitie, might rather worthelie bee called, a harbouryng place of harlottes: a Stewe and vphol- der of whoredome, and all vncleanes. Wherefore, these ab- surdities ought to bee remoued, from the minde and cogita- cion of all menne, that should worthelie ponder the state of [Sidenote: Troie a king[-] dome of whor[-] dome.] Grece. Troie of like sorte to bee a kyngdome and common wealthe of all vice: whoredome in soche price with the kyng, and people, that moste fortunate should the harlotte bee, and the adulterour in soche a common wealthe, that for adulte- rous loue, putteth rather all their state to hasarde and perill, for the maintenaunce of beastlie loue, brutishe societie moste in price with soche a nacion, chastitie, and moderaciou of life, [Fol. xxvij.v] abandoned and caste of. ¶ Unpossible, and not agreyng. [Sidenote: Nature ab- horreth the warre of the Grecians.] IF wee weigh naturall affeccion, it can not bee, that the Grecians so moche abhorring fro[m] nature, should cast of the naturall loue of their wifes, their children and countrie, to bryng home againe, by slaughter of infinite people: soche an one as had left honestie, and chaste loue of her housbande. For, what praise can redounde to the Greci- [Sidenote: Helena.] ans by warre, to bryng home Helena, though she of all crea- tures was moste beautifull, beyng a harlotte: followyng the bridell and will of an other man. Maie shame or commenda- cion rise to the Troians, can wisedome, counsaile, or grauitie, [Sidenote: Priamus.] defende the adulterous luste of Priamus soonne, yea, could Priamus so loue Helena, for Paris his sonnes sake, as that he had rather venter the ruine and destruccion of his citée, and the falle of his people, the murder and ruine of his children, and wife for the beautie of one. For what is beautie, where honestie and vertue lacketh, it is an vncomly matter, though the Poetes so faigne it, not onely that in heauen, a contencio[n] should fall emong the Goddises of their beautie, or that Iu- piter of whom thei make an ignoraunt God, to chuse Paris the kynges sonne of Troie, chief arbitratour & Iudge of that matter, to who[m] he should giue the golde[n] Apell to her beautie, as chief of al other, was ascribed these thynges, are vndecent to thinke of the Goddeses, and moste of all, to thinke there is more Goddes then one. And euen as these are vanities, and forged imaginacions of the Goddes, so of the battaile. ¶ Uncomelie and vnprofitable. THE daunger of many people doeth shewe, that no soche thyng should happen, either of the Grecians or of the Troians: for, it is a matter dissonaunt fro[m] all truthe, that thei should so moche neclecte the quiete state, and prosperous renoume of their kyngdome, in all tymes and ages, since the firste constitucion of all Monar- [Fol. xxviij.r] chies and kyngdomes. Who euer harde soche a forged mat- ter to be Chronicled, and set forthe. Or who can giue credite to soche warre, to be enterprised of so small a matter: to leaue the state of waightier thynges for one woman. All the wo- men of that countrie to stande in perill, the slaughter of their deare housbandes, the violent murder of their children to in- sue. Therefore, the wilfulnesse of people and princes, are the cause of the falle and destruccion, of many mightie kyngdo- mes, and Empires. The fall of Grece ensued, when the chief [Sidenote: Ambicion. Cesar fell by ambicion.] citées, Athenes and Lacedemonie tooke partes, and did con- federate diuers citees to them, to assiste theim, and aide theim in battaile onely: ambicion and desire of glorie, moued bothe [Sidenote: Discorde.] the Athenians and Lacedemonians, fro[m] concorde and vnitie by whiche meanes, the power, glory, and stre[n]gth of all king- [Sidenote: Pompey.] domes falleth. Ambicion was the cause that mightie Pom- pey fell, and died violently. Cesar likewise caught with am- bicion, not bearyng the equalitée, or superioritie of Pompei, was tourned of violentlie fro[m] Fortunes whéele. Many prin- ces of like sorte and kingdomes. By ambicion onely, had the cause of their ruine. The glorie of the Assirian Monarchie grewe moste mightie, by the ambicion of Ninus kyng of Babilon: the ofspring of Ninus, whiche were kynges line- allie descendyng to the firste kyngdome of the Medes, bothe inlarged their kyngdomes, and also had the decaie of theim by ambicion. Let the Medes also associate them selues to the[m], from Arbactus the first kyng, vnto Astiages the laste: the be- ginnyng and falle of the Persian Monarchie. The mightie [Sidenote: Romulus kil[-] led Remus by ambicion.] state of Grece, the seate Imperiall of Rome, by ambicio[n] first extolled theim selues: and also by it, their glorie, scepter, and kyngdome was translated, but the falle of Troie came not, by ambicion, that the Grecians sought. But as the Poetes doe faigne, the beautie of one woman so wounded their har- tes, that the Grecians did hasarde, the perilles of their coun- trie. The Troians so moche estemed, the beautie of Helena, as that the state of all their kyngdome perished. It was no [Fol. xxviij.v] glorie nor honour to the Grecians, to resiste by armour, and to defende the violente takyng awaie of Helena, from her housbande: nor it was no honour, the Grecians to pursue by armour, the takynge awaie of Helena, beyng a harlotte. So that by no meanes it can followe, these thynges to bee true, of the battaile of Troie. ¶ Confirmacion. The other part, contrary to destruccion or subuersion, is called confirmacion. Confirmacion, hath in it so greate force of argumente, to stablishe and vpholde the cause or proposicion: as destruccion hath in castyng doune the sentence or proposicion. Confirmacion is a certain oracion, whiche with a certain reprehension of the persone or facte, by order and waie of art, casteth doune, the contrary propounded. As in the other parte called destruccion, those proposici- ons are to bee subuerted, whiche are not manyfestlie true, with all other notes before specified: so in contrariwise, this oracion by contrary notes is declaimed by, as for example. 1. It shall behoue you first, for the entring of the oracion, to induce a reprehension againste those, whiche haue confuted as a truthe, that whiche you will confirme. 2. In the seconde parte, place the exposicion and meanyng of the aucthours sentence. 3. Shewe the matter to be manifest. 4. Credible. 5. Prossible. 6. Agreyng to the truthe. 7. Shewe the facte comelie. 8. Profitable. This exercise of _Rhetotike_, doeth contain in it all stre[n]gth of arte, as who should saie, all partes of _Rhetorike_ maie co- piouslie bee handled in this parte, called confirmacion. You maie as matter riseth, ioigne twoo notes together, as the reason of the argumente cometh in place, whiche Apthonius [Fol. xxix.r] a Greke aucthour herein vseth. As manifest and credible, pos- sible and agreyng to truthe, comelie and profitable, but in al these, as in all the reste: the theme or proposicion by it self, is to bee placed, the reprehension of the aucthour by it self, the exposicion of the theme by it self. ¶ The theme or proposicion. IT is true that is saied of Zopyrus, the noble Per- sian, who ve[n]tered his life: & did cause the deformi- tie of his bodie, for the sauegarde of this countrie. ¶ The praise. [Sidenote: Iustinus.] IUstinus the Historiographer, for worthinesse of fame and wisedome, deserueth in the poste- ritie of all tymes, immortall fame, by whom the famous actes of Princes, and other noble [Sidenote: Chronicles moste neces- sary to be red.] men, doe remaine Chronicled. Giuyng exam- ples of all valiauntnesse and vertue: for, bothe the actes and worthie feactes of Princes, would passe as vnknowen in all ages, excepte the worthinesse of them, were in monumentes of writyng Chronicled. For, by the fame of their worthines, and vertues, co[m]mon wealthes and kyngdomes, doe stablishe and make Lawes, the hartes of people are incensed, and in- flamed, to the like nobilitie of actes, and famous enter- [Sidenote: The worthi- nesse of histo- ries.] prices, Histories of auncient tymes, bee vnto vs witnesses of all tymes and ages, of kyngdomes and common wealthes, a liuely example. A light to all truthe and knowlege, a schole- [Sidenote: What is a hi- storie.] maister: of maners a memorie of life, for, by it we se the wise- dom of all ages, the forme of the beste and florishing common wealthes. We learne by the vertues of Princes and gouer- nours, to followe like steppe of vertue: to flie and auoide vi- ces, and all soche thynges, as are to the destruccion and de- [Sidenote: An ignorant life, a brutish life.] caie, of realme and countrie. How brutishe wer our life, if we knewe no more then we se presently, in the state of our com- mon wealthe and kyngdome. The kyngdomes of all Prin- ces and common wealthes that now florisheth, doe stande by [Fol. xxix.v] the longe experience, wisedome, pollicy, counsaile, and god- lie lawes of Princes of auncient times, no smal praise and [Sidenote: The know- lege of Histo- ries maketh vs as it were liuyng in all ages. Historiogri- phers.] commendation can be attributed, to all suche as doe trauell in the serching out the veritie of auncient Histories, for bi the knoledge of them, we are as it were liuyng in all ages, the fall of all kyngdomes is manifeste to vs, the death of Prin- ces, the subuersions of kingdomes and common wealthes, who knoweth not the first risyng & ende of the Assiriane mo- narchie, the glorie of the Persians, and the ruynge of the same, the mightie Empire of the Grekes, risyng & fallyng, the Romane state after what sorte florishyng and decaiyng, so that no state of common wealthe or kyngdome is vnkno- wen to vs, therefore Iustine, and all suche as doe leue to the posteritie, the state of al things chronicled, deserue immortal commendacions. ¶ The exposicion. [Sidenote: The treason of the Assy- rians.] IN the time of Darius kyng of the Persians, the Assyria[n]s who ware subiects to him, sence the time of Cirus the firste kynge of the Persians, rebel- led, inuaded and toke the myghtie Citie of Babi- lon, whiche beyng possessed, with much difficultie, and not [Sidenote: Darius.] withoute greate daungers coulde bee attained. Darius the kynge hearyng of the treason of the Assyrians and that the [Sidenote: Babilon ta- ken of the As- syrians.] mightie Citie of Babilon was taken, was very wroth wai- ynge with him selfe, that there by, the ruyne of the Persian kyngdome mighte happen. Zopyrus one of the .vij. noble Peres of Persia, seing the daunger of the countrie, the state of the Prince, and the welfare of the subiectes to decaie, in the safegarde of his countrie, leuyng all priuate commoditie, for the behoufe and felicitie of the Persian kyngdome, did ven- [Sidenote: The fact of Zopyrus.] ter his owne life, commaunded his seruauntes at home to teare and re[n]te his bodie with whippes, to cut of his nose, his lippes and his eares, these thinges being vnknowen to Da- rius the kynge. As sone as Darius sawe Zopyrus so torne [Fol. xxx.r] [Sidenote: Zopyrus cau[-] sed the defor- mitie of his bodie, for the good state of his countrie.] and deformed, bewailed his state being astonished, at so hor- rible a faict: but Zopyrus shewed to the kynge his hole in- tente and purpose that he mynded to go to Babylon, whiche the Assyrians dyd traitorouslie possesse, & complained as that these things had ben don by the tyrannie and crueltie of Da- rius, he we[n]t to Babilon, and there complained of the cruel- tie of his kyng, whereby purchasyng the fauor and loue of the Assyrians, he shewed them how Darius came to be kyng not by worthines, not by vertue, not by the common consent of men, but by the neynge of a horse. Zopyrus therefore ad- monished them, that they should trust more to their armour, [Sidenote: The pollicie of Zopyrus.] then to their walles, he willed them to proclame ope[n] warre, forthwith they encountred with the Persians, and for a time victorie fel on the Babilonians side, suche was the pollice of Zopyrus. The Assyrians reioised of the successe and felicitie of their warres, the king of the Babilonians gaue to Zopy- rus, the chiefe power & office, to leede a mightie armie, of the whiche beynge Lieutenaunt, he betraied the Babilonians and their Citie. ¶ Manifeste. [Sidenote: Trogus Po[m][-] peius.] NOt onlie Trogus Pompeius the famous Historio- grapher, and Iustine which tooke the Story of him, but also the Greke writers doe sette forthe, as matter of truthe, the valiaunte enterprises of Zopyrus: so that the straunge and mightie facte of him can not seme vncredible, [Sidenote: Zopyrus.] hauyng testimonie of it in all ages. Zopyrus hauing not re- spect to his owne life, to his owne priuate wealthe or glorie, did thereby put of the daunger that insued to the Persiane kyngdome: It maie seme a greate matter, to a mynde not well affected towarde his countrie, to destroie or deforme his [Sidenote: The saiyng of Tullie.] owne bodie, for the sauegarde of countrie or common welth. But if we waie the State of oure bearth, oure countrie cha- lengeth more at oure handes then frindes or parentes, so [Sidenote: Plato. Aristotel.] muche price Plato the Philosopher, and Aristotle doe attri- bute vnto our countrie, the volumes of all lawes and bokes [Fol. xxx.v] doe prefare oure naturall countrie before the priuate state of [Sidenote: The state of a publike wealthe, is to bee preferred before a pri- uate wealth. Pericles.] owne manne, wealthe, glorie, honor, dignitie, and riches of one or fewe, the Statutes of all Princes, sekyng the glorie of their countrie, doe prefare a vniuersal welthe, before a pri- uate and particulare commoditie. Pericles the noble Athe- nian in his oration made to the Athenians, sheweth that the glorie and welthe of one man or manie, cannot plante suche glorie, and renowne to their countrie, as that in all partes thereby to be beautified and decorated, but whe[n] glorie a hap- pie and florishyng state redoundeth to the kyngdome, the subiectes, the nobelles and hye peres, the gouuernour stan- deth happie and fortunate. Who so hopeth in sparing costes and charges, monie or ornaments, to the behouf and imploi- ment of his countrie and not by all meanes to his power and strength aydeth and defendeth his naturall countrie, from [Sidenote: A good sub- iecte is redie to liue and die for his countrie.] the daunger and inuasion of his enemie, what state inioyeth he, or what wealth remaineth priuatlie, when the trone and scepter of his kyng faileth, the enemie wasteth, spoileth and destroieth all partes of his state, with the reste his life pe- risheth, so that no daunger, coste, is to bee refused, to serue the kingdom and prince, by whose scepter, iustice, lawes, and equitie we are gouuerned, there is no subiect well affected, but that he onlie liueth to proffite his countrie, to liue & dye therein. ¶ Probabell. IF only Zopyrus had enterprised this valiaunt act, and that no memorie were remainyng in anie age of the noble acts of other men, it may seme not true- lie chronacled, but from time to time, in all ages & co[m]mon wealthes, famous men for their acts & nobilitie haue ben, whiche with like courrage and magnanimitie haue sa- [Sidenote: Horacius Co[-] cles.] ued their countrie, by the losse of their owne liues. Horatius Cocles is bothe a witnesse and a light to the same, by whose aduenture the mightie and stronge Citie Rome was saued: For at what time as the Hetruscians entred on the citie, and [Fol. xxxj.r] were on the bridge, Horatius cocles defendid the ende of the same, baryng of the brunte, and stroke of the enemie, vntill the Romans, for the sauegarde of the cytie, had broken doun the bridge, as sone as Horatius Cocles sawe the Cytie thus deliuered, and the repulse of the enemie, he lepte with his ar- mours into the flud Tibar, it semed he had not regard to his life, that beyng burdened with the waighte and grauitie of his armour, durst venter his life to so main and depe a water. [Sidenote: Marcus Attilius.] Marcus Attilius in the defence of his Prince, his right hand being cut of, the which he laide on the ship of the Massilians, forthwith he apprehended with the lefte hand, and ceased not [Sidenote: Cynegerus.] vntill he hadde soouncke thesame ship. Cynegerus the Athe- nian lineth by fame and like nobilitie of actes, ve[n]teryng his life for his countrie. The mightie cytie of Athenes, brought [Sidenote: Hismenias. Thrasibulus[.]] vnder the dominions of the Lacedemonians. Thrasibulus, Hismenias and Lisias bi their aduenture, and noble atchiue reduced Athenes to his felicitie so moche loue, soo faithefull hartes they hadde towardes theire countreie. Leonides the King of the Lacedemonians, defendyng the narow straights of the cytie Thermopolie with fower thousand men against the mightie and huge armie of Xerxes, for Xerxes contemned [Sidenote: Leonides kyng of the Lacedemo- nians.] theire smalle number and armie: Leonides the kyng hearde that the place and hill of the battell was preue[n]tid of .xx. thou- sande enemies, he exorted his souldiours parte of them to de- parte vntill a better time might be locked for, and onlie with the Lacedemonians he proued the conflicte and the combate, although the campe of Xerxes was mightier & more in num- ber: yet Leonides the kyng thought it good for the sauegarde of his contrie, for saieth he, I must rather saue it, then to haue respecte to my life, although the oracle of Delphos had fore- shewed, that euen Leonides muste die in the fielde or battell of the enemie, and therefore Leonides entred battail, & com- fortid his men for their countrie sake, as to die therein, there- fore he preuented the narrowe straightes of the countrie, and the dangerous places, where the force of the enemie mought [Fol. xxxj.v] bruste in, he lingered not, leste the enemie mighte compasse him in, but in the quiet season of the nighte, he set vppon his enemie vnloked for, and they beynge but sixe hundred men [Sidenote: Leonides.] with the kyng Leonides, brust into the ca[m]pe of their enemies beyng sixe hundred thousand menne, their valiauntnes was suche, and the ouerthowe of their enemies so great, and Xer- xes the kyng hauyng two woundes, retired with shame and [Sidenote: Agesilaus. Conon.] loste the honor. Agesilaus and Conon valiaunte in actes, and excellynge in all nobilitie, what great and mightie dan- gers haue thei atchiued and venterid for their countrie sake, howe moche haue thei neglectid their owne wealth, riches, life and glorie, for the aduauncement and honor of their cou[n]- [Sidenote: Lisander.] trie. Lisander also the Lacedemonian, was indued with like nobilitie with faithfull and syncéer harte towarde his coun- [Sidenote: Archidamus[.] Codrus.] try. Archidamus also lieth not in obliuio[n], whose fame death buried not the famous aduenture of Codrus kyng of the A- thenians is maruelous and almoste incredible, but that the Histores, truelie set forth, and declare a manifest truthe ther- [Sidenote: Epamniun- das.] of, who is more famous then Epaminundas, bothe for vir- tue, nobilitie and marciall feates among the Thebans, the [Sidenote: Grecians.] mightie armie of the Grecians, at the longe sege of Troie, what valiaunte Capitains hadde thei, whiche in the defence [Sidenote: Troians.] of their countrie hasarde their life: the Troians also wanted not for proues valiauntnes and al nobilitie, their péeres and [Sidenote: Romans.] nobles: amonge the Romans, what a greate number was of noble peres, whose studie alwaies was to liue and dye in the glorie, aide and defence of their countrie, for he liueth not by whose cowardlines fainted harte and courage, the contrie [Sidenote: Who liueth in shame.] or kyngdome standeth in perrill, he liueth in shame, that re- fuseth daunger, coste or charge, in the defence or procuryng, better state to his countrie. The worthie saiyng of Epami- nundas declareth, who liueth to his countrie, who diyng va- liauntlie in the felde, beyng thrust thorow with the speare of his enemie, asked those questions of these that stoede by him at the poincte of deathe, is my speare manfullie broken, and [Fol. xxxij.r] my enemies chassed awaie, the whiche things his co[m]panions [Sidenote: Epameunn- das a most no[-] ble and vali- aunt pere.] in warre affirmed, then saide he: nowe your Capitaine Epa- minundas beginneth to liue in that he dieth valiauntlie for his countrie, and in the proffite & aduauncement of the same, a worthie man, noble and valiaunte, his sentence also was worthie to be knowen, and followed of all suche as bee well affected and Godlie mynded to their countrie. Marcus Mar- cellus of like sorte, and Titus Manlius Torquatus, & Sci- pio Aemilianus, Marcus Attilius shewed in what hye price our naturall countrée ought to bee had, by their valiaunt at- chifes, and enterprises: I might passe by in sile[n]ce Scipio Ca- to, and Publius Scipio Nasica, but that thei by like fame, honour and glorie liue immortall to their countrie, the same also of Uibeus, Ualerius Flaccus, and Pedanius Centurio giueth ampell and large matter to all menne, endued with nobilitie and valiaunt proues, for the defence of their coun- trie with Quintus Coccius, Marcus Sceua and Sceuola. ¶ Possibilitie. THere nedeth no doute to rise of possibilitie, seinge that examples doe remain of famous men, of god- lie and well affected persones, whiche haue with like magnanimitie putte in daunger their life, to [Sidenote: The order of Athenes.] saue their Prince, kyngdome, and countrie. Greate honour was giuen of the Athenians, to soche noble and valiaunte men, whiche ventered their liues for their common wealthe, to maintaine the florishyng state thereof. The eloquente and [Sidenote: Thusidides.] copious oracion of Thusidides, the true, faithfull, and elo- quente Historiographer doeth shewe: what honour and im- mortall fame was attributed, to all soche as did venter their liues, in the florishyng state of their countrie, in supportyng, mainteinyng, and defendyng thesame. Who, although thei loste their liues, whiche by death should bee dissolued, their fame neuer buried, liueth with the soule to immortalitie, the losse of their Priuate wealthe, glorie, riches, substaunce, or dignitie, hath purchased and obtained fame, that withereth [Fol. xxxij.v] not, and glorie that faileth not. ¶ Agreyng and comelie. BOthe the true Histories, doe leaue in commenda- cion, the facte of Zopyrus, and the noble and wor- thie enterprises of other: whiche haue giuen the like assaie, and their fame is celebrated and titeled with immortall commendacion and glorie, to the posteritie [Sidenote: The duetie of all good subiectes.] of all ages followyng. What harte can bee so stonie, or bru- tishly affected, that wil not venter his life, goodes, landes, or possessions: if with the daunger of one, that is of hymself, the whole bodie and state of his countrie, is thereby supported, and saued. What securitie and quietnesse remained, what wealth, honour, or fame to Zopyrus: if not onely Zopyrus had perished, but the kyng & people vniuersally had been de- stroied. Therevpon Zopyrus weighing and co[n]sideryng, the [Sidenote: The cause of our birthe.] state of his birthe, that his countrie chalenged his life, rather then the dissolucion of the whole kyngdome, the decaie of the Prince, the takyng awaie of the scepter, the slaughter of in- finite people to ensue. He was borne to be a profitable mem- ber to his countrie, a glorie and staie to thesame: and not spa- ryng his life, or shunnyng the greate deformitie of his bo- die, to bee a ruine of thesame. Was it not better that one pe- rished, then by the securitie of one, a whole lande ouer run- ned, as partes thereby spoiled: it was the duetie of Zopirus, to take vpon hym that greate and famous enterprise. It was also comelie, the kyngdome standyng in perill, a sage and descrite persone to preuente and putte of, soche a daunger at [Sidenote: The facte of Zopyrus.] hande: The faicte altogether sheweth all vertue and greate singularitie, and a rare moderacion of minde, to cast of all re- spectes and excuses, forsakyng presentlie honour, quietnesse and obiecting himself to perill, he sawe if he onelie died, or by ieopardie saued his countrie, many thereby liued, the kyng- dome & people florished, where otherwise, he with his Prince and kyngdome might haue perished. ¶ Proffitable. [Fol. xxxiij.r] [Sidenote: The fact of Zopyrus.] AL the power of the Babilonians, was by his pol- icie throwen doune, the Citee taken, the enemie brought to confusion: on the other side, the Persi- ans rose mightie, soche a mightie enemie put vn- derfoote. The fame of Zopyrus and glorie of the facte, will neuer be obliterated, or put out of memorie, if this were not profitable to the kyngdome of Persia: if this were not a re- noume to the prince and people, and immortall glory to Zo- [Sidenote: Zopyrus de- formed, a beautie of his countree.] pryus iudge ye. Zopyrus therfore, beautified his countrée, by the deformitie of his bodie. Better it wer to haue many soche deformed bodies, then the whole state of the realme destroied or brought to naught: if we weigh the magnanimitie of that man, and his enterprise, there is so moche honour in the fact, that his fame shall neuer cease. ¶ A common place. [Sidenote: Why it is cal- led a common place.] A Common place is a Oracion, dilatyng and ampli- fiyng good or euill, whiche is incidente or lodged in any man. This Oracion is called a common place, because the matter conteined in it, doeth agree vniuersally to all menne, whiche are partakers of it, and giltie of thesame[.] A Oracion framed againste a certaine Thefe, Extorcio- ner, Murderer, or Traitor, is for the matter conteined in it, metelie and aptlie compiled, against all soche as are giltie of theft, murder, treason, or spotted with any other wickednes. This oracion of a common place, is like to the laste argu- ment or _Epilogus_ of any oracion, whiche the Grekes doe call _Deuterologian_, whiche is as moche to saie, as a rehearsall of that whiche is spoken of before. Wherefore, a common place hath no _exhordium_, or be- ginnyng, yet neuerthelesse, for the profite and exercise of the learner, you maie place soche a _proemium_, or beginnyng of the oracion, as maie be easie to induce the learner. This parte of _Rhetorike_ is large to intreate vpon, for the aboundaunce of matter. This part of _Rhetorike_ is large to intreate vpon, for the [Fol. xxxiij.v] aboundaunce of matter. The common place, whiche Aphthonius intreateth of, is to be aplied against any man, for the declaimor to inuade, ei- ther against vices, or to extoll and amplifie his vertues. This oracion of a common place, serueth bothe for the ac- cuser and the defender. For the accuser, to exasperate and moue the Iudges or hearers, against the offender, or accused. For the defendour to replie, and with all force & strength of matter, to mollifie and appease the perturbacions of the Iudges and hearers, to pulle doune and deface the contrarie alledged. There is greate force in this oracion, on bothe the sides. Properlie this kinde of _Rhetorike_, is called a common place, though it semeth to be made againste this man, or that man: because the matter of thesame shall properly pertain to all, giltie of thesame matter. [Sidenote: Pristianus.] Pristianus sheweth, that this parte of _Rhetorike_, is as it were a certaine exaggeracion of reason, to induce a manifest probacion of any thyng committed. As for example, a Theife taken in a robberie, in whom neither shamefastnesse, nor sparcle of grace appereth against soche a one: this oracion maie be made, to exasperate the Iud- ges from all fauour or affeccion of pitie, to be shewed. ¶ The order of the Oracion followeth with these notes to be made by. ¶ The firste Proheme. DEmosthenes the famous Orator of Athenes in his oracio[n] made against Aristogito[n] doeth saie, [Sidenote: What are Lawes.] that Lawes wherewith a common wealthe, ci- tie or Region is gouerned, are the gifte of God, a profitable Discipline among men, a restraint to with holde and kepe backe, the wilfull, rashe, and beastilie [Sidenote: Aristotle. Plato.] life of man, and therupo[n] Aristotle and Plato doe shewe, that through the wicked behauour of men, good lawes were first [Fol. xxxiiij.r] ordained, for, of ill maners, saie thei, rose good lawes, where [Sidenote: Order.] lawes doe cease, and good order faileth, there the life of man will growe, rude, wild and beestlie: Man beyng a chiefe crea- [Sidenote: Man borne by nature to societee.] ture or God, indued with manie singuler vertues, is framed of nature to a mutuall and Godlie societie of life, without the whiche moste horrible wolde the life bee, for not onlie by concorde and agremente, the life of man dothe consiste but al things on the earth haue therin their being: the heauens and lightes conteined in the same, haue a perpetuall harmonie & concente in finishyng their appointed race. The elementes [Sidenote: All thinges beyng on the yearth, dooe consiste by a harmonie or concorde.] of the worlde, where with the nature and substaunce of all thinges, doe consiste onlie by a harmonie and temperature of eche parte, haue their abidyng increase & prosperous beyng, otherwise their substaunce, perisheth and nature in all partes decaieth: Kyngdomes and common wealthes doe consiste in a harmonie, so long as vertue and all singularitie tempereth their state and gouernemente, and eche member thereof obe- ieth his function, office and callynge, and as partes of the- same bodie, euerie one as nature hath ordained theim occu- piyng, their roume and place, the vse of euerie parte, all to the vse and preseruacion of the hole bodie, and as in the bodie so in the common wealthe, the like concorde of life oughte to be in euery part, the moste principall parte accordyng to his di- gnitie of office, as moste principall to gouerne thother inferi- or partes: and it thei as partes moste principal of thesame bo- die with all moderacion and equabilitie te[m]peryng their state, [Sidenote: Order con- serueth com- mon wealth.] office and calling. The meanest parte accordyng to his lowe state, appliyng hym selfe to obeie and serue the moste prin- cipall: wherein the perfecte and absolute, frame of common wealthe or kyngdome is erected. And seyng that as the Phi- losophers doe saie, of ill maners came good lawes, that is to saie, the wicked and beastlie life of man, their iniurius beha- uiour, sekyng to frame themselues from men to beastes mo- [Sidenote: Euil maners was the occa- sion of good Lawes.] ued the wise and Godlie, elders to ordaine certaine meanes, to rote discipline, whereby the wickedlie disposed personne [Fol. xxxiiij.v] should bee compelled to liue in order, to obeie Godlie lawes, to the vpholdyng of societie. Therefore, all suche as dissolue lawes, caste doune good order, and state of common wealth, out as putride and vnprofitable weedes, to be extirpated and plucked vp from Citie and Common wealthe, from societie, who by mischeuous attemptes seke, to extinguishe societie, amitie, and concord in life. Princes & gouernors with al other magistrates ought in their gouernment to imitate the prac- tise of the Phisician, the nature of man, wekedned and made feble with to moche abundaunce of yll humors, or ouermoch with ill bloode replenished, to purge and euacuate that, and all to the preseruacion and healthe of the whole bodie: for so was the meanyng of the Philosopher, intreatyng of the po- litike, gouernment of kingdome and commonwealth, when [Sidenote: Theiues not mete to be in any societie.] thei compared a kingdome to the bodie of man: the thefe and robber as a euill and vnprofitable member, and all other as without all right, order, lawe, equitie and iustice, doe breake societie of life, bothe against lawe and nature: possessing the goodes of a other man, are to bee cutte of, as no partes, méete to remaine in any societie. ¶ The seconde Proheme. [Sidenote: Why theiues and wicked men, are cut of by lawe.] THe chifest cause that moued gouernours and ma- gistrates, to cutte of the race of theues, and viole[n]te robbers, and of all other mischeuous persons, was that by them a confusion would ensue in al states. What Citee could stande in prosperous state, yea, or what house priuatlie inhabited, where lawes and aucthoritee were exiled: where violence, will, luste, and appetite of pestiferous men, might without terrour bee practised. If the labour and industrie of the godlie, should be alwaie a praie to y^e wicked, and eche mannes violence and iniurious dealyng, his owne lawe, the beaste in his state, would bee lesse brutishe and in- iurious. Who so seketh to caste doune this societée, he is not méete to be of any societée, whiche he dissolueth. Who so rob- beth or stealeth, to liue by the gooddes of an other manne, as [Fol. xxxv.r] his possession, is by violence and againste Nature: so by vio- [Sidenote: A due rewar[-] des for thie- ues and mur- therers.] lence and against nature, their pestiferous doinges do frame their confusion: their execrable & destetable purpose, do make theim a outcaste from all good people, and as no members thereof, cut of from all societée, their euill life rooteth perpetu- al ignomie and shame. And thus is the tragicall ende of their enterprise. ¶ The contrarie. [Sidenote: Democratia.] HErein the lose and dissolute state of gouernmente called of the Grekes Democratia, haue conten- ted the wilfull heddes of pestiferous men: where- in euery man must bee a ruler. Their owne will is their Lawe: there luste setteth order, no Magistrate, but euery one to hymself a Magistrate. All thynges in common, as long as that state doeth remain emong the wicked, a most happie state coumpted, a wished state to idell persones, but it [Sidenote: The thiefe. The mur- therer.] continueth not. Herein the murtherer, the thiefe were meete to be placed. The greater thiefe, the better manne: the moste execrable murtherer, a moste mete persone, for soche state of gouernemente. There is no nacion vnder the Sunne, but that one tyme or other, this troublous state hath molested theim: and many haue sought to sette vp soche a monsterous state of regiment, a plagued common wealthe, and to be de- tested. Soche was the order of men, when thei liued without lawes. When the whole multitude were scattered, no citee, Toune, or house builded or inhabited, but through beastlie maners, beastlie dispersed, liued wilde and beastlie. But the wise, sage, and politike heddes reduced by wisedome, into [Sidenote: Houses. Families. Tounes. Citees.] a societie of life, nature leadyng thereto: Houses and habita- cions, were then for necessitie made, families multiplied, vil- lages and Tounes populouslie increased, and Citees raised emong so infinite people. Nature by God inuented and sta- blished Lawe, and the sage and wise persones, pronounced and gaue sentence vpon Lawes. Whereupon, by the obedi- ence of lawes, and preeminente aucthoritie of Magistrates: [Fol. xxxv.v] The state of mightie Kyngdomes and Common wealthes, haue growen to soche a roialnesse and loftie state, many fa- mous kingdomes haue been on the face of the yearth: many noble Princes from tyme to tyme succedyng, whiche with- [Sidenote: Obedience of Lawes did stablishe the mightie mo- narchies.] out a order of godlie lawes, could not haue continued. What was the cause that the mightie Monarchies, continued many hundred yeres: did the losse of dissolute life of subiectes and Princes, cause thesame but good lawes, and obedience to or- ders. Therefore, where Magistrates, bothe in life and office, [Sidenote: The life of the Magi- strate, a lawe[.]] liue in the obedience of Lawes: the multitude inferiour, by example of the Magistrates singularitie, incensed dooe place before them, their example of life, as a strong lawe. [Sidenote: The Epistle of Theodosi- uus Empe- ror of Rome[.]] Theodosius Emperor of Rome, writyng to Uolusianus his chief Pretor, as concernyng his office, in these woordes, saieth: _Digna vox est maiestate regnantis legibus alligatum se principem profiteri. Adeo de autoritate Iuris nostra pendet autoritas et reuera maius imperio est submittere legibus prin[-] cipatum & oraculo presentis edicti quod nobis licere non pa- timur alijs indicamus._ It is a worthie saiyng, and meete for the Maiestie of a Prince, to acknowledge hymself vnder his lawe. For, our aucthoritie, power, and sworde, doeth depende vpon the force, might, and aucthoritie of Lawes, and it pas- seth all power and aucthoritie, his gouernemente and kyng- dome to be tempered by lawe, as a moste inuiolable Oracle and decrée, so to doe as we prouulgate to other. Whereupon it is manifeste, what force godlie lawes gaue to the Prince, what aucthoritie. Take lawes awaie, all order of states fai- [Sidenote: Princes Lawe.] leth, the Prince by Lawe, is a terrour to the malefactour: his Maiestie is with all humblenesse serued, feared, and obeied. By lawes, his state maketh hym as a God, emong menne, at whose handes the preseruacion of eche one, of house, citee and countrie is sought. Seing bothe lawes and the Prince, hane that honour and strength, that without them, a _Chaos_ a con- fusion would followe, in the bodie of all common wealthes and kyngdomes. Let them by aucthoritie and lawe bee con- [Fol. xxxvj.r] founded, that practise to subuerte aucthoritie, to neclecte the Prince, and his godlie lawes. ¶ The exposicion. [Sidenote: Theiues and all iniurious persones.] THe theife, or any other iniurious persone, doeth seke to bée aboue all lawes, exempted from all order, vn- der no obedience, their pestiferous dealyng, dooe vt- [Sidenote: Demosthe- nes in Ari- stogiton.] ter thesame: For, as Demosthenes the famous Orator of A- thenes doeth saie. If that wicked men cease not their viole[n]ce if that good men in all quietnes and securitie, can not enioye their owne goddes, while lawe and aucthoritie of the magi- strate, seuerelie and sharply vseth his aucthoritie and sword. If dailie the heddes of wicked men, cease not to subuerte la- wes, orders, and decrees godlie appoincted. Whiles that in all Citees and common wealthes, the Princes and gouer- [Sidenote: The force of lawes.] nours, are by lawes a terror to them. Lawes then ceasyng, the dreadfull sente[n]ce of the Iudge and Magistrate wanting. The sworde vndrawen, all order confounded, what a con- fusion would followe: yea, what an open passage would bee lefte open to all wickednesse. The terrour of Lawes, the sworde and aucthoritie of the Magestrate, depresseth and put[-] teth doune, the bloodie cogitacions of the wicked, and so hin- dereth and cutteth of, many horrible and bloodie enterprises. Els there would bee neither Prince, Lawe, nor subiecte, no hedde or Magistrate: but euery manne his owne hedde, his owne lawe and Magistrate, oppression and violence should bee lawe, and reason, and wilfull luste would bee in place of reason, might, force, and power, should ende the case. Where- fore, soche as no lawe, no order, nor reason, will driue lo liue as members in a common wealthe, to serue in their functio[n]. [Sidenote: Wicked men burdeins of the yearth.] Thei are as Homere calleth the:m, burdeins to the yearth, for thei are of no societie linked with Nature, who through wickednesse are disseuered, abhorryng concorde of life, socie- tie and felowship. Whom sinister and bitter stormes of for- tune, doe daiely vexe and moleste, who in the defence of their [Fol. xxxvj.v] [Sidenote: Maimed sol- diours muste be prouided for.] countrie are maimed, and thereby their arte and science, for, imbecilitie not practised, all art otherwise wantyng, extreme pouertee fallyng on them, reason muste moue, and induce all hartes, to pitée chieflie their state: who in defence and main- teinaunce of our Countrie, Prince, and to the vpholdyng of our priuate wealthe at home, are become debilitated, defor- med and maimed, els their miseries will driue them to soche hedlesse aduentures, that it maie bee saied, as it was saied to [Sidenote: The saiyng of a souldiour to Alexander the greate.] Alexander the Greate. Thy warres, O Prince, maketh ma- ny theues, and peace will one daie hang them vp. Wherein the Grecians, as Thusidides noteth, had a carefull proui- dence, for all soche as in the defence of their Countrie were maimed, yea, euen for their wiues, and children of all soche, as died in warre, to be mainteined of the commo[n] charge and threasure of Grece. Reade his Oracion in the seconde booke, made vpon the funerall of the dedde soldiours. ¶ A comparison of vices. [Sidenote: The dru[n]kard[.] The proude persone. The prodigal[.] The couei- teous. The robber.] THe dronkarde in his state is beastlie, the proude and arrogante persone odious, the riotous and prodigall persone to be contempned, the couei- tous and nigardlie manne to bee reiected. But who so by violence, taketh awaie the goodes of an other man, or by any subtill meanes, iniustlie possesseth thesame, is detestable, with all seueritée to be punished. The [Sidenote: The adul- terer. The harlot.] adulterer and the harlotte, who by brutishe behauiour, leude affection, not godlines leadyng thereto: who by their vnchast behauior, and wanton life doe pollute, and co[n]taminate their bodie, in whom a pure minde ought to be reposed. Who tho- rowe beastly affeccion, are by euill maners transformed to beastes: and as moche as in theim lieth, multipliyng a bru- [Sidenote: The homi- cide.] tishe societie. The homicide in his state more horrible, accor- dyng to his outragious and bloodie life, is to bee tormented, in like sort all other vices, accordyng to their mischiues, rea- son, Lawe and Iustice, must temper and aggrauate due re- [Fol. xxxvij.r] ward, and sentence to them. ¶ The sentence. [Sidenote: Thefte horri[-] ble amo[n]g the Scitheans.] NO vice was more greuous, and horrible emong the Scithians then thefte, for this was their sai- yng: _Quid saluum esse poterit si licet furari_, what can be safe, if thefte bee lefull or tolerated. Herein [Sidenote: A sentence a- genst thefte.] the vniuersalle societée of life is caste doune, hereby a confu- sion groweth, and a subuersion in all states immediatlie fol- loweth, equitee, iustice, and all sincere dealyng is abaundo- ned, violence extirpateth vertue, and aucthoritie is cutte of. ¶ The digression. THE facte in other maie be with more facilitée to- lerated, in that to theim selues, the facte and con- uersacion of life is moste pernicious, and hurtfull, but by soche kinde of menne, whole kyngdomes and common wealthes would bee ouerthrowen. And for a prosperous state and common wealthe, a common woe and [Sidenote: Horrible vi- ces.] calamitée would fall on them, tumultes and vprores main- tained, right and lawe exiled: neither in field quietnes, welth or riches, houses spoiled, families extinguished, in all places sedicion, warre for peace, violence for right, will and lust for [Sidenote: Userers.] lawe, a hedlesse order in all states. And as concernyng Usu- rers, though their gaines be neuer so ample, and plentifull, to enriche them, whereby thei growe to be lordes, ouer many thousandes of poundes: yet the wealthe gotten by it, is so in- iurious, that thei are a greate plague, to all partes of the co[m]- mon wealthe: so many daungers and mischiues, riseth of the[m][.] Cato the noble and wise Senator of Rome, being demaun- ded diuers questions, what was firste to bee sought, in a fa- milie or housholde, the aunsweres not likyng the demaun- [Sidenote: The sentence of Cato a- gainst vsu- rers. Usure is mur[-] ther.] der: this question was asked, O Cato, what sente[n]ce giue you of Usurie, that is a goodlie matter to bee enriched by. Then Cato aunswered in fewe woordes. _Quid hominem occidere._ What saie you to be a murderer? Soche a thyng saieth he, is [Fol. xxxvij.v] Usurie. A brief sentence againste Usurers, but wittely pro- nounced from the mouth of a godlie, sage, noble, and descrite persone, whiche sentence let the Usurer, ioigne to his Usury retourned, and repeate at the retourne thereof, this sentence [Sidenote: The sentence of Cato a dis- comfort to v- surers.] of Cato, I haue murthered. This one sentence will discou- rage any Usurer, knowyng hymself a murtherer. Though moche more maie be spoken against it, this shalbe sufficient. The Hebrues calleth Usurie, by the name of _Shecke_, that is a bityng gaine, of the whiche many haue been so bitten, that whole families haue been deuoured, & beggerie haue been their gaine. And as Palingenius noteth. _Debitor aufugiens portat cum fænore sortem._ The debtour often tymes saieth he, runneth awaie, and carieth with hym, the debte and gaines of the Usurie. The Grekes calleth Usurie _Tokos_, that is properlie the trauaile of women of their childe: soche is their Usurie, a daungerous gettyng. Demosthenes likeneth their state as thus, as if ter- restriall thynges should be aboue the starres: and the heaue[n]s [Sidenote: Usure a dan- gerous gaue.] and celestialle bodies, gouerned by the base and lowe terre- striall matters, whiche by no meanes, can conserue the ex- cellencie of them, for, of them onely, is their matter, substau[n]ce and nature conserued. ¶ Exclusion of mercie. WHerefore, to whom regimente and gouerne- mente is committed, on whose administracion, the frame of the co[m]mon wealth doe staie it self: thei ought with al wisedome and moderacion, to procede in soche causes, whose office in wor- [Sidenote: Princes and magistrates be as Gods on the earth.] thinesse of state, and dignitée, maketh the[m] as Goddes on the yearth, at whose mouthes for wisedome, counsaill, and for- tunate state, infinite people doe depende. It is no smal thing in that their sword & aucthoritée, doeth sette or determine all thinges, that tendereth a prosperous state, whereupon with all integritée and equitée, thei ought to temper the affeccions of their mynde: and accordyng to the horrible facte, and mis- [Fol. xxxviij.r] chiues of the wicked, to exasperate & agrauate their terrible iudgemente, and to extirpate from the yearth, soche as be of [Sidenote: The homicide. The Theue. The Adulte- rer.] no societie in life. The bloodie homicide, the thief, the adul- terer, for by these all vertue is rooted out, all godlie societie extinguished, citees, realmes, and countrées, prostrate & pla- gued for the toleracion of their factes, against soch frendship in iudgemente muste cease, and accordyng to the state of the cause, equitee to retaine frendship, money muste not blinde, nor rewardes to force and temper Iudgementes: but accor- dyng to the veritee of the cause, to adde a conclusion. Wor- [Sidenote: Whey the pi- ctures of ma- gistrates bee picturid with- oute handes.] thelie the pictures of Princes, Gouernours and Magistrates in auncient tymes doe shewe this, where the antiquitée ma- keth theim without handes, therein it sheweth their office, and iudgemente to proceade with equitée, rewardes not to blind, or suppresse the sinceritée of the cause. Magistrates not to bee bounde to giftes, nor rewardes to rule their sentence. _Alciatus_ in his boke called _Emblemata, in senatu[m] sancti prin- cipis_. [Sidenote: Princes and magistrates graue & con- stante.] _Effigies manibus trunc[ae] ante altaria diuum Hic resident, quarum lumine capta prior Signa potestatis summ[ae], sanctiq[ue] senatus, Thebanis fuerant ista reperta viris. Cur resident? Quia mente graues decet esse quieta Iuridicos, animo nec variare leui. Cur sine sunt manibus? Capiant ne xenia, nec se Pollicitis flecti muneribus ve sinant. Cecus est princeps quod solis auribus, absq[ue] Affectu constans iussa senatus agit._ Where vertue and integritée sheweth it self, in the persone and cause, to vpholde and maintein thesame. Roote out hor- rible vices from common wealthe, that the more surer and stronge foundacion of vertue maie be laied: for, that onelie cause, the scepter of kinges, the office of magistrates was left to the posteritée of all ages. ¶ Lawfull and iuste. [Fol. xxxviij.v] ¶ Lawfull and iust. [Sidenote: Lawes giue equitie to all states.] SEyng that lawes bee godlie, and vniuersally thei temper equitée to all states, and giue according to iustice, euery man his owne: he violateth vertue, that dispossesseth an other manne of his own, and [Sidenote: What driueth y^e magistrate to horrible sentence a- gainst wicked persons.] wholie extinguisheth Iustice. And thereupon his beastly life by merite forceth and driueth, lawe and Magistrate, to terri- ble iudgement. For, who so against right, without order, or lawe, violateth an other man, soche a one, lawes of iustice, muste punishe violentlie, and extirpate from societée, beyng a dissoluer of societee. ¶ Profitable. IF soche wicked persones be restrained, and seuerelie punished, horrible vices will be rooted out: all artes[,] sciences, and godlie occupacions mainteined, vphol- ded and kept. Then there must bée a securitée in all states, to [Sidenote: Magistrate. Subiect.] practise godlines, a mutuall concorde. The Magistrate with equitée, the subiecte with faithful and humble obedience, ac- complishyng his state, office, and callyng. Whereupon by good Magistrates, and good subiectes, the common wealthe and kyngdom is in happie state stablished. For, in these twoo [Sidenote: Plato.] poinctes, as Plato doeth saie, there is vertuous rule, and like obedience. ¶ Easie and possible. [Sidenote: The begyn- nyng of vice is to be cut af.] AL this maie easely be doen, when wickednes is cutte of, in his firste groweth, when the magistrate driueth continually, by sworde and aucthoritée, all menne to obedience, bothe of lawes and gouernuurs. Then in al good common wealthes, vices are neuer tolerated to take roote: be- cause the beginnyng and increase of vices, is sone pulled vp, his monsterous kyngdome thereby ouerthrowen. ¶ The conclusion. SO doyng, happie shall the kyng be, happie kyngdome, and moste fortunate people. [Fol. xxxix.r] ¶ The parte of Rhetorike, called praise. His Oracion, which is titeled praise, is a declamacio[n] of the vertuous or good qualitées, propertees belon- gyng to any thyng, whiche doeth procede by certaine notes of arte. All thynges that maie be seen, with the iye of man, tou- ched, or with any other sence apprehended: that maie be prai- sed, or dispraised. { Manne. Citees. } { Fisshe. Floodes. } { Foule. Castles. } { Beaste. Toures. } As { Orchardes. Gardeins. } { Stones. Stones. } { Trees. Artes. } { Plantes. Sciences. } { Mettals. } Any vertue maie be praised, as wisedome, rightuousnes[,] fortitude, magnanimitée, temperaunce, liberalitée, with all other. These are to be celebrated with praise. The persone, as Iulius Cesar, Octauius Augustus, Hieremie, Tullie, Cato, Demosthenes. Thynges, as rightuousnes, temperaunce. Tymes, as the Spryng tyme of the yere, Sommer, Har- uest, Winter. Places, as Hauens, Orchardes, Gardeins, Toures, Castles, Temples, Islandes. Beastes wantyng reason, as Horse, Shepe, Oxen[,] Pla[n]- ntes, as Uines, Oliues. In the praise of vertue, this maie be saied. THe excellencies of it, the antiquitee and originalle be- ginnyng thereof, the profite that riseth to any region by it, as no kyngdome can consiste without vertue, [Fol. xxxix.v] and to extoll the same, in makyng a comparison, with other giftes of nature, or with other giftes of fortune, more infe- riour or base. [Sidenote: Wherein the praise of a ci- tie consisteth[.]] Upon a citée, praise maie be recited, consideryng the good- lie situacion of it, as of Paris, Uenice, London, Yorke: con- sideryng the fertilitie of the lande, the wealthe and aboun- daunce, the noble and famous goueruours, whiche haue go- uerned thesame. The first aucthors and builders of thesame, the politike lawes, and godlie statutes therein mainteined: The felicitée of the people, their maners, their valeaunt pro- wes and hardines. The buildyng and ornatures of thesame, with Castles, Toures, Hauens, Floodes, Temples: as if a manne would celebrate with praise. The olde, famous, and [Sidenote: The praise of London. Brutus buil[-] ded Londo[n] in the .x. yeare of his raine.] aunciente Citée of London, shewyng the auncient buildyng of thesame: the commyng of Brutus, who was the firste au- cthor and erector of thesame. As Romulus was of the migh- tie Citée Rome, what kyngs haue fro[m] tyme to tyme, lineal- ly descended, and succeded, bearing croune and scepter there- in: the valiauntnes of the people, what terror thei haue been to all forraine nacions. What victories thei haue in battaile obteined, how diuers nacions haue sought their amitée and [Sidenote: Fraunce and Scotlande vpholded by y^e gouernors of this lande.] league. The false Scottes, and Frenche menne truce brea- kers: many and sonderie tymes, losyng their honour in the field, and yet thei, through the puissaunt harte of the kynges of this lande, vpholdyd and saued, from the mighte and force [Sidenote: Cambridge. Oxforde.] of other enemies inuadyng theim. The twoo famous Uni- uersitées of this lande, from the whiche, no small nomber of greate learned men and famous, haue in the co[m]mon wealthe sprong, with all other thynges to it. The praise of a Kyng, Prince, Duke, Erle, Lorde, Ba- ron, Squire, or of any other man be maie declaimed of obser[-] uing the order of this parte of _Rhetorike_. This parte of _Rhetorike_ called praise, is either a particu- ler praise of one, as of kyng Henry the fifte, Plato, Tullie, Demosthenes, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander the greate. [Fol. xl.r] Or a generalle and vniuersalle praise, as the praise of all the Britaines: or of all the citezeins of London. ¶ The order to make this Oracion, is thus declared. Firste, for the enteryng of the matter, you shall place a _exordium_, or beginnyng. The seconde place, you shall bryng to his praise, _Genus eius_, that is to saie: Of what kinde he came of, whiche dooeth consiste in fower poinctes. { Of what nacion. } { Of what countrée. } { Of what auncetours. } { Of what parentes. } After that you shall declare, his educacion: the educacion is conteined in thrée poinctes. { Institucion. } In { Arte. } { Lawes. } Then put there to that, whiche is the chief grounde of al praise: his actes doen, whiche doe procede out of the giftes, and excellencies of the minde, as the fortitude of the mynde, wisedome, and magnanimitée. Of the bodie, as a beautifull face, amiable countenaunce[,] swiftnesse, the might and strength of thesame. The excellencies of fortune, as his dignitée, power, au- cthoritee, riches, substaunce, frendes. In the fifte place vse a comparison, wherein that whiche you praise, maie be aduaunced to the vttermoste. Laste of all, vse the _Epilogus_, or conclusion. ¶ The example of the Oracion. ¶ The praise of Epaminundas. IN whom nature hath powred singuler giftes, in whom vertue, & singularitée, in famous en- terprises aboundeth: whose glorie & renoume, rooteth to the posteritée, immortall commen- dacion. In the graue, their vertues and godlie [Fol. xl.v] [Sidenote: Obliuion.] life, tasteth not of Obliuion, whiche at the length ouerthro- weth all creatures, Citées, and regions. Thei liue onelie in all ages, whose vertues spreadeth fame and noble enterpri- [Sidenote: Who liue in all ages.] ses, by vertue rooteth immortalitée. Who so liueth, as that his good fame after death ceaseth not, nor death with the bo- die cutteth of their memorie of life: Soche not onely in life, but also in death are moste fortunate. In death all honor, di- [Sidenote: Good fame chieflie rou- teth after death.] gnitée, glorie, wealthe, riches, are taken from vs: The fame and glorie of singulare life is then, chieflie takyng his holde and roote, wise men and godlie, in life, knowen famous, af- ter death, remain moste worthie & glorious. Who knoweth [Sidenote: Tullie. Demosthe- nes. Iulius Ce- sar. Octauius Augustus. Uespasianus[.] Theodosius. Traianns. Adrianus.] not of Tullie, the famous Oratour of Rome. Doeth De- mosthenes lieth hidden, that noble Oratour of Athenes. Is not y^e fame of Iulius Cesar, Octauius Augustus remainyng of Uespasianus: of Theodosius, of Traianus, of Adrianus, who by praise minded, be left to the ende of al ages. Soche a one was this Epaminundas, the famous Duke of Thebe, whose vertues gaue hym honour in life, and famous enter- prises, immortalitée of fame after death. What can bee saied more, in the praise and commendacion, of any peere of estate, then was saied in the praise of Epaminundas, for his ver- tues were so singulare, that it was doubted, he beyng so good a manne, and so good a Magistrate, whether he were better manne, or better Magistrate: whose vertues were so vnited, that vertue alwaies tempered his enterprises, his loftie state as fortune oftentymes blindeth, did not make hym vnmind- full of his state. No doubt, but that in all common wealthes, famous gouernours haue been, but in all those, the moste parte haue not been soche, that all so good men, and so good magistrates: that it is doubted, whether thei were better me[n], [Sidenote: Good man, good magi- strate, boothe a good man and a good magistrate.] or better magistrates. It is a rare thyng to be a good manne, but a more difficult matter, to bee a good Magistrate: and moste of all, to be bothe a good man, and a good Magistrate. Honour and preeminent state, doeth sometyme induce obli- uion, whereupon thei ought the more vigilantlie to wade: [Fol. xlj.r] in all causes, and with all moderacion, to temper their pree- [Sidenote: The saiynge of the Philo- sophers.] minent state. The Philosophers ponderyng the brickle and slippere state of fortune, did pronounce this sentence: _Diffici- lius est res aduersas pati, quam fortunam eflantem ferre_, it is more easie to beare sharpe and extreme pouertie, then to rule and moderate fortune, because that the wisest menne of all [Sidenote: Obliuion.] haue as Chronicles doe shewe, felte this obliuion, that their maners haue been so chaunged, as that natures molde in the[m] had ben altered or nuelie framed, in the life of Epaminu[n]das moderacion and vertue, so gouerned his state, that he was a honor and renowne to his state, nothing can be more ample in his praise, then that which is lefte Chronicled of him. [¶] Of his countrie. EPaminundas was borne in Thebe a famous citie in [Sidenote: Cadmus. Amphion. Hercules.] Beotia, the which Cadmus the sone of Agenor buil- ded, whiche Amphion did close & enuiron with wal- les, in the whiche the mightie and valiaunt Hercules was borne, & manie noble Princes helde therin scepter, the which Citie is tituled famous to the posterity by the noble gouern- ment of Epaminundas. ¶ Of his auncetours. EPaminundas came not of anie highe nobilitie or blood, but his parentes were honeste and verteous who as it semed were verie well affected to vertue, instructyng their soonne in all singulare and good qualities, for by good and vertuous life and famous enter- prises from a meane state, manie haue bene extolled to beare scepter, or to attaine greate honour, for as there is a begyn- [Sidenote: Nobility rose by vertue.] nyng of nobilitie, so there is an ende, by vertue and famous actes towarde the common wealthe, nobilite first rose. The [Sidenote: Cesar. Scipio.] stock of Cesar and Cesars was exalted from a meaner state, by vertue onelie to nobilitie. Scipios stocke was not alwais noble, but his vertues graffed nobilitie to the posteritie of his line and ofspryng followynge. And euen so as their fa- [Fol. xlj.v] mous enterprices excelled, nobilite in theim also increased. [Sidenote: Catilina.] Catilina wicked, was of a noble house, but he degenerated from the nobilitie of his auncestours, the vertues that graf- fed nobilitie in his auncestors, were first extinguished in Ca- [Sidenote: Marcus Antonius.] iline. Marcus Antonius was a noble Emperour, a Prince indued with all wisedome and Godlie gouernme[n]t, who was of a noble pare[n]tage, it what a wicked sonne succeded him, the [Sidenote: Commodus.] father was not so godlie, wise, and vertuous, as Commo- dus was wickedlie disposed and pestiferous. There was no vertue or excellence, méete for suche a personage, but that Marcus attained to. Who for wisedome was called Marcus Philosophus, in his sonne what vice was the[m] that he practi- sed not, belie chier, druncknes and harlottes, was his delite, his crueltie and bluddie life was suche that he murthered all the godlie and wise Senatours, had in price with Marcus [Sidenote: Seuerus.] his father. Seuerus in like maner, was a noble and famous Emperor, in the Senate moste graue, politike, and in his [Sidenote: Marcus Antonius Caracalla.] warres moste fortunate, but in his sonne Marcus Antoni- nus Caracalla, what wickednes wanted, whose beastlie life is rather to be put in silence, then spoken of. In the assemble of the Grecians, gathered to consulte vpon the contencion of [Sidenote: Aiax. Ulisses.] Achilles armour, Aiax gloriouslie aduaunceth hymself of his auncestrie, from many kinges descended, whom Ulisses his aduersarie aunswered: makyng a long and eloquente Ora- cion, before the noble péeres of Grece, concernyng Aiax his auncetours. These are his woordes. _Nam genus et proauos et que non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco, sed enim quia retulit Aiax, esse Iouis pronepos._ As for our parentage, and line of auncetours, long before vs, and noble actes of theirs: as we our selues haue not doen the like, how can we call, and title their actes to be ours. Let them therefore, whiche haue descended from noble blood, and famous auncetours: bee like affected to all nobilitée of their auncetours, what can thei glory in the nobilitée of their aun- [Fol. xlij.r] cetours. Well, their auncetours haue laied the foundacion, [Sidenote: Nobilitee.] and renoume of nobilitee to their ofspryng. What nobilitee is founde in them, when thei builde nothyng, to their aunce- tours woorke of nobilitée. Euen as their auncetours, noblie endeuoured them selues, to purchase and obtain, by famous actes their nobilitée) for, nobilitée and vertue, descendeth al- waies to the like) so thei contrary retire and giue backe, fro[m] all the nobiliée of their auncestours, where as thei ought, [Sidenote: A beginnyng of nobilitee.] with like nobilitée to imitate them. Many haue been, whiche through their wisedome, and famous enterprises, in the af- faires of their Prince, worthelie to honour haue been extol- led and aduaunced: who also were the firste aucthours and founders of nobiliée, to their name and ofspring. Whose of- spring indued with like nobilitée of vertues, and noble actes haue increased their auncestors glorie: the childre[n] or ofspring lineally descendyng, hauyng no part of the auncestours glo- rie, how can thei vaunte them selues of nobiliée, whiche thei lacke, and dooe nothyng possesse thereof, Euen from lowe [Sidenote: Galerius a Shepherds sonne Empe- ror of Rome. Probus a Gardeiners sonne, Em- perour.] birthe and degrée. Galerius Armentarius was aduaunced, euen from a Shepherdes sonne, to sit in the Imperiall seat of Roome. Galerius Maximinus whom all the Easte obaied, his vertues and noble acts huffed hym to beare scepter in the Empire of Roome. Probus a Gardiners soonne, to the like throne and glorie asce[n]ded, so God disposeth the state of euery man, placyng and bestowing dignitée, where it pleaseth him as he setteth vp, so he pulleth doune, his prouidence & might is bounde to no state, stocke, or kindred. ¶ Of his educacion. EPaminu[n]das beyng borne of soche parentes, was brought vp in all excellente learnyng, for, vnder hym Philippe the kyng of the Macedonians, the soonne of Amintas, was brought vp. This Epa- minundas, the Histories note hym to be a chief Philosopher, and a capitaine moste valiaunte. In Musike, in plaiyng, and [Fol. xlij.v] singyng finelie to his Instrumente, notable and famous, no kinde of learnyng, arte, or science, wanted in his breaste: So greate and aboundante were his vertues, that aboue all go- uernours, whiche haue been in Thebe, his name and fame is chieflie aduaunced. ¶ The praise of his actes. [Sidenote: The dutie of good gouer- nors.] EPaminundas beyng moste valiaunte and no- ble, leauing all priuate commoditée, glory, and riches a side: sought the renoume of his coun- tree, as all rulers and gouernours ought to do. [Sidenote: Howe a king[-] dome riseth to all felicitie.] For, a kyngdome or common wealth, can not rise to any high nobilitée or Roialnesse, where gouernours, rulers, and magistrates, neclecting the vniuersall, and whole body of the common wealthe, doe cogitate and vigilantly en- deuour them selues, to stablish to them and theirs, a priuate, peculiar, and domesticall profite, glorie, or renoume. Couei- teousnes, whiche is in all ambicious Magistrates the poison, plague, destruccion, and ruine of the beste and florishing co[m]- mon wealthes, of al wickednes and mischief the roote: a vice, [Sidenote: Couetousnes a great euill.] whereupon all vice is grounded, from whom all mischiefe floweth, all execrable purposes issueth. That wanted in Epaminundas, for in the ende of his life, his coffers were so thin and poore, that euen to his Funerall, money wanted to solempnise thesame. Priuate glorie nor excesse, was hunted after of hym, yet his vertues were of soche excellencie, that honour, dignitée, and preeminent state, was offered and gi- uen to hym vnwillinglie. This Epaminundas was in go- uernement so famous, and so vertuouslie and politikelie ru- led thesame, that he was a glorie, renoume, honour, and fe- licitée to his kingdome, by his state. Before the time of Epa- [Sidenote: Beotia. Thebes.] minundas, the countree of Beotia was nothyng so famous in their enterprises: neither the citee of Thebe so roiall, puis- saunt or noble, the antiquitee of that tyme sheweth, that E- paminundas wantyng the power of Thebes, their glorie, strength, and felicitee fell and decaied. The learning of Epa- [Fol. xliij.r] minundas and knowlege, was so aboundant and profounde bothe in Philosophie, and in all other artes and sciences, that it was wounderfull. In chiualrie and in feates of warre, no péere was more couragious and bolde, or hardie, neither in that, whiche he enterprised, any could be of greater counsaile in hedde more pollitike, of minde more sage and wittie: his gouernement so good, that beyng so good a Magistrate, it is doubted, whether he be better man, or better Magistrate, E- paminundas died in the defence of his countrée. The Athe- nians were enemies to the Thebanes, and many greate bat- tailes were assaied of theim and foughten: and often tymes the Athenians felt many bitter stormes, and fortune loured of them, he beyng so valiaunt a capitain. Epaminundas be- yng dedde, the Athenians ceased to practise, any one parte of chiualrie, their prowesse and dexteritée decaied: thei hauyng no aliaunte, and forraine enemie to moleste theim, or whom [Sidenote: A valiant ca- pitain, to his countrie a pil[-] lar[,] to his ene[-] mie, a occasio[n] to dexteritie.] thei feared. So that a famous, wise, pollitike, and valiaunte capitaine, is not onely a staie, a pillar and strong bulwarke to his countrée. But also forraine nacions, hauyng one, who[m] for his valiauntnes thei dreade, doe practise and inure them selues, to all dexteritee, counsaile, wisedome, and pollicie: soche a one was Epaminundas, to his enemies and cou[n]trée. ¶ The comparison. [Sidenote: Hector. Achilles. Numa Pom[-] peius. Adrianus.] NEither Hector of Troie, nor Achilles of Grece, might bee compared with Epaminundas, Numa Pompili- us was not more godlie, Adriane the Emperour of Roome, no better learned, nor Galba the Emperour more valiaunte, Nerua no more temperate, nor Traianus more noble, neither Cocles nor Decius, Scipio nor Marcus Regu[-] lus, did more valianntly in the defence of their countrie, soche a one was this Epaminundas. ¶ The conclusion. OF many thynges, these fewe are recited, but if his whole life and vertues, wer worthely handeled: fewe would beleue, soche a rare gouernour, so vertuous a [Fol. xliij.v] Prince, so hardie and valiaunte a capitaine, to haue remai- ned in no age. ¶ The parte of Rhetorike, called dispraise. THis parte of _Rhetorike_, which is called dispraise, is a in- uectiue Oracion, made againste the life of any man. This part of _Rhetorike_, is contrary to that, whiche is be- fore set, called _laus_, that is to saie, praise: and by contrary no- tes procedeth, for the Oratour or declaimer to entreate vpo[n]. This parte of _Rhetorike_, is called of the Grekes _Psogos_. In praise, we extoll the persone: First by his countrée. Then by his auncestours and parentes. In the third place, by his educacion and institucion. Then in the fowerth place, of his actes in life. In the fifte place vse a comparison, comparyng the per- sone with other, whiche are more inferiour. Then the conclusion. Now in dispraise, contrarily we doe procede. Firste, in the dispraise of his countrée. Of his auncetours and parentes. His educacion is dispraised. Then his actes and deedes of life. Also in your comparison with other, dispraise hym. Then in the laste place, adde the conclusion. All thynges that maie be praised, maie be dispraised. ¶ The dispraise of Nero. [Sidenote: Uertue.] AS vertue meriteth commendacion and immor- tall renoume, for the nobilitée and excellencie reposed in it: so ougle vices for the deformitée of them, are in mynd to be abhorred and detested, and with all diligence, counsaile, and wisedome [Sidenote: Uice.] auoided. As pestiferous poison extinguisheth with his cor- rupcion and nautinesse, the good and absolute nature of all thinges: so vice for his pestiferous nature putteth out vertue and rooteth out with his force all singularitée. For, vice and [Fol. xliiij.r] vertue are so of nature contrary, as fire and water, the vio- lence of the one expelleth the other: for, in the mansion of ver- tue, vice at one tyme harboreth not, neither vertue with vice [Sidenote: What is ver- tue.] can be consociate or vnited, for, vertue is a singuler meane, or Mediocrite in any good enterprise or facte, with order and reason finished. Whose acte in life, doeth repugne order and reason, disseuered from all Mediocrite, soche do leaue iustice, equitée, wisedome, temperaunce, fortitude, magnanimitée, and al other vertues, bothe of minde and body: onely by ver- tues life men shewe theim selues, as chief creatures of God, with reason, as a moste principall gifte, beautified and deco- rated: In other giftes, man is farre inferiour to beastes, both in strength of bodie, in celeritée and swiftnesse of foote, in la- bour, in industrie, in sense, nothyng to bee compared to bea- stes, with beastes as a peculier and proper thyng, wee haue our bodie of the yearth: but our minde, whiche for his diuini- tée, passeth all thynges immortall, maketh vs as gods emo[n]g other creatures. The bodie therefore, as a aliaunt and forain enemie, beyng made of a moste base, moste vile and corrup- tible nature, repugneth the mynde. This is the cause, that wickednesse taketh soche a hedde, and that the horrible facte and enterprise of the wicked burste out, in that, reason exiled and remoued from the minde, the ougle perturbacions of the minde, haue their regiment, power, and dominio[n]: and where soche state of gouernemente is in any one bodie, in priuate and domesticalle causes, in forraine and publike affaires, in kyngdome and co[m]mon wealthe. Uertue fadeth and decaieth, and vice onely beareth the swaie. Lawe is ordered by luste, and their order is will, soche was the tyme and gouernment of this wicked Nero. ¶ Of his countree. NEro was a Romaine borne, though in gouerne- ment he was wicked, yet his cou[n]trée was famous, and noble: for, the Romaines wer lordes and hed- des ouer all the worlde. The vttermoste Indians, [Fol. xliiij.v] the Ethiopes, the Persians, feared the maiestie and auctho- [Sidenote: Rome.] ritée of the Romaines. From Romulus, who was the firste founder, and builder of that Citee: the Romaines bothe had their name of hym, and grew afterward to marueilous pui- saunt roialnes. There was no nacion vnder the Sunne, but it dreaded their Maiestie, or felte their inuincible handes: there hath been many mightie kyngdomes, on the face of the yearth, but no kyngdome was able, with like successe and fe- licitée in their enterprise, or for like famous gouernors, and continuance of their state, to compare with them. This was, and is, the laste mightée Monarchie in the worlde. Roome a olde aunciente citée, inhabited firste of the Aborigines, which [Sidenote: Carthage.] came from Troie. The prouidence of God, so disposeth the tymes and ages of the world, the state of kyngdomes, by the fall of mightier kyngdomes, meaner grewe to power and glorie. The Carthagineans, contended by prowes, and ma- gnanimitee, to be lordes ouer the Romaines. Carthage was a greate, mightie, olde, auncient & famous citée, in the whiche valiaunte, wise, and pollitike gouernours, helde therein re- giment, long warres was susteined betwene the Romaines and Carthagineans, emong whom infinite people, and ma- ny noble péeres fell in the duste. Fortune and happie successe fell to the Romaines: the people of Carthage va[n]quished, and prostrate to the grounde. Scipio the noble Consull, beyng at the destruccion of it, seeyng with his iye, Carthage by fire brunte to ashes, saied: _Talis exitus aliquando erit Rome_: eue[n] [Sidenote: Destruction of Rome to ashes in time.] as of Carthage, like shall the destruccion of Rome bee, as for continuaunce of the Romaine state, of their glorie, power, and worthie successe, no nacion vnder the Sunne, can com- pare with theim: soche was the state of Rome, wherein wic- ked Nero raigned. ¶ Of his anncestours. DOmitianus Nero, the sonne of Domitius Enobar- bus, Agrippina was his mothers name: this Agrip- pina, was Empresse of Rome, wife to Claudius Ti- [Fol. xlv.r] [Sidenote: Agrippina.] berius, the daughter of his brother Germanicus. This A- grippina, the Chronicle noteth her, to be indued with al mis- chief and crueltée: For, Tiberius her housbande, hauyng by his firste wife children, thei were murthered by her, because she might, thei beyng murthered, with more facilitée, fur- ther the Empire, to her soonnes handes, many treasons con- spired against them oftentimes, Agrippina poisoned her hus- bande, then Nero succeded. ¶ Of his educacion. [Sidenote: Seneca schol maister to Nero.] SEneca the famous Poete & Philosopher, was schole- maister to Nero, who brought hym vp in all nobili- tie of learnyng, mete for his state: though that Nero was wickedlie of nature disposed, as his beastlie gouerne- ment sheweth, yet wickednes in him, was by the seueritie of Seneca, and his castigacion depressed: for Traianus Empe- rour of Rome, would saie, as concernyng Nero, for the space of fiue yeres, no Prince was like to hym, for good gouerne- ment, after fiue yeres, losely and dissolutly he gouerned. ¶ Of his actes. [Sidenote: The dreame of Agrippina mother to Nero, in his concepcion.] THis Nero, at what tyme as his mother was con- ceiued of him, she dreamed that she was conceiued of a Uiper: for, the young Uiper alwaies killeth his dame. He was not onely a Uiper to his mo- ther whom he killed, but also to his kyngdome and common wealthe a destroier, whiche afterward shalbe shewed, what [Sidenote: Nero a viper[.]] a tyraunte and bloodie gouernour he was. This Nero made in the Citee of Rome, the rounde seates and scaffoldes, to be- holde spectacles and sightes, and also the bathes. He subdued [Sidenote: Pontus. Colchis. Cappadocia. Armenia.] Pontus a greate countrée, whiche ioineth to the sea Pontus: whiche countrée containeth these realmes, Colchis, Cappa- docia, Armenia, and many other countrées, and made it as a Prouince, by the suffraunce of Polemon Regulus, by whose name it was called Pontus Polemoniacus. He ouer came the Alpes, of the king Cotteius, Cottius the king being dedde[.] [Fol. xlv.v] [Sidenote: Nero vnwor[-] thie to be chron[-] icled. Seneca.] The life followyng of Nero was so abhominable, that the shame of his life, will make any man a fraied, to leaue any memorie of hym. This Domitius Nero, caused his Schole- maister Seneca to be put to death, Seneca chosing his owne death, his veines beyng cutte in a hotte bathe died, bicause he corrected wicked Nero, to traine hym to vertue. He was out- ragious wicked, that he had co[n]sideracion, neither to his own honestie, nor to other, but in continuaunce, he tired hymself as virgines doe when thei marie, callyng a Senate, the dou- rie assigned, and as the maner of that solemnitée is, many re- sortyng and frequentyng, in maidens tire and apparell. He [Sidenote: The shamful life of Nero.] went beyng a man, to be maried as a woman: beside this, at other tymes he cladde hymself with the skin of a wilde beast, and beastlie did handle that, whiche Nature remoueth from the sight. He defiled hymself with his owne mother, whom he killed immediatlie. He maried twoo wiues, Octauia, and Sabina, otherwise called Poppea, firste murtheryng their [Sidenote: Galba. Caius Iu- lius.] housbandes. In that tyme Galba vsurped the Empire, and Caius Iulius: as sone as Nero heard that Galba came nere towardes Rome, euen then the Senate of Rome had deter- mined, that Nero should bee whipped to death with roddes, accordyng to the old vsage of their auncestours, his necke yo- ked with a forke. This wicked Nero, seyng himself forsaken of all his friendes, at midnight he departed out of the Citée, Ephaon, and Epaphroditus waityng on hym, Neophitus and Sporus his Eunuche: whiche Sporus before tyme, had [Sidenote: The death of Nero.] Nero assaied to frame and fashion out of kinde. In the ende, Nero thruste himself through, with the poinct of his sworde, his wicked man Sporus, thrustyng foreward his trembling hande: this wicked Nero before that, hauyng none to mur- ther hym, he made a exclamacion, in these woordes. Is there neither friende nor enemie to kill me, shamefullie haue I li- ued, and with more shame shall I die, in the .xxxij. yere of his age he died. The Persians so entirely loued hym, that after his death thei sente Ambassadours, desiryng licence to erecte [Fol. xlvj.r] to hym a monumente, all countrées and Prouinces, and the whole Citée of Rome, did so moche reioyce of his death, that thei all wearyng the Toppintant hattes, whiche bonde men doe vse to ware, when thei bée sette at libertie, and so thei tri- umphed of his death, deliuered from so cruell a tyraunte. ¶ A comparison. [Sidenote: Nero. Caligula. Domitianus[.] Antoninus.] AS for wicked gouernement, Nero doeth make Ca- ligula like to Comodus, Domitianus, Antoninus Caracalla, thei were all so wicked, that the Senate of Rome thought it méete, to obliterate their name, from all memorie and Chronicle, because of their wickednesse. ¶ The conclusion. MOche more the life and gouernement of wicked Ne- ro, might be intreated of, but this shall be sufficient: to shewe how tyrannically and beastly, he gouerned vnmete of that throne. ¶ A comparison. A Comparison, is a certain Oracion, shewyng by a collacion the worthines, or excelle[n]cie of any thing: or the naughtines of thesame, compared with any other thyng or thynges, either equalle, or more in- feriour. In a comparison good thynges, are compared with good as one vertue with an other: as wisedome & strength, whiche of them moste auaileth in peace and warre. Euill thynges maie bee compared with good, as Iustice, with iniustice, wisedome with foolishnes. Euill thynges maie be compared, with euill thynges, as wicked Nero, compared to Domitianus, or Caligula to Co[m]- modus, theft to homicide, drunkenes with adulterie. Small thynges maie be compared with greate: the king with his subiect, the Elephant or Camell to the Flie, a Cro- codile to the Scarabe. In a comparison, where argumente is supputated on [Fol. xlvj.v] bothe the sides, worthelie to praise, or dispraise. Where a comparison is made, betwene a thyng excel- lente, and a thyng more inferiour: the comparison shall pro- cede with like facilitee. All thynges that maie bee celebrated with praise, or that meriteth dispraise: al soche thynges maie be in a comparison. The persone, as Cato being a wise man, maie be compa- red with Nestor, the sage péere of Grece: Pompei with Ce- sar, as Lucane compareth them, and so of all other men. Thynges maie bee compared, as golde with siluer: one mettall with an other. Tymes maie be compared, as the Spryng with Som- mer: Harueste with Winter. Places maie be compared, as London with Yorke, Ox- forde with Cambridge. Beastes without reason, as the Bée with the Ante, the Oxe with the Shepe. Plantes, as the Uine, and the Oliue. First, make a _proemium_ or beginnyng to your co[m]parison[.] Then compare them of their countrée. Of their parentes. Of their auncestours. Of their educacion. Of their actes. Of their death. Then adde the conclusion. ¶ A comparison betwene De- mosthenes and Tullie. TO speake moche in the praise of famous men, no argument can wante, nor plentie of matter to make of them, a copious and excellent Ora- cion. Their actes in life through nobilitée, will craue worthelie more, then the witte and penne of the learned, can by Eloquence expresse. Who can worthelie expresse and sette foorthe, the noble Philosopher [Fol. xlvij.r] [Sidenote: Plato. Aristotle.] Plato, or Aristotle, as matter worthelie forceth to commend, when as of them, all learnyng, and singularitée of artes hath flowen. All ages hath by their monuments of learning, par- ticipated of their wisedome. Grece hath fostered many noble wittes, from whom all light of knowlege, hath been deriued by whose excellencie Rome in tyme florishyng, did seeke by nobilitée of learnyng, to mate the noble Grecians. So moche Italie was adorned, and beautified with the cunnyng of the Grecians. Emong the Romaines many famous Oratours and other noble men hath spronge vp, who for their worthi- nesse, might haue contended with any nacion: either for their [Sidenote: Tullie.] glorie of learnyng, or noble regiment. Emong whom Tul- lie by learning, aboue the rest, rose to high fame, that he was a renoume to his countree: to learnyng a light, of all singuler Eloquence a fountaine. Whom Demosthenes the famous Oratour of Athenes, as a worthie mate is compared with, whom not onely the nobilitée, and renoume of their Coun- trée shall decorate, but the[m] selues their owne worthines & no- bilitée of fame. No age hath had twoo more famous for lear- nyng, no common wealthe hath tasted, twoo more profitable to their countrée, and common wealthe: for grauitée and cou[n]- saile, nor the posteritée of ages, twoo more worthie celebra- [Sidenote: Thusidides.] cion. Thusidides speakyng, in the commendacion of famous men sheweth: as concernyng the fame of noble men, whose [Sidenote: The enuious manne.] vertue farre surmounteth the[m], and passeth al other. Thenui- ous man seketh to depraue, the worthinesse of fame in other, [Sidenote: The igno- raunte.] his bragging nature with fame of praise, not decorated. The ignoraunte and simple nature, accordyng to his knowlege, iudgeth all singularitée, and tempereth by his owne actes the praise of other. But the fame of these twoo Oratours, nei- ther the enuious nature can diminishe their praise, nor the ignoraunt be of them a arbitrator or iudge, so worthely hath all ages raised fame, and commendacion of their vertues. ¶ Of their countree. [Fol. xlvij.v] IN Grece Demosthenes, the famous Oratour of A- thenes was borne, whose Countrée or Citee, lacketh no co[m]mendacion: either for the nobilitée of the lande, or glorie of the people. What nacion vnder the Sunne, hath not heard of that mightie Monarchie of Grece: of their migh- tie citees, and pollitike gouernaunce. What famous Poetes how many noble Philosophers and Oratours, hath Grece brede. What science and arte, hath not flowne from Grece, so that for the worthinesse of it, it maie bee called the mother of all learnyng. Roome also, in whom Tullie was brought vp, maie contende in all nobilitée, whose power and puisant glorie, by nobilitée of actes, rose to that mightie hed. In bothe soche excellencie is founde, as that no nacion might better contende, of their singularitée and honour of countrée, then Grece and Rome: yet first from the Grekes, the light of Phi- losophie, and the aboundant knowledge of all artes, sprange to the Romaines, from the Grecians. The Godlie Lawes, wherewith the Romaine Empire was decorated and gouer- ned, was brought from the Grecians. If the citee maie bee a honour and glorie, to these twoo Oratours, or their Citees a singuler commendacion, there wanteth in bothe, neither ho- nour, or nobilitée. ¶ Of their auncestours, and parentes. BOthe Demosthenes and Tullie were borne, of ve- rie meane parentes and auncestours: yet thei tho- rowe their learnyng and vertues, became famous, ascendyng to all nobilitée. Of their vertues and learnyng, not of their auncestours, nobilitée rose to them. ¶ Of the educacion. THE singuler vertues of theim bothe, appered euen in their tender youth: wherupon thei being brought vp, in all godlie learnyng and noble Sciences, thei became moste noble Oratours, and by their copious Elo- quence, counsaile, and wisedom, aspired to nobilitée & honor. ¶ Of their scholyng. [Fol. xlviij.r] BOthe were taught of the mouthe of the best learned, Demosthenes of Iseus, a man moste Eloquent: Ci- cero of Philo and Milo, famous in wisedome and Eloquence. ¶ Of their exercise. CIcero did exercise hymself verie moche, to declaime, bothe in Greke and Latine, with Marcus Piso, and with Quintus Pampeius. Demosthenes wanted not industrie and labour, to attain to that singularitée, whi- che he had, bothe in Eloquence, and pronounciacion. ¶ Of the giftes of their minde. IN bothe, integritee, humanitee, magnanimitee, and all vertue flowed: at what time as Demosthe- nes was commaunded of the Athenians, to frame a accusacion, againste a certaine man, Demosthe- nes refused the acte. But when the people, and the whole multitude, were wrothe with hym, and made a exclamacion against hym, as their maner was. Then Demosthenes rose, and saied: O ye men of Athenes, againste my will, you haue me a counsailer, or pleater of causes before you: but as for a accuser, & calumniator, no, not although ye would. Of this sorte Tullie was affected, excepte it were onely in the saue- gard of his conutrée: as against Catiline, bothe were of god- lie, and of vpright conuersacion, altogether in Mediocrite, and a newe leadyng their life. ¶ Of their actes. DEmosthenes and Tullie bothe, gaue them selues to trauail, in the causes and affaires of their com- mon wealthe, to the preseruacion of it. How ve- hemently did Demosthenes pleate, and ingeni- ouslie handle the cause of all his countrée, against Philip, for the defence of their libertee: whereupon he gatte fame, and greate glory. Whereby not onely, he was coumpted a great wise counsailour: but one of a valiaunte stomacke, at whose [Fol. xlviij.v] [Sidenote: Darius. Philip. Demosthe- nes.] wisedome, all Grece stode in admiracion. The kyng of Per- sia, laboured to enter fauour with him. Philip the king of the Macedonians, would saie often tymes, he had to doe against a famous man, notyng Demosthenes. Tullie also by his E- loquence and wisedome, saued Roome and all partes of that dominion, from greate daungers. ¶ Of their aucthoritee. THeir aucthoritee and dignitee was equalle, in the common wealthe: For, at their twoo mouthes, Roome and Athenes was vpholed. Demosthenes was chief in fauour with Caretes, Diophetes, Le[-] ostines, Cicero with Pompei: Iulius Cesar, ascending to the chief seate and dignitée of the Consulship. ¶ Of a like fall that happened to them, before their death. YOu can not finde soche twoo Orators, who borne of meane & poore parentes, that attained so greate honour, who also did obiecte themselues to tyran- tes a like, thei had losse of their children a like, bothe were out of their countree banished men, their returne was with honour, bothe also fliyng, happened into the han- des of their enemies. ¶ Of their death. [Sidenote: Antipater. Demosthe- nes. Archias. Marcus Antonius. Tullie.] BOthe a like, Demosthenes and Tully wer put to death, Demosthenes died, Antipater gouernyng by the handes of Archias. Cicero died by the com- maundement of Marcus Antonius: by Herenius his hedde was cutte of, and sette in Marcus Antonius halle. His handes also were cutte of, with the whiche he wrote the vehement Oracions against Marcus Antonius. ¶ The conclusion. TO speake as moche as maie bee saied, in the praise of theim: their praise would rise to a mightie volume, but this is sufficiente. [Fol. xlix.r] ¶ _Ethopoeia._ _Ethopoeia_ is a certaine Oracion made by voice, and la- mentable imitacion, vpon the state of any one. This imitacion is in { _Eidolopoeia._ } iij. sortes, either it is. { _Prosopopoeia._ } { _Ethopoeia._ } That parte, whiche is called _Ethopoeia_ is that, whiche hath the persone knowne: but onely it doeth faigne the ma- ners of thesame, and imitate in a Oracion thesame. _Ethopoeia_ is called of Priscianus, a certaine talkyng to of any one, or a imitacio[n] of talke referred to the maners, apt- ly of any certaine knowen persone. Quintilianus saieth, that _Ethopoeia_ is a imitacion of o- ther meane maners: whom the Grekes dooe calle, not onelie _Ethopoeia_, but _mimesis_, & this is in the maners, and the fact. This parte is as it were, a liuely expression of the maner and affeccion of any thyng, whereupon it hath his name. The _Ethopoeia_ is in three sortes. The firste, a imitacion passiue, whiche expresseth the af- fection, to whom it parteineth: whiche altogether expresseth the mocion of the mynde, as what patheticall and dolefull o- racion, Hecuba the quene made, the citee of Troie destroied, her housbande, her children slaine. The second is called a morall imitacio[n], the whiche doeth set forthe onely, the maners of any one. The thirde is a mixt, the whiche setteth forthe, bothe the maners and the affection, as how, and after what sorte, A- chilles spake vpon Patroclus, he beyng dedde, when for his sake, he determined to fight: the determinacion of hym she- weth the maner. The frende slaine, the affection. In the makyng of _Ethopoeia_, lette it be plaine, and with- out any large circumstaunce. [Fol. xlix.v] In the makyng of it, ye shall diuide it thus, to make the Oracion more plaine, into three tymes. { A presente tyme. } { A tyme paste. } { A tyme to come. } _Eidolopoeia_ is that part of this Oracion, whiche maketh a persone knowne though dedde, and not able to speake. [Sidenote: _Eidolopoeia_[.]] _Eidolopoeia_ is called of Priscianus, a imitacion of talke of any one, vpon a dedde manne, it is then called _Eidolopoeia_, when a dedde man talketh, or communicacion made vpon a dedde manne. _Eidolopoeia_, when a dedde manne talketh, is set forthe of Euripides, vpon the persone of Polidorus dedde, whose spi- rite entereth at the Prologue of the tragedie. Hector slain, speaketh to Eneas in _Eidolopoeia_. O Eneas thou goddes sonne, flie and saue thy self, from this ruine and fire: the enemies hath taken the walles, and loftie Troie is prostrate to the grounde. I would haue thought, I had died valiantlie inough to my countrée, and my father Priamus, if with this my right hande, Troie had bee defended. Polidorus beyng dedde, in _Eidolopoeia_ talketh to Eneas whiche Uirgil sheweth in his thirde booke of Eneados. Iulia the wife of Pompei beyng dedde, spake to Pompe, preparyng his arme against Cesar, _Eidolopoeia_. Reade Lu- cane, in the beginnyng of his thirde booke. Tullie vseth _Eidolopoeia_, when he maketh talke vpon Hiero beyng dedde. If that kyng Hiero were reduced fro[m] his death, who was a aduauncer of the Romaine Empire, with what counte- naunce, either Siracusa or Rome, might be shewed to hym, whom he maie beholde with his iyes. His countree brought to ruin, & spoiled, if that kyng Hiero should but enter Rome, euen in the firste entryng, he should beholde the spoile of his countree. Tullie also vseth the like _Eidolopoeia_, as thus, vpon Lu- [Fol. l.r] cius Brutus dedde. [Sidenote: Lucius Brutus.] If it so wer, that Lucius Brutus, that noble and famous manne were on liue, and before your presence: would he not vse this oracion: I Brutus, somtyme did banishe and cast out for crueltee, the state and office of kinges, by the horrible fact of Tarquinius, againste Lucretia, and all that name bani- shed, but you haue brought in tyrauntes. I Brutus did re- duce the Romain Empire, to a fredome and libertée: but you foolishly can not vphold and maintein, thesame giuen to you. I Brutus, with the daunger of my life, haue saued my coun[-] tree of Roome, but you without all daunger, lose it. ¶ _Prosopopoeia._ AS co[n]cerning _Prosopopoeia_, it is as Pristianus saith, when to any one againste nature, speache is feigned to bee giuen. Tullie vseth for a like example this, when he maketh Roome to talke againste Cateline. ¶ _Prosopopoeia_ of Roome. [Sidenote: Catiline.] NO mischief hath been perpetrated, this many yeres, but by thee Catiline, no pestiferous acte enterprised, without thee: thou a lone, for thy horrible murther perpetrated vpon the citee of Rome, for the spoile and robbe- ries of their gooddes art vnpunished. Thou onelie haste been of that force and power, to caste doune all lawes and aucthori- tee. Although these thinges were not to be borne, yet I haue borne them: but now thy horrible factes are come to soche an issue, that I feare thy mischiues. Wherfore leaue of Cateline and deminishe this feare from me, that I maie be in securitée[.] Lucane the Poete, intreating of mightie and fearce war- res, againste Pompei and Cesar, maketh Roome to vse this _Prosopopoeia_ againste Cesar. _Quo tenditis vltra quo fertis mea signa viri, Si iure venitis si aues hucusq[ue] licet._ _Prosopopoeia_ is properlie, when all thinges are faigned bothe the maners, the persone, as of Roome in this place. [Fol. l.v] ¶ What lamentable Oracion Hecuba Quene of Troie might make, Troie being destroied. [Sidenote: Kyngdomes.] WHat kyngdome can alwaies assure his state, or glory? What strength can alwaies last? What [Sidenote: Okes. Cedars.] power maie alwaies stande? The mightie O- kes are somtyme caste from roote, the Ceadars high by tempestes falle, so bitter stormes dooe force their strength. Soft waters pearseth Rockes, and ruste the massie Iron doeth bryng to naught. So nothyng can by stre[n]gth so stande, but strength maie ones decaie: yea, mightie kingdoms in time decaie haue felt. Kingdomes weake haue rose to might, and mightie kyngdomes fallen, no counsaile can preuaile, no power, no strength, or might in lande. God disposeth Princes seates, their kyngdome there with stan- des. I knewe before the brickell state, how kyngdomes ruine caught, my iye the chaunge of fortune sawe, as Priamus did aduaunce his throne, by fauour Fortune gat, on other For- tune then did froune, whose kingdom did decaie. Well, now [Sidenote: Fortune hath no staie.] I knowe the brickle state, that fortune hath no staie, all rashe her giftes, Fortune blind doeth kepe no state, her stone doth roule, as floodes now flowe, floodes also ebbe. So glory doth remaine, sometyme my state on high, was sette in Princelie throne, my porte and traine ful roiall was, a kyng my father also was, my housband scepter held. Troie and Phrigia ser- ued his becke, many kynges his power did dreade, his wille their power did serue. The fame of Troie and Brute, his glorie and renoume, what landes knoweth not? But now his falle, all toungues can speake, so greate as glorie was, though kyngdomes stronge was sette, loftie Troie in duste prostrate doeth lye, in blood their glorie, people, kyng are fal- len, no Quene more dolefull cause hath felte. The sorowes depe doe passe my ioyes, as Phebus light with stormes caste [Sidenote: Hector.] doune. Hectors death did wounde my hart, by Hectors might Troie stiffe did stande, my comforte Hector was, Priamus ioye, of Troie all the[m] life, the strength, and power, his death [Fol. lj.r] did wound me for to die, but alas my dolefull and cruell fate to greater woe reserueth my life, loftie Troie before me felle, sworde, and fire hath seate and throne doune caste. The dedde on heapes doeth lye, the tender babes as Lions praies [Sidenote: Priamus.] are caught in bloode, before my sight, Priamus deare mur- dered was, my children also slain, who roiall were, and prin- ces mates. No Queene more ioye hath tasted, yet woe my io- yes hath quite defaced. My state alwaie in bondage thrall, to serue my enemies wille, as enemie wille, I liue or dye. No cruell force will ridde my life, onely in graue the yearth shal close my woes, the wormes shall gnawe my dolefull hart in graue. My hedde shall ponder nought, when death hath sence doune caste, in life I sought no ioye, as death I craue, no glorie was so wished as death I seeke, with death no sence. In prison depe who dolefull lieth, whom Fetters sore dooeth greue. Their dolefull state moste wisheth death, in dongion deepe of care my harte moste pensiue is, vnhappie state that wisheth death, with ioye long life, eche wight doeth craue, in life who wanteth smart? Who doeth not féele, or beare som- time, a bitter storme, to doleful tune, mirth full oft chaunged is, the meaner state, more quiet rest, on high, who climes more deper care, more dolefull harte doeth presse, moste tempestes hie trees, hilles, & moutaines beare, valleis lowe rough stor- mes doeth passe, the bendyng trees doeth giue place to might by force of might, Okes mightie fall, and Ceders high ar re[n]t from the roote. The state full meane in hauen hath Ancre caste, in surgyng seas, full ofte in vaine to saue the maste, the shippe Ancre casteth. ¶ The descripcion. THis exercise profitable to _Rhetorike_, is an Ora- cio[n] that collecteth and representeth to the iye, that which he sheweth, so Priscianus defineth it: some are of that opinion, that descripcion is not to bee placed emo[n]g these exercises, profitable to _Rhetorike_. Because [Fol. lj.v] that bothe in euery Oracion, made vpon a Fable, all thyn- ges therein conteined, are liuely described. And also in euery Narracion, the cause, the place, the persone, the time, the fact, the maner how, ar therin liuely described. But most famous and Eloquente men, doe place descripcion, in the nomber of these exercises. Descripcio[n] serueth to these things, the person, as the Poete Lucane describeth Pompei & Cesar: the person is described, thynges or actes, tymes, places, brute beastes. _Nec coiere pares, alter vergentibus annis In senium longo que toge, tranquilior vsu. Dedidicit. &c._ Homer describeth the persone of Thersites, in the second booke of his Ilias. Homer setteth out Helena, describing the persone of Me- nalaus and Ulisses, in the fowerth booke of Ilias. Thynges are described, as the warres attempted by sea and lande, of Xerxes. Lucan describeth the war of the Massilia[n]s against Cesar[.] Thusidides setteth forthe in a descripcion, the warres on the sea, betwene the Corcurians, and the Corinthians. Tymes are described, as the Spryng tyme, Sommer, Winter, Harueste, Daie, Night. Places are described, as Citees, Mountaines, Regions, Floodes, Hauens, Gardeines, Temples: whiche thynges are sette out by their commoditees, for Thusidides often ty- mes setteth forthe Hauens and Citees. Lucane also describeth at large, the places, by the whiche the armie of Cesar and Pompei passed. The descripcion of a- ny man, in all partes is to bee described, in mynde and bodie, what he was. The acttes are to bee described, farre passed, by the pre- sente state thereof, and also by the tyme to come. As if the warre of Troie, should be set forthe in a descrip- cion, it must bée described, what happened before the Greci- ans arriued at Troie, and how, and after what sorte it was [Fol. lij.r] ouerthrowne, & what thing chaunced, Troie being destroid. So likewise of Carthage, destroied by the Romaines. Of Hierusalem, destroied by Titus Uespasianus, what ad- monicion thei had before: of what monsterous thynges hap- pened also in that ceason: Of a Comete or blasyng Starre, and after that what followed. Lucane also setteth forthe the warres of Pompe and Ce- sar, what straunge and marueilous thynges fell of it. ¶ A descripcion vpon Xerxes. WHen Darius was dedde, Xerxes his soonne did succede hym, who also tooke vpon him to finishe the warres, bego[n] by his father Darius, against Grece. For the whiche warres, preperacion was made, for the space of fiue yeres, after that [Sidenote: The armie of Xerxes.] Xerxes entered Grece, with seuen hundred thousande Persi- ans, and thrée hundred thousande of forrain power aided him that not without cause, Chronicles of aunciente tyme dooe shewe, mightie floodes to be dried vp of his armie. The migh[-] tie dominions of Grece, was not hable to receiue his houge, and mightie power, bothe by sea and lande: he was no small Prince, whom so many nacions, so mightie people followed hym, his Nauie of Shippes was in nomber tenne hundred [Sidenote: Xerxes a cowarde.] thousande, Xerxes had a mightie power, but Xerxes was a cowarde, in harte a childe, all in feare the stroke of battaile moued. In so mightie an armie it was marueile, the chiefe Prince and Capitaine to be a cowarde, there wanted neither men, nor treasure, if ye haue respecte to the kyng hymself, for cowardlinesse ye will dispraise the kyng, but his threasures beeyng so infinite, ye will maruaile at the plentie thereof, whose armie and infinite hoste, though mightie floodes and streames, were not able to suffice for drinke, yet his richesse [Sidenote: Xerxes laste in battaile, and first to runne awaie.] semed not spente nor tasted of. Xerxes hymself would be laste in battaile to fight, and the firste to retire, and runne awaie. In daungers he was fearfull, and when daunger was paste, [Fol. lij.v] he was stoute, mightie, glorious, and wonderfull crakyng, [Sidenote: The pride of Xerxes.] before this hassarde of battaile attempted. He thought hym self a God ouer nature, all landes and Seas to giue place to hym, and puffed with pride, he forgatte hymself: his power was terrible, his harte fainte, whereupon his enteryng into Grece was not so dreaded, as his flight fro[m] thence was sham[-] full, mocked and scorned at, for all his power he was driuen backe from the lande, by Leonides king of the Lacedemoni- ans, he hauing but a small nomber of men, before his second battaile fought on the Sea: he sente fower thousande armed men, to spoile the riche and sumpteous temple of Apollo, at Delphos, from the whiche place, not one man escaped. After that Xerxes entered Thespia, Platea, and Athenes, in the whiche not one man remained, those he burned, woorkyng his anger vpon the houses: for these citees were admonished to proue the maisterie in wodden walles, whiche was ment to bee Shippes, the power of Grece, brought into one place [Sidenote: Themi- stocles.] Themistocles, fauoryng their part, although Xerxes thought otherwise of Themistocles, then Themistocles perswaded Xerxes to assaie the Grecians. Artemisia the Quene of Hali- carnasis aided Xerxes in his battaile: Artemisia fought man[-] fullie, Xerxes cowardly shronke, so that vnnaturally there was in the one a manlie stomacke, in the other a cowardlie harte. The men of Ionia, that fought vnder Xerxes banner, by the treason of Themistocles, shra[n]ke from Xerxes, he was not so greate a terrour or dreade, by his maine hoste, as now smally regarded & least feared. What is power, men, or mo- ney, when God chaungeth and pulleth doune, bothe the suc- cesse, and kyngdome of a Prince. He was in all his glorie, a vnmanlie, and a cowardly prince, yet for a time happie state fell on his side, now his might and power is not feared. He flieth awaie in a Fisher boate, whom all the worlde dreaded and obaied, whom all Grece was not able to receiue, a small boate lodgeth and harboureth. His owne people contemned hym at home, his glorie fell, and life ingloriously ended, who[m] [Fol. liij.r] whom God setteth vp, neither treason nor malice, power nor money can pull doune. Worthelie it is to be pondered of all Princes, the saiyng of Uespasianus Emperour of Rome, at a certain time a treason wrought and conspired against him, the conspiratours taken, Uespasianus satte doune betwene [Sidenote: The saiyng of Uespasi- anus.] theim, commaunded a sworde to be giuen to either of theim, and saied to them: _Nonne videtis fato potestatem dari._ Dooe you not see? Power, aucthoritée, and regimente, by the ordi- [Sidenote: A sentence comfortable to al princes.] naunce of God, is lefte and giuen to princes: A singuler sen- tence, to comforte all good Princes in their gouernemente, not to feare the poisoned hartes of men, or the traiterous har- tes of pestiferous men. No man can pull doune, where God exalteth, neither power can set vp and extoll, where God dis- plaseth or putteth doune: Soche is the state of Princes, and their kyngdomes. ¶ _Thesis._ _THesis_, is a certain question in consultacion had, to bée declaimed vpon vncertaine, notyng no certaine per- sone or thyng. As for example. Whether are riches chieflie to be sought for, in this life, as of all good thynges, the chief good. Whether is vertue the moste excellente good thynge in this life. Whether dooe the giftes of the mynde, passe and excelle the giftes and vertues of Fortune, and the bodie. Whether doeth pollicie more auaile in war, then stre[n]gth of menne. Who so will reason of any question of these, he hath nede with reason, and wittie consultacion to discourse, and to de- claime vpon thesame. The Greke Oratours doe call this exercise _Thesis_, that is to saie, a proposicion in question, a question vncertain, in- cluded with no certaintée, to any perticuler thyng. [Fol. liij.v] The Latine men doeth call it a question infinite, or vni- uersall: Tullie in his booke of places called Topickes, doeth call _Thesis_, _Propositum_, that is to saie, a question, in deter- minacion. Priscianus calleth it _positionem_, a proposicion in question on ether parte to be disputed vpon. As for example. Whether is it best to marie a wife? Whether is frendship aboue all thynges to be regarded. Is warre to be moued vpon a iuste cause? Is the Greke tongue mete, and necessarie to be learned? There is an other kinde of question called _hypothesis_, _hy[-] pothesis_ is called _questio finita_, that is to saie, a question cer- taine notyng a certaine persone, or thyng, a certaine place, tyme, and so forthe. As for example. Is it mete for Cesar to moue warre against Pompei? Is not there a certain persone? Is the Greke tongue to be learned of a Diuine? Is the Greke tongue meete for a Phisicion? In this kinde of exercises, famous men of auncient time did exercise youth, to attain bothe wisedome and Eloquence therby, to make a discourse vpo[n] any matter, by art of lerning[.] Aristotle the famous Philosopher, did traine vp youthe, to be perfite in the arte of eloquence, that thei might with all copiousnes and ingenious inuencion handle any cause. Nothing doeth so moche sharpe and acuate the witte and capacitée of any one, as this kinde of exercise. It is a goodly vertue in any one man, at a sodain, to vtter wittely and ingeniouslie, the secrete and hid wisedome of his mynde: it is a greate maime to a profounde learned man, to wante abilitée, to vtter his exquisite and profounde knowe- ledge of his mynde. ¶ _Thesis._ THis question _Thesis_, which is a question, noting no cer- taine persone or thyng: is moche like to that Oracion, [Fol. liiij.r] intreated of before, called a Common place. ¶ A Common place. BUt a Common place, is a certaine exaggeracion of matter, induced against any persone, conuicted of a- ny crime, or worthie defence. ¶ _Thesis._ _Thesis_ is a reasonyng by question, vpon a matter vncer- taine. _Thesis_, that is to saie, a questio[n] generall is in two sortes. { Ciuill. A question { { Contemplatiue. QUestions Ciuill are those, that dooe pertaine to the state of a common wealth: and are daily practised in the common wealthe. As for example. Is it good to marie a wife. Is Usurie lefull in a citee, or common wealthe. Is a Monarchie the beste state of gouernement. Is good educacion the grounde and roote, of a florishyng common wealthe. ¶ A contemplatiue question. THe other _Thesis_ is a question contemplatiue, which the Grekes dooe call _Theoricas_, because the matter of them is comprehended in the minde, and in the in[-] telligence of man. The example. Is the soule immortall? Had the worlde a beginnyng? Is the heauen greater then the yearth? { Simple. A question is either { { Compounde. Is it good for a man to exercise hymself in wrastlyng, or [Fol. liiij.v] Is it profitable to declaime. [¶] A compounde. Is vertue of more value then gold, to the coueitous man[?] Doeth wisedome more auaile, then strength in battaile? Doe olde men or young men, better gouerne a common wealthe? Is Phisicke more honourable then the Lawe? A Oracion made vpon _Thesis_, is after this sorte made. Use a _exordium_, or beginnyng. Unto the whiche you maie adde a Narracion, whiche is a exposicion of the thyng doen. Then shewe it lawfull. Iuste. Profitable. And possible. Then the conclucion. To this in some parte of the Oracion, you maie putte in certaine obieccions, as thus. Upon this question: Is it good to marie a wife? In Mariage is greate care, and pensiuenesse of minde, by losse of children, or wife, whom thou loueste. There is also trouble of dissolute seruauntes. There is also greate sorowe if thy children proue wicked and dissolute. The aunswere to this obiection, will minister matter to declaime vpon. ¶ Is it good to Marie. SInce the tyme of all ages, and the creacio[n] of the worlde, GOD hath so blessed his creacion, and meruailous workemanship in manne: as in all his other creatures, that not onelie his omnipo- teucie, is therby set forthe. But also from tyme to tyme, the posteritee of men, in their ofspring and procrea- [Sidenote: Kyngdomes continue by mariage and co[m]mon welth[.]] cion, doe aboundantlie commonstrate thesame. The state of all kyngdomes and common wealthes: by procreacion deri- ued, haue onelie continued on the face of the yearth, thereby [Fol. lv.r] many hundred yeres. How sone would the whole worlde be dissolued, and in perpetuall ruine, if that God from tymes and ages, had not by godlie procreacion, blessed this infinite [Sidenote: The dignitee of man, she- weth the worthines of mariage.] issue of mankinde. The dignitée of man in his creacion, she- weth the worthie succession, maintained by procreation. In vaine were the creacion of the worlde, if there were not as manne so excellente a creature, to beholde the creatour, and his meruailous creacion. To what vse were the Elementes and Heauens, the Starres and Planettes, all Beastes and Foules, Fisshe, Plantes, Herbes and trees, if men wer not, for mannes vse and necessitée, all thinges in the yearth were made and procreated. Wherein the Stoike Philosophers do note the excellencie of man to be greate: for saie thei, _Que in terris gignuntur omnia ad vsum hominum creari_. To what vse then were all thynges, if man were not, for whose cause, vse, & necessitée these thynges were made. If a continuaunce of Gods procreacion were not, immediatlie a ruine and ende would ensue of thinges. What age remaineth aboue a hun- dred yeres? If after a hu[n]dred yeres, no issue wer to be, on the [Sidenote: Godlie pro- creacion.] face of the yearth, how sone wer kyngdoms dissolued, where as procreacion rooteth, a newe generacion, issue and ofspring, and as it were a newe soule and bodie. A continuaunce of la- wes, a permanente state of common wealthe dooeth ensue. Though the life of manne be fraile, and sone cutte of, yet by Mariage, man by his ofspryng, is as it were newe framed, his bodie by death dissolued, yet by issue reuiued. Euen as Plantes, by the bitter season of Winter, from their flowers fadyng and witheryng: yet the seede of them and roote, vegi- table and liuyng, dooe roote yerelie a newe ofspryng or flo- [Sidenote: A similitude.] wer in them. So Mariage by godlie procreacion blessed, doth perpetually increase a newe bodie, and therby a vaste world, and infinite nacions or people. Xerxes the mightie kyng of Persia, vewing and beholding his maine and infinite hoste, wéeped: who beyng demaunded, why he so did. _Doleo inquit post centum annos, neminem ex hijs superesse._ It is a pitée- [Fol. lv.v] fulle and dolefull case, that after a hundred yeres, not one of these noble capitaines, and valiant soldiers to be left. ¶ The obieccion. But you will saie parauenture, mariage is a greate bon- dage, alwaies to liue with one. ¶ The solucion. To followe pleasure, and the beastlie mocions of the mynde: what libertée call you that, to liue in a godly, meane, [Sidenote: The libertie in mariage.] and Mediocritée of life, with thy spoused wife. There is no greater ioye, libertée, or felicitée, who so practiseth a dissolute life: whose loue and luste is kindeled, and sette on fire with a [Sidenote: A brutishe societie with harlottes.] harlotte, he followeth a brutishe societée. What difference is there, betwene them and beastes? The beaste as nature lea- deth, he obaieth nature. Reason wanteth in beastes, manne then indued with reason, whiche is a guide to all excellencie how is it that he is not ruled by reason. Whom GOD hath clothed and beautified, with all vertue and all singularitée: If a godly conuersacion of life, moueth thée to passe thy daies without mariage, then must the mocions of thy minde, be ta- [Sidenote: Chastitee in mariage.] med and kepte vnder. Other wise, execrable is thy purpose, and determinacio[n] of the life. If thou hopest of loue of a harlot though thou enioye her otherwise, thou art deceiued. Bac- chis the harlot, whom Terence maketh mencion of, in the persone of her self, sheweth the maners of all harlots to An- tiphila, saiyng. _Quippe forma impulsi nostra nos amatores colunt: Hec vbi immutata est, illi suum animum alio conferunt. Nisi prospectu[m] est interea aliquid nobis, deserte viuimus._ For saieth she, the louer anamoured with our loue, and sette on fire therewith, it is for our beautie and fauour: but when beautie is ones faded, he conuerteth his loue to an o- ther, whom he better liketh. But that we prouide for our sel- ues in the meane season, wée should in the ende liue vtterlie forsaked. But your loue incensed with one, whose maners and life contenteth you: so you bothe are linked together, [Fol. lvj.r] [Sidenote: The loue of a harlotte.] that no calamitée can separate you: who so hopeth loue of a harlotte, or profite, he maie hope as for the fructe of a withe- red tree, gaine is all their loue, vice their ioye and delite. In vertue is libertée, in vertue is felicitee, the state of mariage is vertuous, there can be no greater bo[n]dage, then to obaie ma- ny beastly affections, to the whiche whoredome forceth hym vnto, Loue is fained, cloked amitée, a harte dissembled, ma- ny a mightie person and wise, hath been ouerthrowen by the deceiptes of harlottes: many a Citee plagued, many a region ouerthrowen for that mischief, to obaie many affections is a greate bondage. Who so serueth the beastlie affections of his [Sidenote: Hercules. Omphala.] mynde to that purpose, he must also as Hercules to Ompha- la bee slaue, not onely to his owne will and affection: but to the maners, will, and exspectacion of the harlotte. So serued Thraso, and Phedria Thais, that Gorgious harlot, Antony and Iulius Cesar, Cleopatra, this is a bondage, to liue slaue from reason and all all integritee, to a monsterous rableme[n]t [Sidenote: The harlot- tes lesson, to her louers.] of vices, who so serueth a harlot, thei must learne this lesson. _Da mihi & affer_, giue and bryng. The women of Scithia, abhorryng the godly conuersa- cion of mariage, with their housbandes, lefte theim, who in tyme ware so mightie, that thei repelled theim by force: thei called mariage not Matrimonie, but bondage. For, the chro- nicles doe testifie, thei became conquerours ouer many kyn- ges, all Asia obaied them: thei did builde many a great citee, and for theire successe, thei might compare with many prin- [Sidenote: The life of the Amazo- nes.] ces. These women were called Amazones afterwarde, the order of their life was this, ones in the yere thei would en- ioye the compainie of a man: if it so were that thei had a man childe, the father to haue it, if a daughter, then thei possessed her, and foorthwith burned her right pappe: for thei were all Archers, and wonderfully excelled therein, but in the ende, [Sidenote: Thalestris.] thei came all to ruine. One of them, Thalestris their Quene in the tyme of Alexander the Greate, came to Alexander, thinkyng that he had been, some monstrous man of stature: [Fol. lvj.v] [Sidenote: The offer of a woman to Alexander.] whom, when she did beholde (for Alexander was of no migh- tie stature) did contemne hym, and offered him hand to hande [Sidenote: The answer of Alexander to the offer.] to fight with hym. But Alexander like a wise Prince, saied to his men, if I should ouercome her, that were no victorie, nor manhoode againste a woman: and being ouercome, that were greater shame, then commendacion in all my victories and conquestes, but afterwarde, there was a greate familia- ritée betwene them. The adulterer and the adulteris, neuer prospereth, for many mischiues are reserued, to that wicked and beastly loue. Sincere loue is not rooted, frendship colou- red: the sober and demure countenaunce, is moche to be com- mended in a chaste woman, whose breaste pondereth a chaste [Sidenote: The facte of the matrones of Rome.] life. The facte of the matrones of Rome, semeth straunge to be tolde, of Papirius a Senators soonne, beyng taken to the Senate house, of his father: the childe beyng indued with a singuler wit, harde many causes in the assemble, talked and consulted vpo[n], at his retourne home, his mother was inqui- sitiue of their consultacion, to heare somewhat. The childe was commaunded by his father, to vtter no secrete that he heard, wherevpon of a long tyme, he refused his mothers de- maunde: but at the laste subtelie, he satisfied his mothers re- [Sidenote: Papirius.] quest. Truth it is, my father willed me, to vtter no secret, you keping my counsaill, I will shewe you, it is concluded by the Senate house, that euery man shall haue twoo wiues, that is a straunge matter, saieth the mother: foorthwith she had communicacion with all the matrones of Roome, that could doe somewhat in this matter, thei also full willyngly assem- bled themselues, to let this purpose, to the Senate house, thei went to vtter, their swollen griues. The Senators were a- mased at their commyng, but in this matter bolde thei were, [Sidenote: The Oracio[n] of a matrone, to the Sena- tours.] to enterprise that, whiche thei wer greued at. A Dame more eloquente then all the reste, and of stomacke more hardie, be- gan in these woordes. Otherwise then right, we are iniuri- ously handled, and that in this assemble, that now we should be caste of and neclected: that whereas it is concluded in this [Fol. lvij.r] counsaile, that euery manne should haue twoo wiues, more meter it were, that one woman should haue twoo housban- des. Straunge it was in the Senators eares soche a request, whereupon a proofe made how that rumour rose, Papirius was found the aucthor, who tolde before the Senate, his mo- ther alwaies inquisitiue to knowe that, whiche he should not tell, and thereupon he faigned that, whiche he might better tell. It is to be supposed the Senators mused thereat, and the matrones of Rome went home ashamed: but their secrete co- gitacion of minde was manifest, what willingly in hart thei wished. What greater felicitee can there bee, then in a vnitée of life, the housebande to liue with his wife. The beastes in their kinde, doe condemne mannes brutishe affections here- in: there is no facte that sheweth a man or woman, more like to beastes, then whoredome. ¶ The obieccion. But you will saie, many calamitées happeneth in mariage? ¶ The solucion. Fortunne herein is to bee blamed, and not mariage, if a- ny misfortune happeneth to manne therein, the felicitée and [Sidenote: Eleccion in Mariage.] quiet state that any man enioieth thereby. The discrete elec- cion is therein approued, in the state it self, nothyng can bee founde worthie reprehension, if a man will impute the bit- ter stormes of life to mariage: whatseouer happeneth, our owne reason maie iudge contrary. Place before thy iyes all the affaires, and occupacions of this life, bee all tymes plea- saunte to the housebande man, many a colde storme perceth his bodie, and many a mightie tempeste, dooeth molest hym and greue hym. Sommer is not the tyme, to caste his seede in the grounde, or implowyng to occupie hymself: shall he ther- fore leaue his housebandrie, or doeth he rather neclecte it, his diligence therein is the more, and labour more industrious. From whence commeth the tempeste, the stormes and bitter seasons? From his house, from his wife, from his art and oc- cupacion, all those thynges by violence are expelled from the [Fol. lvij.v] aire. No state of life is able to giue riches, healthe, or securitée [Sidenote: Emperours.] to his state. There hath been princes and Emperours, nedie, full of infirmitées and sickenes, in daungerous state, oppres- sed with many calamitées: was their dignitie and office, the cause of their calamitées? No, God tempreth the state of eue- ry one, how, and after what sorte to possesse thesame. Some [Sidenote: Mariage.] are fulle fortunate in Mariage, if Mariage were of necessitée the cause, then all should be onely fortunate, or onely vnfor- tunate: then in mariage is not the cause, if in marige the ma- ners doe disagrée, and loue is extinguished, blame thyn own [Sidenote: The Mari- ners.] maners, thy choise, and thy eleccion. The Mariner that pas- seth the daungerous Seas, and by dreadfull tempestes, and huffyng waues is alwaies in perille, and many often tymes [Sidenote: The Mar- chauntes.] drouned. The Marchaunt lesyng his marchaundise by ship- wrack, shall thei impute the daunger and losse, to their wife at home? Or doe the Mariners leaue for all these tempestes, their arte of Nauigacion? Or the owner breake his shippe? Or the Marchaunt proue no aduentures, because of his losse, and many haue been of this sort drouned. No. But more ear- [Sidenote: Warre.] nestlie thei dooe assaie theim selues thereto. Because warre spoileth many a man of his life, doe Princes therefore, leaue to moue armour againste the enemie, but because, who so in the defence of his countrée, dieth manfullie, is worthelie ad- uaunced, and in perpetuall memorie, no daunger is refused, because euill thynges happeneth in life, is the state of good thynges to be auoided and eschued. Were it not vnsemelie, if housebande men, for no storme or tempeste, doe leaue their state, their laborious and rough co[n]dicion of life, nor the ship- man his arte of Nauigacion, because he seeth many drouned venteryng thesame, and he hymself often tymes in daunger, nor the soldiour or capitain, their perilous condicion of life, doe leaue for daunger. Should Mariage bée lesse sette by, be- cause alwaies riches and quietnes happeneth not. ¶ The obieccion. The losse of a good wife and children, is a greate grefe to [Fol. lviij.r] any man, and a cause to blame mariage. ¶ The aunswere. [Sidenote: The lawe of Nature.] You your self are borne to dye, thei also by death obaye likewise Nature, this is the Lawe of Nature ones to dye, whiche you séeme to blame. Then the death of thy wife and childre[n], is not the blame in Mariage. What is the cause that you dye? Natures imbecillitée and weakenes, then in theim[.] Mariage is not the cause: Nature in her firste molde hath so framed all, wherefore doe you ascribe that to mariage, that is founde faultée in Nature. Thei die that marie not, what infirmitie, daunger or peril happeneth to any in mariage, as sharpe and perilous, doe molest and torment the other. If any manne by death, leaseth a right honeste wife, clothed with all chastitée, demurenesse, sobrietée, and also with all singulari- tée of vertue adorned: he hath loste a rare treasure, a iewell of [Sidenote: A chaste wo- man.] price, not in all to bee founde. Did you loue your wife, that was so goodlie, so honeste and vertuous: there was greate cause saie you, for her vertuous sake, God hath chosen her fro[m] a mortall creature, to immortalitée, with her it can not bée better. There is no cause why you should blame mariage, for the losse of her, or of thy children, or for the losse of thee, she to blame mariage. If for thy owne sake, this sorowe bee, _Est seipsum amantis non amici_, it is then of a self loue, to thy self, not for her cause: for I muste aunswere as Lelius did to Affricanus, _Cum ea optime esseactu[m] quis neget, quid est quod no[n] assecuta est immortalitatem_. Who can deny saieth he, but that with her it can not bee better? What is it that she hath not attained. Immortalitée. She was vertuous, chaiste, so- ber, descrete, of behauiour womanlie: for her vertues belo- ued. Well, now she hath immortalitee and blesse, are you so- rie thereat, that were enuious. Did you loue her liuyng, loue her also departed, her vertuous shewed vnto vs, her immor- talitée. ¶ The obieccion. There is a care for the wife and children, if the housband [Fol. lviij.v] dye before theim. ¶ The aunswere. [Sidenote: A wretched executour.] If thou leaue them riches, hope not that thy riches shalbe a staie to theim, though thei bee innumerable: a wretched, a miserable executour, wasteth and destroieth oftentymes, the fruictes of thy trauaile, who reioyseth more of thy death, then of thy life. Or thy childrens father in Lawe, shall spoile and spende with a merie harte, that whiche thou haste long tera- [Sidenote: Gods pro- uidence.] uailed for. Staie thy self and thyne vpon Gods prouidence, for it hath been seen, many a riche widowe, with infinite treasure lefte, to her children also like porcions descendyng: afterwarde bothe wife and children, haue been brought to miserie and beggerlie state. Otherwise, poore children com- mitted to the prouidence of God, and vertuouslie brought vp, and the wife in like state, yet thei haue so passed their daies, that thei haue rose to a goodlie state. See that thy richesse bée not iniuriouslie gotten by falshode, by liyng, by Usurie, if it so be, then _Male parta male dilabuntnr_. That is this, gooddes euill gotte, euill spente, soche riches neuer giue déepe roote to their ofspryng. That is an euill care, by a iniurious care, to purchase thynges and gooddes wickedlie. Also mariage taketh awaie widowhed, and doeth repare with a newe freshe mariage, the lacke and priuacion of the [Sidenote: Death. Mariage.] other. She that was by death left a widowe, mariage again hath coupled her to a newe housbande: and doeth restore that whiche death tooke awaie. That that death dissolueth and destroieth, mariage increaseth, augme[n]teth, and multiplieth. Bee it so, but mariage is a painfull life, it forceth euery one to trauaile, to vpholde and maintaine his state, I commende not the idell life, neither a life occupied to no vertuous ende. Nature moueth euery manne to loue hymself and his, so thy care and paine be to a godlie purpose. It is commendable. It is the duetie of euery man, as his power, witte, and industrie is able, to emploie thereto his cogitacion. To laboure for thy wife, whom thou loueste, and deare children, thy laboure is [Fol. lix.r] pleasure, the ioye easeth thy labour. To behold thy self in thy children, thei beyng vertuouslie broughte vp, it is a goodlie [Sidenote: The mariage of a chaste woman.] comfort, to liue with a chaste woman, sober and continente, her vertues be a continuall pleasure, a passyng ioye. In ma- riage ought to be greate deliberacion, whom thou chosest to thy continuall compainie or felowshippe, her life paste well knowen, her parentes and kindrede how honeste and vertu- ous, her maners, her fame, how commendable, her counti- [Sidenote: The choise of a wife.] naunce sober, a constaunt iye, and with shamefastnes beau- tified, a mouthe vttering fewe woordes discretlie. She is not to be liked, who[m] no vertuous qualitées in her educacio[n], beu- tifieth and adorneth, the goodlie qualitees sheweth, the well framed and nurtured mynde. These thynges maie be suffi- ciente, to shewe what excellencie is in mariage and how ne- cessarie it is, to the procreacion and preseruacio[n] of mankind. ¶ _Legislacio._ ¶ A Oracion either in the defence of a Lawe, or againste a Lawe. MAny learned menne are in this opinion, that vpon a Lawe alledged, a Oracion maie bee made in the defence of it: or matter maie be suppeditated, to in- uaigh by force of argument againste it. Although the lawe alleged be in maner the whole cause, bicause it doeth co[n]tain al the matter included in the oracion. In this Oracion, the persone is induced to be spoken vp- pon, vnknowne, vncertaine: wherefore it is to be placed, ra- ther in the state and forme of consultacion, and to bée exami- ned with iudgement. The induccion of a Lawe, is in twoo sortes. A confirmacion of any olde Lawe, or a confutacion. As for example. The Ciuill Lawe doeth well commende, bondmen to be manumised, that is, to be made free. The lawe is herein to be praised, that willeth the cou[n]sail of the parentes & frendes, to be knowne before the contracte. [Fol. lix.v] Upon a Lawe alledged, worthelie matter maie rise, waigh- yng the godlie ende, whereunto the Lawe was firste inuen- ted, decreed and stablished, what profite thereof ensueth and foloweth. What it is to vertue a mainteiner, otherwise if it be not profitable? What moued any one to frame and ordain soche a Lawe, as was to a common wealthe vnprofitable, to vertue no aider, if it were a profitable Lawe and godlie, it is as Demosthenes saieth, of God inuented, though by famous [Sidenote: Lawe.] wise, and godlie menne, stablished and decréed. Good Lawes tempereth to all states equitee and iustice, without fauour or frendship, no more to the one then the other. The order to make an Oracion by a lawe, is in this sort. First, make a prohemiu[m] or beginning to enter your matter. In the seconde place, adde a contrary to that, whiche you will entreate vpon. Then shewe it lawful. Iuste. Profitable. Possible. You maie as in _Thesis_, whiche was the Oracion before, vse a contradiction or obiection: and to that make an answere or solucion. ¶ A confutacion of that Lawe, whiche suffered adultrie to bee punished with death, no iudgement giuen thereupon. [Sidenote: The moste rigorous and moste cruell lawe of Solo[n][.]] SOlon, who was a famous Philosopher, in the time of Cresus king of Lidia, and a lawe giuer to the Athenians: by whose Lawes and godlie meanes, the Athenians were long and prospe- rouslie gouerned. Emong many of his lawes, this Solon set forthe againste adulterers. _Fas esse deprehen- denti mæchum in ipso adulterio interficere_: it shalbee lawfull saieth he, who so taketh an adulterer in his beastlie facte, to kill hym. Solon beyng a wise man, was more rigorous and cruell, in this one Lawe, then he ought to be. A meruailous [Fol. lx.r] matter, and almoste vncredible, so wise, so noble and worthy a Lawe giuer, to bruste out with soche a cruell and bloodie lawe, that without iudgement or sentence giuen, the matter neither proued nor examined, adulterie to be death. Where- fore, reason forceth euery manne, to Iudge and ponder with [Sidenote: Adulterie a horrible vice.] hymself, that either adulterie is a moste horrible vice, moste beastlie & pestiferous, and not mete to tary vpon the censure, and sentence of a Iudge: or Solon was not so wise, discrete, and a politike persone, but a rashe and fonde lawe giuer, that in soche a terrible voice, he should burste out, as adulterie so horrible, as not worthie to be pondered, examined and boul- ted of in Iudgemente. The Athenians receiued that Lawe, thei did also obaie his other lawes. Their dominions there- by in felicitée was gouerned: there was no populous nom- ber of adulterers, to let that Lawe, thei liued moste godlie, a straunge worlde, a rare moderacion of that age and people. [Sidenote: Plato aga- inste adultrie made a lawe.] Plato the godlie Philosopher, who lefte in his woorkes, and monumentes of learnyng, greate wisedome and also godlie Lawes in his bookes: intiteled vpon Lawes, and gouerne- ment of a common wealth, did not passe by in silence, to giue and ordain a Lawe against adulterie. Who also as it semed Iudged adulterie as moste horrible and detestable, in his .ix. booke _de Legibus_. This is the Lawe. _Adulteram deprehen- sam impune occidi a viro posse._ The adultrous woman saith he, taken in the crime, her housbande maie without daunger of death, or feare of punishement slea her. A straunge matter twoo so noble, so famous for wisedome, to make adulterie present death, no Iudgement or sentence of Magistrate, pro- cedyng to examine and iudge, vpon the state of the cause. A man maie saie, O goodlie age, and tyme in vertue tempered, eche state as seemeth brideled and kepte vnder, and farre fro[m] voluptuousnes remoued. There was no stewes or Baudes houses, where soche Lawes and Lawmakers were. Sobrie- tée was in maides, and chastitée harboured in matrones and wedded wiues, a harte inuiolable to honeste conuersacion. [Fol. lx.v] Where adulterie is cutte of, there many detestable vices, [Sidenote: Catos sen- tence vpon adulterie.] and execrable purposes are remoued. Cato the sage Peere of Rome, indued with like seueritée, did fauour that lawe and highlie extolled it. Although adulterie bee a detestable vice horrible, yea, although it be worthie death, better it were by iudgemente, and the sentence of the Magistrate, the faute to [Sidenote: Lawe.] bee determined: then at the will of euery manne, as a Lawe by death to bee ended, the common wealthe shalbee in more quiet state, when the horrible factes of wicked menne, by the [Sidenote: The Iudge, a liuely lawe.] Lawe made worthie of deathe: are neuerthelesse by a liuelie Lawe, whiche is the Iudge, pronounced and condemned, ac- cordyng to the Lawe. Els many mischiues might rise in all kyngdomes and common wealthes, vnder a colour of lawe, many a honeste persone murthered: and many a murtherer, by cloke of a Lawe, from daunger saued. In Rome somtime a Lawe there was ordained againste adulterie, whiche was called _Lex Iulia_, this Lawe Octauius Augustus set foorthe. The Lawe was thus, _Gladio iussit animaduerti in adulteros_[.] The lawe commaunded adulterers to be hedded. The chro- nicles of aunciente tymes herein doe shew, and the decrées of auncient elders also, how horrible a thing adulterie is, when thei punishe it with death. Who knoweth not emo[n]g the Is- raelites, and in the olde lawe thei wer stoned to death. Well as Magistrates are in common wealthes remoued, or as ti- mes chaunge, lawes also are chaunged and dissolued: and as the Prouerbe is, _Lex vt Regio_, the Lawes are accordyng to the Region. Afterwarde Ualerius Publicola, a man ascen- dyng to high nobilitée of honour, and fame emong, the Ro- maines gaue this Lawe. _Qua neminem licebat indicta causa necare._ By this lawe it was not lefull, any manne to be put [Sidenote: A godly law.] to death, their cause not examined in Iudgemente, this was a goodlie Lawe. Then afterwarde, Lawe giuers rose in the common wealth, that with more facilitee tolerated that vice, then wickednesse flowed, adulterie not punished by death. And sence that, the Romaine Empire, wrapped and snared [Fol. lxj.r] with soche mischiues hath decaied, in fame, nobilitée and ver- tue. Many a parte of their dominion plagued, deuoured, and [Sidenote: The good manne.] destroied. The good and godlie menne, nede not to feare any Lawe godlie, their life beyng in vertue and godlines nurtu- red. The terrible sentence of a lawe, forceth the good and god- lie, to perseuere and continue in godlines. The terrible sen- [Sidenote: Lawe.] tence of a Lawe, cutteth of the wicked enterprises of pestife- rous menne. Uice where lawe is not to correcte, will inure it [Sidenote: Uice as a lawe by cu- stome.] self by custome as a Lawe, or borne and tolerated againste a [Sidenote: Adulterie.] Lawe. Therefore as adulterie without Iudgemente, to bee punished worthie of death is vngodlie: so it ought not to bee passed ouer, or tolerated in any Region or common wealth, as no lawe seuerely to punishe thesame. ¶ The contrarie. AL other lawes doe differ, from that rigorous lawe of Solon and Plato herein, yea, and though thei be vices horrible, yet thei ar not determined, with out the sente[n]ce of the Magistrate and Iudge. But this cruell Lawe of Solon, doeth repugne all lawes, stabli- [Sidenote: The lawe v- niuersall and equall to all menne.] shed in all Citees and common wealthes. And sithe the lawe is of hymself vniuersall, with equitée, giuing and tempering to all states. Fonde muste that Lawe bee of Solon, whiche rashely, without consideracion of iudgement doeth procede, no man ought in his own cause, to be his own iudge or Ma- gistrate. This is argument sufficient to confounde the lawe of Solon. All Lawes are repugnaunte to that, because with Iudgement thei procede against vices moste pestiferous. In [Sidenote: Thefte.] common wealthes Theft is by lawe, pronounced worthie of death, whereupon also the Magistrate and Iudge, determi- neth the matter, and heareth of bothe the action of the case, before he condempneth, so in all other mischiues. But you maie saie, many mischiues riseth of adulterie. Although it so be, the Iudge determineth vpon Murder, whiche is in like sort horrible, soche also as dooe séeke to caste into perill their countrée, and by treason to destroie thesame, [Fol. lxj.v] Iudgemente proceadeth by determinacion of the Lawe and Iudge. And so in all other wicked factes, and mischiuous en- terprises, the Iudgement in euery cause procedeth, as Lawe [Sidenote: The Iudge a liuely lawe.] and right willeth, from the mouthe of the Iudge, he beyng a liuelie Lawe, to the Lawe written. The cruell Lawe of So- lon, is like to the phantasie and wille of a tyraunte, who, as phantasie and will leadeth, murdereth at his pleasure, whose will is alwaies a sufficient Lawe to hymself, as who should [Sidenote: The will of a tyraunte his owne lawe.] saie, so I wille, so I commaunde, my wille shall stande for a Lawe: but godlie lawes doe iustlie, accordyng to reason and vertue, tempereth the cause of euery man. No godlie Lawe, maketh the accuser his owne Iudge. ¶ Lawfull. [Sidenote: Lawes were made for two causes.] WHo so by Lawe is iudged, and the offence proued, there is no excuse in the malefactour, nor suspicion seing that, accordyng to lawe, the fact is punished, and as Demosthenes saieth, twoo thynges moued the wise Elders to make Lawes, that the wicked should bee hindered, and cutte of from their purpose, and that good men seyng by a lawe, the actes of pestiferous men kepte vnder, by the terrour of them, are afraied to commit the like facte. This was euen accordyng to lawe. The terrible sentence of a law executed, vpon moste wicked persones, doe kepe vnder many a mischiuous enterprise, whiche through the dolefull and la- mentable ende of the wicked, doe driue and force all other to all godlines. ¶ Iuste. THe accuser by Lawe and Iudge, is able to defende hymself, whe[n] his cause is ended accordyng to law. Uertue thereby vpholded, when by order of lawe, vice is condempned. The malifactour hath no ex- cuse, all staie and colour remoued, the accuser by iuste Lawe pleateth, when the law is thereby supported and saued. And herein a greate parte of Iustice is placed, when the fauour of the Iudge or frendship, is onely on the cause, the persone nec- [Fol. lxij.r] lected, that is Iustice, to giue to euery one his owne. ¶ Profitable. IT must be profitable to the whole bodie of the com- mon wealthe, when by the Iustice of godlie lawes, vertue is in high price aduaunced, vice by the open sentence, and manifeste profe conuicted, the malefa- ctour shall be knowen, the sincere and godlie deliuered, and from tyme to tyme maintained. Lawes as thei be vniuersall so thei openlie ought to giue sentence. ¶ Possible. THen without lawe to procede, and iudgemente of the Magistrate, as Solon did in this lawe, it were not possible, any common wealthe to florishe ther- by. Therefore in Iudgemente ought the cause of euery one to be pleated and examined, that thereby all suspi- cion, & greuous enormitées, maie be put of. Uice is not there- fore tolerated, because for a tyme, Iudgemente ceaseth, but hereupon vices are more depely rooted out, all people know- yng the determinacion of the lawe, and the manifest sente[n]ce of the Iudge heard. A terrour ensueth to al malefactours and pestiferous men, good men are incensed to all godlines, whe[n] vice by Lawe is condempned, cutte of, and destroied. Good menne by Lawe and aucthoritée, vpholded and maintained. [Sidenote: The state of good lawes.] This is the state of good lawes, by order to procede, the cause in Iudgemente examined, the facte proued, vertue in any persone vpholded, vice in all caste doune and defaced, so there is good Lawe, as Demosthenes saieth, sincere Iudge, and sentence inuiola- ble. * * * * * [Transcriber's Note: The following is a list of printer errors in the original.] Page Original Correct Fol. j.r faith he faith be Fol. ij.r Poloponesians Peloponesians Fol. ij.r oracions, when oracion, when Fol. v.r Perthesius Parthesius Fol. vj.v Romai- Romains [or Romaines] Fol. vij.r valianntes valiauntes Fol. vij.r commo wealth commo[n] wealth Fol. ix.r uot not Fol. ix.r state or state of Fol. ix.v comparson comparison Fol. x.r aboundauute aboundaunte Fol. x.v oneie onelie Fol. xj.r fanour fauour Fol. xiiij.r vengauce vengau[n]ce Fol. xiiij.v Fenche Frenche Fol. xv.r Bristaines Britaines Fol. xvj.r porfite profite Fol. xvj.v learnng learning [or learnyng] Fol. xvij.r is was was Fol. xvij.r Pholosopher Philosopher Fol. xvij.v faundacion foundacion Fol. xviij.v aud and Fol. xviij.v Catona Crotona Fol. xix.r celebraied celebrated Fol. xx.v intteled intiteled Fol. xxj.r gouerme[n]t gouernme[n]t Fol. xxij.v Politcia Politia Fol. xxiiij.v Rhetotike Rhetorike Fol. xxiiij.v exposion exposicion Fol. xxiiij.v Incrediblie Incredible Fol. xxv.r The feigne Thei feigne Fol. xxvij.r the the the Fol. xxvij.r moderaciou moderacion Fol. xxviij.v Prossible Possible Fol. xxviij.v Rhetotike Rhetorike Fol. xxix.r Fol. xxxj. Fol. xxix. Fol. xxix.v Historiogriphers Historiographers Fol. xxxj.r Fol. xxxiij. Fol. xxxj. Fol. xxxj.r lineth liueth Fol. xxxj.v ouerthowe ouerthrowe Fol. xxxj.v Epamniundas Epaminundas Fol. xxxij.r Epameunndas Epaminundas Fol. xxxiij.r Zopryus Zopyrus Fol. xxxiiij.r or God of God Fol. xxxiiij.r wekedned wekened Fol. xxxv.r destetable detestable Fol. xxxv.v Theodosiuus Theodosius Fol. xxxv.v prouulgate promulgate Fol. xxxv.v hane haue Fol. xxxvj.r goddes goodes [or gooddes] Fol. xxxvj.r lo liue to liue Fol. xxxvj.r the:m theim Fol. xxxvij.r Fol. xxxix. Fol. xxxvij. Fol. xxxvij.v dangerous gaue dangerous game Fol. xxxviij.v cut af cut of Fol. xxxviij.v gouernuurs gouernours Fol. xxxix.r Fol. xxxvij. Fol. xxxix. Fol. xxxix.r His Oracion THis Oracion Fol. xxxix.v goueruours gouernours Fol. xl.v Traianns Traianus Fol. xlij.r nobilitée) for nobilitée (for Fol. xliij.r valianntly valiauntly Fol. xliiij.v anncestours auncestours Fol. xlviij.r conutrée countrée Fol. liiij.v omnipoteucie omnipotencie Fol. lvj.r all all all Fol. lvij.r whatseouer whatsoeuer Fol. lviij.v terauailed trauailed Fol. lviij.v dilabuntnr dilabuntur The original contains the following additional printer errors: Fol. j.r Decorative capital "N" reversed Fol. xxxiij.r Last sentence repeated Fol. xxxviij.v Section heading repeated Fol. liij.r First word repeats last word on previous page Fol. liiij.r Remainder of last sentence missing? The following do not appear to be printer errors, as they are consistently used in the original: "thesame" for "the same"; "shalbe" for "shall be"; the use of "a" instead of "an" before a noun beginning with a vowel; the combination of "the" and a word beginning with "e" into a single word, as in "theight" for "the eight." 
37134	----	[ Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. Where examples were printed in two columns in the original, the left column has been indented by two spaces, the right one by four. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Bold text has been marked with =equals signs=. ] THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE BY WILLIAM STRUNK, Jr. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1918, 1919, BY WILLIAM STRUNK, JR. COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. THE MAPLE PRESS YORK PA CONTENTS Page I. Introductory 5 II. Elementary Rules of Usage 7 1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding _'s_ 7 2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last 7 3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas 8 4. Place a comma before a conjunction introducing a co-ordinate clause 10 5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma 11 6. Do not break sentences in two 12 7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject 13 III. Elementary Principles of Composition 15 8. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic 15 9. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning 17 10. Use the active voice 19 11. Put statements in positive form 21 12. Use definite, specific, concrete language 22 13. Omit needless words 24 14. Avoid a succession of loose sentences 25 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form 26 16. Keep related words together 28 17. In summaries, keep to one tense 29 18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end 31 IV. A Few Matters of Form 33 V. Words and Expressions Commonly Misused 36 VI. Spelling 48 VII. Exercises on Chapters II and III 50 I. INTRODUCTORY This book aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention (in Chapters II and III) on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. In accordance with this plan it lays down three rules for the use of the comma, instead of a score or more, and one for the use of the semicolon, in the belief that these four rules provide for all the internal punctuation that is required by nineteen sentences out of twenty. Similarly, it gives in Chapter III only those principles of the paragraph and the sentence which are of the widest application. The book thus covers only a small portion of the field of English style. The experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of theory, which he may prefer to that offered by any textbook. The numbers of the sections may be used as references in correcting manuscript. The writer's colleagues in the Department of English in Cornell University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript. Mr. George McLane Wood has kindly consented to the inclusion under Rule 10 of some material from his _Suggestions to Authors_. The following books are recommended for reference or further study: in connection with Chapters II and IV, F. Howard Collins, _Author and Printer_ (Henry Frowde); Chicago University Press, _Manual of Style_; T. L. De Vinne, _Correct Composition_ (The Century Company); Horace Hart, _Rules for Compositors and Printers_ (Oxford University Press); George McLane Wood, _Extracts from the Style-Book of the Government Printing Office_ (United States Geological Survey); in connection with Chapters III and V, _The King's English_ (Oxford University Press); Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, _The Art of Writing_ (Putnam), especially the chapter, Interlude on Jargon; George McLane Wood, _Suggestions to Authors_ (United States Geological Survey); John Lesslie Hall, _English Usage_ (Scott, Foresman and Co.); James P. Kelley, _Workmanship in Words_ (Little, Brown and Co.). In these will be found full discussions of many points here briefly treated and an abundant store of illustrations to supplement those given in this book. It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature. II. ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE 1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles's friend Burns's poems the witch's malice This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press. Exceptions are the possessive of ancient proper names in _-es_ and _-is_, the possessive _Jesus'_, and such forms as _for conscience' sake_, _for righteousness' sake_. But such forms as _Achilles' heel_, _Moses' laws_, _Isis' temple_ are commonly replaced by the heel of Achilles the laws of Moses the temple of Isis The pronominal possessives _hers_, _its_, _theirs_, _yours_, and _oneself_ have no apostrophe. 2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last. Thus write, red, white, and blue gold, silver, or copper He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents. This is also the usage of the Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press. In the names of business firms the last comma is omitted, as, Brown, Shipley & Co. 3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas. The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot. This rule is difficult to apply; it is frequently hard to decide whether a single word, such as _however_, or a brief phrase, is or is not parenthetic. If the interruption to the flow of the sentence is but slight, the writer may safely omit the commas. But whether the interruption be slight or considerable, he must never insert one comma and omit the other. Such punctuation as Marjorie's husband, Colonel Nelson paid us a visit yesterday, or My brother you will be pleased to hear, is now in perfect health, is indefensible. If a parenthetic expression is preceded by a conjunction, place the first comma before the conjunction, not after it. He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile. Always to be regarded as parenthetic and to be enclosed between commas (or, at the end of the sentence, between comma and period) are the following: (1) the year, when forming part of a date, and the day of the month, when following the day of the week: February to July, 1916. April 6, 1917. Monday, November 11, 1918. (2) the abbreviations _etc._ and _jr._ (3) non-restrictive relative clauses, that is, those which do not serve to identify or define the antecedent noun, and similar clauses introduced by conjunctions indicating time or place. The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested. In this sentence the clause introduced by _which_ does not serve to tell which of several possible audiences is meant; what audience is in question is supposed to be already known. The clause adds, parenthetically, a statement supplementing that in the main clause. The sentence is virtually a combination of two statements which might have been made independently: The audience had at first been indifferent. It became more and more interested. Compare the restrictive relative clause, not set off by commas, in the sentence, The candidate who best meets these requirements will obtain the place. Here the clause introduced by _who_ does serve to tell which of several possible candidates is meant; the sentence cannot be split up into two independent statements. The difference in punctuation in the two sentences following is based on the same principle: Nether Stowey, where Coleridge wrote _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_, is a few miles from Bridgewater. The day will come when you will admit your mistake. Nether Stowey is completely identified by its name; the statement about Coleridge is therefore supplementary and parenthetic. The _day_ spoken of is identified only by the dependent clause, which is therefore restrictive. Similar in principle to the enclosing of parenthetic expressions between commas is the setting off by commas of phrases or dependent clauses preceding or following the main clause of a sentence. Partly by hard fighting, partly by diplomatic skill, they enlarged their dominions to the east, and rose to royal rank with the possession of Sicily, exchanged afterwards for Sardinia. Other illustrations may be found in sentences quoted under Rules 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, and 18. The writer should be careful not to set off independent clauses by commas: see under Rule 5. 4. Place a comma before a conjunction introducing a co-ordinate clause. The early records of the city have disappeared, and the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed. The situation is perilous, but there is still one chance of escape. Sentences of this type, isolated from their context, may seem to be in need of rewriting. As they make complete sense when the comma is reached, the second clause has the appearance of an afterthought. Further, _and_ is the least specific of connectives. Used between independent clauses, it indicates only that a relation exists between them without defining that relation. In the example above, the relation is that of cause and result. The two sentences might be rewritten: As the early records of the city have disappeared, the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed. Although the situation is perilous, there is still one chance of escape. Or the subordinate clauses might be replaced by phrases: Owing to the disappearance of the early records of the city, the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed. In this perilous situation, there is still one chance of escape. But a writer may err by making his sentences too uniformly compact and periodic, and an occasional loose sentence prevents the style from becoming too formal and gives the reader a certain relief. Consequently, loose sentences of the type first quoted are common in easy, unstudied writing. But a writer should be careful not to construct too many of his sentences after this pattern (see Rule 14). Two-part sentences of which the second member is introduced by _as_ (in the sense of _because_), _for_, _or_, _nor_, and _while_ (in the sense of _and at the same time_) likewise require a comma before the conjunction. If the second member is introduced by an adverb, a semicolon, not a comma, is required (see Rule 5). The connectives _so_ and _yet_ may be used either as adverbs or as conjunctions, accordingly as the second clause is felt to be co-ordinate or subordinate; consequently either mark of punctuation may be justified. But these uses of _so_ (equivalent to _accordingly_ or to _so that_) are somewhat colloquial and should, as a rule, be avoided in writing. A simple correction, usually serviceable, is to omit the word _so_ and begin the first clause with _as_ or _since_: I had never been in the place before; so I had difficulty in finding my way about. As I had never been in the place before, I had difficulty in finding my way about. If a dependent clause, or an introductory phrase requiring to be set off by a comma, precedes the second independent clause, no comma is needed after the conjunction. The situation is perilous, but if we are prepared to act promptly, there is still one chance of escape. When the subject is the same for both clauses and is expressed only once, a comma is required if the connective is _but_. If the connective is _and_, the comma should be omitted if the relation between the two statements is close or immediate. I have heard his arguments, but am still unconvinced. He has had several years' experience and is thoroughly competent. 5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma. If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon. Stevenson's romances are entertaining; they are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark. It is of course equally correct to write the above as two sentences each, replacing the semicolons by periods. Stevenson's romances are entertaining. They are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark. If a conjunction is inserted the proper mark is a comma (Rule 4). Stevenson's romances are entertaining, for they are full of exciting adventures. It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark. A comparison of the three forms given above will show clearly the advantage of the first. It is, at least in the examples given, better than the second form, because it suggests the close relationship between the two statements in a way that the second does not attempt, and better than the third, because briefer and therefore more forcible. Indeed it may be said that this simple method of indicating relationship between statements is one of the most useful devices of composition. The relationship, as above, is commonly one of cause or of consequence. Note that if the second clause is preceded by an adverb, such as _accordingly_, _besides_, _then_, _therefore_, or _thus_, and not by a conjunction, the semicolon is still required. Two exceptions to the rule may be admitted. If the clauses are very short, and are alike in form, a comma is usually permissible: Man proposes, God disposes. The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up. Note that in these examples the relation is not one of cause or consequence. Also in the colloquial form of expression, I hardly knew him, he was so changed, a comma, not a semicolon, is required. But this form of expression is inappropriate in writing, except in the dialogue of a story or play, or perhaps in a familiar letter. 6. Do not break sentences in two. In other words, do not use periods for commas. I met them on a Cunard liner several years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York. He was an interesting talker. A man who had traveled all over the world and lived in half a dozen countries. In both these examples, the first period should be replaced by a comma, and the following word begun with a small letter. It is permissible to make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence and to punctuate it accordingly: Again and again he called out. No reply. The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, and that he will not be suspected of a mere blunder in syntax or in punctuation. Rules 3, 4, 5, and 6 cover the most important principles in the punctuation of ordinary sentences; they should be so thoroughly mastered that their application becomes second nature. 7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. Walking slowly down the road, he saw a woman accompanied by two children. The word _walking_ refers to the subject of the sentence, not to the woman. If the writer wishes to make it refer to the woman, he must recast the sentence: He saw a woman accompanied by two children, walking slowly down the road. Participial phrases preceded by a conjunction or by a preposition, nouns in apposition, adjectives, and adjective phrases come under the same rule if they begin the sentence. On arriving in Chicago, his friends met him at the station. When he arrived (or, On his arrival) in Chicago, his friends met him at the station. A soldier of proved valor, they entrusted him with the defence of the city. A soldier of proved valor, he was entrusted with the defence of the city. Young and inexperienced, the task seemed easy to me. Young and inexperienced, I thought the task easy. Without a friend to counsel him, the temptation proved irresistible. Without a friend to counsel him, he found the temptation irresistible. Sentences violating this rule are often ludicrous. Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap. Wondering irresolutely what to do next, the clock struck twelve. III. ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION 8. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic. If the subject on which you are writing is of slight extent, or if you intend to treat it very briefly, there may be no need of subdividing it into topics. Thus a brief description, a brief summary of a literary work, a brief account of a single incident, a narrative merely outlining an action, the setting forth of a single idea, any one of these is best written in a single paragraph. After the paragraph has been written, examine it to see whether subdivision will not improve it. Ordinarily, however, a subject requires subdivision into topics, each of which should be made the subject of a paragraph. The object of treating each topic in a paragraph by itself is, of course, to aid the reader. The beginning of each paragraph is a signal to him that a new step in the development of the subject has been reached. The extent of subdivision will vary with the length of the composition. For example, a short notice of a book or poem might consist of a single paragraph. One slightly longer might consist of two paragraphs: A. Account of the work. B. Critical discussion. A report on a poem, written for a class in literature, might consist of seven paragraphs: A. Facts of composition and publication. B. Kind of poem; metrical form. C. Subject. D. Treatment of subject. E. For what chiefly remarkable. F. Wherein characteristic of the writer. G. Relationship to other works. The contents of paragraphs C and D would vary with the poem. Usually, paragraph C would indicate the actual or imagined circumstances of the poem (the situation), if these call for explanation, and would then state the subject and outline its development. If the poem is a narrative in the third person throughout, paragraph C need contain no more than a concise summary of the action. Paragraph D would indicate the leading ideas and show how they are made prominent, or would indicate what points in the narrative are chiefly emphasized. A novel might be discussed under the heads: A. Setting. B. Plot. C. Characters. D. Purpose. An historical event might be discussed under the heads: A. What led up to the event. B. Account of the event. C. What the event led up to. In treating either of these last two subjects, the writer would probably find it necessary to subdivide one or more of the topics here given. As a rule, single sentences should not be written or printed as paragraphs. An exception may be made of sentences of transition, indicating the relation between the parts of an exposition or argument. Frequent exceptions are also necessary in textbooks, guidebooks, and other works in which many topics are treated briefly. In dialogue, each speech, even if only a single word, is a paragraph by itself; that is, a new paragraph begins with each change of speaker. The application of this rule, when dialogue and narrative are combined, is best learned from examples in well-printed works of fiction. 9. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, end it in conformity with the beginning. Again, the object is to aid the reader. The practice here recommended enables him to discover the purpose of each paragraph as he begins to read it, and to retain this purpose in mind as he ends it. For this reason, the most generally useful kind of paragraph, particularly in exposition and argument, is that in which (a) the topic sentence comes at or near the beginning; (b) the succeeding sentences explain or establish or develop the statement made in the topic sentence; and (c) the final sentence either emphasizes the thought of the topic sentence or states some important consequence. Ending with a digression, or with an unimportant detail, is particularly to be avoided. If the paragraph forms part of a larger composition, its relation to what precedes, or its function as a part of the whole, may need to be expressed. This can sometimes be done by a mere word or phrase (_again_; _therefore_; _for the same reason_) in the topic sentence. Sometimes, however, it is expedient to precede the topic sentence by one or more sentences of introduction or transition. If more than one such sentence is required, it is generally better to set apart the transitional sentences as a separate paragraph. According to the writer's purpose, he may, as indicated above, relate the body of the paragraph to the topic sentence in one or more of several different ways. He may make the meaning of the topic sentence clearer by restating it in other forms, by defining its terms, by denying the contrary, by giving illustrations or specific instances; he may establish it by proofs; or he may develop it by showing its implications and consequences. In a long paragraph, he may carry out several of these processes. 1 Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone. 2 If you go in a company, or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but name; it is something else and more in the nature of a picnic. 3 A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your own pace, and neither trot alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl. 4 And you must be open to all impressions and let your thoughts take colour from what you see. 5 You should be as a pipe for any wind to play upon. 6 "I cannot see the wit," says Hazlitt, "of walking and talking at the same time. 7 When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country," which is the gist of all that can be said upon the matter. 8 There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow, to jar on the meditative silence of the morning. 9 And so long as a man is reasoning he cannot surrender himself to that fine intoxication that comes of much motion in the open air, that begins in a sort of dazzle and sluggishness of the brain, and ends in a peace that passes comprehension.--Stevenson, _Walking Tours_. 1 Topic sentence. 2 The meaning made clearer by denial of the contrary. 3 The topic sentence repeated, in abridged form, and supported by three reasons; the meaning of the third ("you must have your own pace") made clearer by denying the contrary. 4 A fourth reason, stated in two forms. 5 The same reason, stated in still another form. 6-7 The same reason as stated by Hazlitt. 8 Repetition, in paraphrase, of the quotation from Hazlitt. 9 Final statement of the fourth reason, in language amplified and heightened to form a strong conclusion. 1 It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different conception of history grew up. 2 Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem; to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity. 3 The history of morals, of industry, of intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word, all the conditions of national well-being became the subject of their works. 4 They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history of kings. 5 They looked especially in history for the chain of causes and effects. 6 They undertook to study in the past the physiology of nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on which the welfare of society mainly depend.--Lecky, _The Political Value of History_. 1 Topic sentence. 2 The meaning of the topic sentence made clearer; the new conception of history defined. 3 The definition expanded. 4 The definition explained by contrast. 5 The definition supplemented: another element in the new conception of history. 6 Conclusion: an important consequence of the new conception of history. In narration and description the paragraph sometimes begins with a concise, comprehensive statement serving to hold together the details that follow. The breeze served us admirably. The campaign opened with a series of reverses. The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious set of entries. But this device, if too often used, would become a mannerism. More commonly the opening sentence simply indicates by its subject with what the paragraph is to be principally concerned. At length I thought I might return towards the stockade. He picked up the heavy lamp from the table and began to explore. Another flight of steps, and they emerged on the roof. The brief paragraphs of animated narrative, however, are often without even this semblance of a topic sentence. The break between them serves the purpose of a rhetorical pause, throwing into prominence some detail of the action. 10. Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive: I shall always remember my first visit to Boston. This is much better than My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me. The latter sentence is less direct, less bold, and less concise. If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting "by me," My first visit to Boston will always be remembered, it becomes indefinite: is it the writer, or some person undisclosed, or the world at large, that will always remember this visit? This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary. The dramatists of the Restoration are little esteemed to-day. Modern readers have little esteem for the dramatists of the Restoration. The first would be the right form in a paragraph on the dramatists of the Restoration; the second, in a paragraph on the tastes of modern readers. The need of making a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used. As a rule, avoid making one passive depend directly upon another. Gold was not allowed to be exported. It was forbidden to export gold (The export of gold was prohibited). He has been proved to have been seen entering the building. It has been proved that he was seen to enter the building. In both the examples above, before correction, the word properly related to the second passive is made the subject of the first. A common fault is to use as the subject of a passive construction a noun which expresses the entire action, leaving to the verb no function beyond that of completing the sentence. A survey of this region was made in 1900. This region was surveyed in 1900. Mobilization of the army was rapidly effected. The army was rapidly mobilized. Confirmation of these reports cannot be obtained. These reports cannot be confirmed. Compare the sentence, "The export of gold was prohibited," in which the predicate "was prohibited" expresses something not implied in "export." The habitual use of the active voice makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a verb in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as _there is_, or _could be heard_. There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground. Dead leaves covered the ground. The sound of a guitar somewhere in the house could be heard. Somewhere in the house a guitar hummed sleepily. The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired. Failing health compelled him to leave college. It was not long before he was very sorry that he had said what he had. He soon repented his words. 11. Put statements in positive form. Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word _not_ as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion. He was not very often on time. He usually came late. He did not think that studying Latin was much use. He thought the study of Latin useless. _The Taming of the Shrew_ is rather weak in spots. Shakespeare does not portray Katharine as a very admirable character, nor does Bianca remain long in memory as an important character in Shakespeare's works. The women in _The Taming of the Shrew_ are unattractive. Katharine is disagreeable, Bianca insignificant. The last example, before correction, is indefinite as well as negative. The corrected version, consequently, is simply a guess at the writer's intention. All three examples show the weakness inherent in the word _not_. Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is. Hence, as a rule, it is better to express even a negative in positive form. not honest dishonest not important trifling did not remember forgot did not pay any attention to ignored did not have much confidence in distrusted The antithesis of negative and positive is strong: Not charity, but simple justice. Not that I loved Caesar less, but Rome the more. Negative words other than _not_ are usually strong: The sun never sets upon the British flag. 12. Use definite, specific, concrete language. Prefer the specific to the general, the definite to the vague, the concrete to the abstract. A period of unfavorable weather set in. It rained every day for a week. He showed satisfaction as he took possession of his well-earned reward. He grinned as he pocketed the coin. There is a general agreement among those who have enjoyed the experience that surf-riding is productive of great exhilaration. All who have tried surf-riding agree that it is most exhilarating. If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is on this, that the surest method of arousing and holding the attention of the reader is by being specific, definite, and concrete. Critics have pointed out how much of the effectiveness of the greatest writers, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, results from their constant definiteness and concreteness. Browning, to cite a more modern author, affords many striking examples. Take, for instance, the lines from _My Last Duchess_, Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the west, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace--all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least, and those which end the poem, Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me. These words call up pictures. Recall how in _The Bishop Orders his Tomb in St. Praxed's Church_ "the Renaissance spirit--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, of good Latin," to quote Ruskin's comment on the poem, is made manifest in specific details and in concrete terms. Prose, in particular narrative and descriptive prose, is made vivid by the same means. If the experiences of Jim Hawkins and of David Balfour, of Kim, of Nostromo, have seemed for the moment real to countless readers, if in reading Carlyle we have almost the sense of being physically present at the taking of the Bastille, it is because of the definiteness of the details and the concreteness of the terms used. It is not that every detail is given; that would be impossible, as well as to no purpose; but that all the significant details are given, and not vaguely, but with such definiteness that the reader, in imagination, can project himself into the scene. In exposition and in argument, the writer must likewise never lose his hold upon the concrete, and even when he is dealing with general principles, he must give particular instances of their application. "This superiority of specific expressions is clearly due to the effort required to translate words into thoughts. As we do not think in generals, but in particulars--as whenever any class of things is referred to, we represent it to ourselves by calling to mind individual members of it, it follows that when an abstract word is used, the hearer or reader has to choose, from his stock of images, one or more by which he may figure to himself the genus mentioned. In doing this, some delay must arise, some force be expended; and if by employing a specific term an appropriate image can be at once suggested, an economy is achieved, and a more vivid impression produced." Herbert Spencer, from whose _Philosophy of Style_ the preceding paragraph is quoted, illustrates the principle by the sentences: In proportion as the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the regulations of their penal code will be severe. In proportion as men delight in battles, bull-fights, and combats of gladiators, will they punish by hanging, burning, and the rack. 13. Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell. Many expressions in common use violate this principle: the question as to whether whether (the question whether) there is no doubt but that no doubt (doubtless) used for fuel purposes used for fuel he is a man who he in a hasty manner hastily this is a subject which this subject His story is a strange one. His story is strange. In especial the expression _the fact that_ should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs. owing to the fact that since (because) in spite of the fact that though (although) call your attention to the fact that remind you (notify you) I was unaware of the fact that I was unaware that (did not know) the fact that he had not succeeded his failure the fact that I had arrived my arrival See also under _case_, _character_, _nature_, _system_ in Chapter V. _Who is_, _which was_, and the like are often superfluous. His brother, who is a member of the same firm His brother, a member of the same firm Trafalgar, which was Nelson's last battle Trafalgar, Nelson's last battle As positive statement is more concise than negative, and the active voice more concise than the passive, many of the examples given under Rules 11 and 12 illustrate this rule as well. A common violation of conciseness is the presentation of a single complex idea, step by step, in a series of sentences or independent clauses which might to advantage be combined into one. Macbeth was very ambitious. This led him to wish to become king of Scotland. The witches told him that this wish of his would come true. The king of Scotland at this time was Duncan. Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth murdered Duncan. He was thus enabled to succeed Duncan as king. (51 words.) Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth achieved his ambition and realized the prediction of the witches by murdering Duncan and becoming king of Scotland in his place. (26 words.) There were several less important courses, but these were the most important, and although they did not come every day, they came often enough to keep you in such a state of mind that you never knew what your next move would be. (43 words.) These, the most important courses of all, came, if not daily, at least often enough to keep one under constant strain. (21 words.) 14. Avoid a succession of loose sentences: This rule refers especially to loose sentences of a particular type, those consisting of two co-ordinate clauses, the second introduced by a conjunction or relative. Although single sentences of this type may be unexceptionable (see under Rule 4), a series soon becomes monotonous and tedious. An unskilful writer will sometimes construct a whole paragraph of sentences of this kind, using as connectives _and_, _but_, _so_, and less frequently, _who_, _which_, _when_, _where_, and _while_, these last in non-restrictive senses (see under Rule 3). The third concert of the subscription series was given last evening, and a large audience was in attendance. Mr. Edward Appleton was the soloist, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra furnished the instrumental music. The former showed himself to be an artist of the first rank, while the latter proved itself fully deserving of its high reputation. The interest aroused by the series has been very gratifying to the Committee, and it is planned to give a similar series annually hereafter. The fourth concert will be given on Tuesday, May 10, when an equally attractive programme will be presented. Apart from its triteness and emptiness, the paragraph above is weak because of the structure of its sentences, with their mechanical symmetry and sing-song. Contrast with them the sentences in the paragraphs quoted under Rule 9, or in any piece of good English prose, as the preface (Before the Curtain) to _Vanity Fair_. If the writer finds that he has written a series of sentences of the type described, he should recast enough of them to remove the monotony, replacing them by simple sentences, by sentences of two clauses joined by a semicolon, by periodic sentences of two clauses, by sentences, loose or periodic, of three clauses--whichever best represent the real relations of the thought. 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form. This principle, that of parallel construction, requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function. Familiar instances from the Bible are the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the petitions of the Lord's Prayer. The unskillful writer often violates this principle, from a mistaken belief that he should constantly vary the form of his expressions. It is true that in repeating a statement in order to emphasize it he may have need to vary its form. For illustration, see the paragraph from Stevenson quoted under Rule 9. But apart from this, he should follow the principle of parallel construction. Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method, while now the laboratory method is employed. Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method; now it is taught by the laboratory method. The left-hand version gives the impression that the writer is undecided or timid; he seems unable or afraid to choose one form of expression and hold to it. The right-hand version shows that the writer has at least made his choice and abided by it. By this principle, an article or a preposition applying to all the members of a series must either be used only before the first term or else be repeated before each term. The French, the Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese The French, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese In spring, summer, or in winter In spring, summer, or winter (In spring, in summer, or in winter) Correlative expressions (_both, and_; _not, but_; _not only, but also_; _either, or_; _first, second, third_; and the like) should be followed by the same grammatical construction, that is, virtually, by the same part of speech. (Such combinations as "both Henry and I," "not silk, but a cheap substitute," are obviously within the rule.) Many violations of this rule (as the first three below) arise from faulty arrangement; others (as the last) from the use of unlike constructions. It was both a long ceremony and very tedious. The ceremony was both long and tedious. A time not for words, but action. A time not for words, but for action. Either you must grant his request or incur his ill will. You must either grant his request or incur his ill will. My objections are, first, the injustice of the measure; second, that it is unconstitutional. My objections are, first, that the measure is unjust; second, that it is unconstitutional. See also the third example under Rule 12 and the last under Rule 13. It may be asked, what if a writer needs to express a very large number of similar ideas, say twenty? Must he write twenty consecutive sentences of the same pattern? On closer examination he will probably find that the difficulty is imaginary, that his twenty ideas can be classified in groups, and that he need apply the principle only within each group. Otherwise he had best avoid difficulty by putting his statements in the form of a table. 16. Keep related words together. The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related. The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning. Wordsworth, in the fifth book of _The Excursion_, gives a minute description of this church. In the fifth book of _The Excursion_, Wordsworth gives a minute description of this church. Cast iron, when treated in a Bessemer converter, is changed into steel. By treatment in a Bessemer converter, cast iron is changed into steel. The objection is that the interposed phrase or clause needlessly interrupts the natural order of the main clause. Usually, however, this objection does not hold when the order is interrupted only by a relative clause or by an expression in apposition. Nor does it hold in periodic sentences in which the interruption is a deliberately used means of creating suspense (see examples under Rule 18). The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent. There was a look in his eye that boded mischief. In his eye was a look that boded mischief. He wrote three articles about his adventures in Spain, which were published in _Harper's Magazine_. He published in _Harper's Magazine_ three articles about his adventures in Spain. This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, who became President in 1889. This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison. He became President in 1889. If the antecedent consists of a group of words, the relative comes at the end of the group, unless this would cause ambiguity. The Superintendent of the Chicago Division, who A proposal to amend the Sherman Act, which has been variously judged. A proposal, which has been variously judged, to amend the Sherman Act. A proposal to amend the much-debated Sherman Act. The grandson of William Henry Harrison, who William Henry Harrison's grandson, who A noun in apposition may come between antecedent and relative, because in such a combination no real ambiguity can arise. The Duke of York, his brother, who was regarded with hostility by the Whigs Modifiers should come, if possible, next to the word they modify. If several expressions modify the same word, they should be so arranged that no wrong relation is suggested. All the members were not present. Not all the members were present. He only found two mistakes. He found only two mistakes. Major R. E. Joyce will give a lecture on Tuesday evening in Bailey Hall, to which the public is invited, on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia" at eight P. M. On Tuesday evening at eight P. M., Major R. E. Joyce will give in Bailey Hall a lecture on "My Experiences in Mesopotamia." The public is invited. 17. In summaries, keep to one tense. In summarizing the action of a drama, the writer should always use the present tense. In summarizing a poem, story, or novel, he should preferably use the present, though he may use the past if he prefers. If the summary is in the present tense, antecedent action should be expressed by the perfect; if in the past, by the past perfect. An unforeseen chance prevents Friar John from delivering Friar Lawrence's letter to Romeo. Meanwhile, owing to her father's arbitrary change of the day set for her wedding, Juliet has been compelled to drink the potion on Tuesday night, with the result that Balthasar informs Romeo of her supposed death before Friar Lawrence learns of the non-delivery of the letter. But whichever tense be used in the summary, a past tense in indirect discourse or in indirect question remains unchanged. The Friar confesses that it was he who married them. Apart from the exceptions noted, whichever tense the writer chooses, he should use throughout. Shifting from one tense to the other gives the appearance of uncertainty and irresolution (compare Rule 15). In presenting the statements or the thought of some one else, as in summarizing an essay or reporting a speech, the writer should avoid intercalating such expressions as "he said," "he stated," "the speaker added," "the speaker then went on to say," "the author also thinks," or the like. He should indicate clearly at the outset, once for all, that what follows is summary, and then waste no words in repeating the notification. In notebooks, in newspapers, in handbooks of literature, summaries of one kind or another may be indispensable, and for children in primary schools it is a useful exercise to retell a story in their own words. But in the criticism or interpretation of literature the writer should be careful to avoid dropping into summary. He may find it necessary to devote one or two sentences to indicating the subject, or the opening situation, of the work he is discussing; he may cite numerous details to illustrate its qualities. But he should aim to write an orderly discussion supported by evidence, not a summary with occasional comment. Similarly, if the scope of his discussion includes a number of works, he will as a rule do better not to take them up singly in chronological order, but to aim from the beginning at establishing general conclusions. 18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end. The proper place in the sentence for the word, or group of words, which the writer desires to make most prominent is usually the end. Humanity has hardly advanced in fortitude since that time, though it has advanced in many other ways. Humanity, since that time, has advanced in many other ways, but it has hardly advanced in fortitude. This steel is principally used for making razors, because of its hardness. Because of its hardness, this steel is principally used in making razors. The word or group of words entitled to this position of prominence is usually the logical predicate, that is, the _new_ element in the sentence, as it is in the second example. The effectiveness of the periodic sentence arises from the prominence which it gives to the main statement. Four centuries ago, Christopher Columbus, one of the Italian mariners whom the decline of their own republics had put at the service of the world and of adventure, seeking for Spain a westward passage to the Indies as a set-off against the achievements of Portuguese discoverers, lighted on America. With these hopes and in this belief I would urge you, laying aside all hindrance, thrusting away all private aims, to devote yourself unswervingly and unflinchingly to the vigorous and successful prosecution of this war. The other prominent position in the sentence is the beginning. Any element in the sentence, other than the subject, may become emphatic when placed first. Deceit or treachery he could never forgive. So vast and rude, fretted by the action of nearly three thousand years, the fragments of this architecture may often seem, at first sight, like works of nature. A subject coming first in its sentence may be emphatic, but hardly by its position alone. In the sentence, Great kings worshipped at his shrine, the emphasis upon _kings_ arises largely from its meaning and from the context. To receive special emphasis, the subject of a sentence must take the position of the predicate. Through the middle of the valley flowed a winding stream. The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition. IV. A FEW MATTERS OF FORM =Headings.= Leave a blank line, or its equivalent in space, after the title or heading of a manuscript. On succeeding pages, if using ruled paper, begin on the first line. =Numerals.= Do not spell out dates or other serial numbers. Write them in figures or in Roman notation, as may be appropriate. August 9, 1918 (9 August 1918) Rule 3 Chapter XII 352nd Infantry =Parentheses.= A sentence containing an expression in parenthesis is punctuated, outside of the marks of parenthesis, exactly as if the expression in parenthesis were absent. The expression within is punctuated as if it stood by itself, except that the final stop is omitted unless it is a question mark or an exclamation point. I went to his house yesterday (my third attempt to see him), but he had left town. He declares (and why should we doubt his good faith?) that he is now certain of success. (When a wholly detached expression or sentence is parenthesized, the final stop comes before the last mark of parenthesis.) =Quotations.= Formal quotations, cited as documentary evidence, are introduced by a colon and enclosed in quotation marks. The provision of the Constitution is: "No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state." Quotations grammatically in apposition or the direct objects of verbs are preceded by a comma and enclosed in quotation marks. I recall the maxim of La Rochefoucauld, "Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come." Aristotle says, "Art is an imitation of nature." Quotations of an entire line, or more, of verse, are begun on a fresh line and centered, but need not be enclosed in quotation marks. Wordsworth's enthusiasm for the Revolution was at first unbounded: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Quotations introduced by _that_ are regarded as in indirect discourse and not enclosed in quotation marks. Keats declares that beauty is truth, truth beauty. Proverbial expressions and familiar phrases of literary origin require no quotation marks. These are the times that try men's souls. He lives far from the madding crowd. The same is true of colloquialisms and slang. =References.= In scholarly work requiring exact references, abbreviate titles that occur frequently, giving the full forms in an alphabetical list at the end. As a general practice, give the references in parenthesis or in footnotes, not in the body of the sentence. Omit the words _act_, _scene_, _line_, _book_, _volume_, _page_, except when referring by only one of them. Punctuate as indicated below. In the second scene of the third act In III.ii (still better, simply insert III.ii in parenthesis at the proper place in the sentence) After the killing of Polonius, Hamlet is placed under guard (IV.ii. 14). _2 Samuel_ i:17-27 _Othello_ II.iii. 264-267, III.iii. 155-161. =Syllabication.= If there is room at the end of a line for one or more syllables of a word, but not for the whole word, divide the word, unless this involves cutting off only a single letter, or cutting off only two letters of a long word. No hard and fast rule for all words can be laid down. The principles most frequently applicable are: (a) Divide the word according to its formation: know-ledge (not knowl-edge); Shake-speare (not Shakes-peare); de-scribe (not des-cribe); atmo-sphere (not atmos-phere); (b) Divide "on the vowel:" edi-ble (not ed-ible); propo-sition; ordi-nary; espe-cial; reli-gious; oppo-nents; regu-lar; classi-fi-ca-tion (three divisions allowable); deco-rative; presi-dent; (c) Divide between double letters, unless they come at the end of the simple form of the word: Apen-nines; Cincin-nati; refer-ring; but tell-ing. (d) Do not divide before final _-ed_ if the _e_ is silent: treat-ed (but not roam-ed or nam-ed). The treatment of consonants in combination is best shown from examples: for-tune; pic-ture; sin-gle; presump-tuous; illus-tration; sub-stan-tial (either division); indus-try; instruc-tion; sug-ges-tion; incen-diary. The student will do well to examine the syllable-division in a number of pages of any carefully printed book. =Titles.= For the titles of literary works, scholarly usage prefers italics with capitalized initials. The usage of editors and publishers varies, some using italics with capitalized initials, others using Roman with capitalized initials and with or without quotation marks. Use italics (indicated in manuscript by underscoring), except in writing for a periodical that follows a different practice. Omit initial _A_ or _The_ from titles when you place the possessive before them. The _Iliad_; the _Odyssey_; _As You Like It_; _To a Skylark_; _The Newcomes_; _A Tale of Two Cities_; Dickens's _Tale of Two Cities_. V. WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED (Some of the forms here listed, as _like I did_, are downright bad English; others, as the split infinitive, have their defenders, but are in such general disfavor that it is at least inadvisable to use them; still others, as _case_, _factor_, _feature_, _interesting_, _one of the most_, are good in their place, but are constantly obtruding themselves into places where they have no right to be. If the writer will make it his purpose from the beginning to express accurately his own individual thought, and will refuse to be satisfied with a ready-made formula that saves him the trouble of doing so, this last set of expressions will cause him little trouble. But if he finds that in a moment of inadvertence he has used one of them, his proper course will probably be not to patch up the sentence by substituting one word or set of words for another, but to recast it completely, as illustrated in a number of examples below and in others under Rules 12 and 13.) =All right.= Idiomatic in familiar speech as a detached phrase in the sense, "Agreed," or "Go ahead." In other uses better avoided. Always written as two words. =As good or better than.= Expressions of this type should be corrected by rearranging the sentence. My opinion is as good or better than his. My opinion is as good as his, or better (if not better). =As to whether.= _Whether_ is sufficient; see under Rule 13. =Bid.= Takes the infinitive without _to_. The past tense in the sense, "ordered," is _bade_. =But.= Unnecessary after _doubt_ and _help_. I have no doubt but that I have no doubt that He could not help see but that He could not help seeing that The too frequent use of _but_ as a conjunction leads to the fault discussed under Rule 14. A loose sentence formed with _but_ can always be converted into a periodic sentence formed with _although_, as illustrated under Rule 4. Particularly awkward is the following of one _but_ by another, making a contrast to a contrast or a reservation to a reservation. This is easily corrected by re-arrangement. America had vast resources, but she seemed almost wholly unprepared for war. But within a year she had created an army of four million men. America seemed almost wholly unprepared for war, but she had vast resources. Within a year she had created an army of four million men. =Can.= Means _am (is, are) able_. Not to be used as a substitute for _may_. =Case.= The _Concise Oxford Dictionary_ begins its definition of this word: "instance of a thing's occurring; usual state of affairs." In these two senses, the word is usually unnecessary. In many cases, the rooms were poorly ventilated. Many of the rooms were poorly ventilated. It has rarely been the case that any mistake has been made. Few mistakes have been made. See Wood, _Suggestions to Authors_, pp. 68-71, and Quiller-Couch, _The Art of Writing_, pp. 103-106. =Certainly.= Used indiscriminately by some writers, much as others use _very_, to intensify any and every statement. A mannerism of this kind, bad in speech, is even worse in writing. =Character.= Often simply redundant, used from a mere habit of wordiness. Acts of a hostile character Hostile acts =Claim, vb.= With object-noun, means _lay claim to_. May be used with a dependent clause if this sense is clearly involved: "He claimed that he was the sole surviving heir." (But even here, "claimed to be" would be better.) Not to be used as a substitute for _declare_, _maintain_, or _charge_. =Clever.= This word has been greatly overused; it is best restricted to ingenuity displayed in small matters. =Compare.= To _compare to_ is to point out or imply resemblances, between objects regarded as essentially of different order; to _compare with_ is mainly to point out differences, between objects regarded as essentially of the same order. Thus life has been compared to a pilgrimage, to a drama, to a battle; Congress may be compared with the British Parliament. Paris has been compared to ancient Athens; it may be compared with modern London. =Consider.= Not followed by _as_ when it means "believe to be." "I consider him thoroughly competent." Compare, "The lecturer considered Cromwell first as soldier and second as administrator," where "considered" means "examined" or "discussed." =Data.= A plural, like _phenomena_ and _strata_. These data were tabulated. =Dependable.= A needless substitute for _reliable_, _trustworthy_. =Different than.= Not permissible. Substitute _different from_, _other than_, or _unlike_. =Divided into.= Not to be misused for _composed of_. The line is sometimes difficult to draw; doubtless plays are divided into acts, but poems are composed of stanzas. =Don't.= Contraction of _do not_. The contraction of _does not_ is _doesn't_. =Due to.= Incorrectly used for _through_, _because of_, or _owing to_, in adverbial phrases: "He lost the first game, due to carelessness." In correct use related as predicate or as modifier to a particular noun: "This invention is due to Edison;" "losses due to preventable fires." =Folk.= A collective noun, equivalent to _people_. Use the singular form only. =Effect.= As noun, means _result_; as verb, means _to bring about_, _accomplish_ (not to be confused with _affect_, which means "to influence"). As noun, often loosely used in perfunctory writing about fashions, music, painting, and other arts: "an Oriental effect;" "effects in pale green;" "very delicate effects;" "broad effects;" "subtle effects;" "a charming effect was produced by." The writer who has a definite meaning to express will not take refuge in such vagueness. =Etc.= Equivalent to _and the rest_, _and so forth_, and hence not to be used if one of these would be insufficient, that is, if the reader would be left in doubt as to any important particulars. Least open to objection when it represents the last terms of a list already given in full, or immaterial words at the end of a quotation. At the end of a list introduced by _such as_, _for example_, or any similar expression, _etc._ is incorrect. =Fact.= Use this word only of matters of a kind capable of direct verification, not of matters of judgment. That a particular event happened on a given date, that lead melts at a certain temperature, are facts. But such conclusions as that Napoleon was the greatest of modern generals, or that the climate of California is delightful, however incontestable they may be, are not properly facts. On the formula _the fact that_, see under Rule 13. =Factor.= A hackneyed word; the expressions of which it forms part can usually be replaced by something more direct and idiomatic. His superior training was the great factor in his winning the match. He won the match by being better trained. Heavy artillery has become an increasingly important factor in deciding battles. Heavy artillery has played a constantly larger part in deciding battles. =Feature.= Another hackneyed word; like _factor_ it usually adds nothing to the sentence in which it occurs. A feature of the entertainment especially worthy of mention was the singing of Miss A. (Better use the same number of words to tell what Miss A. sang, or if the programme has already been given, to tell how she sang.) As a verb, in the advertising sense of _offer as a special attraction_, to be avoided. =Fix.= Colloquial in America for _arrange_, _prepare_, _mend_. In writing restrict it to its literary senses, _fasten_, _make firm or immovable_, etc. =Get.= The colloquial _have got_ for _have_ should not be used in writing. The preferable form of the participle is _got_. =He is a man who.= A common type of redundant expression; see Rule 13. He is a man who is very ambitious. He is very ambitious. Spain is a country which I have always wanted to visit. I have always wanted to visit Spain. =Help.= See under =But=. =However.= In the meaning _nevertheless_, not to come first in its sentence or clause. The roads were almost impassable. However, we at last succeeded in reaching camp. The roads were almost impassable. At last, however, we succeeded in reaching camp. When _however_ comes first, it means _in whatever way_ or _to whatever extent_. However you advise him, he will probably do as he thinks best. However discouraging the prospect, he never lost heart. =Interesting.= Avoid this word as a perfunctory means of introduction. Instead of announcing that what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so. An interesting story is told of (Tell the story without preamble.) In connection with the anticipated visit of Mr. B. to America, it is interesting to recall that he Mr. B., who it is expected will soon visit America =Kind of.= Not to be used as a substitute for _rather_ (before adjectives and verbs), or except in familiar style, for _something like_ (before nouns). Restrict it to its literal sense: "Amber is a kind of fossil resin;" "I dislike that kind of notoriety." The same holds true of _sort of_. =Less.= Should not be misused for _fewer_. He had less men than in the previous campaign He had fewer men than in the previous campaign _Less_ refers to quantity, _fewer_ to number. "His troubles are less than mine" means "His troubles are not so great as mine." "His troubles are fewer than mine" means "His troubles are not so numerous as mine." It is, however, correct to say, "The signers of the petition were less than a hundred," where the round number _a hundred_ is something like a collective noun, and _less_ is thought of as meaning a less quantity or amount. =Like.= Not to be misused for _as_. _Like_ governs nouns and pronouns; before phrases and clauses the equivalent word is _as_. We spent the evening like in the old days. We spent the evening as in the old days. He thought like I did. He thought as I did (like me). =Line, along these lines.= _Line_ in the sense of _course of procedure_, _conduct_, _thought_, is allowable, but has been so much overworked, particularly in the phrase _along these lines_, that a writer who aims at freshness or originality had better discard it entirely. Mr. B. also spoke along the same lines. Mr. B. also spoke, to the same effect. He is studying along the line of French literature. He is studying French literature. =Literal, literally.= Often incorrectly used in support of exaggeration or violent metaphor. A literal flood of abuse. A flood of abuse. Literally dead with fatigue Almost dead with fatigue (dead tired) =Lose out.= Meant to be more emphatic than _lose_, but actually less so, because of its commonness. The same holds true of _try out_, _win out_, _sign up_, _register up_. With a number of verbs, _out_ and _up_ form idiomatic combinations: _find out_, _run out_, _turn out_, _cheer up_, _dry up_, _make up_, and others, each distinguishable in meaning from the simple verb. _Lose out_ is not. =Most.= Not to be used for _almost_. Most everybody Almost everybody Most all the time Almost all the time =Nature.= Often simply redundant, used like _character_. Acts of a hostile nature Hostile acts Often vaguely used in such expressions as a "lover of nature;" "poems about nature." Unless more specific statements follow, the reader cannot tell whether the poems have to do with natural scenery, rural life, the sunset, the untracked wilderness, or the habits of squirrels. =Near by.= Adverbial phrase, not yet fully accepted as good English, though the analogy of _close by_ and _hard by_ seems to justify it. _Near_, or _near at hand_, is as good, if not better. Not to be used as an adjective; use _neighboring_. =Oftentimes, ofttimes.= Archaic forms, no longer in good use. The modern word is _often_. =One hundred and one.= Retain the _and_ in this and similar expressions, in accordance with the unvarying usage of English prose from Old English times. =One of the most.= Avoid beginning essays or paragraphs with this formula, as, "One of the most interesting developments of modern science is, etc.;" "Switzerland is one of the most interesting countries of Europe." There is nothing wrong in this; it is simply threadbare and forcible-feeble. A common blunder is to use a singular verb in a relative clause following this or a similar expression, when the relative is the subject. One of the ablest men that has attacked this problem. One of the ablest men that have attacked this problem. =Participle for verbal noun.= Do you mind me asking a question? Do you mind my asking a question? There was little prospect of the Senate accepting even this compromise. There was little prospect of the Senate's accepting even this compromise. In the left-hand column, _asking_ and _accepting_ are present participles; in the right-hand column, they are verbal nouns (gerunds). The construction shown in the left-hand column is occasionally found, and has its defenders. Yet it is easy to see that the second sentence has to do not with a prospect of the Senate, but with a prospect of accepting. In this example, at least, the construction is plainly illogical. As the authors of _The King's English_ point out, there are sentences apparently, but not really, of this type, in which the possessive is not called for. I cannot imagine Lincoln refusing his assent to this measure. In this sentence, what the writer cannot imagine is Lincoln himself, in the act of refusing his assent. Yet the meaning would be virtually the same, except for a slight loss of vividness, if he had written, I cannot imagine Lincoln's refusing his assent to this measure. By using the possessive, the writer will always be on the safe side. In the examples above, the subject of the action is a single, unmodified term, immediately preceding the verbal noun, and the construction is as good as any that could be used. But in any sentence in which it is a mere clumsy substitute for something simpler, or in which the use of the possessive is awkward or impossible, should of course be recast. In the event of a reconsideration of the whole matter's becoming necessary If it should become necessary to reconsider the whole matter There was great dissatisfaction with the decision of the arbitrators being favorable to the company. There was great dissatisfaction that the arbitrators should have decided in favor of the company. =People.= _The people_ is a political term, not to be confused with _the public_. From the people comes political support or opposition; from the public comes artistic appreciation or commercial patronage. =Phase.= Means a stage of transition or development: "the phases of the moon;" "the last phase." Not to be used for _aspect_ or _topic_. Another phase of the subject Another point (another question) =Possess.= Not to be used as a mere substitute for _have_ or _own_. He possessed great courage. He had great courage (was very brave). He was the fortunate possessor of He owned =Prove.= The past participle is _proved_. =Respective, respectively.= These words may usually be omitted with advantage. Works of fiction are listed under the names of their respective authors. Works of fiction are listed under the names of their authors. The one mile and two mile runs were won by Jones and Cummings respectively. The one mile and two mile runs were won by Jones and by Cummings. In some kinds of formal writing, as geometrical proofs, it may be necessary to use _respectively_, but it should not appear in writing on ordinary subjects. =Shall, Will.= The future tense requires _shall_ for the first person, _will_ for the second and third. The formula to express the speaker's belief regarding his future action or state is _I shall_; _I will_ expresses his determination or his consent. =Should.= See under =Would=. =So.= Avoid, in writing, the use of _so_ as an intensifier: "so good;" "so warm;" "so delightful." On the use of _so_ to introduce clauses, see Rule 4. =Sort of.= See under =Kind of=. =Split Infinitive.= There is precedent from the fourteenth century downward for interposing an adverb between _to_ and the infinitive which it governs, but the construction is in disfavor and is avoided by nearly all careful writers. To diligently inquire To inquire diligently =State.= Not to be used as a mere substitute for _say_, _remark_. Restrict it to the sense of _express fully or clearly_, as, "He refused to state his objections." =Student Body.= A needless and awkward expression meaning no more than the simple word _students_. A member of the student body A student Popular with the student body Liked by the students The student body passed resolutions. The students passed resolutions. =System.= Frequently used without need. Dayton has adopted the commission system of government. Dayton has adopted government by commission. The dormitory system Dormitories =Thanking You in Advance.= This sounds as if the writer meant, "It will not be worth my while to write to you again." In making your request, write, "Will you please," or "I shall be obliged," and if anything further seems necessary write a letter of acknowledgment later. =They.= A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as _each_, _each one_, _everybody_, _every one_, _many a man_, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent _anybody_, _any one_, _somebody_, _some one_, the intention being either to avoid the awkward "he or she," or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, "A friend of mine told me that they, etc." Use _he_ with all the above words, unless the antecedent is or must be feminine. =Very.= Use this word sparingly. Where emphasis is necessary, use words strong in themselves. =Viewpoint.= Write _point of view_, but do not misuse this, as many do, for _view_ or _opinion_. =While.= Avoid the indiscriminate use of this word for _and_, _but_, and _although_. Many writers use it frequently as a substitute for _and_ or _but_, either from a mere desire to vary the connective, or from uncertainty which of the two connectives is the more appropriate. In this use it is best replaced by a semicolon. The office and salesrooms are on the ground floor, while the rest of the building is devoted to manufacturing. The office and salesrooms are on the ground floor; the rest of the building is devoted to manufacturing. Its use as a virtual equivalent of _although_ is allowable in sentences where this leads to no ambiguity or absurdity. While I admire his energy, I wish it were employed in a better cause. This is entirely correct, as shown by the paraphrase, I admire his energy; at the same time I wish it were employed in a better cause. Compare: While the temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees in the daytime, the nights are often chilly. Although the temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees in the daytime, the nights are often chilly. The paraphrase, The temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees in the daytime; at the same time the nights are often chilly, shows why the use of _while_ is incorrect. In general, the writer will do well to use _while_ only with strict literalness, in the sense of _during the time that_. =Whom.= Often incorrectly used for _who_ before _he said_ or similar expressions, when it is really the subject of a following verb. His brother, whom he said would send him the money His brother, who he said would send him the money The man whom he thought was his friend The man who (that) he thought was his friend (whom he thought his friend) =Worth while.= Overworked as a term of vague approval and (with _not_) of disapproval. Strictly applicable only to actions: "Is it worth while to telegraph?" His books are not worth while. His books are not worth reading (are not worth one's while to read; do not repay reading; are worthless). The use of _worth while_ before a noun ("a worth while story") is indefensible. =Would.= A conditional statement in the first person requires _should_, not _would_. I should not have succeeded without his help. The equivalent of _shall_ in indirect quotation after a verb in the past tense is _should_, not _would_. He predicted that before long we should have a great surprise. To express habitual or repeated action, the past tense, without _would_, is usually sufficient, and from its brevity, more emphatic. Once a year he would visit the old mansion. Once a year he visited the old mansion. VI. SPELLING The spelling of English words is not fixed and invariable, nor does it depend on any other authority than general agreement. At the present day there is practically unanimous agreement as to the spelling of most words. In the list below, for example, _rime_ for _rhyme_ is the only allowable variation; all the other forms are co-extensive with the English language. At any given moment, however, a relatively small number of words may be spelled in more than one way. Gradually, as a rule, one of these forms comes to be generally preferred, and the less customary form comes to look obsolete and is discarded. From time to time new forms, mostly simplifications, are introduced by innovators, and either win their place or die of neglect. The practical objection to unaccepted and over-simplified spellings is the disfavor with which they are received by the reader. They distract his attention and exhaust his patience. He reads the form _though_ automatically, without thought of its needless complexity; he reads the abbreviation _tho_ and mentally supplies the missing letters, at the cost of a fraction of his attention. The writer has defeated his own purpose. WORDS OFTEN MISSPELLED accidentally advice affect believe benefit challenge coarse course criticize deceive definite describe despise develop disappoint dissipate duel ecstasy effect embarrass existence fascinate fiery formerly humorous hypocrisy immediately impostor incident incidentally latter led lose marriage mischief murmur necessary occurred opportunity parallel Philip playwright preceding prejudice principal principle privilege pursue repetition rhyme rhythm ridiculous sacrilegious seize separate shepherd siege similar simile too tragedy tries undoubtedly until villain Note that a single consonant (other than _v_) preceded by a stressed short vowel is doubled before _-ed_ and _-ing_: _planned_, _letting_, _beginning_. (_Coming_ is an exception.) Write _to-day_, _to-night_, _to-morrow_ (but not _together_) with a hyphen. Write _any one_, _every one_, _some one_, _some time_ (except in the sense of _formerly_) as two words. VII. EXERCISES ON CHAPTERS II AND III I. Punctuate: 1. In 1788 the King's advisers warned him that the nation was facing bankruptcy therefore he summoned a body called the States-General believing that it would authorize him to levy new taxes. The people of France however were suffering from burdensome taxation oppressive social injustice and acute scarcity of food and their representatives refused to consider projects of taxation until social and economic reforms should be granted. The King who did not realize the gravity of the situation tried to overawe them collecting soldiers in and about Versailles where the sessions were being held. The people of Paris seeing the danger organized militia companies to defend their representatives. In order to supply themselves with arms they attacked the Invalides and the Bastille which contained the principal supplies of arms and munitions in Paris. 2. On his first continental tour begun in 1809 Byron visited Portugal Spain Albania Greece and Turkey. Of this tour he composed a poetical journal Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in which he ascribed his experiences and reflections not to himself but to a fictitious character Childe Harold described as a melancholy young nobleman prematurely familiar with evil sated with pleasures and embittered against humanity. The substantial merits of the work however lay not in this shadowy and somewhat theatrical figure but in Byron's spirited descriptions of wild or picturesque scenes and in his eloquent championing of Spain and Greece against their oppressors. On his return to England in 1811 he was persuaded rather against his own judgment into allowing the work to be published. Its success was almost unprecedented in his own words he awoke and found himself famous. II. Explain the difference in meaning: 3. 'God save thee, ancyent Marinere! 'From the fiends that plague thee thus-- _Lyrical Ballads_, 1798. 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-- _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800. III. Explain and correct the errors in punctuation: 4. This course is intended for Freshmen, who in the opinion of the Department are not qualified for military drill. 5. A restaurant, not a cafeteria where good meals are served at popular prices.--_Advt._ 6. The poets of _The Nation_, for all their intensity of patriotic feeling, followed the English rather than the Celtic tradition, their work has a political rather than a literary value and bears little upon the development of modern Irish verse. 7. We were in one of the strangest places imaginable. A long and narrow passage overhung on either side by a stupendous barrier of black and threatening rocks. 8. Only a few years ago after a snow storm in the passes not far north of Jerusalem no less than twenty-six Russian pilgrims perished amidst the snow. One cannot help thinking largely because they made little attempt to save themselves. IV. Point out and correct the faults in the following sentences: 9. During childhood his mother had died. 10. Any language study is good mind training while acquiring vocabulary. 11. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's lease. 12. Prepared to encounter a woman of disordered mind, the appearance presented by Mrs. Taylor at his entrance greatly astonished him. 13. Pale and swooning, with two broken legs, they carried him into the house. 14. Count Cassini, the Russian plenipotentiary, had several long and intimate conversations during the tedious weeks of the conference with his British colleague, Sir Arthur Nicholson. 15. But though they had been victorious in the land engagements, they were so little decisive as to lead to no important results. 16. Knowing nothing of the rules of the college or of its customs, it was with the greatest difficulty that the Dean could make me comprehend wherein my wrong-doing lay. 17. Fire, therefore, was the first object of my search. Happily, some embers were found upon the hearth, together with potato-stalks and dry chips. Of these, with much difficulty, I kindled a fire, by which some warmth was imparted to our shivering limbs. 18. In this connection a great deal of historic fact is introduced into the novel about the past history of the cathedral and of Spain. 19. Over the whole scene hung the haze of twilight that is so peaceful. 20. Compared with Italy, living is more expensive. 21. It is a fundamental principle of law to believe a man innocent until he is proved guilty, and once proved guilty, to remain so until proved to the contrary. 22. Not only had the writer entrée to the titled families of Italy in whose villas she was hospitably entertained, but by royalty also. 23. It is not a strange sight to catch a glimpse of deer along the shore. 24. Earnings from other sources are of such a favorable character as to enable a splendid showing to be made by the company. 25. But while earnings have mounted amazingly, the status of affairs is such as to make it impossible to predict the course events may take, with any degree of accuracy. [ Transcriber's Note: The following is a list of corrections made to the original. The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript. Compare the sentence. "The export of gold was prohibited," in which the Compare the sentence, "The export of gold was prohibited," in which the Stevenson quoted under Rule 10. But apart from this, he should follow the Stevenson quoted under Rule 9. But apart from this, he should follow the "ordered") is _bade_. "ordered," is _bade_. =Effect.= As noun, means _result_; as verb, means t_o bring about_, =Effect.= As noun, means _result_; as verb, means _to bring about_, incontestable they ma ybe, are not properly facts. incontestable they may be, are not properly facts. Acts of a hostile nature. Acts of a hostile nature Dayton has adopted the commission system of government Dayton has adopted the commission system of government. embarass embarrass ] 
30294	----	[Transcriber's Notes: 1. Italic text is rendered with underscores _like this_, and bold with equal signs =like this=. 2. Misprints and punctuation errors were corrected. A list of corrections can be found at the end of the text.] THE CENTURY HANDBOOK OF WRITING BY GARLAND GREEVER _AND_ EASLEY S. JONES NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1927 Copyright, 1918, by THE CENTURY CO. PRINTED IN U.S.A. PREFACE This handbook treats essential matters of grammar, diction, spelling, mechanics; and develops with thoroughness the principles of sentence structure. Larger units of composition it leaves to the texts in formal rhetoric. The book is built on a decimal plan, the material being simplified and reduced to one hundred articles. Headings of these articles are summarized on two opposite pages by a chart. Here the student can see at a glance the resources of the volume, and the instructor can find immediately the number he wishes to write in the margin of a theme. The chart and the decimal scheme together make the rules accessible for instant reference. By a device equally efficient, the book throws upon the student the responsibility of teaching himself. Each article begins with a concise rule, which is illustrated by examples; then follows a short "parallel exercise" which the instructor may assign by adding an _x_ to the number he writes in the margin of a theme. While correcting this exercise, the student will give attention to the rule, and will acquire theory and practice at the same time. Moreover, every group of ten articles is followed by mixed exercises; these may be used for review, or imposed in the margin of a theme as a penalty for flagrant or repeated error. Thus friendly counsel is backed by discipline, and the instructor has the means of compelling the student to make rapid progress toward good English. Although a handbook of this nature is in some ways arbitrary, the arbitrariness is always in the interest of simplicity. The book does have simplicity, permits instant reference, and provides an adequate drill which may be assigned at the stroke of a pen. TABLE OF CONTENTS SENTENCE STRUCTURE COMPLETENESS OF THOUGHT 1. Fragments wrongly used as sentences 2. Incomplete constructions 3. Necessary words omitted 4. Comparisons not logically completed 5. Cause and reason 6. _Is when_ and _is where_ clauses 7. Undeveloped thought 8. Transitions 9. EXERCISE A. Incomplete sentences B. Incomplete constructions C. Incomplete logic D. Undeveloped thought and transitions UNITY OF THOUGHT 10. Unrelated ideas in one sentence 11. Excessive detail 12. Stringy sentences to be broken up 13. Choppy sentences to be combined 14. Excessive coördination 15. Faulty subordination of the main thought 16. Subordination thwarted by _and_ 17. The _and which_ construction 18. The comma splice 19. EXERCISE A. The comma splice B. One thought in a sentence C. Excessive coördination D. Upside-down subordination CLEARNESS OF THOUGHT REFERENCE 20. Divided reference 21. Weak reference 22. Broad reference 23. Dangling participle or gerund COHERENCE 24. General incoherence 25. Logical sequence 26. Squinting modifier 27. Misplaced word 28. Split construction 29. EXERCISE A. Reference of pronouns B. Dangling modifiers C. Coherence PARALLEL STRUCTURE 30. Parallel structure for parallel thoughts 31. Correlatives CONSISTENCY 32. Shift in subject or voice 33. Shift in number, person, or tense 34. Mixed constructions 35. Mixed imagery USE OF CONNECTIVES 36. The exact connective 37. Repetition of connective with gain in clearness 38. Repetition of connective with loss in clearness 39. EXERCISE A. Parallel structure B. Shift in subject or voice C. Shift in number, person, or tense D. The exact connective E. Repetition of connectives EMPHASIS 40. Emphasis by position 41. Emphasis by separation 42. Emphasis by subordination 43. The periodic sentence 44. Order of climax 45. The balanced sentence 46. Weak effect of the passive voice 47. Repetition effective: a Words; b Structure 48. Repetition offensive: a Words; b Structure 49. EXERCISE A. Lack of emphasis in general B. Loose structure C. Repetition GRAMMAR 50. Case: a Nominative, especially after _than_ or _as_; b Nominative _who_ and _whoever_; c Predicate nominative; d Objective; e Objective with infinitive; f Possessive; g Possessive with gerund; h Possession by inanimate objects; i Agreement of pronouns 51. Number: a _Each_, _every one_, etc.; b _Those kind_, etc.; c Collective nouns; d _Don't_ 52. Agreement--not to be thwarted by: a Intervening nouns; b _Together with_ phrases; c _Or_ or _nor_ after subject; d _And_ in the subject; e A predicate noun; f An introductory _there_ 53. _Shall_ and _will_ 54. Principal parts. List 55. Tense, mode, auxiliaries: a Tense in dependent clauses or infinitives; b The past perfect; c Present tense for a general statement; d Mode; e Auxiliaries 56. Adjective and adverb: a Adjective misused for adverb; b Ambiguous cases; c After verbs pertaining to the senses 57. A word in a double capacity 58. List of the terms of grammar 59. EXERCISE A. Case of pronouns B. Agreement C. _Shall_ and _will_ D. _Lie, lay; sit, set; rise, raise_ E. Principal parts of verbs F. General DICTION 60. Wordiness 61. Triteness 62. The exact word 63. Concreteness 64. Sound 65. Subtle violations of good use: a Faulty idiom; b Colloquialism 66. Gross violations of good use: a Barbarisms; b Improprieties; c Slang 67. Words often confused in meaning. List 68. Glossary of faulty diction 69. EXERCISE A. Wordiness B. The exact word C. Words sometimes confused in meaning D. Colloquialisms, slang, faulty idioms SPELLING 70. Recording errors 71. Pronouncing accurately 72. Logical kinship in words 73. Superficial resemblances. List 74. Words in _ei_ and _ie_ 75. Doubling a final consonant 76. Dropping final _e_ 77. Plurals: a Plurals in _s_ or _es_; b Nouns ending in _y_; c Compound nouns; d Letters, figures, and signs; e Old plurals; f Foreign plurals 78. Compounds: a Compound adjectives; b Compound nouns; c Numbers; d Words written solid; e General principle 79. SPELLING LIST (500 words, 200 in bold-face type) MISCELLANEOUS 80. Manuscript: a Titles; b Spacing; c Handwriting 81. Capitals: a To begin a sentence or a quotation; b Proper names; c Proper adjectives; d In titles of books or themes; e Miscellaneous uses 82. Italics: a Titles of books; b Foreign words; c Names of ships; d Words taken out of context; e For emphasis 83. Abbreviations: a In ordinary writing; b In business writing 84. Numbers: a Dates and street numbers; b Long figures; Sums of money, etc. 85. Syllabication: a Position of hyphen; b Division between syllables; c Monosyllabic words not divided; d One consonant between syllables; e Two consonants between syllables; f Prefixes and suffixes; g Short words; h Misleading division 86. Outlines: a Topic Outline; b Sentence Outline; c Paragraph Outline; d Indention; e Parallel form; f Faulty coördination; g Too detailed subordination 87. Letters: a Heading; b Inside address and greeting; c Body, Language; d Close; e Outside address; f Miscellaneous directions; g Model business letter; h Formal notes 88. Paragraphs: a Indention; b Length; c Dialogue 89. EXERCISE Capitals, numbers, abbreviations, etc. PUNCTUATION 90. The Period: a After sentences; b But not after fragments of sentences; c After abbreviations 91. The Comma: a Between clauses joined by _but_, _for_, _and_; b But NOT to splice clauses not joined by a conjunction; c After a subordinate clause preceding a main clause; d To set off non-restrictive clauses and phrases; e To set off parenthetical elements; f Between adjectives; g Between words in a series; h Before a quotation; i To compel a pause for clearness; j Superfluous uses 92. The Semicolon: a Between coördinate clauses not joined by a conjunction; b Between long coördinate clauses; c Before a formal conjunctive adverb; d But not before a quotation 93. The Colon: a To introduce a formal series or quotation; b Before concrete illustrations of a previous general statement 94. The Dash: a To enclose a parenthetical statement; b To mark a breaking-off in thought; c Before a summarizing statement; d But not to be used in place of a period; e Not to be confused with the hyphen 95. Parenthesis Marks: a Uses; b With other marks; c Confirmatory symbols; d Not used to cancel words; e Brackets 96. Quotation Marks: a With quotations; b With paragraphs; c In dialogue; d With slang, etc.; e With words set apart; f Quotation within a quotation; g Together with other marks; h Quotation interrupted by _he said_; i Omission from a quotation; j Unnecessary in the title of a theme, or as a label for humor or irony 97. The Apostrophe: a In contractions; b To form the possessive; c To form the possessive of nouns ending in _s_; d Not used with personal possessive pronouns; e To form the plural of certain signs and letters 98. The Question Mark: a After a direct question; b Not followed by a comma within a sentence; c In parentheses to express uncertainty; d Not used to label irony; e The Exclamation Point 99. EXERCISE 100. GENERAL EXERCISE TO THE STUDENT When a number is written in the margin of your theme, you are to turn to the article which corresponds to the number. Read the rule (printed in bold-face type), and study the examples. When an _r_ follows the number on your theme, you are, in addition, to copy the rule. When an _x_ follows the number, you are, besides acquainting yourself with the rule, to write the exercise of five sentences, to correct your own faulty sentence, and to hand in the six on theme paper. If the number ends in 9 (9, 19, 29, etc.), you will find, not a rule, but a long exercise which you are to write and hand in on theme paper. In the absence of special instructions from your teacher, you are invariably to proceed as this paragraph requires. Try to grasp the principle which underlies the rule. In many places in this book the reason for the existence of the rule is clearly stated. Thus under 20, the reason for the rule on parallel structure is explained in a prologue. In other instances, as in the rule on divided reference (20), the reason becomes clear the moment you read the examples. In certain other instances the rule may appear arbitrary and without a basis in reason. But there is a basis in reason, as you will observe in the following illustration. Suppose you write, "He is twenty one years old." The instructor asks you to put a hyphen in _twenty-one_, and refers you to 78. You cannot see why a hyphen is necessary, since the meaning is clear without it. But tomorrow you may write. "I will send you twenty five dollar bills." The reader cannot tell whether you mean twenty five-dollar bills or twenty-five dollar bills. In the first sentence the use of the hyphen in _twenty-one_ did not make much difference. In the second sentence the hyphen makes seventy-five dollars' worth of difference. Thus the instructor, in asking you to write, "He is twenty-one years old," is helping you to form a habit that will save you from serious error in other sentences. Whenever you cannot understand the reason for a rule, ask yourself whether the usage of many clear-thinking men for long years past may not be protecting you from difficulties which you do not foresee. Instructors and writers of text books (impressive as is the evidence to the contrary) are human, and do not invent rules to puzzle you. They do not, in fact, invent rules at all, but only make convenient applications of principles which generations of writers have found to be wisest and best. THE CENTURY HANDBOOK OF WRITING SENTENCE STRUCTURE COMPLETENESS OF THOUGHT The first thing to make certain is that the thought of a sentence is complete. A fragment which has no meaning when read alone, or a sentence from which is omitted a necessary word, phrase, or idea, violates an elementary principle of writing. =Fragments Wrongly Used as Sentences= =1. Do not write a subordinate part of a sentence as if it were a complete sentence.= Wrong: He stopped short. Hearing some one approach. Right: He stopped short, hearing some one approach. [Or] Hearing some one approach, he stopped short. Wrong: The winters are cold. Although the summers are pleasant. Right: Although the summers are pleasant, the winters are cold. Wrong: The hunter tried to move the stone. Which he found very heavy. Right: The hunter tried to move the stone, which he found very heavy. [Or] The hunter tried to move the stone. He found it very heavy. Note.--A sentence must in itself express a complete thought. Phrases or subordinate clauses, if used alone, carry only an incomplete meaning. They must therefore be attached to a sentence, or restated in independent form. Elliptical expressions used in conversation may be regarded as exceptions: Where? At what time? Ten o'clock. By no means. Certainly. Go. Exercise: 1. My next experience was in a grain elevator. Where I worked for two summers. 2. The parts of a fountain pen are: first, the point. This is gold. Second, the body. 3. The form is set rigidly. So that it will not be displaced when the concrete is thrown in. 4. There are several reasons to account for the swarming of bees. One of these having already been mentioned. 5. Since June the company has increased its trade three per cent. Since August, five per cent. =Incomplete Constructions= =2. Do not leave uncompleted a construction which you have begun.= Wrong: You remember that in his speech in which he said he would oppose the bill. Right: You remember that in his speech he said he would oppose the bill. [Or] You remember the speech in which he said he would oppose the bill. Wrong: He was a young man who, coming from the country, with ignorance of city ways, but with plenty of determination to succeed. Right: He was a young man who, coming from the country, was ignorant of city ways, but had plenty of determination to succeed. Wrong: From the window of the train I perceived one of those unsightly structures. Right: From the window of the train I perceived one of those unsightly structures which are always to be seen near a station. Exercise: 1. As far as his having been deceived, there is a difference of opinion on that matter. 2. The fact that he was always in trouble, his parents wondered whether he should remain in school or not. 3. People who go back to the scenes of their childhood everything looks strangely small. 4. It was the custom that whenever a political party came into office, for the incoming men to discharge all employees of the opposite party. 5. Although the average man, if asked whether he could shoot a rabbit, would answer in the affirmative, even though he had never hunted rabbits, would find himself badly mistaken. =Necessary Words Omitted= =3. Do not omit a word or a phrase which is necessary to an immediate understanding of a sentence.= Ambiguous: I consulted the secretary and president. [Did the speaker consult one man or two?] Right: I consulted the secretary and the president. [Or] I consulted the man who was president and secretary. Ambiguous: Water passes through the cement as well as the bricks. Right: Water passes through the cement as well as through the bricks. Wrong: I have had experience in every phase of the automobile. Right: I have had experience in every phase of automobile driving and repairing. Wrong: About him were men whom he could not tell whether they were friends or foes. Right: About him were men regarding whom he could not tell whether they were friends or foes. [Or, better] About him were men who might have been either friends or foes. Exercise: 1. When still a small boy, my family moved to Centerville. 2. Constantly in conversation with some one broadens our ideas and our vocabulary. 3. It was a trick which opposing teams were sure to be baffled. 4. They departed for the battle front with the knowledge they might never return. 5. At the banquet were all classes of people; I met a banker and plumber. =Comparisons= =4. Comparisons must be completed logically.= Wrong: His speed was equal to a racehorse. Wrong: Of course my opinion is worth less than a lawyer. Wrong: The shells which are used in quail hunting are different than in rabbit hunting. Compare a thing with another thing, an abstraction with another abstraction. Do not carelessly compare a thing with a part or quality of another thing. Always ask yourself: What is compared with what? Right: His speed was equal to that of a racehorse. Right: Of course my opinion is worth less than a lawyer's. Right: The shells used in quail hunting are different from those used in rabbit hunting. Self-contradictory: Chicago is larger than any city in Illinois. Right: Chicago is larger than any other city in Illinois. Impossible: Chicago is the largest of any other city in Illinois. Right: Chicago is the largest of all the cities in Illinois. [Or] Chicago is the largest city in Illinois. Note.--After a comparative, the subject of the comparison should be excluded from the class with which it is compared; after a superlative, the subject of the comparison should be included within the class. Wrong: {taller of all the girls. {tallest of any girl. Right: {taller than any other girl [comparative]. {tallest of all the girls [superlative]. Exercise: 1. The climate of America helps her athletes to become superior to other countries. 2. This tobacco is the best of any other on the market. 3. You men are paid three dollars more than any other factory in the city. 4. I thought I was best fitted for an engineering course than any other. 5. Care should be taken not to turn in more cattle than the grass in the pasture. =Cause and Reason= =5. A simple statement of fact may be completed by a _because_ clause.= Right: I am late because I was sick. =But a statement containing _the reason is_ must be completed by a _that_ clause.= Wrong: The reason I am late is because I was sick. [The "reason" is not a "because"; the "reason" is the fact of sickness.] Right: The reason I am late is that I was sick. =_Because_, the conjunction, may introduce an adverbial clause only.= Wrong: Because a man wears old clothes is no proof that he is poor. [A _because_ clause cannot be the subject of _is_.] Right: The fact that a man wears old clothes is no proof that he is poor. [Or] The wearing of old clothes is not proof that a man is poor. Note.--_Because of_, _owing to_, _on account of_, introduce adverbial phrases only. _Due to_ and _caused by_ introduce adjectival phrases only. Wrong: He failed, due to weak eyes. [Due is an adjective; it cannot modify a verb.] Right: His failure was {due to } weak eyes {caused by} {because of } Right: He failed {owing to } weak eyes. {on account of} Exercise: 1. The reason why I would not buy a Ford car is because it is too light. 2. My second reason for coming here is because of social advantages. 3. Because John is rich does not make him happier than I. 4. Because I like farming is the reason I chose it. 5. The only reason why vegetation does not grow here is because of the lack of water. =_is when_ or _is where_ Clauses= =6. Do not use a _when_ or _where_ clause as a predicate noun. Do not define a word by saying it is a "when" or a "where". Define a noun by another noun, a verb by another verb, etc.= Wrong: The great event is when the train arrives. Right: The great event is the arrival of the train. Wrong: Immigration is where foreigners come into a country. Right: Immigration is the entering of foreigners into a country. Wrong: A simile is when one object is compared with another. Right: A simile is a figure of speech in which one object is compared with another. Note.--A definition of a term is a statement which (1) names the class to which the term belongs, and (2) distinguishes it from other members of the class. Example. A quadrilateral is a plane figure having four sides and four angles. To test a definition ask whether it separates the term defined from all other things. If the definition does not do this, it is incomplete. Define _California_ (so as to exclude other states), _window_ (so as to exclude _door_), _star_ (exclude _moon_), _night_, _rain_, _circle_, _Bible_, _metal_, _mile_, _rectangle_. Exercise: 1. The pistol shot is when the race begins. 2. A snob is when a man treats others as inferior socially. 3. The wireless telegraph is where messages are sent a long distance through the air. 4. The definition of usury is where one charges interest higher than the legal rate. 5. Biology is when one studies plant and animal life. =Undeveloped Thought= =7. Do not halfway express an idea. If the idea is important, develop it. If it is not important, omit it.= Incomplete: We were now quite sure that we had lost our way, and Jack said he had a business engagement that night. Better: We were now quite sure that we had lost our way, a fact which was all the more annoying as Jack said he had a business engagement that night. Puzzling: Since McAndrew had inherited money, his suitcase was plastered with labels. Right: Since McAndrew had inherited money, he had traveled extensively. His suitcase was plastered with the labels of foreign hotels. Careless: In looking for gasoline troubles, we forgot to see whether the tank was supplied. Right: In looking for the cause of the trouble, we forgot to see whether the tank was supplied with gasoline. Note.--In giving information about books, do not confuse the title with the contents or some part of the contents. Be accurate in referring to the time, scene, action, plot, or characters. Loose thinking: Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ occurs in Denmark [The scene is laid?]. Many passages are powerful, especially the grave-digging [Is grave-digging a passage?]. The character of Horatio is a noble fellow [conception], and the same is true of Ophelia [Ophelia a fellow?]. The drama takes place over several weeks. [The action covers a period of several weeks.] Exercise: 1. The victrola brings to the home the world's musical ability. 2. The user of Dietzgen instruments is not vexed by numerous troubles that accompany the inferior makes. 3. To the picnicker rainy weather is bad weather, while the farmer raises a big crop. 4. Some diseases can be checked by preventives, and in many cases can be of great use to an army. 5. This idea of breaking all records held for eating is naturally harmful to the digestion, and these important organs may thank their stars that Christmas does not come very often. =Transitions= The state of mind of a writer is not the state of mind of his reader. The writer knows his ideas, and has spent much time with them. The reader meets these ideas for the first time, and must gather them in at a glance. The relation between two ideas may be clear to the writer, and not at all clear to the reader. Therefore, =8. In passing from one thought to another, make the connection clear. If necessary, insert a word, a phrase, or even a sentence, to carry the reader safely across.= Space transition needed: We were surprised to see a house in the distance, but we went to the door and knocked. [This sentence does not give a reader the effect of distance.] Better: We were surprised to see a house in the distance. _But we hastened toward it with thoughts of a warm meal and a good lodging. We entered the yard_, and went up to the door, and knocked. Exterior-interior transition needed: We noticed that the house was built of cobblestones. There was a broad window from which we could look out upon the small stream that dashed down the rocky hillside. Better: We noticed that the house was built of cobblestones. _We went inside, and found that the living room was large and airy._ There was a broad window from which we could look out upon the small stream that dashed down the rocky hillside. Cause transition lacking: The Romans were great road-builders. They wished to maintain their empire. Better: The Romans were great road-builders, _because means of moving troops quickly were necessary_ to the maintenance of their empire. General-to-particular transition needed: Modern machinery often makes men its slaves. Last summer I worked for the Chandler Company. [This gap in thought occurs oftenest between the first two sentences of a paragraph or theme.] Better: Modern machinery often makes men its slaves. _This truth is well illustrated by my own experience._ Last summer I worked for the Chandler Company. Transition to be improved by changing order: A careless trainer may spoil a good colt. A good horse can never be made of a vicious colt. [Here the order of ideas is: "Trainer ... colt. Horse ... colt." Turn the last sentence end for end.] Better: A careless trainer may spoil a good colt. And a vicious colt can never be made a good horse. [Now the order of ideas is "Trainer ... colt. Colt ... horse."] Transition to be improved by removal of a disturbing element: Our class in physics last week visited a pumping station in which the Corliss type of steam engine is used. _The engines are manufactured by the Allis-Chalmers Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin._ This type of engine is used because it has several advantages. [The italicized sentence should be omitted here, and used later in the theme.] Note.--The divisions of thought within a paragraph may likewise be indicated by connectives: _however_, _on the other hand_, _equally important_, _another interesting problem is_, _for this reason_, _the remedy for this_, _so much for_, _it remains to mention_, _of course I admit_, _finally_. (For a longer list see 36.) Such phrases are also useful in linking one paragraph to another. When a student first learns the art, he is likely to use transition phrases in excess, and produce something like the following: "When I have to write a theme, I first think of my subject. As soon as I have my subject, I take out my paper. On the paper I then make a rough outline." This abuse of transition causes an overlapping of thought, like shingles laid three inches to the weather. An abrupt transition is better than wordiness. Exercise: 1. The shore looked far off. Then we reached it. 2. A light snow was falling last night. This is a good day for hunting rabbits. 3. A dollar is often a large sum. I sold newspapers when I was a boy. 4. Many English words still preserve their old meanings. There is the teller in the bank. 5. We had to walk half a mile across the pastures in the fresh morning air. Exercise indoors does not arouse much zest or enthusiasm. =9.= EXERCISE IN COMPLETENESS OF THOUGHT =A. Fragments Misused as Sentences= Rewrite the following statements in sentences each of which expresses a complete thought. 1. He gave me a flower. Which was wilted. 2. The gasoline flows through the supply tube to the carburetor. Where it should vaporize and enter the cylinders. 3. People of all ages were there. Old men, young women, and even children. 4. He told us that you had a good standing among business men. That you always met your bills promptly. 5. Excuse Everett Smith from school this morning. He having the measles. 6. The internal combustion engine may be either one of two types. The two cycle or the four cycle. 7. The young men and women acted like children. Who should have known better. 8. There was a cross cow in the pasture. Which had long horns. 9. Bacteria are microscopic organisms. Especially found where milk or some other substance decomposes. 10. We pass on down the street. The buildings rising two or three stories high on either side. 11. The Y. M. C. A. enables you to keep your religious interests alive. As well as to associate with clean young men. 12. She wasted her time on foolish clothes. While her mother took in washing. 13. He was dressed in a ridiculous fashion. Wearing, for instance, an orange necktie. 14. The point is similar to that of the ordinary steel pen, except that it is made of gold. Gold being used on account of its greater smoothness and durability. 15. Tire troubles have been made less formidable by the invention of a compact, efficient little vulcanizer. A factory for making which is now being built. =B. Incomplete Constructions= Improve the following statements. Supply missing words. Make sure that each construction and each sentence is complete. 1. When one year old, my mother died. 2. Yours received, and in reply would say your order has been filled. 3. While in there a man came in and bought a quarter's worth of soap. 4. War is largely dependent upon the engineers to design new machinery. 5. When you talk to a man look at him, not the floor or ceiling. 6. In writing a book, an author's first one is usually not very good. 7. Every summer while in high school, our family has gone to our cottage on Lake Michigan. 8. When a boy, Mary was my best friend. 9. There is, however, another reason a person should know how to swim. 10. I think more of her than anyone else. 11. Corrupt laws are often the means rich people obtain the earnings of others. 12. A hundred dollars invested in a warning signal, future accidents would be prevented. 13. Electric transmission is sometimes used on automobiles more of an experiment than anything else. 14. Was delighted to hear from you. Glad to hear you entered the wholesale business. Wish you success. 15. As a rule people eat too much. This point should be noticed, and not overwork the digestive organs. =C. Incomplete Logic= The following sentences are inadequate statements of cause, comparison, etc. Complete the thought. 1. His neck is as long as a giraffe. 2. His name was David Meek, from New Hampshire. 3. The Pacific Ocean is larger than any ocean. 4. Because he never worked led to his failure. 5. A monitor is where a heavily armored boat of light draft can go near the shore. 6. Democracy is when people, through representatives, govern themselves. 7. The story of _Huckleberry Finn_ is in reality Mark Twain himself. 8. Because a man has money is no reason why he should be lazy. 9. The character of Sydney Carton is the real hero of this novel. 10. A forester leads an interesting life is the reason I want to be one. 11. Tact is where a man anticipates the criticism of others, and acts with discretion. 12. The comfort of a modern house is much greater than the old-time house. 13. Free trade is when no revenue is collected on imports, beyond enough to run the government. 14. The cost of room, board, and tuition is low at this school, compared to the more fashionable schools. 15. The theme of this novel tells how a peasant, Jean Valjean, from a convict comes to be a respected citizen. =D. Undeveloped Thought and Transitions= Complete the thought of the following sentences, and secure a smooth transition between parts. 1. As you enter this room, to the left is an interesting painting of the Canterbury Pilgrims. 2. Poe delights in fantastic plots. A pirate's treasure chest was discovered in _The Gold Bug_. 3. I got up and ate a bite of breakfast. A few of my friends came over. We went to play golf. 4. All the loose material on the trail is carried off by the rush of the water. The last time I was on it was in early summer, and I found it in this rough condition. 5. I managed to find the softest board in the floor and went to sleep. Some of the boys found pleasure in arousing me with a shower of cold water. 6. Under guise of friendly escort the Indians accompanied the inhabitants of the fort a few miles. Only three escaped the massacre. 7. Many people say that in civil engineering it depends on the prosperity of the country; in hard times they do not build and in good times they do build. 8. Canada has more forests than minerals. Canada has made only a start in the lumber industry. The minerals are found, for the most part, in the mountain district near Lake Superior. 9. Thanksgiving day, as we are told, is a day on which our Puritan forefathers gathered round the roast turkey and gave thanks to God for his goodness. Last Thanksgiving I was at home. 10. The old method was to dig the holes by hand, and drop two or three kernels in each hole. Corn has become a staple crop. Machinery is used. The preparing of a field for corn has become a science. UNITY OF THOUGHT Unity means oneness. A sentence should contain one thought. It may contain two or more statements only when these are closely related parts of a larger thought or impression. A writer should make certain, first, that his thought has unity; and second, that this unity will be obvious to the reader. =Unrelated Ideas in One Sentence= =10. Do not combine ideas which have no obvious relation to each other. Place the ideas in separate sentences. Or, write the ideas as one sentence, making their relation obvious.= Wrong: The Spartans did not care for literature, and lived in the southern part of Greece. Wrong: The coffee business is not difficult to learn, and the most important work in preparing coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries. The simplest method of correction is to divide the sentence. Right: The Spartans lived in the southern part of Greece. They did not care for literature. Right: The coffee business is not difficult to learn. The most important work in preparing the coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries. Another method of correction is to subordinate one idea to the other, or to change the wording until the relation between the ideas is obvious. Right: The Spartans, who lived in the southern part of Greece, did not care for literature. Right: The coffee business is not difficult to learn, since the only important work in preparing the coffee for the market is the roasting of the green berries. Exercise: 1. Franklin is often regarded as the typical American, and wrote an interesting autobiography. 2. Coal miners wear little oil lamps in their caps, and they seldom receive very good wages. 3. My neighbor, Mr. Houghton, was always a very good friend of mine, and died last night. 4. I dropped the clock and injured the works, but the jeweler told me it would be cheaper for me to buy a new clock. 5. The next thing the camper should do is to make a bed, and the branches of the spruce are the best. =Excessive Detail= =11. Do not encumber the main idea of a sentence with superfluous details. Place some of the details in another sentence, or omit them.= Faulty: In the town in which I live there are several large churches, and about six o'clock one morning, in a violent storm, one of these churches was struck by lightning. Right: In my home town there are several large churches. One morning about six o'clock, in a violent storm, one of these churches was struck by lightning. Wrong: In 1836, in Baltimore, Poe married Virginia Clemm, his cousin, who was hardly more than a child, being then fourteen years old, while Poe himself was twenty-eight, and to her he wrote much of his best verse. Right: In 1836 Poe married Virginia Clemm. Poe was then twenty-eight, and Virginia was only fourteen. To this girl Poe wrote much of his best verse. Exercise: 1. The house with the red tile roof is the finest in the city, and is owned by Mr. Saunders, who made his money speculating in land. 2. Then the engine tilted and fell over on one side, and the boiler exploded and added to the frightful scene. 3. The deer whose antlers you see over the fireplace as you enter the room was shot by my Uncle Will, who is now in South America on a hunting expedition. 4. The seeds, which have previously been soaked in water over night, are now planted carefully, not too deep, in straight rows sixteen inches apart, the best time being in April, when the ground is soft and has been thoroughly spaded. 5. One day last week my employer, Mr. Conway, a jolly, peculiar man, raised my salary, first telling me I was about to be discharged, and laughing at me when I looked so surprised. =Stringy Sentences to be Broken up= =12. Avoid stringy compound sentences. The crude, rambling style which results from their use may be corrected by separating the material into shorter sentences, or by subordinating lesser ideas to the main thought.= Faulty: The second speaker had sat quietly waiting, and he was a man of a different type, and he began calmly, yet from the very first words he showed great earnestness. Right: The second speaker, who had sat quietly waiting, was a man of a different type. He began calmly, yet from his very first words he showed great earnestness. Faulty: There are many stops on the organ which control the tones of the different pipes and one has to learn how and when to use these and this takes time and practice. Right: On the organ are many stops which control the tones of the different pipes. To learn how and when to use these takes time and practice. Faulty: He published prose fiction, and this was then the accepted literary form, and the drama was neglected. Better: He published prose fiction, which was then the accepted literary form, the drama being neglected. [This sentence makes three statements in a diminishing series. The important idea is expressed in a main clause; a less important explanation is fitted into a relative clause; and a still less important comment takes a parenthetical phrase at the end.] Note.--One of the crying faults of the immature writer is that by excessive coördination he obscures the fine shades of meaning. When two clauses are joined, the meaning will very often be more exact if one is subordinated to the other. For a list of subordinating connectives, see 36. Exercise: 1. He went down town, and it began to rain, and so he decided to go to the city library. 2. There is an old saying which I have often heard and I believe in it to a certain extent, and it runs as follows: The more you live at your wit's end, the more the wit's end grows. 3. Our salesman, Mr. Powers, has spoken very favorably of your firm, and we feel that our relations will be most pleasant, and the report of the commercial agencies is sufficient evidence of your good financial standing. 4. There was no escaping from this churn, so one of the frogs, after a brief struggle thought that he might just as well die one time as another, and so he gave up and sank to the bottom. 5. Socrates did no writing himself, and the only information we have of him we get from the writings of his pupils and from later writers, and our most reliable knowledge comes from two of these writers, Plato and Xenophon. =Choppy Sentences to be Combined= =13. Do not use two or three short sentences to express ideas which will make a more unified impression in one sentence. Place subordinate ideas in subordinate grammatical constructions.= Excessive predication: Excavating is the first operation in street paving. The excavating is usually done by means of a steam shovel. The shovel scoops up the dirt and loads it directly into wagons. Right: Excavating, the first operation in street paving, is usually done by a steam shovel which loads the dirt directly into wagons. Monotonous: The doe is wading along the shore. She is nibbling the lily pads as she goes. Now she moves slowly around the point. She has a little spotted fawn with her. The fawn frolics along at the heels of his mother. Better: Wading along the shore, the doe nibbles the lily pads by the way, and moves slowly around the point. A spotted fawn frolics at her heels. Primer style: Rooms are marked on the floor. These rooms are about fourteen feet square. Better: The floor is marked off into rooms about fourteen feet square. Note.--An occasional short sentence is permissible, even desirable. Successive short sentences may be used to express rapid action, or emphatic assertion, or deliberate simplicity. Otherwise, avoid them. Exercise. 1. Decatur has wide streets. The streets are paved with brick, asphalt, and creosote blocks. 2. Sixteen posts are set in a row. All of these are at equal intervals. 3. The boat approaches the leeward side of the ship. This side is the side protected from the wind. 4. The _Scientific American_ reports the progress of science. It explains new inventions. It makes practical applications of scientific principles. 5. The beans are usually harvested about the middle of September. They are cut when the plants turn color at the roots and the beans turn white. They are cut by a bean-cutter which takes two rows at a time. =Excessive Coördination= In structure a sentence may be A. Simple: The rain fell. B. Compound: The rain continued and the stream rose. C. Complex: When the rain ceased, the flood came. In B, the clauses are of almost equal importance, and the first is coördinated with the second. In C, the clauses are not of equal importance, and the first is subordinated to the second. _And_ is a coördinating conjunction. _When_ is a subordinating conjunction. For a list of connectives see 36. =14. Do not use coördination when subordination will secure a more clear and emphatic unit of thought. Especially do not coördinate a main idea with an explanatory detail.= The speech of children connects all ideas, important and unimportant, with _and_. Discriminating writers place minor ideas in subordinate clauses, consign still less important ideas to participial or prepositional phrases, and omit trivial details altogether. Childish: I went down town and saw a crowd standing in the street, and wanted to know what was the matter, and so I went up and asked a man. Right: When I went down town, I saw a crowd standing in the street, and since I wanted to know what was the matter, I asked a man. [Two clauses are subordinated by the use of _when_ and _since_. This change abolishes two _ands_. The words _went up and_ are struck out. One _and_ remains, and deserves to remain, for it joins two ideas which are truly coördinate.] Main idea not emphasized: I talked with an old man and his name was Ned. Better: I talked with an old man named Ned. [A participial phrase replaces a clause. The name is now subordinated.] Main idea not emphasized: Developing is the next step in preparing the film, and it is very important. Better: Developing, the next step in preparing the film, is very important. [An appositional phrase replaces the first predicate.] Main idea not emphasized: They began their perilous journey, and they had four horses. Right [emphasizing _perilous journey_]: With four horses they began their perilous journey. [A prepositional phrase replaces a clause.] Right [emphasizing _having the horses_]: When they began their perilous journey, they had four horses. [A subordinate clause replaces a main clause.] Capable of greater unity: The frog is a stupid animal, and may be caught with a hook baited with red flannel. [Is the writer trying to tell us _how to catch frogs_, or merely that _frogs are stupid_? Coördination makes the two ideas appear equally important.] Right [emphasizing _frogs are stupid_]: The fact that the frog can be caught with a hook baited with red flannel proves his stupidity. Right [emphasizing _how to catch frogs_]: The frog, being stupid, will bite at a piece of red flannel. Exercise. 1. Men were sent to Panama and could not live in such unsanitary conditions. 2. When a letter came and it bore a familiar handwriting, I always opened it eagerly. 3. West Hickory is the name of the place where the tannery is situated, and it is a laboring man's town. 4. She wore a dress and it was silk, and cost her father a lot of money. 5. Every race horse has a care taker or groom, and this man spends all his time and makes the horse comfortable. =Faulty Subordination of the Main Thought= =15. Do not put the principal statement of a sentence in a subordinate clause or phrase.= This violation of unity is sometimes called "upside-down subordination". Faulty: I was going down the street, when I heard an explosion. [If _hearing the explosion_ is the main thought, it should be placed in the main clause.] Right: When I was going down the street, I heard an explosion. Faulty: Longstreet received orders to attack the Federal right wing, which he did immediately. Right: As soon as Longstreet received orders, he attacked the Federal right wing. Faulty: I suspected that it would rain, although I did not take an umbrella. Right: Although I suspected that it would rain, I did not take an umbrella. Exercise: 1. An old man used to work for us, who died yesterday. 2. He became angry, saying he positively refused to go. 3. He is a bright boy, although I should not want to trust him with my pocketbook. 4. He had an ambition which was to become the best lawyer in the state by the time he was forty years old. 5. The cable breaks and the elevator starts to drop, when the safety device always operates at once to prevent an accident. =Subordination Thwarted by _and_= =16. Do not attach to a main clause by means of _and_, a word, phrase, or clause which you intend shall be subordinate. The presence of _and_ thwarts subordination.= Wrong: Major went to bed, and leaving the work unfinished. Right: Major went to bed, leaving the work unfinished. Wrong: He ran home and with coat tails flying. Right: He ran home with coat tails flying. Exercise: 1. They denied my request, and giving no reason for the refusal. 2. He gave me his answer and in few words. 3. The girl stood on the edge of the cliff, and thus showing that she was not afraid. 4. A telegraph line is leased by the Associated Press, and thus giving the newspapers quick service. 5. When the summer passed, the fisherman returned home for the winter, and where he renewed his acquaintance with the villagers. =The _and which_ construction= =17. Use _and which_ (or _but which_), _and who_ (or _but who_) only between relative clauses similar in form. Between a main clause and a relative clause, _and_ or _but_ thwarts subordination.= Wrong: This is an important problem, and which we shall not find easy to solve. Right: This problem is an important problem, which we shall not find easy to solve. Right: This problem is one _which_ is important, _and which_ we cannot easily solve. Wrong: _Les Miserables_ is a novel of great interest and which everybody should read. Right: _Les Miserables_ is a novel of great interest, and one which everybody should read. Wrong: Their chief opponent was Winter, a shrewd politician, but who is now less popular than he was. Right: Their chief opponent was Winter, a shrewd politician, who is now less popular than he was. Note.--Rule 17 is sometimes briefly stated: "Do not use _and which_ unless you have already used _which_ in the sentence." This statement is generally true, but an exception must be made for sentences like the following: Right: "He told me what countries he had visited, and which ones he liked most." Exercise: 1. Just outside is a small porch looking out over the street, and which can be used for sleeping purposes. 2. She is a woman of pleasing personality, and who can converse intelligently. 3. It is a difficult task, but which can be accomplished in time. 4. He is a good-looking man, but who is very snobbish. 5. The rule made by the conference of college professors in 1896, and which has been followed ever since, applies to the case we are considering. =Unity Thwarted by Punctuation= =The Comma Splice= =18. Do not splice two independent statements by means of a comma. Write two sentences. Or, if the two statements together form a unit of thought, combine them (1) by a comma plus a conjunction, (2) by a semicolon, or (3) by reducing one of the statements to a phrase or a subordinate clause.= Wrong: The town has two railroads, it was founded when oil was discovered. Right: The town has two railroads. It was founded when oil was discovered. Wrong: The speed of the car seemed slower than it really was, this was due, no doubt, to the absence of all noise. [Here are three commas. The reader cannot quickly discover which one marks the great division of thought.] Right: The speed of the car seemed slower than it really was. This was due, no doubt, to the absence of all noise. Wrong: The winters were long and cold, nothing could live without shelter. Right: The winters were long and cold. Nothing could live without shelter. Right: The winters were long and cold, and nothing could live without shelter [For the use of the comma, see 91a]. Right: The winters were long and cold; nothing could live without shelter [For the use of the semicolon see 92]. Right: The winters were so long and cold that nothing could live without shelter. Exception.--Short coördinate clauses which are parallel in structure and leave a unified impression, may be joined by commas, even though the conjunctions be omitted. Right: All was excitement. The ducks quacked, the pigs squealed, the dogs barked. [The general idea _excitement_ gives the three clauses a certain unity.] Exercise: 1. The key is turned to the right, this unlocks the door. 2. The author keeps one guessing, there is no hint how the story will end. 3. The farmer is independent, he has no task-master. 4. There has been a change of government, in fact there has been a revolution. 5. Lamb had failed in poetry, in the drama, and in the novel, in the essay, at last, he succeeded. =19.= EXERCISE IN UNITY OF THOUGHT =A. The Comma Splice= Rewrite the following material in sentences each of which is a unit of thought. Most of the statements should be summarily cut apart. If you decide that others taken together have unity of thought, combine them (1) by a comma plus a conjunction, (2) by a semicolon, or (3) by reducing one of the statements to a phrase or a subordinate clause. 1. The canoe is long and narrow, it is made of birch bark. 2. I decided to serve tea, of course cream and sugar would be needed. 3. Some men hunt rabbits for market purposes only, they are the sportsman's enemies. 4. This city furnished many boats for the siege of Calais, when these boats returned they brought the plague with them. 5. The bottom of the box is then put in, it is nailed to the sides. 6. It is not easy to become a good musician, one must practice continually. 7. The Northern and Southern states could not be separate nations, there was no natural boundary between them. 8. The telephone is a great invention, it is very useful to the farmer. 9. Why would no one come to help me, my feet ached and I was thirsty. 10. I know a girl who has a cynical disposition, she is always criticizing. 11. I went into the office hopeless, a dime stood between me and starvation. 12. The construction of the bridge has much to do with the tone of a violin, it should be lower on the side nearest the E string. 13. A private expense account does not require much labor or time, just one hour a week will suffice to keep tract of all expenditures. 14. We offer you sixty dollars a month to start, this is all we can afford to pay at present. 15. He wanted personal success but would not shirk a duty or harm any one in any way to gain that success, at all times he forgot his own personal importance and was ready to do any task set before him. =B. One Thought in a Sentence= By dividing, subordinating, or logically combining the following statements, secure unity of thought. 1. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on September 30, 1902, where she has lived ever since and is now well known. 2. Franklin was kindly, shrewd, and capable, and was the representative of the United States in France. 3. She said that Mrs. Brown was ill and that she was just caring for the baby, she loved babies anyway, she said. 4. One Sunday afternoon there was an excursion to Beaver and several of us decided to go and take our lunches and return on the eight o'clock car. 5. He gave me the dimensions of the room. The dimensions were ten by twelve feet. 6. Good grades may be obtained in two ways: by honest work, and by cheating; however any one who cheats is doing himself more harm than good. 7. The wall studding is made of two-by-fours. These two-by-fours are placed sixteen inches apart. 8. The returning Crusaders brought with them oriental learning, and found the peasantry impoverished. 9. The articles in this magazine are of high quality. The articles are well written and attractively illustrated. 10. A Japanese woman going abroad at night must carry a lighted lamp and must not speak to any one, women do not have much freedom in Japan. 11. The sugar beets are irrigated by river water. They are irrigated by means of furrows. The furrows run between the rows of beets. The beets are irrigated once a week. 12. The referee asked each captain if his men were ready, after which he blew the whistle, and the game was on, and within five minutes our team scored a touchdown. 13. The ground should be harrowed as soon as possible after it is plowed. It is a good plan to harrow the ground on the same day that it is plowed, or on the day following. 14. Choose the middle of the prepared ground, which is about eighty-five by fifty feet, as your starting point, measure twenty-four feet east and west and set the net posts; then, after marking off the different courts with tape, you are ready for a good game of tennis. 15. There are two places on the island suitable for plays: one in the bungalow and the other down on the sandy point; the latter lends itself to the purpose readily, there are two trees which make a splendid support for wires on which to hang the curtain, and just east of these the ground slopes enough to make a natural amphitheater. =C. Excessive Coördination= The ideas in the following sentences are loosely strung together with coördinating conjunctions. Place the important idea in the main clause. Subordinate other ideas by reducing each to a dependent clause, or a phrase, or a word. 1. Chris has a new coat and it is double-breasted. 2. I had a dog, and his name was Scratcher. 3. He gave a laugh but it was forced. 4. The woodcock is so foolish and deliberately walks into a trap. 5. The engineers fastened rafts to the piles, and which were pulled up when the tide rose. 6. Students often sit all doubled up, and raising their feet high on the table. 7. Dunlap is carrying a palette, but without any paint on it. 8. The government has been successful in its suit, and the tobacco trust was dissolved. 9. The British troops had no protection against poisonous gas and the use of gas by the enemy was unexpected. 10. I make it a rule to study one thing at least an hour and no long rest between. 11. The concrete is spread in a layer, and this is about nine inches thick, and the width being ten feet. 12. Rockwell is our postmaster, and is accommodating, but he has a disposition to be curious. 13. At the Gatun Dam there are concrete locks, and the purpose of these is to lift vessels into the lake. 14. They say to tourists that objects are historic but which are not historic at all. 15. I was lying quietly in the hammock, and I happened to look up in the tree, and there was a green bird and eating a cherry. 16. They disputed for a time, and afterward the officer became angry, and whipped out his sword. 17. A mirage is an illusion and the traveler thinks he sees water when there really is none. =D. Upside-down Subordination= In the following sentences the important idea is buried in a subordinate clause or phrase. Rescue this main idea, express it in the main clause, and if possible subordinate the rest of the sentence to it. 1. I spoke to her on the street, when she did not answer. 2. She thanked me for my assistance, also asking me to come and visit her the following Sunday. 3. The water froze in the buckets, although they did not burst. 4. The crows cawed angrily and circling around in one place. 5. He is threatened with tuberculosis, although he will not sleep in the open air. 6. We had hacked the bark, the tree dying after a few months. 7. One of the contestants was from Wendover College, who received the prize. 8. You ask a person what a spiral staircase is, when he will go to showing you by motions of his hand. 9. It was about three o'clock, and we decided to return home, which we did. 10. The plumber came, stopping the leak as soon as he arrived. 11. Benton sold stamps, in which business he grew rich. 12. The sun's heat beats down upon the brick tenements, which is terrible. 13. The chemist tested the purity of the water, but which he found unfit to drink. 14. Montaigne wrote an essay on "Solitude," where he pointed out the disadvantages of travel. 15. The house is set close to the edge of the bluff, overlooking a wide bend of the Alleghany River. 16. Things had been going from bad to worse among the Indians, and some Sioux were entertaining a few Chippewas, and murdered them, when the government took a hand in the affair. 17. The slight knowledge of metals and wide-awake observation of an inexperienced miner discovered gold in Arizona. CLEARNESS OF THOUGHT Clearness is fundamental. The writer should be content, not when his meaning may be understood, but only when his meaning cannot be misunderstood. He may attain this entire clearness by giving attention to five matters: Reference (20-23) Coherence (24-28) Parallel Structure (30-31) Consistency (32-35) Use of Connectives (36-38) REFERENCE By the use of pronouns, participles, and other dependent words, language becomes flexible and free. But each dependent part must refer without confusion to a word which is reasonably near, and properly expressed. Ordinarily a reader expects a pronoun or a participle to refer to the nearest noun (or pronoun) or to an emphatic noun. =Divided Reference= =20. A pronoun should be placed near the word to which it refers, and separated from words to which it might falsely seem to refer. If this method does not secure clearness, discard the pronoun and change the sentence structure.= Uncertain reference of _which_: He dropped the bundle in the mud which he was carrying to his mother. [The reader for a moment refers the pronoun to the wrong noun. Bring _which_ nearer to its proper antecedent _bundle_.] Right: He dropped in the mud the bundle which he was carrying to his mother. Vague reference of _this_: My failure in mathematics was serious. My grades in English, history, and Latin were good enough. But this brought down my average. [_This?_ What _this_? Five nouns intrude between the pronoun _this_ and its proper antecedent _failure_.] Right: In English, history, and Latin I received fairly good grades. But in mathematics I received a failure. This brought down my average. Remote reference of _it_: If you want to make a good speech, take your hands out of your pockets, open your mouth wide, and throw yourself into it. Right: If you want to make a good speech, take your hands out of your pockets, open your mouth wide, and throw yourself into what you are saying. [Or, better] Take your hands out of your pockets, open your mouth wide, and throw yourself into the speech. Ambiguous reference of _he_: John spoke to the stranger, and he was very surly. Right: John spoke to the stranger, who was very surly. [Or] John spoke in a surly manner to the stranger. Note.--The reference of relative and demonstrative pronouns is largely dependent upon their position. The reference of a personal pronoun (_he_, _she_, _they_, etc.) is not so much dependent upon its position, the main consideration being that the antecedent shall be emphatic (See the next article.) Exercise: 1. He was driving an old mule attached to a cart that was blind in one eye. 2. There is a grimy streak on the wall over the radiator which can be removed only with great difficulty. 3. The feet of Chinese girls were bandaged so tightly when they were babies that they could not grow. 4. He gave me a receipt for the money which he told me to keep. 5. After the pictures have been taken and the film has been removed, they are sent to the developing room where it is developed and dried. =Weak Reference= =21. Do not allow a pronoun to refer to a word not likely to be central in the reader's thought; a word, for example, in the possessive case, or in a parenthetical expression, or in a compound, or not expressed at all. Make the pronoun refer to an emphatic word.= Wrong: When a poor woman came to Jane Addams' famous Hull House, she always gave help. [_Poor woman_ and _Hull House_ are the emphatic words, to which any pronoun used later is instinctively referred by the reader.] Right: When a poor woman came to Jane Addams' famous Hull House, she always received help. [Or] When a poor woman came to Hull House, Jane Addams always gave help. Wrong: In biology, which is the study of plants and animals we find that they are made up of unitary structures called cells. [Since the words _plants and animals_ occur only in a parenthetical clause, the reader is surprised to find them used as an antecedent.] Right: In the study of biology we find that plants and animals are made up of unitary structures called cells. Wrong: This old scissors-grinder sharpens them for the whole neighborhood. [The center of interest in the reader's mind is a man, not scissors.] Right: This old scissors-grinder sharpens scissors for the whole neighborhood. Wrong: I always liked engineers, and I have chosen that as my profession. Right: I always liked engineering, and I have chosen it as my profession. Absurd: When the baby is through drinking milk, it should be disconnected and put in boiling water. [The central idea in the reader's mind is _baby_, not _milk-bottle_. The writer may have been thinking about the _bottle_, but he did not make the word emphatic; in fact, he did not express it at all.] Right: When the baby is through drinking milk, the bottle should be taken apart and put in boiling water. Note.--Ordinarily, do not refer to the title in the first line of a theme. The reader expects you to assert something, and face forward, not to turn back to what you have said in the title. Faulty: Color Photography I am interested in this new development of science. For a long time I ... Right: Color Photography Taking pictures in color has long appealed to me as an interesting possibility ... Exercise: 1. In Shakespeare's play _Othello_ he makes Iago a fiend. 2. The noodle-cutter is a kitchen device which saves time in making this troublesome dish. 3. The life of a forester is interesting, and I intend to follow that profession. 4. He took down his great-grandfather's old sword, who had carried it at Bunker Hill. 5. I was always making experiments in science, and I naturally acquired a liking for periodicals of that nature. =Broad Reference= =22. Do not use a pronoun to refer broadly to a general idea. Supply a definite antecedent or abandon the pronoun.= Wrong: The tapper strikes the gong, which continues as long as the push button is pressed. [The writer intends that _which_ shall refer to the entire preceding clause, but the reference is intercepted by the word _gong_.] Right [supplying a definite antecedent]: The tapper strikes the gong, a process which continues as long as the push button is pressed. [Or, abandoning the pronoun] The tapper strikes the gong as long as the push button is pressed. Wrong: Read the directions which are printed on the bottle and it may save you from making a mistake. Right [supplying a definite antecedent]: Read the directions which are printed on the bottle. This precaution may save you from making a mistake. [Or, abandoning the pronoun] Reading the directions on the bottle may prevent a mistake. Wrong: The managers told him they would increase his salary if he would represent them in South America. He refused that. Right: The managers told him they would increase his salary if he would represent them in South America. He refused the offer. Exception.--It cannot be maintained that a pronoun must _always_ have one definite word for its antecedent. Many of the best English authors occasionally use a pronoun to refer to a clause. But the reference must always be clear. Note.--Impersonal constructions must be used with caution. "It is raining" is correct, although _it_ has no antecedent. We desire that the antecedent shall be vague, impersonal. But unnecessary use of the indefinite _it_, _you_, or _they_ should be avoided. Faulty: It says in our history that Columbus was an Italian. Right: Our history says that Columbus was an Italian. Not complimentary to the reader: You aren't hanged nowadays for stealing. Right: No one is hanged nowadays for stealing. Faulty: They are noted for their tact in France. Right: The French are noted for their tact. Exercise: 1. You use little slang in your paper which is commendable. 2. They had no reinforcements which caused them to lose the battle. 3. The carbon must be removed from pig iron to make pure steel, and that is done by terrific heat. 4. Our stenographer spends most of her spare time at a cheap movie theater, which is in itself an index of her character. 5. It says in the new rules that you aren't allowed in the building on Sunday. =Dangling Participle or Gerund= =23. A participle, being dependent, must refer to a noun or pronoun. The noun or pronoun should be within the sentence which contains the participle, and should be so conspicuous that the participle will be associated with it instantly and without confusion.= Wrong: Coming in on the train, the high school building is seen. [Is the building coming in? If not, who is?] Right: Coming in on the train, one sees the high school building. A sentence containing a dangling participle may be corrected (1) by giving the word to which the participle refers a conspicuous position in the sentence, or (2) by replacing the participial phrase by some other construction. Wrong: Having taken our seats, the umpire announced the batteries. Right: Having taken our seats, we heard the umpire announce the batteries. [Or] When we had taken our seats, the umpire announced the batteries. Wrong: She was for a long time sick, caused by overwork. [The participle _caused_ should not modify _sick_. A participle is used as an adjective, and should therefore modify a noun.] Right--using an adjectival modifier: She had a long sickness, {caused by} overwork. {due to } Right--using an adverbial modifier: {because of } She was for a long time sick {owing to } overwork. {on account of} =When a gerund phrase (_in passing_, _while speaking_ etc.) implies the action of a special agent, indicate what the agent is. Otherwise the phrase will be dangling.= Faulty: In talking to Mr. Brown the other day, he told me that you intend to buy a car. Better: In talking to Mr. Brown the other day, I learned that you intend to buy a car. Faulty: The address was concluded by reciting a passage from Wordsworth. Better: The speaker concluded his address by reciting a passage from Wordsworth. [Or] The address was concluded by the recitation of a passage from Wordsworth. Note.--Two other kinds of dangling modifier, treated elsewhere in this book, may be briefly mentioned here. A phrase beginning with the adjective _due_ should refer to a noun; otherwise the phrase is left dangling (See 5 Note). An elliptical sentence (one from which words are omitted) is faulty when one of the elements is left dangling (See 3). Faulty: I was late _due_ to carelessness [Use _because of_]. Ludicrous: My shoestring always breaks when hurrying to the office at eight o'clock [Say _when I am hurrying_]. Exercise: 1. Coming out of the house, a street car is seen. 2. While engaged in conversation with my host and hostess, my maid placed upon the table a steaming leg of lamb. 3. A small quantity of gold is thoroughly mixed with a few drops of turpentine, using the spatula to work it smooth. 4. After being in the oven twenty minutes, open the door. When fully baked, you are ready to put the sauce on the pudding. 5. Entering the store, a soda fountain is observed. Passing down the aisle, a candy counter comes into view. The rear of the store is bright and pleasant, caused by a skylight. COHERENCE The verb _cohere_ means to stick or hold firmly together. And the noun _coherence_ as applied to writing means a close and natural sequence of parts. Order is essential to clearness. =General Incoherence= =24. Every part of a sentence must have a clear and natural connection with the adjoining part. Like or related parts should normally be placed together.= Bring related ideas together: Little Helen stood beside the horse wearing white stockings and slippers. Right: Little Helen, in white stockings and slippers, stood beside the horse. Keep unlike ideas apart: The colors of purple and green are pleasing to the eye as found in the thistle. Right: The purple and green colors of the thistle are pleasing. Distribute unrelated modifiers, instead of bunching them: I found a heap of snow on my bed in the morning which had drifted in through the window. [Subject verb--object--place--time--explanation.] Right: In the morning I found on my bed a heap of snow which had drifted in through the window. [Time--subject verb--place--object--explanation.] Bring related modifiers together: When he has prepared his lessons, he will come, as soon as he can put on his old clothes. [Condition--main clause--condition.] Right: When he has prepared his lessons and put on his old clothes, he will come. [Condition and condition--main clause.] Exercise: 1. He was gazing at the landscape which he had painted with a smiling face. 2. She turned the steak with a fork which she was cooking for dinner every few minutes. 3. Dickens puts the various experiences he had in the form of a novel when he was a boy. 4. If the roads are made of dirt, the farmer has to wait, if the weather is rainy, till they dry. 5. We received practically very little or none at all experience in writing themes. =Logical Sequence= =25. Place first in the sentence the idea which naturally comes first in thought or in the order of time.= Faulty: We went to the station from the house after bidding all goodby. Right: We said goodby to all, and went from the house to the station. =Do not begin one idea, abandon it for a second, and then return to the first. Complete one idea at a time.= Faulty: She looked up as he approached and smoothed her hair. [The writer begins a main clause, changes to a subordinate clause, and then attempts to add more to the main clause. Unfortunately the last two verbs appear to be coördinate.] Right: She looked up and smoothed her hair as he approached. [Or] As he approached she looked up, and smoothed her hair. =Ordinarily, let a second thought begin where the first leaves off.= Faulty: An orange grove requires plenty of water. The young trees will die if they do not have plenty of water. [The order of ideas is: "Grove ... water. Trees ... water." Reverse the order of the second sentence.] Right: An orange grove requires plenty of water. For without water the young trees will die. [Now the order of ideas is: "Grove ... water. Water ... trees."] Exercise: 1. I boarded the train, after buying a ticket. 2. I dropped my pen when the whistle blew and sighed. 3. Unless the bank clerk has ability he will never be successful unless he works faithfully and hard. 4. I remember the days when Rover was a pup. Now he is not half so interesting as he was then. 5. A chessboard is divided into sixty-four squares, and there is plenty of room between the opposing armies for a terrific battle, since each army occupies only sixteen squares. =Squinting Modifier= =26. Avoid the squinting construction. That is, do not place between two parts of a sentence a modifier that may attach itself to either. Place the modifier where it cannot be misunderstood.= Confusing: I told him when the time came I would do it. [_When the time came_ is said to "squint" because the reader cannot tell whether it looks forward to the end of the sentence, or backward to the beginning.] Right: When the time came, I told him I would do it. [Or] I told him I would do it when the time came. Confusing: Some friends I knew would enjoy the play. [_I knew_ squints.] Right: Some friends would enjoy the play, I knew. Confusing: The orator whom every one was calling for enthusiastically hurried to the platform. [_Enthusiastically_ squints.] Clear: The orator whom every one was enthusiastically calling for hurried to the platform. Exercise: 1. The man who laughs half the time does not understand the joke. 2. Playing football in many ways improves the mind. 3. When she reached home much to her disgust the door was locked. 4. When the lightning struck for the first time in my life I was afraid. 5. The landlord wrote that he would if the rent were not paid in thirty days eject the tenant. =Misplaced Word= =27. Such an adverb as _only_, _ever_, _almost_, should be placed near the word it modifies, and separated from words which it might falsely seem to modify. Such a conjunction as _nevertheless_, if required with a clause, should usually be placed near the beginning.= Illogical: I only need a few dollars. Right: I need only a few dollars. Illogical: I don't ever intend to go there again. Right: I don't intend ever to go there again. [Or] I intend never to go there again. Illogical: She has the sweetest voice I nearly ever heard. Right: She has nearly [or _almost_] the sweetest voice I ever heard. Tardy use of conjunction: I intend to try. I do not expect to accomplish much, however. Right: I intend to try. I do not, however, expect to accomplish much. Exercise: 1. Students are only admitted to one lecture. 2. This is the smallest book I almost ever saw. 3. He is so poor he hasn't any food, scarcely. 4. She had one dress that she never expected to wear. 5. The difficulties were tremendous. He said that he would do his best, nevertheless. =Split Construction= =28. Elements that have a close grammatical connection should not be separated awkwardly or carelessly. These elements are: (a) subject and verb, or verb and object; (b) the parts of a compound verb; and (c) the parts of an infinitive.= Awkward: One in the struggle for efficiency should not become a machine. Better: In the struggle for efficiency one should not become a machine. Awkward: What use of an education could a girl who married a penniless rogue and afterwards knew nothing but hard labor, make? Better: What use of an education could a girl make who married a penniless rogue and afterward knew nothing but hard labor? Crude: He was unable to even so much as stir a foot. Better: He was unable even to stir a foot. Note.--It is often desirable to separate the forms enumerated under (a) and (b) above, either for emphasis (See 40) or to avoid a bunching of modifiers at the end of a sentence (See 24). The whole point of rule 28 is not to depart from a natural order needlessly. Exercise: 1. One thing the beginner must remember is to not get excited. 2. Ralph, when he heard the news, came flying out of the house. 3. The president called together, for the need was urgent, his cabinet. 4. Bryce said that it is more patriotic to judiciously vote than to frantically wave the American flag. 5. About the time Florence Nightingale had to give up her plans, a war between Turkey, England, and France on one side and Russia on the other, broke out. =29.= EXERCISE IN CLEARNESS OF THOUGHT =A. Reference of Pronouns= In the following sentences make the reference of pronouns exact and unmistakable. 1. Brown wrote to Roberts that he had made a mistake. 2. We heard a voice through the door which told us to enter. 3. There is a walk leading from the street to the house which is made of thin slabs of stone. 4. A milking stool was beside the cow on which he was accustomed to sit. 5. Should a community, such as a small village, spend the money they do on roads? 6. This magazine prints many special articles on politics and social reforms that are always instructive. 7. I wish I could do something for the protection of birds in our country which is neglected. 8. After a man has failed in one business, it is no sign he will fail in every other. 9. Sometimes cane syrup is mixed with the maple syrup, which reduces the value of the product. 10. It means hard and diligent work to study Latin, but it strengthens our brain or at least it gives it good exercise. 11. In the class room the students become acquainted, which may develop into lifelong friendships. 12. He was delighted with a ride on horseback, which animal he had been familiar with in his childhood on the farm. 13. It says in our history that the battle of New Orleans was fought after the treaty of peace had been signed. 14. Sparks flew about in the air, and it reminded me of a huge Fourth of July celebration. 15. The doctor gave me medicine to stop the dull pain in my head. This made me feel much better. =B. Dangling Modifiers= Remembering that a participle is used as an adjective and must therefore refer to a noun or pronoun, correct the following sentences. Gerund phrases and a few elliptical sentences are included in the list. 1. Having planned the basement, the next thing considered was the first floor. 2. Glancing around the room, the ugly wall paper at once confronted me. 3. After ringing the bell, and waiting a few moments, a maid came to the door. 4. When selecting a site for an orchard, it should be well drained. 5. Not being a skilled dancer, my feet moved awkwardly. 6. Having no watch, the clock must be consulted. 7. He was sick, caused by eating too much dessert. 8. Radium is very difficult to get, making it the most valuable metal. 9. One man goes home and beats his wife, resulting in internal injuries. 10. Over the paper and kindling a few small chunks of coal are scattered, taking care not to choke the draft. 11. In speaking of character, it does not mean to be a governor or a general. 12. This town draws trade for a radius of twenty miles, thus accounting for the large volume of business. 13. While talking to Ralph yesterday, he spoke about his recent success in the hardware business. 14. The bus holds fifteen people, and when full, the bus man shuts the door. 15. If bright and pleasant, the rabbit will be found sitting at the entrance of his burrow. =C. Coherence= Secure a clear, smooth, natural order for the following sentences. 1. I have a lot for sale near the city limits. 2. Many men can only speak their native tongue. 3. I saw yesterday, crossing the street, a beautiful woman. 4. They entered the room, and sitting on the floor they saw a baby. 5. I put down my book when the clock struck and yawned. 6. She dropped the money on the sidewalk which she was carrying home. 7. The horse did not notice that the gate was open for several minutes. 8. It was worth the trouble. I do not wish to have the experience again, however. 9. My first trip away from home, of any distance, was made on a steamboat from St. Louis to New Orleans. 10. He gazed at a young man who was waving his hands violently, called a cheer leader. 11. Any soil will grow some variety of strawberry, except sand and clay. 12. I turned triumphantly to Will, who was still gazing at the place where the muskrat sank with a beaming face. 13. Only the interest, the principal being kept intact, is spent. 14. A student should see that external conditions are favorable for study, such as light, temperature, and clothing. 15. Draw a heavy line using a ruler to connect New York and San Francisco across the map. PARALLEL STRUCTURE When the structure of a sentence is simple and uniform, the important words strike the eye at once. Compare the following: Parallel: Beggars must not be choosers. Confusing: Beggars must not be the one who choose. A reader gives attention partly to the structure of a sentence, and partly to the thought. The less we puzzle him with our structure, the more we shall impress him with our thought. Parallel: Seeing is believing. [Attention goes to the thought.] Confusing: Seeing is to believe. [Attention is diverted to _structure_.] The reader's expectation is that uniform structure shall accompany uniform ideas, and that a departure from uniformity shall indicate a change of thought. =Parallel Structure for Parallel Thoughts= =30. Give parallel structure to those parts of a sentence which are parallel in thought. Do not needlessly interchange an infinitive with a participle, a phrase with a clause, a single word with a phrase or clause, a main clause with a dependent clause, one voice or mode of the verb with another, etc.= Faulty: Riding is sometimes better exercise than to walk. Right: Riding is sometimes better exercise than walking. [Or] To ride is sometimes better exercise than to walk. Faulty: He had two desires, of which the first was for money; in the second place, he wanted fame. Right: He had two desires, of which the first was for money and the second for fame. [Or] He had two desires: in the first place, he wanted money; in the second, fame. Faulty: His rival handled cigars of better quality and having a higher selling price. Right: His rival handled cigars of better quality and higher price. Faulty: When you have mastered the operation of shifting gears, and after a little practice you will be a good driver. Right: When you have mastered the operation of shifting gears, and had a little practice, you will be a good driver. [Or] After you master the gears and have a little practice, you will be a good driver. Faulty. These are the duties of the president of a literary society: (a) To preside at regular meetings, (b) He calls special meetings, (c) Appointment of committees. Right: These are the duties of the president of a literary society: (a) To preside at regular meetings, (b) To call special meetings, (c) To appoint committees. Faulty: She was actively connected with the club, church, and with several organized charities. [Here parallelism is obscured by the omission from the second phrase of both the preposition and the article.] Right: She was actively connected with the club, with the church, and with several organized charities. Faulty: He was red-faced, awkward, and had a disposition to eat everything on the table. [The third element is like the others in thought, and should have similar form.] Right: He had a red face, an awkward manner, and a disposition to eat everything on the table. [Or] He was red-faced, awkward, and voracious. Note.--Avoid misleading parallelism. For ideas _different_ in kind, do _not_ use parallel structure. Wrong: He was hot, puffing, and evidently had run very hard. [The third element is unlike the others in thought; hence the _and_ is misleading.] Right: He was hot and puffing; evidently he had run very hard. Confusing: He was admired for his knowledge of science, and for his taste for art, and for this I too honor him. [The last _for_ gives a false parallelism to unlike thoughts.] Better: He was admired for his scientific knowledge and for his artistic taste. I honor him for both these qualities. Exercise: 1. The duties of the secretary are to answer correspondence, and keeping the minutes of the meetings. 2. This process is the most difficult; it costs the most; and is most important. 3. I make it a rule to be orderly, spend no money foolishly, and keep still when I have nothing to say. 4. The cotton is put up in bales about five feet in length and three feet wide and four thick, and one of them weighing about five hundred pounds. 5. Considerations of economy that one should bear in mind when planning a house are: first, a rectangular ground-plan; second, a one-chimney plan; third, to have only one stairway; fourth, eliminate as many doors as possible; fifth, the bathroom should be above the kitchen so as to reduce the cost of plumbing; and lastly, the rooms should be few and large rather than small and many of them. =Correlatives= Conjunctions that are used in pairs are called correlatives; for example, _not only_ ... _but also_ ..., _both_ ... _and_ ..., _either_ ... _or_ ..., _neither_ ... _nor_ ..., _not_ ... _or_ ..., _whether_ ... _or_ .... =31. Correlatives should usually be followed by elements parallel in form; if a predicate follows one, a predicate should follow the other; if a prepositional phrase follows one, a prepositional phrase should follow the other; and so on.= Faulty: He was not only courteous to rich customers but also to poor ones. [Here the phrases intended to be balanced against each other are _to rich customer's_ and _to poor ones_. As the sentence stands, it is the word _courteous_ that is balanced against _to poor ones_.] Right: He was courteous not only to rich customers but also to poor ones. Faulty: She could neither make up her mind to go nor could she decide to stay. Right: She could neither make up her mind to go nor decide to stay. [Or] She could not make up her mind either to go or to stay. Faulty: I talked both with Brown and Miller. [Here one conjunction is followed by a preposition and the other by a noun.] Right: I talked with both Brown and Miller. [Or] I talked both with Brown and with Miller. Exercise: 1. He was courteous to both friends and his enemies. 2. Such conduct is not only dangerous to society but becomes a national disgrace as well. 3. She had neither affectation of manners nor was she sharp-tongued. 4. After reading Thoreau's _Walden_ I appreciate not only the style but also I am inclined to believe in his ideas. 5. The good that the delegates derive from the convention not only helps them, but they tell others what happened. CONSISTENCY =Shift in Subject or Voice= =32. Do not needlessly shift the subject, voice, or mode in the middle of a sentence. Keep one point of view, until there is a reason for changing.= Faulty: In the stream which the road led over, fish were plentiful. [Here the first mental picture is of a stream. Then the thought is jerked away to the road above. Then it returns to the fish in the stream.] Right: In the stream which flowed under the roadway, fish were plentiful. Faulty: Mark Twain was born in the West, but the East was his home in later years. [The change of subject is uncalled for.] Right: Mark Twain was born in the West, but lived in the East in his later years. [Or] The West was the birthplace of Mark Twain, and the East was his home in his later years. Faulty: A careful driver can go fifteen miles on a gallon of gasoline, and at the same time very little lubricating oil is used. [The shift from active to passive voice is awkward and confusing.] Right: A careful driver can go fifteen miles on a gallon of gasoline, and at the same time use very little lubricating oil. Faulty: When a problem in chemistry is given, or when we wish to calculate certain formulas, we find that a knowledge of mathematics is indispensable. Right: When a problem in chemistry is given, or when certain formulas are to be calculated, a knowledge of mathematics is indispensable. [Or] When we face a problem in chemistry, or wish to calculate certain formulas, we find that a knowledge of mathematics is indispensable. Faulty: Next the ground should be harrowed. Then you sow the wheat. [The subject changes from _ground_ to _you_. One verb explains what _should_ be done, the other what somebody _does_.] {is } Right: Next the ground { } harrowed. Then it {should be} {is } { } sown to wheat. [Or] Next you should harrow {should be} the ground. Then you should sow the wheat. Exercise: 1. One end of a camera carries the film, and the lens and shutter are in the other end. 2. When an athlete is in training, good healthful food should be eaten. 3. An engineer's time is not devoted to one branch of science, but should include many. 4. By having only five men in charge of our city government, they would have more power, and we could then fix responsibility. 5. There are two main classes of cake, sponge and butter. We are taught to make both in cooking school. I like the sponge cake. The butter cake is preferred by most persons. =Shift in Number, Person, or Tense= =33. Avoid an inconsistent change in number, person, or tense.= Faulty change in number: One should save their money. Right: People should save their money. [Or] A man should save his money. Faulty change in person: Place the seeds in water, and in a few days a person can see that they have started to grow. Right: Place the seeds in water, and in a few days you will see that they have started to grow. Faulty change in number: Take your umbrella with you. They will be needed today. Right: Take your umbrella with you. You will need it today. Faulty change in tense: Freedom means that a man may conduct his affairs as he pleases so long as he did not injure anybody else. Right: Freedom means that a man may conduct his affairs as he pleases so long as he does not injure anybody else. Faulty change in tense: When he heard the news, he hurries down town and buys a paper. Right: When he heard the news, he hurried down town and bought a paper. Note.--A change of tense within a sentence is desirable and necessary in certain instances, for which see 55. Sometimes, for the sake of vividness, past events are described in the present tense, as if they were taking place before our eyes. This usage is called the _historical present_. A shift to the historical present should not be made abruptly, or frequently, or for any subject except an important crisis. Exercise: 1. A person should be careful of their conduct. 2. Sentences should be so formed that the reader feels it to be a unit. 3. One should make the best of their surroundings and their possessions, provided they cannot better them. 4. When he sees me coming, he looked the other way. 5. Silas Marner lost many of his habits of solitude, and goes out among his neighbors. =Mixed Constructions= =34. Do not make a compromise between two constructions.= Faulty: I cannot help but go. Right: I cannot help going. [Or] I cannot but go. [Or] I can but go. Faulty: They are as following: Right: They are as follows: [Or] They are the following: Faulty: He tried, but of no avail. Right: He tried, but to no avail. [Or] He tried, but his effort was of no avail. Faulty: There is no honor to be on this committee. Right: It is no honor to be on this committee. [Or] There is no honor in being on this committee. Faulty: Sparks from the chimney caught the house on fire. Right: Sparks from the chimney set the house on fire. [Or] The house caught fire from the sparks from the chimney. Note.--The double negative and kindred expressions (_not hardly_, _not scarcely_, etc.) are an especially gross form of mixed construction. Wrong: He isn't no better now than he was then. [Logically, not no better means _better_. The two negatives cancel each other and leave an affirmative.] Right: He isn't any better now than he was then. [Or] He is no better now than he was then. Wrong: She couldn't see her friend nowhere. Right: She couldn't see her friend anywhere. [Or] She could see her friend nowhere. Wrong: We couldn't hardly see through the mist. Right: We could hardly see through the mist. [Or] We couldn't see well through the mist. Exercise: 1. He doesn't come here no more. 2. I cannot help but make this error. 3. I remember scarcely nothing of the occurrence. 4. I would not remain there only a few days. 5. John would not do this under no circumstances. =Mixed Imagery= =35. Avoid phrases which may call up conflicting mental images. When using metaphor, simile, etc., carry one figure of speech through, instead of shifting to another, or dropping suddenly back into literal speech.= Crude: The Republicans have gained a foothold in the heart of the cotton belt. Right: The Republicans have gained a foothold in the South. Crude: He traveled a rough road and climbed with his burden the ladder of success, where he is a glowing example and guide to other men. [The suggestion which a reader with a sense of humor may get is, that a man starts out as a traveler, suddenly becomes a hod-carrier, and is then transformed into a bonfire or a lighthouse.] Right: He traveled a rough road, but found success. Other men followed in his steps. Incongruous: Spring came scattering flowers, and there was rain a great per cent of the time. [This sentence mingles the language of poetry with the language of science. It should be fanciful, or else literal, throughout.] Right: Spring came scattering flowers and rain. [Or] Spring came with much rain and many flowers. Inconsistent use of irony: The phonograph was shrieking, "Waltz me around again, Willie." I am sure I love that beautiful song. The taste of the people who attend these cheap theaters is deplorable. [The three sentences should be ironical throughout, or not ironical at all.] Exercise: 1. We should meet the future from the optimistic point of view. 2. General Wolfe put every ounce of his life into the capture of Quebec. 3. A key-note of sincerity should be the mainspring of a well-built speech. 4. He went drifting down the sands of time on flowery beds of ease. 5. The blank in my mind crystallized into action. USE OF CONNECTIVES =The Exact Connective= =36. Use a connective which expresses the exact relation between two clauses. Distinguish between time and cause, concession and condition, etc. Do not overwork _and_, _so_, or _while_.= Misleading: _While_ he is sick, he is able to walk. [Use _though_.] Misleading: Miss Brown sang, _while_ her sister spoke a piece. [Use _but_.] Faulty. Work hard _when_ you want to succeed. [Use _if_.] Faulty: They will be sorry _without_ they do this. [Use _unless_.] Faulty: Little poetry is read, _only_ at times when it is compulsory. [Use _except_.] Faulty. The early morning and evening are the best times to find ducks, _and_ we did not see many flying. [Use _and for that reason_.] Faulty: Corbin says: "In America sportsmanship is almost a passion," _and_ in England "the player very seldom forgets that he is a man first and an athlete afterward." [Use _whereas_.] Note.--_So_ is an elastic word that covers a multitude of vague meanings. Language has need of such a word, and in many instances (especially when the relation between clauses is obvious and does not need to be pointed out) _so_ serves well enough. Use it, but not as a substitute for more exact connectives. Beware of falling into the "_so_-habit." Abuse of _so_ as a vague coördinating connective: So I went to call on Mrs. Woods, and so she told me about Mrs. White's new gown; so then I missed the car, and so of course our supper is late. [Strike out every _so_.] Abuse of _so_ as a subordinating connective: You may go, _so_ you keep still. [Use _provided_.] _So_ you do only that, I shall be satisfied. [Use _though_.] Permissible: I was excited, so I missed the target. _So_ may sometimes be used to express result. But when a clause of result is important and needs emphasis, it is perhaps better to strike out _so_ and subordinate the preceding clause. Right: In my excitement I missed the target. Right: Because I was excited, I missed the target. Right: Being excited, I missed the target. =List of Connectives= =A. With Coördinate Clauses, expressing= =1. Addition:= and, besides, furthermore, again, in addition, in like manner, likewise, moreover, then too, and finally. =2. Contrast:= but, and yet, however, in spite of, in contrast to this, nevertheless, notwithstanding, nor, on the contrary, for all that, rather still, but unhappily, yet unfortunately, whereas. =3. Alternative:= or, nor, else, otherwise, neither, nor, or on the other hand. =4. Consequence:= therefore, hence, consequently, accordingly, in this way, it follows that, the consequence is, and under such circumstances, wherefore, thus, as a result, as a consequence. =5. Explanation:= for example, for instance, in particular, more specifically, for, because. =6. Repetition for emphasis:= in other words, that is to say, and assuredly, certainly, in fact, and in truth, indeed it is certain, undoubtedly, for example, in the same way, as I have said. =B. With Subordinate Adverb Clauses, expressing= =1. Time:= when, then, before, while, after, until at last, as long as, now that, upon which, until, whenever, whereupon, meanwhile. =2. Place:= where, whence, whither, wherever. =3. Degree or Comparison:= as, more than, rather than, than, to the degree in which. =4. Manner:= as, as if, as though. =5. Cause:= because, for, as, inasmuch as, since, owing to the fact that, seeing that, in that. =6. Purpose:= that, so that, in order that, lest. =7. Result:= that is, so that, but that. =8. Condition:= if, provided that, in case that, on condition that, supposing that, unless. =9. Concession:= though, although, assuming that, admitting that, granting that, even if, no matter how, notwithstanding, of course. =C. With Adjective Clauses.= Adjective or relative clauses are introduced by who, which, that, or an equivalent compound. Exercise: Insert within the parentheses all the connectives that might conceivably be used, and underscore the one which you consider to be most exact: 1. He is not a broad-minded man; ( ) he has many prejudices. 2. A number of friends came in, bringing refreshments, ( ) we spent a delightful evening. 3. We ought to return now, for it is growing dark; ( ) I told Mary we would be home at six o'clock. 4. I do not believe that climate is responsible for many of the differences between races, ( ) Taine says that it is. 5. She took the letter from me and read it slowly, ( ) her eyes filled with tears. =Repetition of Connective with a Gain in Clearness= =37. Connectives that accompany a parallel series should be repeated when clearness requires.= Preposition to be repeated: He was regarded as a hero by all who had known him at school, and especially his old school mates. Right: He was regarded as a hero _by_ all who had known him at school, and especially _by_ his old school mates. Sign of the infinitive to be repeated: He wishes to join with those who love freedom and justice, and end needless suffering. Right: He wishes _to_ join with those who love freedom and justice, and _to_ end needless suffering. Conjunction to be repeated: Since he was known to have succeeded in earlier enterprises, though confronted by difficulties that would have taxed the ability of older men, and his powers were now acknowledged to be mature, he was put in charge of the undertaking. Right: _Since_ he was known to have succeeded in earlier enterprises, though confronted by difficulties that would have taxed the ability of older men, and _since_ his powers were now acknowledged to be mature, he was put in charge of the undertaking. Conjunction to be repeated: He explained that the strikers asked only a fair hearing, since their contentions were misunderstood; were by no means in favor of the violent measures to which the public had grown accustomed; and had no desire to resort to bloodshed and the destruction of property. Right: He explained _that_ the strikers asked only a fair hearing, since their contentions were misunderstood; _that_ they were by no means in favor of the violent measures to which the public had grown accustomed; and _that_ they had no desire to resort to bloodshed and the destruction of property. Exercise: 1. The place is often visited by fishermen who catch some strange varieties of fish and especially summer tourists. 2. The worth of a man depends upon his character, not his possessions. 3. He was delighted with that part of the city which overlooked the harbor and bay, and especially the citadel on the highest point. 4. Although he was so youthful in appearance that the recruiting officer must have known he was under twenty-one, and had not yet become a fully naturalized citizen, his effort to enlist met with immediate success. 5. In the course of his speech he said that he was a foreigner, he came to this country when he was fourteen years old, landing in New York with his only possessions tied in a handkerchief, went to work in an iron foundry, and after many years of toil he found himself at the head of a great industry. =Repetition of Connective with a Loss in Clearness= =38. Do not complicate thought by persistent repetition of elements beginning with _that_, _which_, _of_, _for_, or _but_, and NOT parallel in structure.= Complicated repetition of _that_: He gave a quarter to the boy that brought the paper that printed the news that the war was ended. [_That_, _which_, and _who_ are often used carelessly to form a chain of subordinate clauses. Three successive subordinations are all that a reader can possibly keep straight; ordinarily a writer should not exceed two. But in parallel structure (See 30 and 37) the number of _that_, _which_, or _who_ clauses does not matter; a writer may fill a page with them and not confuse the reader at all.] Right: He gave the boy a quarter for bringing him the paper with the news that the war was ended. Complicated repetition of _of_: The East Side Civics Club is an organization of helpers of the helpless of the lower classes of the city. Right: The East Side Civics Club is organized to help the helpless poor of the city. Complicated repetition of _for_: The general was dismayed, for he had not expected resistance, for he had thought the power of the enemy was shattered. Right: The general was dismayed; he had not expected resistance, for he had thought the power of the enemy was shattered. Complicated repetition of _but_: He was undoubtedly a brave man, but now he was somewhat alarmed, but he would not turn back. Right: He was undoubtedly a brave man; though now somewhat alarmed, he would not turn back. [Or] He was undoubtedly a brave man. He was now somewhat alarmed, but he would not turn back. Note.--Guard against the _but_-habit. Frequent recurrence of _but_ makes the reader's thought "tack" or change its course too often. There are ways to avoid an excessive use of _but_ and _however_. When one wishes to write about two things, A and B, which are opposed, he need not rush back and forth from one idea to the other. Let him first say all he wants to say about A. Then let him deliberately use the adversative _but_, and proceed to the discussion of B. In the following paragraph on "Whipping Children" the writer tries to be on both sides of the fence at once. Confusing: It is easier to punish a child for a misdeed, than to explain and argue. _But_ the gentler method is better. _Yet_ we all admit that the birch must be used sometimes. _However_, if it is used only for serious trangressions, the child will have a sense of proportion regarding what offenses are grave. _But_ for ordinary small misdemeanors I think we need a new motto: Spoil the rod and spare the child. Right: It is easier to punish a child for a misdeed than to explain and argue. And of course we all admit that the birch must be used sometimes. _But_ if it is used only for serious transgressions, the child will have a sense of proportion regarding what offenses are grave. For ordinary small misdemeanors I think we need a new motto: Spoil the rod and spare the child. Exercise: 1. He did not agree at first, but hesitated for a time, but finally said that he would go along. 2. Push down on the foot lever, which closes a switch which starts an electric motor which turns the flywheel so that the gasoline engine starts. 3. Apple dumplings are good, but they must be properly baked, but fortunately this is not difficult to do. 4. The work of the course consists partly of the study of the principles of grammar and of rhetoric, partly of the writing of themes, partly of oral composition, and partly of the reading and study of models of English prose. 5. The landscape which lay before me was one which was different from any which I had ever seen before. There was one thing which impressed me, and that was the miles and miles of grass which stretched and undulated away from the hill on which I stood. =39.= EXERCISE IN CLEARNESS OF THOUGHT =A. Parallel Structure= Give parallel structure to elements which are parallel in thought. 1. Baskets are of practical value as well as being used for ornaments. 2. The Book of Job ought to be interesting to a student, or for anybody. 3. The important considerations are whether the soil is sandy, and if it is well drained, and that it shall be easily cultivated. 4. A flower garden is a source of profit--profit not measured in money but in pleasure. 5. He was successful in business, and also attained success in the political world. 6. Whether his object was writing for pastime, or to please a friend, or money, we do not know. 7. Always praise your enemy, because if you whip him your glory is increased, and if he whips you it lets you down easy. 8. Either the ship will sink in the rough sea or go to pieces on the shore. 9. An athlete must possess strength, nerve, and be able to think quickly. 10. We were interested in buying some dry-goods, and at the same time see the sights of the great city. 11. Some people talk foolishness, and others on serious subjects, and some keep still. 12. Not only she noticed my condition, but commented on it. 13. He abides by neither the laws of God nor man. He spoke both to Harry and Tom. 14. It is good for the health of one's mind to get new ideas every day, and expressing them clearly in writing. 15. Everyone who is capable of understanding the tax laws should know them and how they are abused. 16. I began by making applications at federal, state, and city employment bureaus for a position as cost accountant, salesman, or clerical work. 17. The damage to the trunk was caused by rough handling and not from faults in construction. 18. Pope, Swift, Addison, and Defoe were four satirists, but differing greatly in their work. 19. The occupants of these buildings are engaged in various kinds of business, namely: shoe-shining, shoe repair shops, cleaning and pressing clothes, confectionery stores, and restaurants. 20. I sing of geese: of the Biblical goose, that blew his bugle from the roof of Noah's Ark; the classical goose that picked his livelihood along the shores of the Ægean; of the historical goose, that squawked to save old Rome; the mercenary goose, laying the golden egg; and, finally, of the roast goose. =B. Shift in Subject or Voice= Rewrite the following sentences, avoiding all unnecessary shift in construction. 1. After you decide on the plan of the house, your attention is turned to the materials of construction. 2. Editors are careful to use words that are exact, yet simple, and the use of technical terms is not generally considered to be good. 3. Bank accounts should be balanced once a month in order that you may know your exact standing. 4. We should have our athletic contest between the weakest students, and in that way they will become physically strong. 5. When one is making a long-distance run, several cautions should be borne in mind by him. 6. In melody the poem is good, but the author's ideas are eccentric. 7. Lincoln's sentences are plain, blunt, and to the point. He lacks the ornate eloquence of Jefferson. 8. The operator places a large shovelful of concrete in the mold, and the mixture is made solid by tamping. 9. He might become angry, but it was over in a few minutes. 10. The pauper chanced to gain entrance to the royal palace, and while there the young prince is met by him. 11. When the weather is hot, plowing is accomplished very slowly with horses, while on the tractor the heat has no effect. 12. First, one should mix one-half cup of corn syrup and one cup of brown sugar; then one cup of cream and the flavoring are added. 13. In the college situated in a small town there are dormitories for the student, but in the cities they usually room where they please. 14. An education should enable us to tell the valuable from the cheap book, and by it we should be able to tell the true from the counterfeit man. 15. Moisten the sand thoroughly and set the box in a warm place, and in about a week's time it can readily be seen by the way the grains have sprouted which ears of seed corn have greatest vitality. =C. Shift in Number, Person, or Tense= Rewrite the following sentences, removing all inconsistency in grammatical form. 1. Every one has a right to their own opinion. 2. Bryant rushed to the window and shouts at the postman. 3. The life of the honey bee has been studied, and their activities found to be remarkable. 4. He says to me, "Are you ready?" And I answered, "No." 5. When a person keeps a store, you should remember the names and faces of your customers. 6. An automobile is expensive, and they are liable to become an elephant on your hands. 7. If one studies the market, he would find that prices rise every year. 8. If one went to Europe, he will find everything different. 9. Since these tires were different in construction, the method of repairing will vary. 10. Contentment is a state of mind in which one is satisfied with themselves and their surroundings. 11. It is easy to catch 'possums if you can find the rascal. 12. The writer of a theme should not waste time on a long introduction, and get to the facts of your subject as quickly as possible. 13. Shakespeare's comedies are great fun. I prefer it to tragedy. 14. Often a man will knock at the door, and finds no one at home. 15. Too much attention will spoil a child. They should not be entertained every minute. =D. The Exact Connective= Each of the following sentences contains an idea which is, or may be, subordinate to another idea. (1) Decide what kind of subordinate relation should exist between the ideas. (2) Determine what connective best expresses this relation. (Consult 36 for a list of connectives.) (3) Write the sentence as it should be. 1. Wealth is a good thing, while honest wealth is better. 2. Spend an hour in the open air every day when you want to keep your health. 3. The rattlesnake gives warning and it is only afterward that he strikes. 4. South Americans are our national neighbors, and we as a nation should understand them. 5. The city man knows nothing about a cow, only that it has horns. 6. He got up early in order that he might be able to see the sunrise. 7. The tenderfoot saw the funnel-shaped cloud when he made for a cyclone cellar. 8. Men fear what they do not understand, and a coward is one who is ignorant. 9. Hinting did not influence her; then he tried scolding. 10. The valet spilled the wine, and the duke started up with an oath. 11. While he writhed on the ground, he was not really hurt. 12. He will not cash the check without you indorse it. 13. We want this work done by the first of April, so please send an estimate soon. 14. He had traveled everywhere, and he had a vivid recollection of only three scenes: Niagara Falls, the Jungfrau, and Lake Como. 15. I never hear him talk but he makes me angry. 16. Animals have some of the same feelings as human beings have. 17. It was four o'clock and we decided to return and be home for supper. =E. Repetition of Connectives= In the following sentences determine whether repetition is desirable or undesirable, and change the sentences accordingly. 1. With the coming of meal time, the potatoes are removed from the fire with a fork with a long handle. 2. His clothes were brushed and neat, but patched and repatched. But still he could be bright and cheery. 3. To no other magazine do I look forward to the arrival of its new issue, more than I do to the _World's Work_. 4. At the time the book was written, I believe Forster was considered to be almost the best biographer living at that time. 5. The freshman has no spirit until the sophomores have provoked him until he resists until he finds that he has spirit. 6. Some socialists are against the present system of initiative, referendum, and recall, but advocate a system much like it but applied in a different way. 7. The gun with which the Germans bombarded Paris with had a range of seventy-five miles. 8. Basketball is a game that I have played for years, and I am greatly interested in. 9. This is the lever which throws the switch which directs the train that takes the track that goes to Boston. 10. Short talks were made by the captain, the coach, and by the faculty. 11. At this school one can study to be a doctor, dentist, farmer, a lawyer, or an engineer. 12. I like to cross the harbor on the ferry, to dodge in and out among the ships, see the gulls dart among the waves, smell the sharp tang of salty air, and to feel the rocking motion of the boat. 13. In the sultry autumn, and when the winter's storms came, and when in spring the winds whistled, and in the summer's heat, he always wore the same old coat. 14. He knew that if he did not ignite the piece of wet bark this time, that he could not dry his clothing or broil the bacon. 15. The next speaker said that the need was critical, the schools must be enlarged, and that the paving now begun must be completed, and a new board of health should be created, that the interest on past debts had to be paid, and the city treasury was at this moment out of funds. EMPHASIS =Emphasis by Position= =40. Reserve the emphatic positions in a sentence for important words or ideas. (The emphatic positions are the beginning and the end--especially the end.)= Weak ending: Then like a flash a vivid memory of my uncle's death came to me. Weak: I demand the release of the prisoners, in the first place. Weak: This principle is one we cannot afford to accept, if my understanding of the question is correct. Place the important idea at the end. Secure, if possible, an emphatic beginning. "Tuck in" unimportant modifiers. Emphatic: Like a flash came to me a vivid memory of my uncle's death. Emphatic: I demand, in the first place, the release of the prisoners. Emphatic: This principle, if my understanding of the question is correct, is one we cannot afford to accept. Exercise: 1. "War is inevitable," he said. 2. The cat had been poisoned to all appearances. 3. There are several methods of learning to swim, as everyone knows. 4. A liar is as bad as a thief, in my estimation. 5. He saw a fight below him in the street, happening to look out of the window. =Emphasis by Separation= =41. An idea which needs much emphasis may be detached, and allowed to stand in a sentence by itself.= Faulty: The flames were by this time beyond control, and the walls collapsed, and several firemen were hurt. [The ideas here are too important to be run together in one sentence.] Right: By this time the flames were beyond control, and the walls collapsed. Several firemen were hurt. A quotation gains emphasis when it is separated from what follows. Faulty: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley," are some lines from Burns which McDonald was always quoting. Right: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley." McDonald was always quoting these lines from Burns. Direct discourse is more emphatic when it is separated from explanatory phrases, particularly from those which follow. Faulty: Mosher leaped to the stage and shouted defiantly, "I will never consent to that!" and he looked as if he meant what he said. Right: Mosher leaped to the stage and shouted his defiance: "I will never agree to that!" And he looked as if he meant what he said. Exercise: 1. After the tents are pitched, the beds made, and the fires started, the first meal is cooked and served, and this meal is the beginning of camp-life joy. 2. He tried to make his wife vote for his own, the Citizen's Party, but she firmly refused. 3. At the word of command the dog rushed forward; the covey rose with a mighty whir, and the hunter fired both barrels, and the dog looked in vain for a dead bird, and then returned disconsolate. 4. I sat and gazed at the motto, "Aim high, and believe yourself capable of great things," which my mother had placed there for me. 5. "A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness." were the four things Omar Khayyam wanted to make him happy. =Emphasis by Subordination= =42. Do not place the important idea of a sentence in a subordinate clause or phrase. Make the important idea grammatically independent. If possible, subordinate the rest of the sentence to it.= Faulty: He had a manner which made me angry. Faulty: The fire spread to the third story, when the house was doomed. Faulty: For years the Indians molested the white people, thereby causing the settlers to want revenge. The important idea should not be placed in a _which_ clause, or a _when_ clause, or a participial phrase. Right: His manner made me angry. Right: When the fire spread to the third story, the house was doomed. Right: Years of molestation by the Indians made the white men want revenge. Exercise: 1. I was riding on the train, when suddenly there was an accident. 2. There are two windows in each bedroom, thus insuring good ventilation. 3. Yonder is the house which is my home. 4. He saw that argument was useless, so he let her talk. 5. His clothes were very old, making him look like a tramp. =The Periodic Sentence= A sentence is periodic when the completion of the main thought is delayed until the end. This delay creates a feeling of suspense. A periodic sentence is doubly emphatic: it has emphasis by position because the important idea comes at the end; it has emphasis by subordination because all ideas except the last one are grammatically dependent. =43. To give emphasis to a loosely constructed sentence, turn it into periodic form.= Loose: I saw two men fight a duel, many years ago, on a moonlit summer night, in a little village in northern France. [What is most important, the time? the place? or the actual duel? Place the important idea last.] Periodic: Many years ago, on a moonlit summer night, in a little village in northern France, I saw two men fight a duel. Loose: We left Yellowstone Gateway for the ride of our lives in a six-horse tally-ho. [Place the important idea last, _and make all other ideas grammatically subordinate_.] Periodic: Leaving Yellowstone Gateway in a six-horse tally-ho, we had the ride of our lives. Loose: The river was swollen with incessant rain, and it swept away the dam. [Which is the important idea? Why not make it appear more important by subordinating everything to it?] Periodic: The river, swollen with incessant rain, swept away the dam. Loose: War means to have our pursuit of knowledge and happiness rudely broken off, to feel the sting of death and bereavement, to saddle future generations with a burden of debt and national hatred. Periodic: To have our pursuit of knowledge and happiness rudely broken off, to feel the sting of death and bereavement, to saddle future generations with a burden of debt and national hatred--this is war. Exercise: 1. I am happy when the spring comes, when the sun is warm, when the fields revive. 2. He cares nothing for culture, for justice, for progress. 3. As the boat gathered speed, the golden sun was setting far across the harbor. 4. He amassed a great fortune, standing there behind his dingy counter, discounting bills, pinching coins, buying cheap and selling dear. 5. The shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, from the plains to the mountains. =Order of Climax= =44. In a series of words, phrases, or clauses of noticeable difference in strength, use the order of climax.= Wrong order: He was insolent and lazy. Weak ending: Literature has expanded into a sea, where before it was only a small stream. Weak ending: As we listened to his story we felt the sordid misery and the peril and fear of war. Emphatic: He was lazy and insolent. Emphatic: The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent, expanded into a sea. Emphatic: As we listened to his story we felt the fear, the peril, the sordid misery of war. Exercise: 1. We boarded the train, after having bought our tickets and checked our baggage. 2. War brings famine, death, disease after it. 3. They have broken up our homes, enslaved our children, and stolen our property. 4. In the old story, the drunken man, carried into the duke's palace, sees himself surrounded with luxury, and imagines himself a true prince, after waking up. 5. The becalmed mariners were famished, hungry. =The Balanced Sentence= =45. Two ideas similar or opposite in thought gain in emphasis when set off, one against the other, in similar constructions.= Weak and straggling: This paper, like many others, has many bad features, but in some ways it is very good. The news articles are far better than the editorials, which are feeble. Balanced structure: This paper is in some respects good; in other respects very poor. The news articles are impressive, the editorials are feeble. Weak and complicated: From the East a man who lives in the West can learn a great deal, and an Easterner ought to be able to understand the West. Balanced: A Westerner can learn much from the East, and an Easterner needs to understand the West. Weak: Both Mill and Macaulay influenced the younger writers. Mill taught some of them to reason, but many more of them learned from Macaulay only a superficial eloquence. Balanced: Both Mill and Macaulay influenced the younger writers. If Mill taught some of them to reason, Macaulay tempted many more of them to declaim. Note.--Although excessive use of balance is artificial, occasional use of it is powerful. It can give to writing either dignity (as in an oration) or point (as in an epigram). Observe how many proverbs are in balanced structure. "Seeing is believing.--Nothing venture, nothing have.--For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly.--You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.--An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Note the effective use of balance in Emerson's _Essays_, particularly in _Compensation_; and in the Old Testament, particularly in _Psalms_ and _Proverbs_. Exercise: 1. Machinery is of course labor-saving, but countless men are thrown out of work. 2. There is a difference between success in business and in acquiring culture. 3. I attend concerts for the pleasure of it, and to get an understanding of music. 4. The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet; but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterward, caught in the thicket, he was destroyed by his horns. 5. We do not see the stars at evening, sometimes because there are clouds intervening, but oftener because there are glimmerings of light; thus many truths escape us from the obscurity we stand in, and many more from the state of mind which induces us to sit down satisfied with our imaginations and of our knowledge unsuspicious. [This sentence is correctly balanced, except at the end.] =The Weak Effect of the Passive Voice= =46. Use the active voice unless there is a reason for doing otherwise. The passive voice is, as the name implies, not emphatic.= Weak: Your gift is appreciated by me. Better: I appreciate your gift. Weak and vague: His step on the porch was heard. Better: His step sounded on the porch. [Or] I heard his step on the porch. The passive voice is especially objectionable when by failing to indicate the agent of the verb it unnecessarily mystifies the reader. Vague: The train was seen speeding toward us. Better: We saw the train speeding toward us. Exercise: 1. Their minds were changed frequently as to what profession should be taken up by them. 2. A gun should be examined and oiled well before a hunter starts. 3. Finally the serenaders were recognized. 4. In athletics a man is developed physically. 5. If a man uses slang constantly, a good impression is not made. =Effective Repetition= =47a. The simplest and most natural way to emphasize a word or an idea is to repeat it.= The Bible is the best standard of simplicity and dignity in our language, and the Bible uses repetition constantly. A word or idea that is repeated must, of course, be important enough to deserve emphasis. Fairly emphatic: He works and toils and labors, but he seems never to get anywhere. Very emphatic: Work, work, work, all he does is work, and still he seems never to get anywhere. Fairly emphatic: How did the general meet this new menace? He withdrew before it! Very emphatic: How did the general meet this new menace? He withdrew! He retreated! He ran away! Homely but emphatic: "I went under," said the old salt; "bows, gunnels, and starn--all under." Deliberately too emphatic: Everywhere we hear of efficiency--efficiency experts, efficiency bureaus, efficiency methods, in the office, in the school, in the home--until one longs to fly to some savage island beyond the reach of inhuman modern science. =b. Not only words, but an entire grammatical structure may be repeated on a large scale for emphasis.= Weak: We hope that this shipment will reach you in good condition, and that you will favor us with other orders in the future, which will be given prompt and courteous attention. [This sentence is flimsy and spineless because the writer had a timid reluctance to repeat.] Strong: We hope that this shipment will reach you in good condition. We believe that the quality of our goods will induce you to send us a second order. We assure you that such an order will receive prompt and courteous attention. [Note the emphasis derived from the resolute march of the expressions _We hope_, _We believe_, _We assure_.] Emphatic: Through the patience, the courage, the high character of Alfred the country was saved--saved from the rapacities of fortune, saved from the malignancy of its enemies, saved from the sluggish despair of the people of England themselves. Emphatic and natural: This corner of the garden was my first playground. Here I made my first toddling effort to walk. Here on the soft grass I learned the delight of out-of-doors. Here I became acquainted with the bull-frog, and the bumble-bee, and the neighbor's dog. Emphatic and delightful: He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Exercise: 1. He kept digging away for gold through long years. 2. Breaking against the shore, came innumerable waves. 3. Sand, sagebrush, shimmering flat horizon. I could not endure the barren monotony of the desert. 4. We want you to come and visit us, and bring along a good appetite and your customary high spirits. Plan to stay a long time. 5. 'Twas bitter cold outside. The cat meowed until I had to let her in. =Offensive Repetition= Careless repetition attracts attention to words that do not need emphasis. It is extremely annoying to the reader. =48a. Unless a word or phrase is repeated deliberately to gain force or clearness, its repetition is a blunder. Get rid of recurring expressions in one of three ways: (1) by substituting equivalent expressions, (2) by using pronouns more liberally, (3) by rearranging the sentence so as to say once what has awkwardly been said twice.= Each of these schemes is illustrated below. =1.= Repetition cured by the use of equivalent expressions (synonyms). Bad: _Just_ as we were half way down the lake, _just_ off Milwaukee, we _began_ to feel a slight motion of the ship and the _wind began_ to freshen. The _wind began_ to blow more fiercely from the south and the waves _began_ to leap high. The boat _began_ to pitch and roll. Right: _Just_ as we were half way down the lake, _opposite_ Milwaukee, we began to feel a slight motion of the ship, for the wind _had_ freshened. Before long _a gale_, _blowing_ from the south, _kicked up a heavy sea and caused_ the boat to pitch and roll. [Notice how combining the last two sentences helps to solve the problem of the last _began_, besides giving firmer texture to the construction.] =2.= Repetition cured by the use of pronouns. (In using this method, one should take care that the reference of the pronouns is clear.) Bad: The _Law Building_, the _Commerce Building_, and the _Science Building_ are close together. The _Commerce Building_ is south of the _Law Building_, and the _Science Building_ is south of the _Commerce Building_. The _Law Building_ is old and dilapidated. The _Commerce Building_ is a red brick _building_, trimmed in terra-cotta. The _Science Building_ resembles the _Commerce Building_. Right: The Law, Commerce, and Science Buildings are close together in a row. _The first of these_ is old and dilapidated. South of it stands the Commerce Building, _which_, because of _its_ red brick and terra-cotta trimmings, somewhat resembles the Science Building. =3.= Repetition cured by rearranging and condensing. Bad: The _autumn_ is my favorite of all the _seasons_. While _autumn_ in the _city_ is not such a pleasant _season_ as _autumn_ in the country, yet even in the _city_ my preference will always be for the _autumn_. Right: My favorite season is autumn. I like it best in the country, but even in the city it is the best time of the year. =b. Avoid a monotonous repetition of sentence structure. To give variety to successive sentences: (1) vary the length, (2) vary the beginnings, (3) avoid a series of similar compound sentences, (4) interchange loose with periodic structure, (5) use rhetorical question, exclamation, direct discourse, (6) avoid an excessive use of participles or adjectives.= =1.= Vary the length of sentences. Bad: Walter came up the path carrying Betty in his arms. She was wet from head to toe. Damp curls clung to her pale face. Water dripped from her clothes. One hand hung loosely over Walter's arm. The other held a live duckling. She had saved the little duck from drowning. This was Betty's first day in the country. Right: Walter came up the path carrying Betty in his arms--little Betty who was spending her first day in the country. She was wet from head to toe; damp curls clung to her pale face, and water dripped from her clothes. In one hand she held a live duckling. Her face lighted with courage as she told how she jumped into the pond and saved the little duck from drowning. =2.= Vary the beginnings of sentences. Do not allow too many sentences to begin with the subject, or with a time clause, or with a participle, or with _so_. When you have finished a composition, rapidly read over the opening words of each sentence, to see if there is sufficient variety. Bad [too many sentences begin directly with the subject]: Our way is circuitous. A sharp turn brings us round a rocky point. The road drops suddenly into a little valley. The roof of a house appears in a grove of trees below. A cottage is there and a flower garden. An old-fashioned well is near the door. Right: Presently, on our circuitous way, we make a sharp turn round a rocky point. Before us the road drops suddenly into a little valley. In a grove of trees below appears the roof of a house, and as we draw nearer we see a cottage surrounded by flowers. Nothing could be more attractive to a weary traveler than the old-fashioned well near the door. =3.= Avoid a series of similar compound sentences, especially those of two parts of equal length, joined by _and_ or _but_. Bad: Ring was a sheep dog, and tended the flock with his master. One day there came a deep snow, and the flock did not return. They found the herder frozen stiff, and the dog shivering beside him. Right: Ring was a sheep dog, and tended the flock with his master. One day there came a deep snow. When the flock failed to return, the men became uneasy, and began to search. They found the herder frozen stiff, with the dog shivering beside him. =4.= Change occasionally from loose to periodic or balanced structure (See 43 and 45). Monotonous: I stood at the foot of Tunbridge hill. I saw on the horizon a dense wood, which, in the evening sunlight, was veiled in purple haze [Loose]. On the left was the village, the houses appearing like specks in the distance [Loose]. Nearer on the right was the creek, winding through the willows [Loose]. The creek approached nearer until it reached the dam, over which it rushed tumultuously [Loose]. Near by was a thicket of tall trees, through which I could see the white tents of my fellow campers, and their glowing camp fires [Loose]. Right: Far south from Tunbridge hill, on the dim horizon, I saw, veiled in the evening haze, a dense wood [Periodic, long, conveying the idea of distance better than a loose sentence]. On my left stood the village, the houses like specks; on my right wound the creek, nearer and nearer through the willows [Balanced]. The creek advanced by slow sinuous turns, until, reaching the dam, it plunged over tumultuously [Loose]. Through a thicket of tall trees, near at hand, I could see the white tents of my fellow campers, and their glowing camp fires [Periodic through the middle of the sentence; then loose]. =5.= Use question, exclamation, direct quotation. Somewhat flat: He asked me the road to Camden. I did not know. I told him to ask Thurber, who knew the country well. Better: He asked me the road to Camden. The road to Camden? How should I know? "Ask Thurber," I said impatiently; "he knows this country. I'm a stranger." =6.= Avoid an excessive use of participles. Do not pile adjectives around every noun. Above all, do not form a habit of using adjectives in pairs or triplets. Bad: Sitting by the window, I saw a sharp, dazzling flash of lightning, and heard a loud rumbling crash of heavy thunder, warning me of the coming of the storm. Darting across the gray, leaden sky, the quick, jagged lightning flashed incessantly. The tall stately poplar trees thrashed around in the boisterous wind. Then across the window, like a great white curtain, swept the streaming, blinding rain. Right: I sat by the window. Suddenly a sharp flash of lightning and a roll of thunder gave warning of the approach of a storm. Soon lightning zig-zagged across the sky incessantly. The wind huddled the poplar trees. Then like a white curtain across the window streamed the rain. Exercise: 1. The parts of the tables are not put together at the factory, but the different parts are shipped in different shipments. 2. In order to convince the reader that the present management of farms is inefficient, I shall give some examples of efficiency in the farm management on some farms with which I am acquainted. 3. When one wishes to learn how to swim one must first become accustomed to the water. The best way to become accustomed to the water is to go into it frequently. After one has become accustomed to the water he may begin to learn the strokes. 4. _The Life of Sir Walter Scott_, written by J. G. Lockhart, is an interesting biography of this great writer. It consists of a short biography by Scott himself, and also consists of a continuation of this biography by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart. 5. If a piece of steel is kept hot for several seconds, it will lose some of its hardness. If kept hot longer, it will lose more of its hardness. Along with losing its hardness it will lose its brittleness. If the piece of steel is heated continually it will lose nearly all its hardness and brittleness. In other words, it will lose its "temper." =49.= EXERCISE IN EMPHASIS =A. Lack of Emphasis in General= Make the following sentences emphatic. 1. The man is a thief who fails in business but continues to live in luxury. 2. The plant was withered and dry, not having been watered for over a week. 3. Much time is saved in Chicago by taking the elevated cars, if you have a great distance to travel. 4. The clock struck eleven, when he immediately seized his hat and left. 5. These liberal terms should be taken advantage of by us. 6. The study of biology has proved very interesting, as far as I have gone. 7. Who is this that comes to the foot of the guillotine, crouching, trembling? 8. They must pay the penalty. Their death is necessary. They have caused harm enough. 9. I intend to get up fifteen minutes earlier, thereby giving myself time to eat a good breakfast. 10. The book was reread several times, for I never grew tired of it. 11. "What is the aim of a university education?" the speaker asked. 12. A bicycle is sometimes ridden when a tire contains no air, total ruin resulting from the weight of the rim upon the flat tire. 13. He sprang forward the instant the pistol cracked, since the start of a sprint is very important, and one cannot overdo the practicing of it. 14. Sometimes the fuses fail to burn, or burn too fast, causing an explosion before the workmen are prepared for it. 15. How father made soap was always a mystery to me. Cracklings saved from butchering time, lye, and water went into the kettle on a warm spring day and came out in the form of soap a few hours later, to my great astonishment. =B. Loose or Unemphatic Structure= Make the following sentences more emphatic by throwing them into periodic form. 1. It was Tom, as I had expected. 2. I will not tell, no matter how you beg. 3. The supremacy of the old river steamboat is gone forever, unless conditions should be utterly changed. 4. Across the desert he traveled alone, and over strange seas, and through quaint foreign villages. 5. The hot water dissolves the glue in the muresco, making the mixture more easily applied. 6. Visions of rich meadows and harvest-laden fields now pass before my eyes, as I sit by the fire. 7. Some of the women were weeping bitterly, thinking they would never see their homes again. 8. I splashed along on foot for three miles after night in a driving rain. 9. Very high rent is demanded, thus keeping the peasants constantly in debt. 10. Roderigo was in despair because he had been rejected by Desdemona, and was ready to end his life, by the time Iago entered. 11. Through storm and cold the open boat was brought to the shore at last, after toil and suffering, with great difficulty. 12. The car came to a violent stop against a rock pile, after it demolished two fences, upset a hen-house, and scared a pig out of his wits. 13. The Panama Canal is the fulfilment of the dreams of old Spanish adventurers, the desires of later merchant princes, and the demand of modern nations for free traffic on the seas. 14. The fiddle yelled, and the feet of the dancers beat the floor, and the spectators applauded, and the room fairly rang. 15. The man with the best character, not the man with most money, will come out on top in the end. =C. Faulty Repetition= Repetition in the following sentences is objectionable, because it attracts attention to words or constructions that do not need to be emphasized. Improve the sentences, avoiding unnecessary repetition. 1. He is a great friend of boys, and views things from the boys' point of view. 2. In the case of the strike at Lawrence, Massachusetts, the real cause was low wages caused by immigration and child labor. 3. First, a subject must be chosen, and in choosing a subject, choose one that you know something about. 4. There are great opportunities in the field of science, and a scientist who makes a mark in the world of science makes a mark for himself everywhere. 5. While the practical man is learning skill in the practical world, the college man is attaining a development of mentality that will surpass that of the practical man when the college man learns the skill of the practical man. 6. The field is dragged and rolled. Dragging and rolling leaves the ground smooth and ready for planting. 7. A great number and variety of articles appears in every issue. There is a complete review of each subject. It is treated in a short, but thorough manner. 8. They gave me a hearty welcome. They stood back and looked at me. They wanted to see if three months in the city had made any changes in me. But they said it had not. 9. Engineering is looked upon by many students as an easy and uninteresting study, but to my knowledge it is not uninteresting and easy. Engineering is probably one of the hardest courses in college. To me it is also the most interesting. 10. A duck hunter should have a place to hunt where ducks are frequently found in duck season. Ducks often light in the backwater along a river, and in ponds. They are often found in small lakes. Corn fields are common feeding places for ducks. Ducks make regular trips to cornfields within reach of a body of water such as a river or lake. It is their nature to spend the night in the water, and in the morning and in the evening they go out to the fields to feed. GRAMMAR =Case= =50a. The subject of a verb is in the nominative case, even when the verb is remote, or understood (not expressed).= Wrong: They are as old as us. Right: They are as old as we [are]. Wrong: He is taller than her. Right: He is taller than she [is]. Note.--_Than_ and _as_ are conjunctions, not prepositions. When they are followed by a pronoun merely, this pronoun is not their object, but part of a clause the rest of which may be understood. The case of this pronoun is determined by its relation to the rest of the unexpressed clause. Sometimes the understood clause calls for the objective: "I like his brother better than [I like] him." _Than whom_, though ungrammatical, is sanctioned by usage. =b. Guard against the improper attraction of _who_ into the objective case by intervening expressions like _he says_.= Wrong: The man whom they believed was the cause of the trouble left the country. [_They believed_ is parenthetical, and the subject of _was_ is _who_.] Right: The man who they believed was the cause of the trouble left the country. Wrong: Whom do you suppose made us a visit? Right: Who do you suppose made us a visit? =Guard against the improper attraction of _who_ or _whoever_ into the objective case by a preceding verb or preposition.= Wrong: Punish whomever is guilty. [The pronoun is the subject of _is_. The object of _punish_ is the entire clause _whoever is guilty_.] Right: Punish whoever is guilty. Wrong: The mystery as to whom had rendered him this service remained. [The pronoun is the subject of _had rendered_. The object of the preposition is the entire clause _who had rendered him this service_.] Right: The mystery as to who had rendered him this service remained. =c. The predicate complement of the verb _to be_ (in any of its forms, _is_, _was_, _were_, _be_, etc.) is in the nominative case.= _To be_ never takes an object, because it does not express action. Wrong: Was it her? Was it them? It is me. Right: Was it she? Was it they? Is it I. Wrong: The happiest people there were him and his mother. Right: The happiest people there were he and his mother. =d. The object of a preposition or a verb is in the objective case.= Wrong: Some of we fellows went fishing. Right: Some of us fellows went fishing. Wrong: That seems incredible to you and I. Right: That seems incredible to you and me. Wrong: Who did they detect? Right: Whom did they detect? =e. The "assumed" subject of an infinitive is in the objective case.= Right: I wanted him to go. [_Him to go_ is the group object of the verb _wanted_. _To go_, being an infinitive, cannot assert an action, and consequently cannot take a subject. But _to go_ implies that something is at least capable of action. _Him_ is the latent or assumed subject of the action implied in _to go_.] Right: _Whom_ do you wish _to be_ your leader? [_Whom_ is the assumed subject of the infinitive _to be_.] =f. A noun or pronoun used to express possession is in the possessive case.= Do not omit the apostrophe (See 97) from nouns, or from the pronouns _one's_ and _other's_. Most of the other possessive pronouns do not require an apostrophe. Right: The man's hair is gray. Right: The machine does its work well. [_It's_ would mean _it is_.] Right: One should do one's duty. =g. A noun or pronoun linked with a gerund should be in the possessive case whenever the use of the objective case might cause confusion.= Faulty: Is there any criticism of Arthur going? Right: Is there any criticism of Arthur's going? Right: I had not heard of his being sick. Right, but slightly less desirable: I had not heard of him being sick. Note.--In other instances than those in which clearness is involved many good writers use the objective case with the gerund. But even in these instances most writers prefer the possessive case. =h. It is usually awkward and slightly illogical to attribute possession to inanimate objects.= Awkward: The farm's management. Better: The management of the farm. Awkward: The stomach's lining. Better: The lining of the stomach. Note.--Usage justifies many exceptions, particularly (1) expressions that involve time or measure, _a day's work_, _a hair's breadth_, _a year's salary_, _a week's vacation_, _a cable's length_; and (2) expressions that involve personification, explicit or implied, _Reason's voice_, _the law's delay_, _for mercy's sake_, _the heart's desire_, _the tempest's breath_. =i. A pronoun agrees with its antecedent in person, gender, and number, but not in case.= Right: _I, who am_ older, know better. Right: Tell _me, who am_ older, your trouble. Right: Many a man has saved _himself_ by counsel. Exercise: 1. I am as old as (he, him). They may be pluckier than (we, us). Nobody is less conceited than (she, her). 2. He gave help to (whoever, whomever) wanted it. The girls (who, whom) they say have the worst taste are on a committee to select the class pin. 3. Four of (we, us) boys were left without a cent. That is a good investment for her cousin and (she, her). 4. It was (he, him). It is (they, them). The sole occupants of the car were his chum and (he, him). 5. I had not heard of (his, him) being sick. She does not approve of (our, us) being late to dinner. (They, them) who labor now the Master will reward. =Number= =51a. _Each_, _every_, _every one_, _everybody_, _anybody_, _either_, _neither_, _no one_, _nobody_, and similar words are singular.= Wrong: Everybody did their best. Right: Everybody did his best. Wrong: Each of my three friends were there. Right: Each of my three friends was there. Wrong: Either of the candidates are capable of making a good officer. Right: Either of the candidates is capable of making a good officer. =b. Do not let _this_ or _that_ when modifying _kind_ or _sort_ be attracted into the plural by a following noun.= Wrong: He knew nothing of those kind of activities. Right: He knew nothing of that kind of activities. Wrong: I never did like these sort of post cards. Right: I never did like this sort of post cards. =c. Collective nouns may be regarded as singular or plural, according to the meaning intended.= Right: The crowd is waiting. Right: The crowd are not agreed. Right: Webster maintained that the United States is an inseparable union; Hayne that the United States are a separable union. English usage: The government were considering a new bill regarding labor. American usage: The government was glad to place our troops at the disposal of General Foch. =d. Do not use _don't_ in the third person singular. Use _doesn't_. _Don't_ is contraction of _do not_.= Wrong: He don't get up early on Sunday morning. Right: He doesn't get up early on Sunday morning. Exercise: 1. She said not to buy those sort of carpet tacks. These kind of apples won't keep. I don't care for these boasting kind of travelers. 2. Neither of us were in condition to run the race. Every one assured Mrs. Merton they had spent a pleasant evening. 3. He don't suffer much now. I don't care if she don't come today. 4. Each of us in that dismal waiting room were angry with the agent for telling us the train was not late. 5. No one of the girls will tell their age. It don't matter. =Agreement= =52a. A verb agrees in number with the subject, not with a noun which intervenes between it and the subject.= Wrong: The size of the plantations vary. Right: The size of the plantations varies. Wrong: The increasing use of luxuries are a menace to the country. Right: The increasing use of luxuries is a menace to the country. Wrong: The prices of grain fluctuates in response to the demand. Right: The prices of grain fluctuate in response to the demand. [Or] The price of grain fluctuates in response to the demand. =b. The number of the verb is not affected by the addition to the subject of words introduced by _with_, _together with_, _no less than_, _as well as_, and the like.= Wrong: The mayor of the city, as well as several aldermen, have investigated the charges. Right: The mayor of the city, as well as several aldermen, has investigated the charges. =c. Singular subjects joined by _or_ or _nor_ take a singular verb.= Wrong: Either the second or the third of the plans they have devised are acceptable. Right: Either the second or the third of the plans they have devised is acceptable. =d. A subject consisting of two or more nouns joined by _and_ takes a plural verb.= Right: The hunting and fishing are good. =e. A verb should agree in number with the subject, not with a predicate noun.= Wrong: The weak point in the team were the fielders. Right: The weak point in the team was the fielders. Wrong: Laziness and dissipation is the cause of his failure. Right: Laziness and dissipation are the cause of his failure. =f. In _There is_ and _There are_ sentences the verb should agree in number with the noun that follows it.= Wrong: There is very good grounds for such a decision. Right: There are very good grounds for such a decision. Wrong: There was present a man, two women, and a child. Right: There were present a man, two women, and a child. Exercise: 1. The sound of falling acorns (is, are) one of the delights of an autumn evening. Eye strain through ill-fit glasses (is, are) injurious to the general health, but reading without glasses (is, are) often more harmful still. 2. Neither the baritone nor the tenor (has, have) as good a voice as the soprano. The guitar or the mandolin (is, are) always out of tune. 3. The Amazon with its tributaries (affords, afford) access to sea. The conductor of the freight train, along with the engineer and fireman of the passenger, (was, were) injured. 4. Ghost stories late at night (is, are) a crime against children. My reason for knowing that it is six o'clock (is, are) the factory whistles. 5. There (was, were) in the same coach a dozen singing freshmen. Years of experience in buying clothes (gives, give) me confidence in my judgment. =_Shall_ and _Will_, _Should_ and _Would_= Although there is a tendency to disregard subtle distinctions between _shall_ and _will_ in ordinary speech, it is desirable to preserve the more important distinctions in written discourse. =53. To express simple futurity or mere expectation, use _shall_ with the first person (both singular and plural) and _will_ with the second and third.= I shall go. We shall walk. You will play. You will hear. He will sing. They will reply. =To express resolution or emphatic assurance, reverse the usage; that is, use _will_ with the first person (both singular and plural), and _shall_ with the second and third.= I will; I tell you, I will. We will not be excluded. You shall do what I bid. You shall not delay us. He shall obey me. They shall pay the tribute. In asking questions, use the form expected in the answer. "Shall I go?" I asked myself musingly. "Shall we take a walk?" "You promise. But will you pay?" "Will it rain tomorrow?" _Should_ and _would_ follow the rules given for _shall_ and _will_. Mere statement of a fact: I [or We] should like to go. You [or He or They] would of course accept the offer. Resolution or emphatic assurance: I [or We] would never go under terms so degrading. You [or He or They] should decline; honor demands it. _Should_ has also a special use in the subjunctive (in all persons) to express a condition; and _would_ has a special use (in all persons) to express a wish, or customary action. If it should rain, I shall not go. If I should remain, it would probably clear off. Would that I could swim! He [I, We, You, They] would often sit there by the hour. Exercise: 1. I (shall, will) probably do as he says. I'm determined; I (shall, will) go! We (shall, will) see what tomorrow (shall, will) bring forth. 2. The train (shall, will) whistle at this crossing, I suppose. When the log is nearly severed, it (shall, will) begin to pinch the saw. The weather (shall, will) be warmer tomorrow. 3. Johnny, you (shall, will) not go near those strawberries! He (shall, will) not leave us in this predicament. I repeat it, he (shall, will) not! We (shall, will) never sell this good old horse. 4. (Shall, will) this calico fade? (Shall, will) you give the organ grinder some money? (Shall, will) I raise the window? (Should, would) I ask his permission? 5. If you (should, would) visit his laboratory, you (should, would) learn how a starfish preserved in alcohol smells. You (shall, will) all die some day, my friends. (Shall, will) I ever forget this? Time (shall, will) tell. =Principal Parts= =54. Use the correct form of the past tense and past participle.= Avoid _come_, _done_, _bursted_, _knowed_, _says_ for the past tense; and [_had_] _eat_, [_had_] _froze_, [_have_] _ran_, [_has_] _went_, [_has_] _wrote_, [_are_] _suppose_ for the past participle. Memorize the principal parts of difficult verbs. The principal parts are the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle. A good way to recall these is to repeat the formula: Today I _sing_; yesterday I _sang_; often in the past I have _sung_. The principal parts of _sing_ are _sing_, _sang_, _sung_. A list of difficult verbs is given below. bear bore borne born begin began begun bend bent bent bid bid bid bade bidden bite bit bit bitten bleed bled bled blow blew blown break broke broken burn burnt burnt burned burned burst burst burst catch caught caught choose chose chosen come came come deal dealt dealt dive dived dived do did done drag dragged dragged draw drew drawn dream dreamt dreamt dreamed dreamed drink drank drunk drive drove driven drown drowned drowned dwell dwelt dwelt dwelled dwelled eat ate eaten fall fell fallen fight fought fought flee fled fled fly flew flown flow flowed flowed freeze froze frozen get got got go went gone grow grew grown hang hung hung hang hanged hanged hold held held kneel knelt knelt know knew known lay laid laid lead led led lend lent lent lie lay lain lie lied lied loose loosed loosed lose lost lost mean meant meant pay paid paid prove proved proved read read read rid rid rid ride rode ridden ring rang rung rise rose risen run ran run say said said see saw seen set set set shake shook shaken shine shone shone show showed shown shrink shrank shrunk sing sang sung sit sat sat slink slunk slunk speak spoke spoken spend spent spent spit spit spit spat spat steal stole stolen swear swore sworn sweep swept swept swim swam swum take took taken tear tore torn throw threw thrown thrust thrust thrust tread trod trod trodden wake woke waked waked wear wore worn weave wove woven weep wept wept write wrote written Exercise: 1. Adams ---- (past tense of _draw_) another glass of cider and ---- (past tense of _drink_) it. When those squashes once ---- (past tense of _begin_), they ---- (past tense of _grow_) like mad. 2. The thermometer had ---- (past participle of _fall_) twenty degrees, and three water pipes had ---- (past participle of _freeze_). Afterward one ---- (past tense of _burst_). 3. Annie had ---- (past participle of _speak_) a piece, and Nancy had ---- (past participle of _write_) a poem, and Isabel had nearly ---- (past participle of _burst_) with envy. 4. He ---- (past tense of _do_) a brave deed; he ---- (past tense of _swim_) straight for the whirlpool. I had ---- (past participle of _know_) him before, and had ---- (past participle of _shake_) hands with him. 5. He ---- (past tense of _come_) home late, and has ---- (past participle of _eat_) his dinner. Now he has ---- (past participle of _go_) down town. He has ---- (past participle of _ride_) before. I ---- (past tense of _see_) him. He ---- (past tense of _run_) swiftly. =Tense, Mode, Auxiliaries= =55a. In dependent clauses and infinitives, the tense is to be considered in relation to the time expressed in the principal verb.= Wrong: I intended to have gone. [The principal verb _intended_ indicates a past time. In that past time I intended to do something. What? Did I intend _to go_, or _to have gone_?] Right: I intended to go. Wrong: We hoped that you would have come to the party. [The principal verb _hoped_ indicates a past time. In that past time our hope was that you _would_ come, not that you _would have come_.] Right: We hoped that you would come. =b. When narration in the past tense is interrupted for reference to a preceding occurrence, the past perfect tense is used.= Wrong: In the parlor my cousin kept a collection of animals which he shot. Right: In the parlor my cousin kept a collection of animals which he had shot. =c. General statements equally true in the past and in the present are usually expressed in the present tense.= Faulty: He said that Venus was a planet. Right: He said that Venus is a planet. =d. The subjunctive mode of the verb _to be_ is used to express a condition contrary to fact, or a wish.= Faulty: If he was here, I should be happy. Right: If he were here, I should be happy. Faulty: I wish that I was a man. Right: I wish that I were a man. =e. Use the correct auxiliary. Make sure that the tense, mode, or aspect of successive verbs is not altered without reason.= Wrong: By giving strict obedience to commands, a soldier _learns_ discipline, and consequently _would have_ steady nerves in time of war. [_Learns_ should be followed by _will have_.] Wrong: An automobile _should be_ kept in good working order so that its life _is_ lengthened. [_Should be_ is properly followed by _may be_.] Exercise: 1. Every one hoped that you would have spoken. 2. I saw it in the window. It was the very book I wanted so long. 3. If I was sick, I should go home. 4. They expected to have won the game. 5. The Masons never invite men to join their lodge, but if a person expresses a desire to join, his friends would probably be able to secure membership for him. =Adjective and Adverb= =56a. Do not use an adjective to modify a verb.= Crude: He spoke slow and careful. Right: He spoke slowly and carefully. Crude: He sure did good in his classes. Right: He surely did well in his classes. =b. In such sentences as _He stood firm_ and _The cry rang clear_ the modifier should be an adjective if it refers to the subject, an adverb if it refers to the verb.= Right: The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home. [Here the thought is that the sun which shines is bright.] Right: He worked diligently. [Here the modifier refers to the manner of working rather than to the person who works. It should therefore be an adverb.] Right: It stood immovable. The shot rang loud. He becomes angry. The weeds grow thick. They remain obstinate. He seems intelligent. =c. After a verb pertaining to the senses, _look_, _sound_, _taste_, _smell_, _feel_, an adjective is used to denote a quality pertaining to the subject.= (An adverb is used only when the reference is clearly to the verb.) She looks _beautiful_. [Not _beautifully_.] The dinner bell sounds _good_. [Not _well_.] My food tastes _bad_. [Not _badly_.] That flower smells _bad_. [Not _badly_.] I feel good [_in good spirits_.] I feel well [_in good health_. An adjectival use of _well_.] I feel bad [_in bad health or spirits_. "I feel badly" would mean "My sense of touch is impaired."] Exercise: 1. They fought ---- (heroic, heroically). Dave stumbled ----(awkward, awkwardly). 2. Margaret ---- (sure, surely) worked ---- (faithful, faithfully) in economics. 3. At this reply the teacher grew ---- (wrathful, wrathfully). I hear you ---- (plain, plainly). 4. I feel ---- (giddy, giddily). Your rose looks ---- (sweet, sweetly). No perfume smells so ---- (dainty, daintily). 5. That salad tastes ---- (good, well). I feel ---- (bad, badly) today. Your voice sounds ---- (good, well) and ----(familiar, familiarly). =A Word in a Double Capacity= =57. Do not use a verb, conjunction, preposition, or noun in a double capacity when one of the uses is ungrammatical.= Wrong [verb]: An opera house was built in one part of town, and two churches in another. Right: An opera house was built in one part of town, and two churches were built in another. Wrong [verb]: He always has and will do it. Right: He always has done it, and always will do it. Wrong [conjunction]: He was as old, if not older, than any other man in the community. Right: He was as old as any other man in the community, if not older. Wrong [preposition]: He was fond and diligent in work. Right: He was fond of work and diligent in it. Wrong [noun]: He is one of the most skilful, if not the most skilful, tennis players in the state. Right: He is one of the most skilful tennis players in the state, if not the most skilful. Exercise: 1. He is as old, if not older, than she is. 2. Two boats were in the water, and one on the shore. 3. From childhood he has, and to old age he will, have many hobbies. 4. A visit to a ten cent store is better, or at least as good, as a visit to a circus. You see as many or more queer things than in any show. 5. One of the greatest, if not the greatest, secrets in keeping our health, is to keep our teeth in good condition. A famous physician said that one of the next, if not the very next, marked advance in medical science will be through discoveries in the realm of dentistry. Parts of Speech, Other Grammatical Terms, Conjugation The Parts of Speech and Their Uses =Noun.= A noun is a name. It may be =proper= (_Philip Watkins_), or =common=. Common nouns may be =concrete= (_man_, _windmill_), or =abstract= (_gratitude_, _nearness_). =A= noun applied to a group is said to be =collective= (_family_, _race_). The uses of a noun =are=: to serve as the subject of a verb, to serve as the object of a verb or a preposition, to be in apposition with another noun (Jenkins, our _coach_), to indicate possession (_Joseph's_ coat of many colors); and less frequently, to serve as an adjective (the _brick_ sidewalk) or adverb (John went _home_), and to indicate direct address (_Jehovah_, help us!). =Pronoun.= A pronoun is a word which takes the place of a noun. It may be =personal= (_I_, _thou_, _you_, _he_, _she_, _it_, _we_, _they_), =relative= (_who_, _which_, _what_, _that_, _as_, and compounds _whoever_, _whichsoever_, etc.), =interrogative= (_who_, _which_, _what_), =demonstrative= (_this_, _that_, _these_, _those_), or =indefinite= (_some_, _any_, _one_, _each_, _either_, _neither_, _none_, _few_, _all_, _both_, etc.). Strictly speaking, the last two groups, demonstratives and indefinites, are adjectives used as pronouns. Certain pronouns are also used as adjectives, notably the =possessives= (_my_, _his_, _their_, etc.) and the relative or interrogative _which_ and _what_. The addition of _-self_ to a personal pronoun forms a =reflexive pronoun= or =intensive= (I blamed _myself_. You _yourself_ are at fault). A noun for which the pronoun stands is called the =antecedent=. The uses of pronouns are in general the same as those of nouns. In addition, relatives serve as connectives (the man _who_ spoke), interrogatives ask questions (_what_ man?), and demonstratives point out (_that_ man). =Verb.= A verb is a word or word-group which makes an assertion about the subject. It may express either action or mere existence. It may be =transitive= (_trans_ meaning "across"; hence action carried across, requiring a receiver of the act; Brutus _stabbed_ Cæsar; Cæsar is _stabbed_) or =intransitive= (not requiring a receiver of the act: Montgomery _fell_). Its meaning is dependent upon its voice, mode, and tense. Voice shows the relationship between the subject and the assertion made by the verb. The =active voice= shows the subject as actor (They _elected_ Washington); the =passive voice=, as acted upon (Washington _was elected_). (A transitive verb may be active or passive, but an intransitive verb has no voice.) Mode indicates the manner of predicating an action, whether as assertion, condition, command, etc. There are three modes in English. The =indicative mode= affirms or denies (He _went_. She _did not dance_.) The =subjunctive= expresses condition or wish (If he _were_ older, he would be wiser. Would that I _were_ there!). The =imperative= expresses command or exhortation (_Remain_ there. _Go!_ _Let_ us pray). =Modal auxiliaries= with these three modes form =modal aspects= of the verb. There are as many different aspects as there are auxiliaries. Aspects are sometimes spoken of as separate modes or called collectively the "potential mode." Tense expresses the time of the action or existence. The tenses are the =present=, the =past=, the =future= (employing the auxiliaries _shall_ and _will_), the =perfect= (employing _have_), the =past perfect= (employing _had_), and the =future perfect= (employing _shall have_ and _will have_). =Verbals= are certain forms of the verb used as other parts of speech (noun, adjective, adverb). For the verbal forms, infinitive, gerund, and participle, see the separate headings. =Adjective.= An adjective is a word used to modify a noun or pronoun. An adjective may be =attributive= (_bright_ sun, _cool-headed_ adventurers) or =predicate= (The field is _broad_. The meat tastes _bad_. I want this _ready_ by Christmas). Adjectives assume three forms known as degrees of comparison. The =positive degree= indicates the simple quality of the object without reference to any other. The =comparative degree= indicates that two objects are compared (Stanley is the _older_ brother). The =superlative degree= indicates that three or more objects are compared (Stanley is the _oldest_ child in the family) or that the speaker feels great interest or emotion (A _most excellent_ record). Ordinarily _er_ or _r_ is added to the positive to form the comparative, and _est_ or _st_ to the positive to form the superlative (brave, braver, bravest). But some adjectives (sometimes those of two, and always those of more than two, syllables) prefix _more_ (or _less_) to the positive to form the comparative, and _most_ (or _least_) to the positive to form the superlative (beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful). Some adjectives express qualities that do not permit comparison (_dead_, _four-sided_, _unique_). =Adverb.= An adverb is a word used to modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb (She played _well_; _unusually_ handsome; _very_ sternly); or, more rarely, a verbal noun (Walking _fast_ is good for the health), a preposition (The ship drifted _almost_ upon the breakers), or a conjunction (It came _just_ when we wished). Certain adverbs (_fatally_, _entirely_) do not logically admit of comparison. Those that do are compared like adjectives of more than two syllables (_slowly_, _more_ or _less slowly_, _most_ or _least slowly_). =Preposition.= A preposition is a connective _placed before_ a substantive (called its object) in order to subordinate the substantive to some other word in a sentence (The boast _of_ heraldry, the pomp _of_ power. He ran _toward_ the enemy _without_ fear). =Conjunction.= A conjunction is a word used to _join together_ words, phrases, clauses, or sentences. A =coördinate conjunction= connects elements of equal rank (See 36). =Correlative conjunctions= are conjunctions used in pairs (See 31). A =subordinate conjunction= is one that connects elements unequal in rank (See 36). When a conjunction, in addition to its function as a connective, indicates a relation of time, place, or cause, it is often called a =conjunctive adverb= or =relative adverb=. =Interjection.= An interjection is a word _thrown into_ speech to express emotion. It has no grammatical connection with other words. (_Oh_, is that it? _Well_, I'll do it. _Hark!_) =Other Grammatical Terms= =Absolute expression.= An expression (usually composed of a substantive and a participle, perhaps with modifiers) which, though not formally and grammatically joined, is in thought related to the remainder of the sentence. (_The relief party having arrived_, we went home. _This disposed of_, the council proceeded to other matters. _Defeated_, he was not dismayed.) =Antecedent.= A substantive to which a pronoun or participle refers. Literally, _antecedent_ means _that which goes before_; but sometimes the antecedent follows the dependent word. (The _man_ who hesitates is lost. Entering the store, _we_ saw a barrel of apples.) _Man_ is the antecedent of the pronoun _who_, and _we_ is the antecedent of the participle _entering_. =Auxiliary.= _Be_, _have_, _do_, _shall_, _will_, _ought_, _may_, _can_, _must_, _might_, _could_, _would_, _should_, etc., when used with participles and infinitives of other verbs, are called auxiliary verbs. =Case.= The relation of a substantive to other words in the sentence as shown by inflectional form or position. The subject of a verb, or the predicate of the verb _to be_, is in the nominative case. The object of a verb or preposition, or the "assumed subject" of an infinitive, is in the objective case. A noun or pronoun which denotes possession is in the possessive case. =Clause.= A portion of a sentence which contains a subject and a verb, perhaps with modifiers. The following sentence contains one dependent (subordinate) and one independent (principal) clause: _When the storm ceased, the grove was a ruin_. =Conjugation.= The inflectional changes in the verb to indicate person, number, tense, voice, mode, and modal aspect. =Declension.= The changes in a noun, pronoun, or adjective to indicate person, number, or case. =Ellipsis, elliptical expression.= An expression partially incomplete, so that words have to be understood to complete the meaning. An idea or relation corresponding to the omitted words is present, at least vaguely, in the mind of the speaker. Elliptical sentences are usually justifiable except when the reader cannot instantly supply the understood words. Examples of proper ellipses: You are as tall as I [am tall]. Is your sister coming? I think [my sister is] not [coming]. I will go if you will [go]. [I give you] Thanks for your advice. =Gerund.= A verbal in _-ing_ used as a noun. (I do not object to your _telling_. His _having deserted_ us makes little difference.) The gerund may be regarded as a special form of the infinitive. =Infinitive.= A verbal ordinarily introduced by _to_ and used as a noun (_To err_ is human). In such sentences as "The road to follow is the river road," _follow_ may be regarded as the noun of a phrase (compare _the road to Mandalay_), or the entire phrase may be regarded as an adjective. Similarly, in "He hastened to comply," _comply_ may be regarded as a noun or _to comply_ as an adverb. After certain verbs (_bid_, _dare_, _help_, _make_, _need_, etc.) the _to_ is omitted from the infinitive group. (He bids me _go_. I need not _hesitate_.) =Inflection.= Change in the form of a word to show a modification or shade of meaning. At a very early period in our language there was a separate form for practically every modification. Although separate forms are now less numerous, _inflection_ is still a convenient term in grammar. Its scope is general: it includes the declension of nouns, the comparison of adjectives and adverbs, and the conjugation of verbs. =Modify.= To be grammatically dependent upon and to limit or alter the quality of. In the expression "The very old man," _the_ and _old_ modify _man_, and _very_ modifies _old_. =Participle.= A verbal used as an adjective, or as an adjective with adverbial qualities. In the sentence "Mary, being oldest, is also the best liked," _being oldest_ refers exclusively, or almost exclusively, to the subject and is therefore adjectival. In such sentences as "He fell back, exhausted" and "Running down the street, I collided with a baby carriage," the participle refers in part to the verb and is therefore adverbial as well as adjectival. =Phrase.= A group of words forming a subordinate part of a sentence and not containing a subject and its verb. Examples: _With a whistle and a roar_ the train arrived [prepositional phrase]. _Bowing his head_, the prisoner listened to the verdict of the jury [participial phrase]. In a loose, untechnical sense _phrase_ may refer to any short group of words, even if the group includes a subject and its verb. =Predicate.= The word or word-group in a sentence which makes an assertion about the subject. It consists of a finite verb with or without objects or modifiers. =Predicate adjective.= An adjective in the predicate, usually linked with the subject by some form of the verb _to be_ (_is_, _was_, _were_, etc.). (John is _lazy_. The soldiers were very _eager_.) =Predicate noun.= A noun linked with the subject by some form of the verb _to be_. (John is _halfback._ They were our _neighbors._) =Sentence.= A sentence is a group of words containing (1) a subject (with or without modifiers) and a predicate (with or without modifiers) and not grammatically dependent on any words outside of itself; or (2) two or more such expressions related in thought. Sentences of type 1 are simple or complex; sentences of type 2 are compound. A =simple sentence= contains one independent clause (The dog barks angrily). A =complex sentence= contains one independent clause and one or more subordinate clauses (The dog barks when the thief appears). A =compound sentence= contains two or more independent clauses (The dog barks, and the thief runs). =Substantive.= A noun or a word standing in place of a noun. (The _king_ summoned _parliament_. The _bravest_ are the _tenderest_. _She_ was inconsolable.) A =substantive phrase= is a phrase used as a noun. (_From Dan to Beersheba_ is a term for the whole of Israel.) A =substantive clause= is a clause used as a noun. (_That he owed the money_ is certain.) =Syntax.= Construction; the grammatical relation between the words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. =Verbal.= Any form of the verb used as another part of speech. Infinitives, gerunds, and participles are verbals. They are used to express action without asserting it, and cannot, therefore, have subjects or be used as predicate verbs. =Abridged Conjugation of the verb _to take_= =Tense= =Active Voice= =Passive Voice= =Indicative Mode= =Present= I take I am taken =Past= I took I was taken =Future= I shall (will) take I shall (will) be taken =Perfect= I have taken I have been taken =Past Perfect= I had taken I had been taken =Future Perfect= I shall (will) have taken I shall (will) have been taken =Subjunctive Mode= =Present= If I take If I be taken =Past= If I took If I were taken =Perfect= If I have taken If I have been taken =Past Perfect= If I had taken If I had been taken =Imperative Mode= =Present= Take =Modal Aspects= (Modal aspects, formed by combining auxiliaries with the main verb, give special meanings--emphatic, progressive, etc.--to the primary modes. Since there are almost as many aspects as there are auxiliaries, only a few can be enumerated here.) =Tense= =Active Voice= =Passive Voice= { =Emphatic:= I do take { =Progressive:= I am taking I am being taken =Present= { =Contingent:= I may take I may be taken =Indicative= { =Potential:= I can take I can be taken { =Obligative:= I must take I must be taken { =Etc.= { =Emphatic:= I did take { =Progressive:= I was taking I was being taken =Past= { =Contingent:= I might take I might be taken =Indicative= { =Potential:= I could take I could be taken { =Obligative:= I must take I must be taken { =Etc.= { =Emphatic:= If I do take { =Progressive:= If I be taking =Present= { =Contingent:= If I might take =Subjunctive= { =Potential:= If I could take { =Obligative:= If I must take { =Etc.= =Present= { =Emphatic:= Do take =Imperative= { =Progressive:= Be taking =Verbals= =Infinitive= =Active Voice= =Passive Voice= =Present:= To take To be taken =Perfect:= To have taken To have been taken =Gerund= =Present:= Taking Being taken =Perfect:= Having taken Having been taken =Participle= =Present:= Taking Being taken =Past:= Taken =Perfect:= Having taken Having been taken Exercise: Copy a page of good prose from any book, leaving wide spaces between the lines. Indicate the part of speech of every word. This may be done by abbreviations placed beneath the words. For example: "Von Arden, having fallen into a very unquiet _noun_ _part._ _prep._ _art._ _adv._ _adj._ slumber, dreamed that he was an aged man _noun_ _verb_ _conj._ _pers pro._ _verb_ _art._ _adj._ _noun_ who stood beside a window." _rel. pro._ _verb_ _prep._ _art._ _noun_ =59.= EXERCISE IN GRAMMAR =A. Case of Pronouns= Determine the correct form of the pronoun. 1. It is (I, me). 2. No one knows better than (she, her). 3. Then came the whistle for Gerald and (I, me). 4. It was (they, them). 5. Alice can drive a car as well as (he, him). 6. It was (she, her) (who, whom) you saw on the car. 7. John, you may go with Dan and (I, me). 8. If I were (she, her), I could not think of accepting the questionable honor. 9. One evening four of (we, us) girls decided to go to the theater. 10. Others are older than (we, us). 11. (Who, Whom) do you imagine will be our next president? 12. He does not approve of (our, us) walking on the grass. 13. Counsel will be given to (they, them) who ask for it. 14. That seems strange to you and (I, me). 15. Her mother has more regular features than (she, her). 16. Women (who, whom) some people would call "quiet" are often the wisest. 17. Between you and (I, me), I'm hungry. 18. The thought of (it, its) coming by parcel post never entered my mind. 19. He never discovered (who, whom) his enemy was. 20. In case of a fumble, the ball is given to (whoever, whomever) recovers it. =B. Agreement= Determine the correct form of the verb. 1. He (don't, doesn't) care for music. 2. The swimming, boating, and fishing (is, are) good. 3. Each one of the two hands of the clock (is, are) made of gold. 4. The ore is sorted and the cars having good ore (is, are) hauled to the smelter. 5. A deck of ordinary playing cards consisting of fifty-two cards (is, are) used. 6. It is safe to say that only one out of every ten of the great number of students (realizes, realize) the value of economy. 7. In spite of all obstacles, the construction of the three hundred trestles and the twenty scaffolds (was, were) completed. 8. Some nights may seem still, yet there (is, are) always noises. 9. The exact meaning of such words as _inspiration_, _prophecy_, and _orthodox_ (puzzles, puzzle) laymen. 10. Hard roads (is, are) an important matter to all country people. 11. There (has, have) been many lives lost in Arctic exploration. 12. Personal gifts inspired by good will and directed by careful thought (is, are) the very best kind of charity. 13. In Lincoln's replies to Douglas there (is, are) no flights or oratory. 14. The conciseness of these lines (is, are) to be admired. 15. A constant stream of wagons and horses (was, were) passing as the circus was unloaded. 16. Nevertheless there (exists, exist) a certain class of students who are socially submerged. 17. She (doesn't, don't) care for olives. 18. "Current Events" (is, are) a very useful department of this magazine. 19. No people (lives, live) in that house. 20. The corporal, together with two other members of the patrol, (was, were) captured by the enemy. =C. _Shall_ and _Will_, _Should_ and _Would_= Determine the correct form of the verb. 1. Perhaps I (shall, will) be able to go. 2. I tell you, I (shall will) not allow that dog in the car. 3. It is odd what a person (shall, will) do in a time of excitement. 4. They have never seen anything like it, and probably they never (shall, will). 5. "Johnny, you (shall, will) not go!" Johnny knew that further begging was useless. 6. As we (shall, will) find by investigation, our coast fortifications are few. 7. I (shouldn't, wouldn't) do that for anything. 8. I (should, would) think you (should, would) enjoy your bicycle. 9. (Shall, will) you go driving with us? 10. Do you think it (shall, will) rain? 11. Where (shall, will) I hang my hat? 12. (Should, would) you go if I (should, would) ask you? 13. Rover (should, would) stay in the house all the time, if we (should, would) let him. 14. I promised that I (should, would) be at the station early, lest we (should, would) miss the train. 15. You (shall, will) have much trouble with that cold, I'm afraid. =D. _Lie_, _lay_; _sit_, _set_; _rise_, _raise_= Fix in mind the following principal parts: I lie I lay I have lain I lay I laid I have laid I sit I sat I have sat I set I set I have set I rise I rose I have risen I raise I raised I have raised _Lie_, _sit_, _rise_ are used intransitively; _lay_, _set_, _raise_ are used transitively. _Lay_, _set_, _raise_ are causatives; that is, _to lay_ means _to cause to lie_, etc. Insert a correct form of the verb _lie_ or _lay_: 1. I ---- here and watch the clouds. My dog is ----ing at my feet. 2. In the evening I ---- aside all cares. I ---- down on the couch and read. Yesterday I ---- there an hour. 3. The children have ---- in bed until seven o'clock. John has ---- his coat on a chair. He ---- there asleep now. 4. ---- the shovel down. The garden is now ---- out in rows. ---- down and take a little rest. 5. Smoke ---- along the horizon. Snow was ----ing here yesterday. He is ----ing plans for the future. Insert a correct form of the verb _sit_ or _set_: 6. Jerome ---- the box on the floor. Then he ---- on the box. 7. Four people are ----ing at the table. Who ---- the lamp there? 8. I had ---- there an hour. They had ---- the pitcher outside the door. 9. I often ---- up late. Last night I ---- up late. I must ----the alarm clock. 10. ---- the package down. ---- down and rest. While we are ----ing there the gardener is ----ing out the plants. Insert a correct form of the verb _rise_ or _raise_: 11. ---- up and speak! ---- the window. 12. He quickly ---- his head. The cork had gone under, but now it ---- again to the surface. 13. During the night the bread ---- to the top of the pan. 14. The invalid slowly ---- himself in his bed. 15. The river has already ---- and overflowed its banks. =E. Principal Parts of Verbs= In the following sentences supply the correct form of the verb. 1. He ---- (past tense of _come_) to this country in 1887. 2. He has ---- (past participle of _eat_) breakfast and ---- (past participle of _go_) to the office. 3. Have you ---- (past participle of _ride_) far? I have ----(past participle of _drive_) ten miles. 4. I am sure it was Henry who ---- (past tense of _do_) it, for I ---- (past tense of _see_) him running away as fast as he could go. 5. The wind has ---- (past participle of _tear_) down the chimney and ---- (past participle of _blow_) down the tree. 6. After he ---- (past tense of _lie_) down, he remembered he had left his books ---- (present participle of _lie_) in the orchard. 7. He ---- (past tense of _throw_) the ball so hard that the window was ---- (past participle of _break_) into a hundred pieces. 8. The man ---- (past tense of _give_) warning before we had ---- (past participle of _go_) too far. 9. After we had ---- (past participle of _ride_) about ten miles we ---- (past tense of _come_) upon a stretch of hard road. 10. Where ---- (past tense of _be_) you? You ----n't (past tense of _be_) at home when I ---- (past tense of _ring_) the bell. 11. The harness was ---- (past participle of _break_ or _burst_) beyond repair. Who ---- (past tense of _break_) it? 12. I ---- (past tense of _take_) four shots at the rabbit, but every shot ---- (past tense of _go_) wild. 13. He has ---- (past participle of _swim_) across the harbor, and has ---- (past participle of _break_) the record. 14. I had ---- (past participle of _drink_) buttermilk for several weeks. I ---- (past tense of _begin_) to gain weight. 15. When we had ---- (past participle of _sit_) there an hour and ---- (past participle of _eat_) all we wanted, Jim ---- (past tense of _draw_) out his purse and ---- (past tense of _give_) the waiter a dollar. =F. General= Improve the grammar of the following sentences. 1. Those kind of lamps are ugly. 2. It don't interest me any more. 3. Nobody may enter the hall tonight without their admittance cards. 4. One does not need to strain their ears while at the movies. 5. Nearly all people eat too much, too fast, and too irregular. 6. Don't take this letter too serious. 7. He done the best he could with these kind of tools. 8. Every person with a cold was blowing their nose. 9. It would help considerable if you would speak to the manager about existing conditions. 10. If I were the mayor, I could not do as good as he does. 11. Talk polite to your customers. 12. It is important that a salesman has a good memory. 13. Each tube must be capable of withstanding a pressure of five hundred pounds per square inch before they are lowered into place. 14. She is as tall, if not taller, than he is. 15. He always has and always will say that. 16. He is one of the worst, if not the very worst, player on the team. 17. Final examinations require time and study that would not otherwise be done. 18. I feel badly. He talks rude. It smells fragrantly. DICTION =Wordiness= =60. Avoid wordiness. Strike out words not essential to the thought.= Roundabout impersonal construction: There are many interesting things which may be seen in New York. [12 words.] Better: Many interesting things may be seen in New York. [9 words.] Clause to be reduced to a phrase: The skeleton which stood in the office of Dr. Willard was terrifying to little Cecil. [15 words.] Right: The skeleton in Dr. Willard's office was terrifying to little Cecil. [11 words.] Clause and phrase each to be reduced to a word: Men who cared only for their individual interests were now in a state of discouragement. [15 words.] Right: Selfish men were now discouraged. [5 words.] Separate predication in excess: That day I was shocking wheat behind the binder. Shocking wheat behind the binder was my usual job in harvest. That day while I was working at this job, I found a nest full of partridge eggs. [37 words.] Right: That day, while shocking wheat behind the binder, my usual job in harvest, I found a nest full of partridge eggs. [21 words.] Ponderous scientific terms for simple ideas: Since, according to the physicists, the per cent of efficiency of a machine is equal to the amount of energy put in, divided by the amount of useful work performed, it naturally follows that in all human activities, unnecessary friction, since it lowers the amount of nervous energy, is going to lower the per cent of efficiency. While we may never reach an astonishing degree of efficiency by economizing nervous energy, nevertheless, if we consistently and perseveringly try to spare ourselves all unnecessary labor and exertion, we shall have an abundant supply of energy to direct into channels of usefulness. [100 words.] Right: If we economize our strength, we can make our actions more efficient and useful. [14 words.] Inflated writing: She was supreme in beauty among the daughters of Eve whom his ravished eyes had hitherto beheld. [17 words.] Right: She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. [10 words.] Note.--A special form of wordiness is tautology--the useless repetition of an idea in different words. Gross tautology: He had an entire monopoly of the whole fruit trade. [This is like saying "black blackbird."] Right: He had a monopoly of the fruit trade. Tautological expressions: this here where at return back ascend up repeat again biography of his life good benefits fellow playmates Hallowe'en evening important essentials indorse on the back connect up meet up with combined together perfectly all right utter absence of quite round absolutely annihilated still continue to absolutely new creation necessary requisite total effect of all this Exercise: 1. The people who act the parts in a play want the people who witness the performance to applaud them. 2. There is an oily grass which is found on the prairie, and which is called mesquite grass, and it covers the prairie. 3. You wish to call the operator. You take the receiver from the hook. By taking the receiver from the hook you call the operator. 4. At last the employer of the men, and those who were employed by him, having compromised their difficulties, effected a settlement, and reached an amicable understanding agreeable to both parties. 5. The two merchants joined up their forces together in order to secure a monopoly of the entire trade of the village. There was one absolutely essential preliminary which they thought must necessarily precede everything else. It was that they should take all the old shop-worn articles and dispose of them by selling them as bargains at a reduced rate. =Triteness= =61. Avoid trite or hackneyed expressions.= Such expressions may be tags from everyday speech (_the worse for wear_, _had the time of my life_); or stale phrases from newspapers (_taken into custody_, _the officiating clergyman_); or humorous substitutions (_ferocious canine_, _paternal ancestor_); or forced synonyms (_gridiron heroes_, _the Hoosier metropolis_); or conventional fine writing (_reigns supreme_, _wind kissed the tree-tops_); or oft-repeated euphemisms (_limb_ for _leg_, _pass away_ for _die_); or overworked quotations from literature (_monarch of all I survey_, _footprints on the sands of time_). List of trite expressions: along these lines meets the eye feathered songsters a long-felt want the last sad rites launched into eternity last but not least doomed to disappointment at one fell swoop sadder but wiser did justice to a dinner a goodly number budding genius beggars description a dull thud silence broken only by wended their way abreast of the times trees stood like sentinels method in his madness sun-kissed meadows tired but happy hoping you are the same nipped in the bud the happy pair seething mass of humanity specimen of humanity with bated breath green with envy the proud possessor too full for utterance a pugilistic encounter conspicuous by its absence with whom they come in contact exception proves the rule favor with a selection as luck would have it more easily imagined than described where ignorance is bliss Exercise: 1. Halleck returned from his trip considerably the worse for wear. 2. The baby whom she had promised to keep quiet proved to be a foeman worthy of her steel. 3. I first saw the light of day in New Orleans. It was in the Crescent City also that my dear mother passed away. 4. Americans come off second best in a vocalizing encounter with umlauted _u_, while Germans and Frenchmen wage sanguinary battles with our _th_. 5. The daily scramble for dear life to get aboard a trolley was like taking arms against a sea of troubles. Even standing room was conspicuous by its absence. Sheridan began to think along the line of getting to the office in some other way. =The Exact Word= =62. Find the exact word. Do not be content with a loose meaning. Seek the verb, the noun, the adjective, the adverb, or the phrase which expresses your thought with precision.= Such words as _said_, _proposition_, and _nice_ are often used too loosely. Observe the possible gain in definiteness by substitution. For _said_ (verb): _declared_, _related_, _insisted_, _exclaimed_, _added_, _repeated_, _replied_, _admitted_, _commented_, _corrected_, _protested_, _explained_, _besought_, _interrupted_, _inquired_, _stammered_, _sighed_, _murmured_, or _thundered_. For _proposition_ (noun): _transaction_, _undertaking_, _venture_, _recourse_, _suggestion_, _overture_, _proposal_, _proffer_, _convenience_, _difficulty_, _thesis_, or _doctrine_. For _nice_ (adjective): _discriminating_, _precise_, _fastidious_, _dainty_, _neat_, _pretty_, _pleasant_, _fragrant_, _delicious_, _well-behaved_, _good_, or _moral_. Inexact verb: He had not sufficiently _regarded_ the difficulties of the task [Use _considered_]. Inexact noun: Promptness is an _item_ which a manager should possess [Use _quality_]. Inexact adjective: He looked _awfully funny_ when I told him he had made a mistake [Use _surprised_]. Inexact phrasing throughout: Health is first in every line of activity. A man who has it does not hold it with enough respect, and make efforts enough to keep it. Right: Health is indispensable to success in any work. Even those who have it do not realize its value. Exercise: 1. He was proud of the honorable record he had gained. 2. He resolved that some day he would be a banker, and I shall tell you how he tried to do so. 3. Isn't the sunset grand? Isn't it nice to be out of doors? 4. The mystery as to which ones of the piano keys to play was hard for him to acquire. 5. If the package comes by freight, you must negotiate the proposition of getting it home; but if it comes by express, the delivery is done free. =Concreteness= =63. Concrete words are often more effective than vague, general, or abstract words.= Not specific: She held herself aloof from her brothers' games and amusements. Concrete: She never played soldier or sailed paper boats with her brothers. No appeal to the senses: I liked to watch the servant girl as she moved about the kitchen, preparing our morning repast. Concrete: I liked to watch Norah as she fried our crisp breakfast bacon and browned our buckwheat cakes. Flat, not readily visualized: The first inhabitants overcame the barriers to settlement about a century ago. Concrete: Rough backwoodsmen broke through the underbrush and swamp-land a century ago. Exercise: 1. The scientist discovered a bird in a tree. 2. Our hostess set before us many good things to eat. 3. The sailor was carving queer figures on a piece of soft wood. 4. The night watchman heard something that made him suspicious. 5. I stood at the door of the shop to watch the astonishing things the blacksmith was doing. =Sound= =64. Avoid the frequent repetition of a sound, especially if it be harsh or unpleasant.= Bad: He is an exceedingly orderly secretary. Better: As a secretary he is very systematic. [Or] The secretary is very systematic. Bad: Immediately the squirrel hid himself behind the hickory tree. Better: Immediately the squirrel dodged behind the hickory tree. Unfortunate rime: Bert did not dare to go home with wet hair. Better: Bert did not dare to go home with his hair wet. [Or] Bert was afraid to go home with wet hair. Exercise: 1. That Christmas happened to be unusually happy. 2. I fear we must sit near the rear of the room. 3. The Jackies went clambering and scurrying up the rigging. 4. The ship slips anchor while the idlers sip tea on the deck. 5. The third treasure-seeker heard a thud. His pick had struck an obstruction. =Subtle Violations of Good Use: Faulty Idioms, Colloquialisms= =65. Avoid subtle violations of good use, particularly (a) faulty idioms and (b) colloquialisms.= =a. Make your expression conform to English idiom.= A faulty idiom is an expression which, though correct in grammar and general meaning, combines words in a manner contrary to usage. Idioms are established by custom, and cannot be explained by logical rules. "I enjoy to read" is wrong, not because the words offend logic or grammar, but merely because people do not instinctively make that combination of words. "I like to read" and "I enjoy reading" are good idioms. =Faulty Idioms= =Correct Idioms= in the city Toledo in the city of Toledo in the year of 1920 in the year 1920 I hope you a good time I wish you a good time the Rev. Hopkins the Reverend Mr. Hopkins possessed with ability possessed of ability stay to home stay at home different than different from independent from independent of in search for in search of Observe that many idioms are concerned with prepositions. Make sure that a verb or adjective is accompanied by the right preposition. Study the following list of correct idioms: accused of (a theft) accused by (a person) accord with (a person) agree with (a person) agree to (a proposal) agreeable to angry at (things or persons) angry with (a person) careful about (an affair) careful of (one's money) comply with convenient to (a person) convenient for (a purpose) correspond to (things) correspond with (persons) dissent from enamored of entrust to free from listen to part from (a person) part with (a thing) pleased with resolve on sympathize with take exception to =b. Do not carry the standards of conversation into formal writing.= Colloquial usage is more free than literary usage. The colloquial sentence _That's the man I talked with_ becomes in writing _That is the man with whom I talked._ The colloquial sentence _It was a cold day but there wasn't any wind blowing_ is a loose string of words. Written discourse requires greater tension and more care in subordinating minor ideas: _The day, though cold, was still._ Contractions are proper in conversation, and in personal or informal writing. In formal writing they are not appropriate. And do not let such expressions as _He doesn't_, _We aren't_, _It's proved_, used in talk by careful speakers, mislead you into expressions like _He don't_, _We ain't_, _It's proven_, which violate even colloquial good use. Exercise: 1. He confessed of his inability to comply to the demand. 2. Is he from Irish descent? Is humor characteristic with the Irish? 3. She was not to home, but I was reluctant against leaving. 4. He dissented to the opinion of the committee's majority, for his ideas were utterly different than theirs. 5. He got a few jobs as a carpenter that summer, but they didn't pay him much, and so he went to loafing around, and he's been at it ever since. =Gross Violations of Good Use: Barbarisms, Improprieties, Slang= =66. Avoid gross violations of good use, particularly (a) barbarisms, (b) improprieties, and (c) slang.= =a. Barbarisms are distortions of words in good use, or coinages for which there is no need.= Examples: _to concertize_, _to burgle_ or _burglarize_, _to jell_, _alright_, _a-plenty_, _most_ (for _almost_), _performess_, _fake_, _pep_, _tasty_, _illy_, _complected_, _undoubtably_, _nowheres_, _soph_, _lab_, _gents_. =b. Improprieties are words wrenched from one part of speech to another, or made to perform an unnatural service.= Examples: _to suspicion_, _to gesture_, _to suicide_, _a steal_, _a try_, _a go_, _an invite_, _the eats_, _humans_, _some_ or _real_ or _swell_ (as adverbs), _like_ (as a conjunction). =c. Slang is speech consisting either of uncouth expressions of illiterate origin, or of legitimate expressions used in grotesque or irregular senses.= Though sometimes (witness eighteenth century _mob_, and nineteenth century _buncombe_) it satisfies a real need and becomes established in the language, in most instances it is short-lived (witness the thieves' talk in _Oliver Twist_, or passages from any comic opera song popular five years ago). Vicious types of slang are: Expressions of vulgar origin (from criminal classes, the prize ring, the vaudeville circuit, etc.): _get pinched_, _down and out_, _took the count_, _bum hunch_, _nix on the comedy stuff_, _get across_. Language strained or distorted for novel effect: _performed the feed act at a bang-up gastronomic emporium_, _bingled a tall drive that made the horsehide ramble out into center garden_. Blanket expressions used as substitutes for thinking: _corking_, _stunning_, _ain't it fierce?_, _can you beat it?_, _going some_, _just so I get by with it_. The use of the last-named type is most to be regretted. It leads to a mental habit of phonographic repetition, with no resort to independent thinking. If a man really desires to use slang, let him invent new expressions every day, and make them fit the specific occasion. Exercise: 1. I disremember what sort of an outfit he wore. 2. Helen's as light-complected a girl as you'll run across, I calculate. 3. His ad brought a first-rate gent to hold down the job. 4. Thompson hasn't stability, or it seems like it. He ain't got no gumption. He's too easy enthused. 5. The grub was to of cost us two bits, but we didn't have the dough. We gets outside the food, and when the cashier ain't lookin', we runs out the door and beats it. =Words Often Confused in Meaning= =67. Do not confuse or interchange the meanings of the following words:= =_Accept_ and _except_.= _Accept_ means _to receive_; _except_ as a verb means _to exclude_ and as a preposition means _with the exception of_. =_Affect_ and _effect_.= _Affect_ is not used as a noun; _effect_ as a noun means _result_. As verbs, _affect_ means _to influence in part_; _effect_ means _to accomplish totally_. "His story affected me deeply." "The Russians effected a revolution." _Affect_ also has a special meaning _to feign_. "She had an affected manner." =_Allusion_ and _illusion_.= _Allusion_ means _a reference_; _illusion_ means a _deceptive appearance_. "A Biblical allusion." "An optical illusion." =_Already_ and _all ready_.= _Already_ means _by this time_ or _beforehand_; _all ready_ means _wholly ready_. "I have already invited him." "Dinner is all ready." "We are all ready for dinner." =_Altogether_ and _all together_.= _Altogether_ means _wholly_, _entirely_; _all together_ means _collectively, in a group_. "He is altogether honest." "The King sent the people all together into exile." =_Can_ and _may_.= _Can_ means _to be able_; _may_ means _to have permission_. _Can_ for _may_ has a certain colloquial standing, but is condemned by literary usage. =_Emigrate_ and _immigrate_.= _Emigrate_ means _to go out from a country_; _immigrate_ means _to enter into a country_. The same man may be an _emigrant_ when he leaves Europe, and an _immigrant_ when he enters America. =_Healthy_ and _healthful_.= _Healthy_ means _having health_; _healthful_ means _giving health_. "Milk is healthful." "The climate of Colorado is healthful." "The boy is healthy." =_Hanged_ and _hung_.= _Hanged_ is the correct past tense of _hang_ in the sense _put to death, hanged on the gallows_; _hung_ is the correct past tense for the general meaning _suspended_. =_Hygienic_ and _sanitary_.= Both words mean _pertaining to health_. _Hygienic_ is used when the condition is a matter of personal habits or rules; _sanitary_ is used when the condition is a matter of surroundings (water supply, food supply, sewage disposal, etc.) or the relations of numbers of people. =_Instants_ and _instance_.= _Instants_ means _small portions of time_; _instance_ means _an example_. =_Later_ and _latter_.= _Later_ means _more late_; _latter_ means _the second in a series of two_. "The latter" is used in conjunction with the phrase "the former." =_Lead_ and _led_.= _Led_ is the past tense of the verb _to lead_. _Lead_ is the present tense. =_Learn_ and _teach_.= _Learn_ means _to get knowledge of_; _teach_ means _to give knowledge of_ or _to_. "The instructor _teaches_ (not _learns_) me physics." "He learns his lessons easily." =_Leave_ and _let_.= _Leave_ means _to abandon_; _let_ means _to permit_. =_Less_ and _fewer_.= _Less_ refers to quantity; _fewer_ refers to number. "He has _fewer_ (not _less_) horses than he needs." =_Liable_, _likely_, and _apt_.= _Likely_ merely predicts; _liable_ conveys the additional idea of harm or responsibility. _Apt_ applies usually to persons, in the sense of _having natural capability_, and sometimes to things, in the sense of _fitting_, _appropriate_. "It is likely to be a pleasant day." "I fear it is liable to rain." "He is liable for damages." "He is an apt lad at his books." "That is an apt phrase." =_Lie_ and _lay_.= _Lay_, a transitive verb, means _to cause to lie_. "I lay the book on the table and it lies there." "Now I lay me down to sleep." A source of confusion between the two words is that the past tense of _lie_ is _lay_: I lie down to sleep. I lay the book on the table. I lay there yesterday. I laid it there yesterday. I have lain here for hours. I have laid it there many times. =_Like_ and _as_ or _as if_.= _Like_ is in good use as a preposition, and may be followed by a noun; _as_ is in good use as a conjunction, and may be followed by a clause. "He is tall like his father." "He is tall, as his father is." "It looks _as if_ (not _like_) it were going to rain." =_Lose_ and _loose_.= _Lose_ means _to cease having_; _loose_ as a verb means _to set free_, and as an adjective, _free, not bound_. =_Majority_ and _plurality_.= In a loose sense, _majority_ means the _greater part_. More strictly, it means the number by which votes cast for one candidate exceed those of the opposition. A _plurality_ is the excess of votes received by one candidate over his nearest competitor. In an election A receives 500 votes; B, 400 votes; and C, 300 votes. A has a plurality of 100, but no majority. =_Practical_ and _practicable_.= _Practical_ means _not theoretical_; _practicable_ means _capable of being put into practice_. "A practical man." "The arrangement is practicable." =_Principal_ and _principle_.= _Principal_ as an adjective means _chief_ or _leading_; _principle_ as a noun means a _general truth_. _Principal_ as a noun means a _sum of money_, or the _chief official of a school_. =_Proof_ and _evidence_.= In a law court, _proof_ is _evidence sufficient to establish a fact_; _evidence_ is _whatever is brought forward in an attempt to establish a fact_. "The evidence against the prisoner was extensive, but hardly proof of his guilt." In ordinary speech, _proof_ is sometimes loosely used as a synonym for _evidence_. =_Pseudo-_ and _quasi-_.= As a prefix, _pseudo-_ means _false_; _quasi-_ means literally _as if_, hence _seeming_, _so-called_. "Phrenology is a pseudo-science." "A quasi-evolutionary doctrine." =_Quiet_ and _quite_.= _Quiet_ is an adjective meaning _calm_, _not noisy_; _quite_ is an adverb meaning _entirely_. =_Respectfully_ and _respectively_.= _Respectfully_ means _in a courteous manner_; _respectively_ means _in a way proper to each_. "Yours _respectfully_" (not _respectively_). "He handed the commissions to Gray and Hodgins respectively." =_Rise_ and _raise_.= _Rise_ is an intransitive verb; _raise_ is a transitive verb. "I rise to go home." "I raise vegetables." "I raise the stone from the ground." =_Sit_ and _set_.= _Set_, a transitive verb, means _to cause to sit_. "He sets it in the corner and it sits there." The past tense of _sit_ is _sat_. I sit down. I always set it in its place. He sat in this very chair. I set it in its place yesterday. He has sat there an hour. I have always set it just here. =_Stationary_ and _stationery_.= _Stationary_ is an adjective meaning _fixed_; _stationery_ is a noun meaning _writing material_. =_Statue_, _stature_, and _statute_.= _Statue_ means a _carved_ or _moulded figure_; _stature_ means _height_; _statute_ means a _law_. Exercise: 1. Insert _affect_ or _effect_: Noise does not ---- my studying. It has little ---- on me. By the exercise of will power I was able to ---- a change. 2. Insert _healthy_ or _healthful_: New Mexico has a ---- climate, Graham bread is ----. You will be ---- if you take exercise. 3. Insert _later_ or _latter_: I will see you ----. Here are two plans: the former is complex; the ---- is simple. Sooner or ---- you will learn the rule. 4. Insert _less_ or _fewer_: They have ---- money than we; we have ---- pleasures than they. It seems to me there are ---- accidents. 5. Insert _principal_ or _principle_: The ---- part of a clock is the pendulum, which swings regularly, according to a ---- of science. My ---- reason for trusting him is that he is a man of ----. He is the ---- of the high school. The widow spends the interest on the money, but keeps the ---- intact. =Glossary of Faulty Diction= =68. Avoid faulty diction.= =_Ad_= (for _advertisement_). Avoid in formal writing and speaking. =_Ain't_.= Never correct. Say _I'm not_, _you_ [_we_, _they_] _aren't_, _he_ [_she_, _it_] _isn't_. =_All the farther_, _all the faster_.= Crude. Use _as far as_, _as fast as_, in such sentences as "This is all the farther I can go." =_As_.= (a) Incorrect in the sense of _that_ or _whether_. "I don't know _whether_ (not _as_) I can tell you." "Not _that_ (not _as_) I know." (b) _As ... as_ are correlatives. _Than_ must not replace the second _as_. Right: "As good as or better than his neighbors." "As good as his neighbors, or better [than they]." See 57. =_Auto_.= An abbreviation not desirable in formal writing. =_Awful_.= Means _filling with awe_ or _filled with awe_. Do not use in the sense of _uncivil_, _serious_, or _ludicrous_, or (in the adverbial form) in the sense of _very_, _extremely_. =_Balance_.= Incorrect when used in the sense of _remainder_. =_Because_.= Not to be used for _the fact that_. "_The fact that_ (not _because_) he is absent is no reason why we should not proceed." See 5. =_Between_.= Used of two persons or things. Not to be confused with _among_, which is used of more than two. =_Blame on_.= A crudity for _put the blame on_ or _blame_. Faulty: "Don't blame it on me." Better: "Don't blame me." =_Borned_.= A monstrosity for _born_. "I was _born_ (not _borned_) in 1899." =_Bursted_.= The past tense of _burst_ is the same as the present. =_Bust_ or _busted_.= Vulgar for _burst_. Right: "The balloon burst." "The bank failed." =_But what_.= _That_ is often preferable. "I do not doubt _that_ (not _but what_) he is honest." =_Canine_.= An adjective. Not in good use as a noun. =_Cannot help but_.= A confusion of _can but_ and _cannot help_. "I can but believe you"; or "I cannot help believing you"; not "I cannot help but believe you." See 34. =_Caused by_.= To be used only when it refers definitely to a noun. Wrong: "He was disappointed, caused by the lateness of the train." The noun _disappointment_ should be used instead of the verb _disappointed_. Then caused will have a definite reference. Right: "His disappointment was caused by the lateness of the train." See 23. =_Claim_.= Means _to demand as a right_. Incorrect for _maintain_ or _assert_. =_Considerable_.= An adjective, not an adverb. "He talked _considerably_ (not _considerable_) about it." =_Could of_.= An illiterate form arising from slovenly pronunciation. Use _could have_. Avoid also _may of_, _must of_, _would of_, etc. =_Data_.= Plural. The singular (seldom used) is _datum_. Compare _stratum_, _strata_; _erratum_, _errata_. =_Demean_.= Means _to conduct oneself_, not _to lower_ or _to degrade_. =_Different than_.= _Different from_ is to be preferred. _Than_ is a conjunction. The idea of separation implied in _different_ calls for a preposition, rather than a word of comparison. =_Disremember_.= Not in good use. =_Done_.= A gross error when used as the past tense of _do_, or as an adverb meaning _already_. "_I did it_ (not _I done it_)." "I've _already_ (not _done_) got my lessons." =_Don't_.= A contraction for _do not_; never to be used for _does not_. The contraction of _does not_ is _doesn't_. See 51d. =_Drownded_.= Vulgar for _drowned_. =_Due to_.= To be used only when it refers definitely to a noun. Faulty: "He refused the offer, due to his father's opposition." Right: "His refusal of the offer was due to his father's opposition." The noun _refusal_ should be used instead of the verb _refused_. Then _due_ will have a definite reference. See 5. =_Enthuse_.= Not in good use. =_Etc._= An abbreviation for the Latin _et cetera_, meaning _and other_ [things]. _Et_ means _and_. _And etc._ is therefore grossly incorrect. Do not write _ect._ =_Expect_.= Means _to look forward to_. Hardly correct in the sense of _suppose_. =_Fine_.= Use cautiously as an adjective, and not at all as an adverb. Seek the exact word. See 62. =_Former_.= Means the first or first named of two. Not to be used when more than two have been named. The corresponding word is _latter_. =_For to_.= Incorrect for _to_. "I want _you_ (not _for you_) to listen carefully." "He made up his mind _to_ (not _for to_) accept." =_Gent_.= A vulgar abbreviation of _gentleman_. =_Good_.= An adjective, not an adverb. Wrong: "He did good in mathematics." Right: "He did well in mathematics." "He did good work in mathematics." =_Gotten_.= An old form now usually replaced by _got_ except in such expressions as _ill-gotten gains_. =_Guess_.= Expresses conjecture. Not to be used in formal composition for _think_, _suppose_, or _expect_. =_Had of_.= Illiterate. "I wish I _had known_ (not _had of known_) about it." =_Had ought_.= A vulgarism. "He _ought_ (not _had ought_) to have resigned." "We _oughtn't_ (not _hadn't ought_) to make this error." =_Hardly_.= Not to be used with a negative. See 34. =_Home_.= Do not use when you mean simply _house_. =_Human_ or _humans_.= Not in good use as a noun. Say _human being_. Right: "The house was not fit for _human beings_ (not _humans_) to live in." =_If_.= Do not use for _whether_. "I can't say _whether_ (not _if_) the laundry will be finished today." =_In_.= Often misused for _into_. "He jumped _into_ (not _in_) the pond." =_It's_.= Means _it is_; not to be written for the possessive _its_. =_Kind of_.= (a) Should not modify adjectives or verbs. "He was _somewhat_ (not _kind of_) lean." "_She partly suspected_ (not _She kind of suspected_) what was going on." (b) When using with a noun, do not follow by _a_. "That kind of man"; not "That kind of a man." =_Like_.= To be followed by a substantive; never by a substantive and a verb. "He ran like a deer." "Do _as_ (not _like_) I do." "She felt _as if_ (not _like_) she was going to faint." _Like_ is a preposition; _as_ is a conjunction. =_Literally_.= Do not use where you plainly do not mean it, as in the sentence, "I was literally tickled to death." =_Loan_.= _Lend_ is in better use as a verb. =_Locate_.= Do not use for _settle_ or _establish oneself_. =_Lose out_.= Not used in formal writing. Say _lose_. =_Lots of_.= A mercantile term which has a dubious colloquial standing. Not in good literary use for _many_ or _much_. =_Might of_.= A vulgarism for _might have_. =_Most_.= Do not use for _almost_. "_Almost_ (not _most_) all." =_Myself_.= Intensive or reflexive; do not use when the simple personal pronoun would suffice. "I saw them myself." "Some friends and _I_ (not _myself_) went walking." =_Neither_.= Used with _nor_, and not with _or_. "Neither the man whom his associates had suspected _nor_ (not _or_) the one whom the police had arrested was the criminal." "She could neither paint a good picture _nor_ (not _or_) play the violin well." =_Nice_.= Means _delicate_ or _precise_. _Nice_ is used in a loose colloquial way to indicate general approval, but should not be so used in formal writing. Right: "He displayed nice judgment." "We had a _pleasant_ (not _nice_) time." See 62. =_Nowhere near_.= Vulgar for _not nearly_. =_Nowheres_.= Vulgar. =_O_ and _Oh_.= _O_ is used with a noun in direct address; it is not separated from the noun by any marks of punctuation. _Oh_ is used as an interjection; it is followed by a comma or an exclamation point. "Hear, O king, what thy servants would say." "Oh, dear!" =_Of_.= Do not use for _have_ in such combinations as _should have_, _may have_, _ought to have_. =_Off of_.= _On_, _upon_, or some equivalent expression is usually preferable. =_Ought to of_.= A vulgarism for _ought to have_. =_Over with_.= Crude for _over_. =_Pants_.= _Trousers_ is the approved term in literary usage. _Pants_ (from _pantaloons_) has found some degree of colloquial and commercial acceptance. =_Party_.= Not to be used for _person_, except in legal phrases. =_Phone_.= A contraction not employed in formal writing. Say _telephone_. =_Plenty_.= A noun; not in good use as an adjective or an adverb. "He had _plenty of_ (not _plenty_) resources." "He had _resources in plenty_ (not _resources plenty_)." =_Proposition_.= Means a _thing proposed_. Do not use loosely, as in the sentence: "A berth on a Pullman is a good proposition during a railway journey at night." See 62. =_Proven_.= Prefer _proved_. =_Providing_.= Prefer _provided_ in such expressions as "I will vote for him _provided_ (not _providing_) he is a candidate." =_Quite a_.= Colloquial in such expressions as _quite a while_, _quite a few_, _quite a number_. =_Raise_.= _Rear_ or _bring up_ is preferable in speaking of children. "She _reared_ (not _raised_) seven children." =_Rarely ever_.= Crude for _rarely_, _hardly ever_. =_Real_.= Crude for _very_ or _really_. "She was _very_ (not _real_) intelligent." "He was _really_ (not _real_) brave." =_Remember of_.= Not to be used for _remember_. =_Right smart_ and _Right smart of_.= Extremely vulgar. =_Same_.= No longer used as a pronoun except in legal documents. "He saw her drop the purse and restored _it_ (not _the same_) to her." =_Scarcely_.= Not to be used with a negative. See 34. =_Seldom ever_.= Crude for _seldom_, _hardly ever_. =_Shall_.= Do not confuse with _will_. See 53. =_Sight_.= _A sight_ or _a sight of_ is very crude for _many_, _much_, _a great deal of_. "_A great many_ (not _a sight_) of them." =_So_.= Not incorrect, but loose, vague, and often unnecessary. (a) As an intensive, the frequent use of _so_ has been christened "the feminine demonstrative." Hackneyed: "I was so surprised." Better: "I was much surprised." Or, "I was surprised." (b) As a connective, the frequent use of _so_ is a mark of amateurishness. See 36 Note. =_Some_.= Not to be used as an adverb. "She was _somewhat_ (not _some_) better the next day." Wrong: "He studied some that night." Right: "He did some studying that night." =_Somewheres_.= Very crude. Use _somewhere_. =_Species_.= Has the same form in singular and plural. "He discovered a new _species_ (not _specie_) of sunflower." =_Such_.= (a) To be completed by _that_, rather than by _so that_, when a result clause follows. "There was such a crowd _that_ (not _so that_) he did not find his friends." (b) To be completed by _as_, rather than by _that_, _who_, or _which_, when a relative clause follows. "I will accept such arrangements _as_ (not _that_) may be made." "He called upon such soldiers _as_ (not _who_) would volunteer for this service to step forward." =_Superior than_.= Not in good use for _superior to_. =_Sure_.= Avoid the crude adverbial use. "It _surely_ (not _sure_) was pleasant." In answer to the question, "Will you go?" either _sure_ or _surely_ is correct, though _surely_ is preferred. "[To be] sure." "[You may be] sure." "[I will] surely [go]." =_Suspicion_.= A noun. Never to be used as a verb. =_Take and_.= Often unnecessary, sometimes crude. Redundant: "He took the ax and sharpened it." Better: "He sharpened the ax." Crude: "He took and nailed up the box." Better: "He nailed up the box." =_Tend_.= In the sense _to look after_, takes a direct object without an interposed _to_. _Attend_, however, is followed by _to_. "The milliner's assistant _tends_ (not _tends to_) the shop." "I shall _attend to your wants in a moment_." =_That there_.= Do not use for _that_. "I want _that_ (not _that there_) box of berries." =_Them_.= Not to be used as an adjective. "_Those_ (not _them_) boys." =_There were_ or _There was_.= Avoid the unnecessary use. Crude: "There were seventeen senators voted for the bill." Better: "Seventeen senators voted for the bill." =_These sort_, _These kind_.= Ungrammatical. See 51b. =_This here_.= Do not use for _this_. =_Those_.= Do not carelessly omit a relative clause after _those_. Faulty: "He is one of those talebearers." Better: "He is a talebearer." [Or] "He is one of those talebearers whom everybody dislikes." =_Those kind_, _those sort_.= Ungrammatical. See 51b. =_Till_.= Do not carelessly misuse for _when_: "I had scarcely strapped on my skates _when_ (not _till_) Henry fell through an air hole." =_Transpire_.= Means _to give forth_ or _to become known_, not _to occur_. "The secret _transpired_." "The sale of the property _occurred_ (not _transpired_) last Thursday." =_Try_.= A verb, not a noun. =_Unique_.= Means _alone of its kind_, not _odd_ or _unusual_. =_United States_.= Ordinarily preceded by _the_. "The United States raised a large army." (Not "United States raised a large army.") =_Up_.= Do not needlessly insert after such verbs as _end_, _rest_, _settle_. =_Used to could_.= Very crude. Say _used to be able_ or _once could_. =_Very_.= Accompanied by _much_ when used with the past participle. "He was _very much_ (not _very_) pleased with his reception." =_Want to_.= Not to be used in the sense of _should_, _had better_. "You _should_ (not _You want to_) keep in good physical condition." =_Way_.= Not to be used for _away_. "Away (not _way_) down the street." =_Ways_.= Not to be used for _way_ in referring to distance. "A little _way_ (not _ways_)." =_When_.= (a) Not to be used for _that_ in such a sentence as "It was in the afternoon that the races began." (b) A _when_ clause is not to be used as a predicate noun. See 6. =_Where_.= (a) Not to be used for _that_ in such a sentence as "I see in the paper that our team lost the game." (b) A _where_ clause is not to be used as a predicate noun. See 6. =_Where at_.= Vulgar. "Where is he? (not _Where is he at_?)" =_Which_.= Do not use for _who_ or _that_ in referring to persons. "The friends _who_ (not _which_) had loved him in his boyhood were still faithful to him." =_Who_.= Do not use unnecessarily for _which_ or _that_ in referring to animals. Do not use the possessive form _whose_ for _of which_ unless the sentence is so turned as practically to require the substitution. =_Will_.= Do not confuse with _shall_. See 53. =_Win out_.= Not used in formal writing or speaking. =_Woods_.= Not ordinarily to be used as singular. "_A wood_ (not _A woods_)." =_Would have_.= Do not use for _had_ in if clauses. "If you _had_ (not _would have_) spoken boldly, he would have granted your request." =_Would of_.= A vulgarism for _would have_. =_You was_.= Use _You were_ in both singular and plural. =_Yourself_.= Intensive or reflexive; do not use when the personal pronoun would suffice. "_You_ (not _Yourself_) and your family must come." Exercise: 1. Be sure the gun works alright. I was already when you came. 2. He talked considerable, but I couldn't scarcely remember what all he said. 3. I never suspicioned that John could of been guilty of forging his father's note. It don't seem hardly possible. 4. The island was not inhabited by humans. It was different than any place I ever remember of. One sailor and myself climbed a sand hill, but we couldn't see any signs of life anywheres. 5. Hawkeye walked a ways into a woods. He was a right smart at ease, for he had Kildeer with him. =69.= EXERCISE IN DICTION =A. Wordiness= Strike out all that is superfluous, and make the following sentences simple and exact. 1. Some students lack the ability of being able to spell. 2. He seems to enjoy the universal esteem of all men. 3. The mind rebels against the enforced discipline imposed upon it by others. 4. This is the house that was constructed and erected by a young fellow who went by the common name of Jack. 5. There are invariably people in the world who always want to get something for nothing. I saw some today crowding round a soap man who was giving away free samples gratis. 6. Strawberries which grow in the woods or anywhere like that have a flavor that is better than that of those which grow in gardens. 7. The people showed Jackson the greatest honor it is within their power to bestow by electing him president. 8. It was an old man of about sixty years, and he carried a cane to support himself with when he took a walk. He pulled out his watch to see what time it was every few minutes. 9. My favorite magazine is the one called _Popular Mechanics_. I like it because it appeals to me. 10. There is a bird, and that bird is the cuckoo, that seems to think it unnecessary to build its own nest, and so it occupies any nest that it happens to find. 11. It is a good plan to follow if one would like to be able to develop his memory to make it a rule to learn at least a few lines of poetry every night before going to bed. 12. In the annals of history there is no historical character more unselfish than the character of Robert E. Lee. 13. There are quite a few hotels in Estes Park, which is in Colorado, but the one that is the most picturesque and striking so that you remember it a long time on account of its unusual surroundings is Long's Peak Inn. 14. It is often, but not always, a good sign that when one person is quick to suspect another person of disloyalty or dishonesty that he himself is disloyal or dishonest. 15. The canine quadruped was under suspicion of having obliterated by a process of mastication that article of sustenance which the butcher deposits at our posterior portal. =B. The Exact Word= Substitute, for inaccurate words and phrases, expressions which carry an exact and reasonable meaning. 1. Ostrich eggs made into omelets are a funny experience. 2. A small back porch can be built which will enter directly into the kitchen. 3. Ruskin uses a great deal of unfamiliar words. 4. Reading will broaden the point of view of a student. 5. To visit the plant in operation is indeed a spectacular sight. 6. My plants grew and looked nicer than any I ever saw. 7. I place little truth in that article, since it appeared in a strong partisan paper. 8. The manufacturing of automobiles has gained to quite an extent. 9. Emerson has some real clever thoughts in his essays. 10. I do not mean to degrade our local street car system, for indeed, it is good along some lines. 11. I want to attain a greater per cent of efficiency in my study. 12. Imagination is an important part in the successful writing of themes. 13. His employer praised him for the preparation he had done. 14. I used water-wings as a sort of a "safety first" until I learned how to swim. 15. In order to prevent infection from disease, two big things are necessary. 16. The pastor delivered the announcements and after the collection had been obtained, he presented the sermon of the morning. 17. Another factor in my career that winter was that I became a part of the orchestra. 18. It was a mighty nice party that Mrs. Jones gave and everybody seemed to have an awfully nice time. 19. The more general word socialism might be divided into three distinct classes, namely: the political party, the theoretical socialist, and last what might be called a general tendency. 20. Starting with the pioneer days and up to the present time every energy was set forth to lay low the forests and to get homes from the wilderness. =C. Words Sometimes Confused in Meaning= Use the word which accurately expresses the thought. 1. The climate of California is very (healthful, healthy). 2. (Leave, let) me have the book. 3. He is afraid that he will (loose, lose) his position. 4. The (principal, principle) speaker of the day was Colonel Walker. 5. I cannot run (as, like) he can. 6. An hour ago he (laid, lay) down to sleep. 7. I fear we are (liable, likely) to be punished. 8. The scolding did not much (affect, effect) him. 9. The light roller presses down the bricks so that the steam roller will break (fewer, less) of them. 10. Whittier makes many (allusions, illusions) to the Bible. 11. Bread will (raise, rise) much more quickly in a warm place than in a place where there is a draft. 12. It hardly seems (credible, creditable) that a small child could walk ten miles. 13. I can't write a letter on this (stationary, stationery). 14. He (sets, sits) at the head of the table. 15. He spoke to the stranger (respectfully, respectively). 16. Did the president (affect, effect) a settlement of the strike? 17. I cannot (accept, except) help from anyone. 18. Are the guests (already, all ready) for dinner? 19. Is the train moving or (stationary, stationery)? 20. It is (apt, likely, liable) to be pleasant tomorrow. =D. Colloquialism, Slang, Faulty Idiom, etc.= The diction of the following sentences is incorrect or inappropriate for written discourse. Improve the sentences. 1. I was kind of tired this morning, but now I feel alright. 2. I should of known better. 3. A young lady and myself went walking. 4. He is out of town for a couple days. 5. I feel some better now. 6. He will benefit greatly from the results. 7. The Puritans were a very odd acting people. 8. I like camping because of many reasons. 9. Cook your meal, and after you are finished eating, wash the dishes. 10. He is a regular genius of a bookkeeper. 11. It is hard to see how humans can live in such tenements. 12. The soldiers destroyed property without the least regard of who owned it. 13. She was crazy for an invite to the hop. 14. It was up to me to get out before there was something doing. 15. The Gettysburg Address is very simple of understanding though very strong of meaning. 16. When we become located in a desirable locality, we intend to pay off some of our social indebtedness. 17. Have some local glass dealer to mend the broken door, and send us the bill for the same. 18. The first part of Franklin's _Autobiography_ is different than the latter part, which he wrote after the Revolutionary War. 19. In 1771 a fellow by the name of Arkwright established a mill in which spinning machines were run by water power. 20. Each day has brought closer to home the truth that the condition of mankind in one part of the world is certain to effect the equilibrium of mankind in most all other parts of the world. SPELLING No one is able to spell all unusual words on demand. But every one must spell correctly even unusual words in formal writing. The writer has time or must take time to consult a dictionary. The best dictionaries are _Webster's New International Dictionary_, the _Standard Dictionary_ (less conservative than Webster's), the _Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia_ (Volume 2 of the _Century_ is the best place to look for proper names), and _Murray's New English Dictionary_ (very thorough, each word being illustrated with numerous quotations to show historical development). An abridged edition of one of these (the price is one to three dollars) should be accessible to each student who cannot buy the larger volumes. The best are: _Webster's Secondary School Dictionary_, _Funk and Wagnalls Desk Standard Dictionary_, the _Oxford Concise Dictionary_, and _Webster's Collegiate Dictionary_. But the student will be spared constant recourse to the dictionary, and will save himself much time and many humiliations, if he will employ the rules and principles which follow. =Recording Errors= =70. Keep a list of all the words you misspell, copying them several times in correct form.= Concentrate your effort upon a few words at a time--upon those words which you yourself actually misspell. The list will be shorter than you think. It may comprise not more than twenty or thirty words. Unless you are extraordinarily deficient, it will certainly not comprise more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty. Find where your weakness lies; then master it. You can accomplish the difficult part of the task in a single afternoon. An occasional review, and constant care when you write, will make your mastery permanent. After this, and only after this, begin slowly to learn the spelling of words which you do not yourself use often, but which are a desirable equipment for all educated men. See the list under 79. _Concentrate your efforts upon a few words at a time._ It is better to know a few exactly than a large number hazily. Form the mental habit of being always right with a small group of words, and extend this group gradually. Exercise: Prepare for your instructor a corrected list of words which you have misspelled in your papers to the present time. =Pronouncing Accurately= =71. Avoid slovenly pronunciation.= Careful articulation makes for correctness in spelling. Watch the vowels of unaccented syllables; give them distinct (not exaggerated) utterance, at least until you are familiar with the spelling. Examples: _sep=a=rate_, _opp=o=rtunity_, _ever=y=body_, _soph=o=more_, _d=i=vine_. Sound accurately all the consonants between syllables, and do not sound a single consonant twice. Examples: _can=d=idate_, _gover=n=ment_, _su=r=prise_ (not _supp=r=ise_), _o=m=i=ss=ion_ (compare _o=cc=a=s=ion_), _de=f=er_ (compare _di=ff=er_). Sound the _g_ in final _-ing_. Examples: _eating_, _running_. Pronounce the _-al_ of adverbs derived from adjectives in _-ic_ or _-al_. Examples: _tragically_, _occasionally_, _generally_, _ungrammatically_. Do not transpose letters; place each letter where it belongs. Examples: _p=er=spiration_ (not _p=re=spiration_), _tra=g=edy_ (not _tra=d=e=g=y_). Note.--The principle of phonetic spelling as stated above applies to many words, but by no means to all. The Simplified Spelling Board would extend this principle by changing the spelling of words to correspond with their actual sounds. It recommends such forms as _tho_, _thru_, _enuf_, _quartet_, _catalog_, _program_. If the student employs these forms, he must use them consistently. Many writers oppose simplified spelling; many advocate it; many compromise. Others desire to supplant our present alphabet with one more nearly phonetic, and prefer, until this fundamental reform takes place, to preserve our present spelling as it is. Exercise: Copy the following words slowly, pronouncing the syllables as you write: _accidentally_, _accommodate_, _accurately_, _artistically_, _athletics_ (not _atheletics_), _boundary_, _candidate_, _cavalry_, _commission_, _curiosity_, _defer_, _definite_, _description_, _despair_, _different_, _dining room_, _dinned_, _disappoint_, _divide_, _divine_, _emphatically_, _eighth_, _everybody_, _February_, _finally_, _goddess_, _government_, _hundred_, _hurrying_, _instinct_, _laboratory_, _library_, _lightning_, _might have_ (not _might of_), _naturally_, _necessary_, _occasionally_, _omission_, _opinion_, _opportunity_, _optimist_, _partner_, _perform_, _perhaps_, _perspiration_, _prescription_, _primitive_, _privilege_, _probably_, _quantity_, _really_, _recognise_, _recommend_, _reverence_, _separate_, _should have_ (not _should of_), _sophomore_, _strictly_, _superintendent_, _surprise_, _temperance_, _tragedy_, _usually_, _whether_. =Logical Kinship in Words= =72. Get help in spelling a difficult word by thinking of related words.= To think of _ridiculous_ will prevent your writing _a_ for the second _i_ of _ridicule_; to think of _ridicule_ will prevent your writing _rediculous_. To think of _prepare_ will prevent your writing _preperation_; to think of _preparation_ will forestall _preparitory_. To think of _busy_ will save you from the monstrosity _buisness._ To think of the prefixes _re-_ (meaning _again_) and _dis-_ (meaning _not_), and the verbs _commend_ and _appoint_, will prevent your writing _recommend_ or _disappoint_ with a double _c_ or _s_. Note.--The relationship between words is not always a safe guide to spelling. Observe _four_, _forty_; _nine_, _ninth_; _maintain_, _maintenance_; _please_, _pleasant_; _speak_, _speech_; _prevail_, _prevalent_. Do not confuse the following prefixes, which have no logical connection: _ante-_ (before) _anti-_ (against, opposite) _de-_ (from, about) _dis-_ (apart, away, not) _per-_ (through, entirely) _pre-_ (before) Exercise: 1. Write the nouns corresponding to the following verbs: _prepare_, _allude_, _govern_, _represent_, _degrade_. 2. Write the adjectives corresponding to the following nouns and the nouns corresponding to the following adjectives: _desperation_, _academy_, _origin_, _ridiculous_, _miraculous_, _grammatical_, _arithmetical_, _busy_. 3. Write the adverbs corresponding to the following adjectives: _real_, _sure_, _actual_, _hurried_, _accidental_, _incidental_, _grammatical_. 4. Copy the following pairs of related words or related forms of words: _labor, laboratory_; _debate, debater_; _base, based_; _deal, dealt_; _chose, chosen_; _mean, meant_. 5. Write each of the following words with a hyphen between the prefix and the body of the word: _describe_, _description_, _disappoint_, _disappear_, _disease_, _dissatisfy_, _dissever_, _permit_, _perspire_, _prescription_, _preconceive_, _recommend_, _recollect_, _reconsider_, _antedate_, _antecedent_, _anticlimax_, _antitoxin_. =Superficial Resemblances between Words= =73. Guard against misspelling a word because it bears a superficial resemblance, in sound or appearance, to some other word.= Most of the words in the following list have no logical connection; the resemblance is one of form only (_angel_, _angle_). But a few words are included which are different in spelling in spite of a logical relation (_breath_, _breathe_). accept (to receive) except (to exclude, with exclusion of) advice (noun) advise (verb) affect (to influence in part) effect (to bring to pass totally) allusion (a reference) illusion (a deceiving appearance) all right almost already altogether always alley (a back street) ally (a confederate) altar (a structure used in worship) alter (to make otherwise) angel (a celestial being) angle (the meeting place of two lines) baring (making bare) barring (obstructing) bearing (carrying) born (brought into being) borne (carried) breath (noun) breathe (verb) capital (a city) capitol (a building) canvas (a cloth) canvass (to solicit) clothes (garments) cloths (pieces of cloth) coarse (not fine) course (route, method of behavior) conscious (aware) conscience (an inner moral sense) dairy diary device (noun) devise (verb) desert (a barren country) dessert (food) dining room dinning disappear disappoint disavowal dissatisfaction dissimilar dissipate dissuade decent (adjective) descent (downward slope or motion) dissent (a disagreement) dual (adjective) duel (noun) formally (in a formal way) formerly (in time past) forth forty four fourth freshman freshmen (not used as adjective) gambling (wagering money on games of chance) gamboling (frisking or leaping with joy) guard regard hear here hinder hindrance holly (a tree) holy (hallowed, sacred) wholly (altogether) hoping (from _hope_) hopping instance (an example) instants (periods of time) isle (an island) aisle (a narrow passage) its (possessive pronoun) it's (contraction of _it is_) Johnson, Samuel Jonson, Ben later (comparative of _late_) latter (the second) lead (present tense) led (past tense) lessen (verb) lesson (noun) liable (expresses responsibility or disagreeable probability) likely (expresses probability) loose (free, not bound) lose (to suffer the loss of) maintain maintenance nineteenth ninetieth ninety ninth past (adjective, adverb, preposition) passed (verb, past tense) peace (a state of calm) piece (a fragment) perceive perform persevere persuade purchase pursue personal (private, individual) personnel (the body of persons engaged in some activity) Philippines Filipino plain (clear; adjective) plain (flat region; noun) plane (flat; adjective) plane (geometrical term; noun) planed (past tense of _plane_) planned (past tense of _plan_) pleasant please precede proceed } succeed } these three are the exceed } "double _e_ group" concede intercede recede supersede pre cé dence (act or right of preceding) préc e dents (things said or done before, now used as authority or model) presence (state of being present) presents (gifts) prevail prevalent principal (chief, leading, the leading official of a school, a sum of money) principle (a general truth) quiet (still) quite (completely) rain reign (rule of a monarch) rein (part of a harness) respectfully ("Yours respectfully") respectively (in a way proper to each--should never be used to close a letter) right rite (ceremony) write shone (past tense of _shine_) shown (past tense of _show_) seize siege sight (view, spectacle) site (situation, a plot of ground reserved for some use) cite (to bring forward as evidence) speak speech Spencer, Herbert (scientist) Spenser, Edmund (poet) stationary (not moving) stationery (writing materials) statue (a sculptured likeness) stature (height, figure) statute (a law) steal (to take by theft) steel (a variety of iron) than then their (belonging to them) there (in that place) they're (they are) therefor (to that end, for that thing) therefore (for that reason) till until to too two track (an imprint, or a road) tract (an area of land) tract (a treatise on religion) village villain wandering wondering weak (not strong) week (seven days) weather whether whole (entire) hole (an opening) who's (who is) whose (the possessive of _who_) your (indicates possession) you're (contraction of _you are_) Exercise: 1. Insert _to_, _too_, or _two_: He is ---- tired ---- walk the ----miles ---- the town. Then ----, it is ---- late ---- catch a car. It is ---- minutes of ----. It is ---- bad. 2. Insert _lose_ or _loose_: You will ---- your money if you carry it ---- in your pocket. We are ----ing time. The sailor ----ens the rope. Did you ---- your ticket? 3. Insert _speak or speech_: I was ----ing with our congressman about his recent ----. I ---- from experience. 4. Insert _plan_ or _plane_: The architect's ---- was accepted. The carpenter's ---- cuts a long shaving. The carpenter does not ---- the house. 5. Insert _quite_ or _quiet_: The baby is ----ly sleeping. She is ---- well now, but last night she was ---- sick. Be ----. Walk ----ly when you go. =Words in _ei_ or _ie_= =74. Write _i_ before _e_ When sounded as _ee_ Except after _c_.= Examples: _believe_, _grief_, _chief_; but _receive_, _deceive_, _ceiling_. Exceptions: _Neither financier seized either species of weird leisure._ (Also a few uncommon words, like _seignior_, _inveigle_, _plebeian_.) Rules based on a key-word, lice, Alice, Celia (_i_ follows _l_ and _e_ follows _c_) apply after two consonants only, and do not help one to spell a word like _grief_. Rule 74 applies after all consonants. Note.--The words in which the sound is _ee_ are the words really difficult to spell. When the sound is any other than _ee_ (especially when it is _a_), _i_ usually follows _e_. Examples: _veil_, _weigh_, _freight_, _neighbor_, _height_, _sleight_, _heir_, _heifer_, _counterfeit_, _foreign_, etc. Exceptions: _ancient_, _friend_, _sieve_, _mischief_, _fiery_, _tries_, etc. Exercise: Write the following words, supplying _ei_ or _ie_: _conc--t_, _retr--ve_, _dec--tful_, _n--ce_, _y--ld_, _p--ce_, _s--ge_, _s--ze_, _rec--pt_, _n--ther_, _w--rd_, _rel--ve_, _l--sure_, _f--ld_, _v--n_, _r--gn_, _sover--gn_, _sl--gh_, _br--f_, _dec--ve_, _r--n_, _f--nt_, _perc--ve_, _w--ld_, _gr--vous_, _--ther_. =Doubling a Final Consonant= =75. Monosyllables and words accented on the final syllable, if they end in one consonant preceded by a single vowel, double the consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel.= Examples: (a) Words derived from monosyllables: _plan-ned_, _clan-nish_, _get-ting_, _hot-test_, _bag-gage_, (b) Words derived from words accented on the final syllable: _begin-ning_, _repel-lent_, _unregret-ted_. Note 1.--There are four distinct steps in the application of this rule. (1) The primary word must be found. To decide whether _begging_ contains two _g's_, we must first think of _beg_. (2) The primary word must be a monosyllable or a word accented on the final syllable. _Hit_ and _allot_ meet this test; _open_ does not. _Deferred_ and _differed_, _preferred_ and _proffered_, _committed_ (or _committee_) and _prohibited_ double or refrain from doubling the final consonant of the primary word according to the position of the accent. The seeming discrepancy between _preferred_ and _preferable_, between _conferred_ and _conference_, is due to a shifting of the accent to the first syllable in the case of _preferable_ and _conference_. (3) The primary word must end in one consonant. _Trace_, _oppose_, _interfere_, _help_, _reach_, and _perform_ fail to meet this test, and therefore in derivatives do not double the last consonant. _Assurance_ has one _r_, as it should have; _occurrence_ has two _r's_, as it should have. (4) The final consonant of the primary word must be preceded by a single vowel. This principle excludes the extra consonant from _needy_, _daubed_, and _proceeding_, and gives it to _running_. Note 2.--After _q_, _u_ has the force of _w_. Hence _quitting_, _quizzes_, _squatter_, _acquitted_, _equipped_, and similar words are not really exceptions to the rule. Exercise: 1. Write the present participle (in _-ing_) of _din_ (not _dine_), _begin_, _sin_ (compare _shine_), _stop_, _prefer_, _rob_, _drop_, _occur_, _omit_, _swim_, _get_, _commit_. 2. Write the past tense (in _-ed_) of _plan_ (not _plane_), _star_ (compare _stare_), _stop_ (compare _slope_), _lop_ (not _lope_), _hop_ (not _hope_), _fit_, _benefit_, _occur_ (compare _cure_), _offer_, _confer_, _bat_ (compare _abate_). =Final _e_ before a Suffix Beginning with a Vowel= =76. Words that end in silent _e_ usually drop the _e_ in derivatives or before a suffix beginning with a vowel.= Examples: _bride_, _bridal_; _guide_, _guidance_; _please_, _pleasure_; _fleece_, _fleecy_; _force_, _forcible_; _argue_, _arguing_; _arrive_, _arrival_; _conceive_, _conceivable_; _college_, _collegiate_; _write_, _writing_; _use_, _using_; _change_, _changing_; _judge_, _judging_; _believe_, _believing_. Note 1.--Of the exceptions some retain the _e_ to prevent confusion with other words. Exceptions: _dyeing_, _singeing_, _mileage_, _acreage_, _hoeing_, _shoeing_, _agreeing_, _eyeing_. The exceptions cause comparatively little trouble. One rarely sees _hoing_ or _shoing_; he often sees _hopeing_ and _inviteing_. Note 2.--After _c_ or _g_ and before a suffix beginning with _a_ or _o_ the _e_ is retained. The purpose of this retention is to preserve the soft sound of the _c_ or _g_. (Observe that _c_ and _g_ have the hard sound in _cable_, _gable_, _cold_, _go_.) Examples: _peaceable_, _changeable_, _noticeable_, _serviceable_, _outrageous_, _courageous_, _advantageous_. Exercise: 1. Write the present participle of the following words: _use_, _love_, _change_, _judge_, _shake_, _hope_, _shine_, _have_, _seize_, _slope_, _strike_, _dine_, _come_, _place_, _argue_, _achieve_, _emerge_, _arrange_, _abide_, _oblige_, _subdue_. 2. Write the present participle of the following words: _singe_, _tinge_, _dye_, _agree_, _eye_. 3. Write the _-ous_ or _-able_ form of the following words: _trace_, _love_, _blame_, _move_, _conceive_, _courage_, _service_, _advantage_, _umbrage_. 4. Write the adjectives which correspond to the following nouns: _force_, _sphere_, _vice_, _sense_, _fleece_, _college_, _hygiene_. 5. Write the nouns which correspond to the following verbs: _please_, _guide_, _grieve_, _arrive_, _oblige_, _prepare_, _inspire_. =Plurals= =77a. Most nouns add _s_ or _es_ to form the plural.= Examples: _word_, _words_; _fire_, _fires_, _negro_, _negroes_; _Eskimo_, _Eskimos_; _leaf_, _leaves_ (_f_ changes to _v_ for the sake of euphony); knife, knives. =b. Nouns ending in _y_ preceded by a consonant (or by _u_ as _w_) change the _y_ to _i_ and add _es_ to form the plural.= Examples: _sky_, _skies_; _lady_, _ladies_; _colloquy_, _colloquies_; _soliloquy_, _soliloquies_. =Other nouns ending in _y_ form the plural in the usual way.= Examples: _day_, _days_; _boy_, _boys_; _monkey_, _monkeys_; _valley_, _valleys_. =c. Compound nouns usually form the plural by adding _s_ or _es_ to the principal word.= Examples: _sons-in-law_, _passers-by_; but _stand-bys_, _hat-boxes_, _writing-desks_. =d. Letters, signs, and sometimes figures, add _'s_ to form the plural.= Examples: Cross your t's and dot your i's; ?'s; $'s; 3's or 3s. =e. A few nouns adhere to old declensions.= Examples: _ox_, _oxen_; _child_, _children_; _goose_, _geese_; _foot_, _feet_; _mouse_, _mice_; _man_, _men_; _woman_, _women_; _sheep_, _sheep_; _deer_, _deer_; _swine_, _swine_. =f. Words adopted from foreign languages sometimes retain the foreign plural.= Examples: _alumnus_, _alumni_; _alumna_, _alumnæ_; _fungus_, _fungi_; _focus_, _foci_; _radius_, _radii_; _datum_, _data_; _medium_, _media_; _phenomenon_, _phenomena_; _stratum_, _strata_; _analysis_, _analyses_; _antithesis_, _antitheses_; _basis_, _bases_; _crisis_, _crises_; _oasis_, _oases_; _hypothesis_, _hypotheses_; _parenthesis_, _parentheses_; _thesis_, _theses_; _beau_, _beaux_; _tableau_, _tableaux_; _Mr._, _Messrs._ (_Messieurs_); _Mrs._, _Mmes._ (_Mesdames_). Exercise: Write the singular and plural of the following words: _day_, _sky_, _lady_, _wife_, _leaf_, _loaf_, _negro_, _potato_, _tomato_, _pass_, _glass_, _boat_, _beet_, _flash_, _crash_, _bead_, _box_, _passenger_, _messenger_, _son-in-law_, _Smith_, _Jones_, _jack-o'-lantern_, _hanger-on_, _stratum_, _datum_, _phenomenon_, _crisis_, _basis_, _thesis_, _analysis_. =Compounds= =78a. Use a hyphen between two or more words which serve as a single adjective before a noun:= _iron-bound bucket_, _well-kept lawn_, _twelve-inch main_, _normal-school teacher_, _up-to-date methods_, _twentieth-century ideas_, _devil-may-care expression_, _a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk_. =But when the words follow the noun, the hyphen is omitted.= _The lawn is well kept. Methods up to date in every way_. =Also adverbs ending in _-ly_ are not ordinarily made into compound modifiers:= _nicely kept lawn_, _securely guarded treasure_. =b. Use a hyphen between members of a compound noun when the second member is a preposition, or when the writing of two nouns solid or separately might confuse the meaning:= _runner-up_, _kick-off_; _letting-down of effort_, _son-in-law_, _jack-o'-lantern_, _Pedro was a bull-fighter_, _a woman-hater_, _Did you ever see a shoe-polish like this?_ =c. Use a hyphen in compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, and in fractions according to the following examples:= _Twenty-three_, _eighty-nine_; but _one hundred and one_. _Twenty-third_, _one-hundred-and-first man_. _Three-fourths_, _four and two-thirds_, _thirty-hundredths_, _thirty-one hundredths_. But omit the hyphen in simple fractions when loosely used: _Three quarters of my life are spent._ _One third of his fortune._ =d. A hyphen is not used in the following common words:= _airship_, _altogether_, _anybody_, _baseball_, _basketball_, _everybody_, _football_, _goodby_, _herself_, _handbook_, _himself_, _inasmuch_, _itself_, _midnight_, _myself_, _nevertheless_, _nobody_, _nothing_ (but _no one_), _nowadays_, _railroad_, _themselves_, _together_, _typewritten_, _wherever_, _without_, _workshop_, _yourself_, _newspaper_, _sunset_. =e. For words that do not come within the scope of rules, consult an up-to-date dictionary.= Compounds tend, with the passing of time, to grow together. Once men wrote _steam boat_, later _steam-boat_, and finally _steamboat_. New-coined words are usually hyphenated; old words are often written solid. The degree of intimacy between the parts of a compound word affects usage; thus we write _sun-motor_, but _sunbeam_; _birth-rate_, but _birthday_; _cooling-room_, but _bedroom_; _non-conductor_, but _nonsense_. The ease with which a vowel blends with the consonant of a syllable adjoining it affects usage; thus _self-evident_, but _selfsame_; _non-existent_, but _nondescript_; _un-American_, but _unwise_. Many compounds, however, are still uncontrolled by usage; whether they should be written as two words or one, whether with or without the hyphen, the dictionaries themselves do not agree. Exercise: Copy the following expressions, inserting hyphens where they are necessary: _twenty two years old_, _twenty two dollar bills_ _make forty dollars_, _twenty seven eighths inch boards_, _a normal school graduate_, _two handled boxes_, _a cloth covered basket_, _blood red sun_, _water tight compartment_, _sixty horse power motor_, _seven dollar bathing suits_, _a happy go lucky fellow_, _germ destroying powder_, _he had a son in law_, _passers by on the street_, _the kick off is at three o'clock_, _dark complexioned woman_, _silver tongued orator_, _a dish like valley_, _a rope like tail_, _a fish shaped cloud_, _a touch me not expression_, _will o' the wisp_, _well to do merchant_, _rough and tumble existence_. =79.= SPELLING LIST The English language comprises about 450,000 words. Of these a student uses about 4000 (although he may understand more than twice that number when he encounters them in sentences). Of these, in turn, not more than four or five hundred are frequently misspelled. The following list includes nearly all of the words which give serious trouble. Certain American colleges using this list require of freshmen an accuracy of ninety per cent. absurd academy =accept= =accidentally= =accommodate= accumulate accustom acquainted acquitted =across= addressed =adviser= aeroplane =affects= aggravate alley allotted =all right= ally already altar alter =altogether= alumnus =always= =amateur= =among= analogous analysis =angel= angle annual anxiety apparatus =appearance= appropriate arctic =argument= =arising= =arithmetic= arrange arrival ascend asks =athletic= audience auxiliary awkward balance barbarous baring barring baseball =based= bearing =becoming= before beggar =begging= =beginning= =believing= =benefited= =biscuit= boundaries brilliant =Britain= =Britannica= buoyant bureau =business= =busy= =calendar= =candidate= =can't= cemetery =certain= =changeable= =changing= characteristic chauffeur =choose= chose chosen =clothes= =coarse= column =coming= commission =committee= comparative =compel= compelled competent concede conceivable =conferred= conquer conqueror conscience conscientious considered continuous control =controlled= coöperate country =course= =courteous= courtesy cruelty cylinder =dealt= debater deceitful decide decision deferred =definite= descend =describe= =description= derived =despair= =desperate= destroy device devise dictionary difference digging dilemma =dining room= dinning =disappear= =disappoint= disavowal discipline disease =dissatisfied= dissipate distinction distribute =divide= =divine= =doctor= =don't= dormitories drudgery dying ecstasy =effects= =eighth= eliminate =embarrass= eminent encouraging =enemy= =equipped= especially =etc.= everybody exaggerate exceed excellent except exceptional exhaust exhilarate =existence= expense experience explanation familiar fascinate =February= fiery fifth =finally= financier forfeit formally =formerly= forth =forty= =fourth= frantically fraternity =freshman= (adj.) =friend= fulfil furniture gallant gambling =generally= goddess =government= governor =grammar= grandeur =grievous= guard guess guidance harass haul =having= height hesitancy =holy= =hoping= huge =humorous= =hurriedly= hundredths hygienic =imaginary= imitative immediately immigration impromptu imminent incidentally incidents incredulous =independence= indispensable induce influence =infinite= =instance= instant =intellectual= intelligence =intentionally= intercede irresistible =its= it's itself invitation =judgment= =knowledge= laboratory =ladies= =laid= =later= =latter= =lead= =led= liable library =lightning= likely literature loneliness =loose= =lose= =losing= lying maintain =maintenance= manual manufacturer =many= marriage Massachusetts material =mathematics= mattress =meant= messenger =miniature= minutes =mischievous= Mississippi misspelled momentous month murmur muscle mysterious =necessary= =negroes= =neither= nickel nineteenth ninetieth =ninety= ninth =noticeable= =nowadays= oblige obstacle =occasion= occasionally occur =occurred= =occurrence= occurring =o'clock= officers =omitted= =omission= =opinion= opportunity =optimistic= =original= outrageous overrun paid pantomime =parallel= =parliament= particularly =partner= =pastime= peaceable =perceive= perception peremptory =perform= =perhaps= =permissible= perseverance pérsonal personnél =perspiration= persuade pertain pervade physical picnic picnicking =planned= =pleasant= politics politician =possession= possible practically =prairie= =precede= precédent précedents =preference= =preferred= prejudice =preparation= =primitive= =principal= =principle= prisoner =privilege= =probably= =proceed= prodigy profession =professor= proffered prohibition promissory =prove= purchase pursue putting quantity =quiet= =quite= quizzes rapid =ready= =really= recede =receive= recognize =recommend= =reference= =referred= =regard= region =religion= =religious= repetition replies representative =restaurant= rheumatism ridiculous sacrilegious safety =sandwich= schedule science scream screech =seems= =seize= sense =sentence= =separate= sergeant several shiftless =shining= shone shown =shriek= =siege= similar =since= smooth soliloquy =sophomore= speak specimen =speech= statement =stationary= =stationery= statue stature statute steal steel stops =stopped= =stopping= =stories= stretch =strictly= succeeds successful summarize =superintendent= supersede =sure= =surprise= syllable symmetrical =temperament= =tendency= than =their= there therefore =they're= thorough thousandths till to =too= =together= =tragedy= track =tract= transferred tranquillity translate treacherous treasurer =tries= =trouble= =truly= =Tuesday= two typical tyranny universally =until= =using= =usually= vacancy vengeance vigilance village =villain= weak =wear= weather =Wednesday= week =weird= welfare where wherever =whether= which whole =wholly= =who's= whose wintry wiry within without =women= world =writing= written your =you're= Note 1.--The following words have more than one correct form, the one given here being preferred. abridgement acknowledgment analyze ax boulder caliber catalog center check criticize develop development dulness endorse envelop esthetic gaiety gild gipsy glamor goodby gray inquire medieval meter mold mustache odor program prolog skilful theater Note 2.--In a few groups of words American spelling and English spelling differ. American spelling gives preference to _favor_, _honor_, _labor_, _rumor_; English spelling gives preference to _favour_, _honour_, _labour_, _rumour_. American spelling gives preference to _civilize_, _apprize_; _defense_, _pretense_; _traveler_, _woolen_; etc. English spelling gives preference to _civilise_, _apprise_; _defence_, _pretence_; _traveller_, _woollen_; etc. MISCELLANEOUS =Manuscript= =80a. Titles.= Center a title on the page. Capitalize important words. It is unnecessary to place a period after a title, but a question mark or exclamation point should be used when one is appropriate. Do not underscore the title, or unnecessarily place it in quotation marks. Leave a blank line under the title, before beginning the body of the writing. =b. Spacing.= Careful spacing is as necessary as punctuation. Place writing on a page as you would frame a picture, crowding it toward neither the top nor the bottom. Leave liberal margins. Write verse as verse; do not give it equal indention or length of line with prose. Connect all the letters of a word. Leave a space after a word, and a double space after a sentence. Leave room between successive lines, and do not let the loops of letters run into the lines above or below. =c. Handwriting.= Write a clear, legible hand. Form _a_, _o_, _u_, _n_, _e_, _i_, properly. Write out _and_ horizontally. Avoid unnecessary flourishes in capitals, and curlicues at the end of words. Dot your _i's_ and cross your _t's_; not with circles or long eccentric strokes, but simply and accurately. Let your originality express itself not in ornate penmanship, or unusual stationery, or literary affectations, but in the force and keenness of your ideas. =Capitals= =81a. Begin with a capital a sentence, a line of poetry, or a quoted sentence. But if only a fragment of a sentence is quoted, the capital should be omitted.= Right: He said, "The time has come." Right: The question is, Shall the bill pass? Right: They said they would "not take no for an answer." Right: "The good die first, And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket."--Wordsworth. =b. Begin proper names, and all important words used as or in proper names, with capitals.= Words not so used should not begin with capitals. Right: Mr. George K. Rogers, the Principal of the Urbana High School, a college president, the President of the Senior Class, a senior, the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, three battalions of infantry, the Fourth of July, on the tenth of June, the House of Representatives, an assembly of delegates, a Presbyterian church, the separation of church and state, the Baptist Church, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a creek known as Black Oak Creek, the Republican Party, a party that advocates high tariff, Rocky Mountains, The Bible, God, The Christian Era, Wednesday, in the summer, living in the South, turning south after taking a few steps to the east, one morning, O dark-haired Evening! italic type, watt, pasteurize, herculean effort. =c. Begin an adjective which designates a language or a race with a capital.= Right: A Norwegian peasant, Indian arrowheads, English literature, the study of French. =d. In the titles of books or themes capitalize the first word and all other important words.= Prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are usually not important. Right: _The English Novel in the Time of Scott_, _War and Peace_, _Travels with a Donkey_, _When I Slept under the Stars_. =e. Miscellaneous uses. Capitalize the pronoun _I_, the interjection _O_, titles that accompany a name, and abbreviations of proper names.= Right: Battery F, 150 F. A.; Mobile, Ala.; Dr. Stebbins. Exercise: 1. the teacher said, "let me read you a famous soliloquy." he began: "to be, or not to be: that is the question." 2. the chinese laundry man does not write out his lists in english. 3. the _la fayette tribune_ says that a Principal of a School has been elected to congress. 4. mr. woodson, the lecturer, said that "the title of a book may be a poem." he mentioned _christmas eve on lonesome_ by john fox, jr. 5. i like architecture. as i approached the british museum, i noticed the ionic colonnade that runs along the front. the first room i visited was the one filled with marbles which lord elgin brought from the parthenon at athens. =Italics= In manuscript, a horizontal line drawn under a letter or word is a sign for the printer to use italic type. =82a. Quoted titles of books, periodicals, and manuscripts are usually italicized.= Right: I admire Shakespeare's _Hamlet_. [The italics make the reader know that the writer means, _Hamlet_ the play, not Hamlet the man.] Right: John Galsworthy's novel, _The Patrician_, appeared in serial form in the _Atlantic Monthly_. Note 1.--When the title of a book begins with an article (_a_, _an_, or _the_), the article is italicized. But _the_ before the title of a periodical is usually not italicized. Note 2.--It is correct, but not the best practice, to indicate the titles of books by quotation marks. The best method is to use italics for the title of a book, and quotation marks for chapters or subdivisions of the same book. Example: See _Encyclopedia Britannica_, Vol. II, p. 427, "Modern Architecture". =b. Words from a foreign language, unless they have been anglicized by frequent use, are italicized.= Right: A great noise announced the coming of the _enfant terrible_. Right: A play always begins _in medias res_. =c. The names of ships are usually italicized.= Right: The _Saxonia_ will sail at four o'clock. =d. Words taken out of their context and made the subject of discussion are italicized or placed in quotation marks.= Right: _So_ is a word faded and colorless from constant use. Right: The _t_ in the word _often_ is not pronounced. =e. A word or passage requiring great emphasis is italicized.= This device should not be used to excess. The proper way to secure emphasis is to have good ideas, and to use emphatic sentence structure in expressing them. Exercise: 1. In Vanity Fair Thackeray heads one chapter How to Live Well on Nothing a Year. 2. Auf wiedersehen was his parting word. He had informed me, sub rosa of course, that he was going to Bremen. 3. The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac revolutionized naval warfare. How far back it seems to the days when Decatur set fire to the old Philadelphia! 4. Her They say's are as plenteous as rabbits in Australia. 5. A writer in the Century Magazine says the public may know better than an author what the title of his book should be. Dickens, for example, called one of his works The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. =Abbreviations= =83a. In ordinary writing avoid abbreviations. The following, however, are always correct: Mr., Messrs., Dr., or St. (Saint), before proper names; B. C. or A. D., when necessary to avoid confusion, after a date; and No. or $ when followed by numerals.= In ordinary writing spell out All titles, except those listed above. Names of months, states, countries. Christian names, unless initials are used instead. Names of weights and measures, except in statistics. Street, Avenue, Road, Railroad, Park, Fort, Mountain, Company, Brothers, Manufacturing, etc. In ordinary writing, instead of _&_ write _and_; for _viz._ write _namely_; for _i. e._, write _that is_; for _e. g._ write _for example_; for _a. m._ and _p. m._ write _in the morning_, _this afternoon_, _tomorrow evening_, _Saturday night_. Do not use _etc._ (_et cetera_) when it can be avoided. =b. In business correspondence, technical writing, tabulations, footnotes, and bibliographies, or wherever brevity is essential, other abbreviations may be used.= Even here, short words should not be abbreviated: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Ohio, Samoa, Utah, March, April, May, June, July. Exercise: 1. Mr. Gregg & Dr. Appleton were rivals. 2. Harris lacked but one of having a grade of one hundred; _i. e._, he had the two O's already. 3. His inheritance tax was three thousand $. In Apr. he moved from Portland, Me., to Sandusky, O. 4. Prof. Kellogg came down Beech St. at a quarter before eight every a. m. 5. A No. of old friends visited them on special occasions; _e. g._, on their wedding anniversaries. =Numbers= =84a. It is customary to use figures for dates, for the street numbers in addresses, for reference to the pages of a book, and for statistics.= Right: June 16, 1920. 804 Chalmers Street. See Chapter 4, especially page 79. Note.--It is desirable not to write _st_, _nd_, or _th_ after the day of the month if the year is designated also. Right: March 3, 1919 (not March 3rd, 1919). =b. Figures are used for numbers which cannot be expressed in a few words. The dollar sign and figures are used with complicated sums of money.= Right: The farm comprised 3260 acres. The population of Kansas City, Missouri, was 248,381 in 1910. He earned $437 while attending school. The cost of the improvement was $1,940.25. =c. In other instances than those specified in _a_ and _b_ numbers as a rule should be written out.= (This rule applies to numbers and to sums of money which can be expressed in a few words, to sums of money less than one dollar, and to ages and time of day.) Right: The box weighs two hundred pounds. Xerxes had an army of three million men. I enclose seventy-five cents. He owed twelve hundred dollars. Grandfather Toland is eighty-seven years old. The train is due at a quarter past three. Exercise: 1. For 70 pounds of excess baggage I had to pay $1.00. 2. At 2 o'clock Rice gave him the 2nd capsule. 3. The letter was sent from twenty-one Warner St. November the eleventh, nineteen hundred and eighteen. 4. Knox earned $5 a day he said; but they paid him only $0.75. 5. At 40 he owned a 2,000 acre farm and had an income of $10,000 a year. =Syllabication= =85a. When a word is broken at the end of a line, use a hyphen there. Do not place a hyphen at the beginning of the second line.= =b. Words are divided only between syllables:= _depart-ment_, _dis-charge_, _ab-surd_, _univer-sity_, _pro-fessor_ (not _depa-rtment_, _disc-harge_, _abs-urd_, _unive-rsity_, _prof-essor_). =c. Monosyllabic words are never divided:= _which_, _through_, _dipped_, _speak_ (not _wh-ich_, _thr-ough_, _dip-ped_, _spe-ak_). =d. A consonant at the junction of two syllables usually goes with the second:= _recipro-cate_, _ordi-nance_, _inti-mate_ (not _reciproc-ate_, _ordin-ance_, _intim-ate_). Sometimes two consonants are equivalent to a single letter: _falli-ble_, _photo-graph_ (not _fallib-le_, _photog-raph_). =e. Two or more consonants at the junction of syllables are themselves divided:= _en-ter-prise_, _com-mis-sary_, _in-car-nate_ (not _ent-erpr-ise_, _comm-iss-ary_, _inc-arn-ate_). =f. A prefix or a suffix is usually set off from the rest of the word regardless of the rule for consonants between syllables:= _ex-empt_, _dis-appoint_, _sing-ing_, _pro-gress-ive_. But when a final consonant is doubled before a suffix the additional consonant goes with the suffix: _trip-ping_, _permit-ted_, _omis-sion_. =g. The best usage avoids separating one or two letters (unless in prefixes like _un_ or suffixes like _ly_) from the rest of the word:= _achieve-ment_, _enor-mous_, _remem-bered_, _dyspep-sia_ (not _a-chievement_, _e-normous_, remember-ed, dyspepsi-a). =h. The first part of a divided word should not be ludicrous or misleading:= _dogma-tize_, _croco-dile_, _de-cadence_, _metri-cal_, _goril-la_ (not _dog-matize_, _croc-odile_, _deca-dence_, _met-rical_, _go-rilla_). Exercise: Place a hyphen between each pair of syllables in each word of more than one syllable: _thoughtful_, _burrowing_, _thorough_, _chimney_, _brought_, _helped_, _harshnesses_, _which_, _murmur_, _superstition_, _ground_, _symmetry_, _ripped_, _compartment_, _disallow_, _obey_, _opinion_, _opportune_, _aggressive_, _intellectually_, _complicated_, _encyclopedia_, _wrought_, _electricity_, _abstraction_, _syllabication_, _punctuation_, _frustrate_, _except_, _substituting_, _distressful_. =Outlines= Three kinds of outlines are illustrated in this article: (a) the Topic Outline, (b) the Sentence Outline, and (c) the Paragraph Outline. =86a. A topic outline consists of headings (nouns or phrases containing nouns) which indicate the important ideas in a composition, and their relation to each other. Conform to the following model:= =The Lumber Problem= Theme: The decline of our lumber supply requires that we shall take steps toward reforesting, conservation, and the use of substitutes for wood. I The Depletion of our forests A Former abundance B Present scarcity (especially walnut, white pine, oak) II The Causes of the depletion A Great demand 1 For building 2 For industrial expansion (ties, posts, etc.) 3 For fuel, and other minor uses B Wasteful methods of forestry III The Remedy A Reforestation 1 Planting by individuals 2 Planting by the states 3 Extension of the present National Forest Reserves B The prevention of waste 1 In fires, by insects, etc. 2 In cutting and sawing 3 In by-products (sawing, odd lengths, etc.) C The use of substitutes for wood (concrete, steel, brick, stone, etc.) =b. A sentence outline is expressed in complete sentences. Conform to the following model:= =The Lumber Problem= I The depletion of our forests is evident when one compares A the former abundance, with B the present scarcity (of walnut, white pine, and oak, especially). II The causes of the depletion are: A the great demand 1 for building, 2 for industrial expansion (ties, posts, etc.), 3 for fuel and other minor uses; and B wasteful methods of forestry. III The remedies for the depletion are: A reforestation 1 by individuals, 2 by the states, 3 by extension of the present National Forest Reserves; B the prevention of waste 1 in fires, by insects, etc., 2 in cutting and sawing, 3 in by-products (sawdust, odd lengths, etc.); and C the use of substitutes, for wood (concrete, steel, brick, stone, etc.) =c. A paragraph outline is a series of sentences summarizing the thought of successive paragraphs in a composition. Conform to the following model:= =The Disagreeable Optimist= 1. The present age may be called an era of efficiency, prosperity, and optimism, since efficiency has produced prosperity, and this in turn has produced "optimism"--a word recurrent in common literature and conversation. 2. The optimist is often not natural or sincere, because his thoughts are centered on keeping up an appearance of being happy. 3. He is intrusive, for he thrusts comfort upon those who wish to mourn, and repeats irritating epigrams and poems about cheer. 4. He is undiscriminating, in that he prescribes the same remedy, "good cheer," for everybody and for every condition. 5. He is sometimes harmful, because he tells us that the world is going well, when conditions need changing, and need changing badly. =d. Mechanical details.= Indent headings that are coördinate (that is, of equal value) an equal distance from the margin. One inch to the right is a good distance for successive subordinate headings. Use Roman numerals, capital letters, Arabic numerals, and small letters to indicate the comparative rank of ideas. When a heading runs over one line, use hanging indention; that is, do not allow the second line to run back to the left-hand margin, but indent it. Make the numerals and letters (_1_, _A_, etc.) stand out prominently. The title of a theme should not be given a numeral or letter. Faulty indention: Sources of energy which may be utilized when the coal supply is exhausted are I Rivers and streams, especially in mountain districts II The tides III The heat of the sun Correct hanging indention: Sources of energy which may be utilized when the coal supply is exhausted are I Rivers and streams, especially in mountain districts II The tides III The heat of the sun =e. Ideas parallel in thought should be expressed in parallel form.= Nouns and phrases including nouns are ordinarily used. Faulty parallelism: Advantages of a garden: 1 Profitable 2 It affords good exercise 3 Gives pleasure Right: Advantages of a garden: 1 Profit 2 Exercise 3 Pleasure =f. Avoid faulty coördination (giving two ideas equal rank, when one should be subordinated to the other) and _vice versa_, avoid faulty subordination.= Faulty coördination: How Seeds Scatter I By Wind II Some Seeds provided with parachutes III Others light, and easily blown about IV By Water V By Animals Right: =How Seeds Scatter= I By Wind A Some seeds provided with parachutes B Others light, and easily blown about II By Water III By Animals =g. Avoid detailed subordination. Especially avoid a single subheading when it can be joined to the preceding line, or omitted.= Too detailed: A The McClellan Orchard 1 Situation a On a northern slope 2 Nature of soil a Sandy 3 Kind of fruit a Apple b Cherry Right: A The McClellan Orchard 1. Situation: a northern slope 2. Nature of soil: sandy 3. Kind of fruit: apple and cherry Exercise: 1. Give a title to an outline which shall include the following topics. Group the topics under two main headings, and give the headings names. Uses of the grape The Vine The Fruit Itself How Marketed How Cultivated 2. Place in order the sentences of the following outline on "Why Keep a Diary?" Subordinate some of the headings to others. A diary affords great satisfaction in future years. We sometimes record in a diary information which proves useful. A few lines a day will suffice. A diary is not hard to keep. We may find time for writing in our diary if we do not waste time at the table or on newspapers. We may write in our diary just before we go to bed. A diary will bring back the past. We all have some moments to kill. A diary gives us pleasure even in the present. 3. Place in order the headings of the following outline on "Ulysses S. Grant." Subordinate some of the headings to others. Obscurity in 1861 Prominence in 1865 Patience President General Perseverance and Resolution Character The Turning Point in His Career =Letters= The parts of a letter are the heading, the inside address, the greeting, the body, the close, and the signature. For these parts good use prescribes definite forms, which we may sometimes ignore in personal letters, but must rigidly observe in formal or business letters. =87a. The heading of a letter should give the full address of the writer and the date of writing. Do not abbreviate short words, or omit Street or Avenue.= Objectionable: #15 Hickory, Omaha. Right: 15 Hickory Street, Omaha, Nebraska. Objectionable: 4/12/19; 10-28-'16; May 2nd, 1910. Right: April 12, 1919; October 28, 1916; May 2, 1910. The following headings are correct: 106 East Race Street, Red Oak, Iowa, August 4, 1916. 423 Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois May 20, 1918 Prescott, Arizona, June 1, 1920. Note.--In personal letters the heading may be transferred to the end, below the signature, at the left-hand side. But it must not be so divided that the street address will appear in one place and the town and state in another. The "closed" form of punctuation (the use of punctuation at the ends of the lines) is best until the student learns what is correct. Afterward, the adoption of the "open" form becomes purely a matter of individual taste and not a matter of carelessness or ignorance. =b. An inside address and a greeting are required in business letters.= Personal letters contain the greeting, but may omit the inside address, or may supply it at the end of the letter. The Jeffrey Chemical Works, 510 Marion Street, Norfolk, Virginia. Gentlemen: Mr. Joseph N. Kellogg 1411 Lake Street Cleveland, Ohio Dear Mr. Kellogg: Secretary of Rice Institute, Houston, Texas. My dear Sir: Greetings used in business letters are: My dear Sir: My dear Madam: My dear Mr. Fisher: Dear Sir: Sir: Sirs: Gentlemen: Ladies: Greetings used in personal letters are: My dear Miss Brown: Dear Professor Ward: Dear Jones, Dear Mrs. Vincent, Dear Robert, Dear Olive, "My dear Miss Brown" is more ceremonious than "Dear Miss Brown". As a rule, the more familiar the letter, the shorter the greeting. A colon follows the greeting if the letter is formal or long; a comma, if the letter is familiar or in the nature of a note. Both inside address and greeting begin at the left-hand margin. The body of the letter begins on the line below the greeting, and is indented as much as an ordinary paragraph (about an inch). =c. The body of a letter should be written in correct style.= =1.= Do not omit pronouns, or write a "telegraphic style". Wrong: Just received yours of the 21st, and in reply would say your order has been filled and shipped. Right: I have your letter of March twenty-first. Your order was promptly filled and shipped. =2.= The idea that it is immodest to use _I_ is a superstition. Undue repetition of _I_ is of course awkward; but entire avoidance of it is silly. =3.= Use simple language. Say "your letter"; not "your kind favor", or "yours duly received", or "yours of the 21st is at hand". =4.= Avoid "begging" expressions which you obviously do not mean, especially the hackneyed "beg to advise". Wrong: Received yours of the 3rd instant, and beg to advise we are out of stock. Right: We received your order of March 3. We find that we have no more dining-room chairs B 2-4-6 in stock. Wrong: I beg to enclose a booklet. Right: I enclose a booklet. Wrong: Permit us to say that prices have been advanced. Right: The prices on our goods have been advanced. =5.= Avoid the formula "please find enclosed". The reader will find what is enclosed; if you use "please", let it refer to what the reader shall do with what is enclosed. Wrong: Enclosed please find 10 cents, for which send me Bulletin 58. Right: I enclose ten cents, for which please send me Bulletin 58. =6.= Avoid unnecessary commercial slang: _On the job_, _A-1 service_, _O.K._, _your ad_, _popular-priced line_, _this party_, _as per schedule_. =7.= Get to the important idea quickly. In applying for a position, do not beat around the bush, or say you "wish to apply" or "would apply". Begin, "I make application for ...", "kindly consider my application for ...", or "I apply ..." =8.= Group your ideas logically. Do not scatter information. A letter applying for a position might consist of three paragraphs: Personal qualifications (age, health, education, etc.); Experience (nature of positions, dates, etc.); References (names, business or profession, exact street address). Finish one group of ideas before passing to the next. =9.= Do not monotonously close all letters with a sentence beginning with a participle: _Hoping to hear from you ..._, _Asking your coöperation ..._, _Awaiting your further favors ..._, _Trusting this will be satisfactory ..._, _Wishing you ..._, _Thanking you ..._. The independent form of the verb is more emphatic (see 42); _I hope to hear from you ..._, _We await further orders ..._, _We ask coöperation ..._. =d. The close= should be consistent in tone with the greeting. It is written on a separate line, beginning near the middle of the page, and is followed by a comma. Only the first word is capitalized. Preceding expressions like "I am", "I remain", "As ever", (if they are used at all) belong in the body of the letter. Right: I thank you for your courtesy, and remain Yours sincerely, Robert Blair Right: I shall be grateful for any further information you can give me. Yours truly, Florence Mitchell In business letters the following forms are used: Yours truly, Very truly yours, Yours respectfully, In personal letters the following are used: Yours truly, Yours sincerely, Sincerely yours, Cordially yours, =e. The outside address should follow one of the forms given below:= +---------------------------------------------------+ | R. E. Stearns | | 512 Chapel Hill St. | | Durham, N. C. | | | | | | Mr. Donald Kemp | | 3314 Salem Street | | Baltimore | | Maryland | +---------------------------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------------------+ | Bentley Davis | | 906 Park Street | | Ogden, Utah | | | | | | Rogers, Mead, and Company | | 2401 Eighth Avenue | | Los Angeles | | California | +---------------------------------------------------+ Note.--An abbreviation in an address is followed by a period. Punctuation is also correct, but not necessary, after every line (a period after the last line, and a comma after the others). A married woman is ordinarily addressed thus: Mrs. George H. Turner. But a title belonging to the husband should not be transferred to the wife. Wrong: Mrs. Dr. Jenkins, Mrs. Professor Ward. Right: Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. Ward. Reverend Mr. Beecher is a correct address for a minister; not "Rev. Beecher". If a title of respect is placed before a name (Professor, Dr., Honorable), it is undesirable to place another title after the name (Secretary, M.D., Ph.D., Principal, Esq.). =f. Miscellaneous directions.= Writing should be centered on the page, not crowded against the top, or against one side. Letter paper so folded that each sheet is a little book of four pages is best for personal correspondence. Both sides of such paper may be written on. The pages may be written on in any order which will be convenient to the reader. An order like that of the pages in a printed book (1, 2, 3, 4) is best. Business letters are usually written on one side only of flat sheets 8-1/2 by 11 inches in size. The sheet is folded once horizontally in the middle, and twice in the other direction, for insertion in the envelope. =g. A business letter should have, in general, the following form:= 1516 South Garrison Avenue. Carthage, Missouri, May 14, 1918. J. E. Pratt, General Superintendent, The Southwest Missouri Railroad Company, 1012 North Madison Street, Webb City, Missouri. Dear Sir: I apply for a position as mechanic's assistant in the electrical department of your shops. I am nineteen years old, and in good physical condition. On June 6 I shall graduate from Carthage High School, and after that date I can begin work immediately. I have had no practical experience in electrical work. But I have for two years made a special study of physics, in and out of school. I worked last summer in the local garage of Mr. R. S. Bryant. In addition, I have become familiar with tools in my workshop at home, so that I both know and like machinery. For statements as to my character and ability, I refer you to R. S. Bryant, Manager Bryant's Garage; Mr. Frank Darrow (lawyer), 602 Ninth Street; W. C. Barnes, Superintendent of Schools; and C. W. Oldham, Principal of the High School--all of this city. Respectfully yours, Howard Rolfe =h. Formal notes and replies are written in the third person (avoiding _I_, _my_, _me_, _you_, _your_) and permit no abbreviations except _Mr._, _Mrs._, _Dr._ = Mrs. Clarence King requests the company of Mr. Charles Eliot at dinner on Friday, April the twenty-fourth, at six o'clock. 102 Pearl Street, April the seventeenth. In accepting an invitation, the writer should repeat the day and hour mentioned, in order to avoid a misunderstanding; in declining an invitation, only the day need be mentioned. The verb used in the reply should be in the present tense; not "will be pleased to accept", or "regrets that he will be unable to accept"; but "is pleased to accept", or "regrets that circumstances prevent his accepting". Mr. Charles Eliot gladly accepts the invitation of Mrs. King to dinner on Friday, April the twenty-fourth, at six o'clock. 514 Poplar Avenue, April the eighteenth. =Paragraphs= =88a. The first lines of paragraphs are uniformly indented, in manuscript, about an inch; in print, somewhat less. After a sentence, the remainder of a line should not be left blank, except at the end of a paragraph.= =b. The length of a paragraph is ordinarily from fifty to three hundred words, depending on the importance or complexity of the thought.= In exposition, the paragraphs should be long enough to develop every idea thoroughly. Scrappy expository paragraphs arouse the suspicion that the writer is incoherent, or that he has not given sufficient thought to the subject. Short paragraphs are permissible, and even desirable, in the following cases: 1. In a formal introduction to the main body of a discourse, or in the formal conclusion. (In some instances the paragraph may consist of a single sentence.) 2. In the body of a composition, when a brief logical transition between two longer paragraphs is necessary. 3. In short compositions on complex subjects, where space forbids the development of each thought on a proper scale. (But, as a rule, the student should limit his subject to a few simple ideas, each of which can be developed fully.) 4. In newspapers, where brevity and emphasis are required. (But the student should not take the journalistic style as a model.) 5. In description or narration meant to be vivid, vigorous, or rapid. 6. In dialogue. =c. In representing dialogue, each speech, no matter how short, is placed in a separate paragraph.= Right: "Listen!" he said. "There was a noise outside. Didn't you hear it?" "No," I whispered. It was dark in the room, except for a faint light at the window, and I felt my way cautiously to his side. "What is it? Burglars?" "I believe it is." "I can't hear anything." "Listen! There it is again." "Pshaw!" I had to laugh aloud. "Thompson's cow has got into the garden again." Note that a slight amount of descriptive matter may be included in a paragraph with the direct discourse, the only requirement being that a change of speaker shall be indicated by a new paragraph. When special emphasis is desired, a quotation may be detached from a preceding introductory statement. Right: The speaker turned gravely about, and facing the front row, he said slowly and solemnly: "Small boys should be seen and not heard." In exceptional cases a long, rapid-fire dialogue may, for purposes of compression, be placed in one paragraph. Dashes should then be used before successive quotations to indicate a change of speaker. Omissions from a dialogue (as when only one side of a telephone conversation is reported), long pauses, and the unfinished part of interrupted statements, may be represented by a short row of dots. Exercise: Arrange in paragraphs, and insert quotation marks: 1. Help! I cried, rolling over in the narrow crevasse, and wondering dazedly how far I had fallen through the snow. A muffled voice came from above: We'll have a rope down to you in a minute. Tie that bottle of brandy on the end of it, I suggested, and it'll come faster. [The student will here insert a sentence of his own to complete the dialogue.] 2. Good morning, James, said the deacon, suspiciously. How are you? and where are you going? I'm all right, answered the boy, and I'm goin' down to the creek. As he spoke, he tried to hide something bulky underneath his coat. You oughtn't to go fishing on Sunday. [Add another sentence to finish the dialogue.] =89.= MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISE The following sentences illustrate errors in the use of capitals, italics, numbers, abbreviations, etc. Make necessary changes. 1. I met him at kansas city at a dinner of the commercial club. 2. The senate and the house of representatives are the two branches of congress. 3. In today's chicago herald the union pacific railroad advertises reduced rates to yellowstone park and the northwest. 4. There are 30 men in each section in chemistry, but only 25 in each section in french. 5. Early in pres. wilson's administration troops crossed the rio grande river. Pres. Carranza protested. 6. In nineteen ten the population of new york city (including suburbs) was 4,766,883. 7. Send the moving van to thirty walnut street at eight o'clock. 8. I like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice better than George Eliot's Adam Bede. 9. May I call for you about 7:30 p. m., Miss Reynolds? 10. The note draws 6 per cent interest, and is payable Jan. 1st, 1921. 11. He will remain in town until Apr. 20th, and will then go away for the Summer. He is going abroad to study the spanish and italian languages. 12. Grays elegy in a country churchyard is perhaps the best known poem in english literature. 13. Enclosed please find $4, for which send me the New Republic for one year. 14. In reply to yours of 3-7-18 wish to advise that we are out of stock. 15. I enclose $0.10 for a copy of bulletin #314 of the dept. of Agriculture. Thanking you, I remain ... yours Respectively.... PUNCTUATION Punctuation is not used for its own sake. It is used in writing as gestures, pauses, and changes of voice are used in speaking--to add force or to reveal the precise relationship of thoughts. The tendency at present is against the lavish use of punctuation. This does not mean, however, that one may do as he pleases. In minor details of punctuation there is room for individual preference, but in essential principles all trustworthy writers agree. =The Period= =90a. Place a period after a complete declarative or imperative sentence.= =b. Do not separate part of a sentence from the rest of the sentence by means of a period. (See 1.)= Wrong: He denied the accusation. As every one expected him to do. Right: He denied the accusation, as every one expected him to do. Wrong: Anderson wrote good editorials. The best that appeared in any paper in the city. Right: Anderson wrote good editorials, the best that appeared in any paper in the city. [Or] Anderson wrote good editorials--the best that appeared in any paper in the city. Exception.--Condensed or elliptical phrases established by long and frequent use may be written as separate sentences. They should be followed by appropriate punctuation--usually by a period. Examples: Yes. Of course. Really? By all means! Note.--The student should distinguish clearly between a subordinate clause and a main clause. A subordinate clause is introduced by a subordinate conjunction (_when_, _while_, _if_, _as_, _since_, _although_, _that_, _lest_, _because_, _in order that_, etc.), or by a relative pronoun (_who_, _which_, _that_, etc.). Since a subordinate clause does not express a complete thought, it cannot stand alone, but must be joined to a main clause to form a sentence. =c. Place a period after an abbreviation.= Bros. Mr. e. g. Ph.D. LL.D. etc. If an abbreviation falls at the end of a sentence, one period may serve two functions. Exercise: 1. The hen clucks to her chickens. When she scratches up a worm. 2. Before my brother could forewarn me. I had touched my tongue against the cold iron. On which it stuck. 3. The commission had the services of two men of international reputation. Charles Newman, Esq. and Gifford Bailey, Ph D. 4. Since Hugh had fished only in creeks. He was surprised that the lines were let down a hundred feet or more. The right distance for codfish. 5. Between 1775 and 1825 Virginia furnished the nation its leaders. Such as the author of the Declaration of Independence. The orator of the Revolution. The leader of the Revolutionary army. The chief maker of the Constitution. Four of our first five Presidents. And our greatest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. =The Comma= There are five principal uses of the comma: to separate clauses (a-d) to set off a parenthetical element (e) to mark a series (f-g) to introduce a quotation (h) to compel a pause for the sake of clearness (i) =91a. A comma is used between clauses joined by _but_, _for_, _and_, or any other coördinating conjunction.= Right: The hour arrived, but Forbes did not appear. [The comma emphasizes the contrast.] Right: She was glad she had looked, for a man was approaching the house. [The comma prevents the combination _looked for a man_.] Right: He gave the money to Burke, and Reynolds received nothing. [The comma prevents confusion.] Exception.--If the clauses are short and closely linked in thought, the comma may be omitted (She came and she was gone in a moment. McCoy talked and the rest of us listened.) If the clauses are long and complicated, a semicolon may be used (See 92b). Note.--No comma should follow the conjunction. Wrong: He was enthusiastic but, inexperienced. Wrong: They went before the committee but, not one of them would answer a question. =b. Do _not_ use a comma between independent clauses which are _not_ joined by a conjunction. Use a period or a semicolon.= (This error, the "comma splice," betrays ignorance of what constitutes a unified sentence. See 18.) Wrong: The circus had just come to town, every one wanted to see it. Right: The circus had just come to town. Every one wanted to see it. Wrong: The story deals with the life of a youth, Don Juan, his mother desired to make an angel of him. Right: The story deals with the life of a youth, Don Juan. His mother desired to make an angel of him. Wrong: My courses required very hard study, did yours? Right: My courses required very hard study. Did yours? [Or] My courses required very hard study; did yours? Wrong: He will assist you without the slightest hesitation, indeed he will do so with alacrity. Right: He will assist you without the slightest hesitation. Indeed he will do so with alacrity. [Or] He will assist you without the slightest hesitation; indeed he will do so with alacrity. Exception.--Short coördinate clauses which are not joined by conjunctions, but which are parallel in structure and leave a unified impression, may be joined by commas. Right: He sowed, he reaped, he repented. =c. An adverbial clause which precedes a main clause is usually set off by a comma.= When long: Right: While I have much confidence in his sincerity, I cannot approve his decision. [The comma marks the meeting point of clauses too long to be easily read together. Brief clauses do not require the comma. Right: Where thou goest I will go.] When ending in words that link themselves with words in the main clause: Right: If Jacob finds time to plow, the garden can be planted tomorrow. [The comma prevents _plow the garden_ from being read as verb and object.] When not closely connected with the main clause in meaning: Right: Although they were few, they were resolute. [Here the comma reveals the distinctness of the two stages of thought. In the sentence _If it freezes the skating will be good_ the distinctness of the two thoughts is less emphatic, and the comma may be omitted.] Note.--The comma is usually omitted when the adverbial clause follows the main clause. Right: The score stood twelve to twelve when the first half ended. [The adverbial clause is linked closely with the element it modifies, the predicate; punctuation is unnecessary. If the _when_ clause were placed before the element it does not modify, the subject, a comma should be inserted.] =d. Restrictive clauses should not be set off by commas; non-restrictive clauses should be set off by commas.= (A restrictive clause is one inseparably connected with the noun or pronoun it modifies; to omit it would change the thought of the main clause. A non-restrictive clause is less vitally connected with the noun or pronoun; to omit it would not affect the thought of the main clause.) Right: Men who are industrious will succeed. [The relative clause restricts the meaning; it is inseparably connected with the noun it modifies, and to omit it would change the thought of the main clause.] Right: Thomas Carlyle, who wrote forty volumes, was of peasant origin. [The relative clause is non-restrictive; it is not inseparably connected with the noun it modifies, and to omit it would not change the thought of the main clause. Thus: Thomas Carlyle was of peasant origin.] Right: Where is the house that Jack built? [Restrictive.] Right: I went to Jack's house, which is across the street. [Non-restrictive.] Wrong: Students, who are lazy, do not deserve to pass. [The sentence as it stands says that all students are lazy, and that none of them deserve to pass. Without the commas, the sentence would mean that such students as are lazy do not deserve to pass.] Right: Students who are lazy do not deserve to pass. =The rule stated above for clauses applies also to phrases.= Right. She, hearing the voice, turned quickly. [_Hearing the voice_ is non-restrictive. It does not identify _she_, and the thought of the main clause is complete without it.] Right: Books pertaining to aeronautics are in demand. [_Pertaining to aeronautics_ is restrictive. It explains what books are referred to, and without it the meaning of the main thought is changed.] Right: Our country, made up as it is of democratic people, lacks the centralized power of a monarchy. [Non-restrictive.] Right: A country made up of democratic people must be lacking in centralized power. [Restrictive. _Made up of democratic people_ explains _country_ and is essential to the thought of the sentence.] =e. Slightly parenthetical elements are set off by commas:= Direct address or explanation: Write soon, Henry, and tell all the news. They intend, as you know, to build a great dam across the river. His father, they say, was frugal and industrious. I, on my part, however, am unalterably opposed to the expenditure. He was, according to such reports as have reached me, altogether in the right. Mild interjections: Well, we shall see. Come now, let's talk it over. But alas, the cupboard was bare. The custom is, oh, very old. Absolute phrases: This being admitted, I shall proceed to my other evidence. Geographical names which explain other names and dates which explain other dates: The convention met at Madison, Wisconsin, on March 24, 1916. Words in apposition: We arrived at Austin, the capital of Texas. It was Archie, my best friend in boyhood. Exception.--The comma is omitted (1) When the appositive is part of a proper name. Right: William the Silent, Alexander the Great. (2) When there is unusually close connection between the appositive and the noun it modifies. Right: My one confidant was my brother Robert. (3) When the appositive is a word or phrase to which attention is called by italics or some other device which sets it apart. Right: The word _sequent_ is derived from Latin. Right: The expression "That's fine" is one which I use indiscriminately. Note.--When the parenthetical element occurs in the middle of a sentence, "set off by commas" means _punctuate before and after_. Wrong: I was, madam at home yesterday. Right: I was, madam, at home yesterday. Wrong: I am to say the least, provoked. Right: I am, to say the least, provoked. =f. Consecutive adjectives that modify the same noun are separated from each other by commas. If, however, the last adjective is closely linked in meaning with the noun, no comma is used before it.= Right: A short, slight, pitiable figure. Right: A shrewd professional man. [_Shrewd_ modifies, not _man_ alone, but _professional man_.] Right: A bedraggled old rooster. [_Old rooster_ has almost the force of a compound word. _Bedraggled_ modifies the general idea _old rooster_.] Note.--The commas in a series of adjectives are used to separate the adjectives from each other. No comma should intervene between the final adjective and the noun. Wrong: He was only a frail, unarmed, frightened, youngster. Right: He was only a frail, unarmed, frightened youngster. =g. Words or phrases in series are separated by commas.= When the series takes the form _a, b, and c_, a comma precedes the _and_. Confusing: The railroads in question are the New York Central, Pennsylvania and Chesapeake and Ohio. [The reader might surmise that the words _Pennsylvania and Chesapeake and Ohio_ represent a single line or even three different lines.] Right: The railroads in question are the New York Central, Pennsylvania, and Chesapeake and Ohio. Confusing: For breakfast we had oatmeal, bacon, eggs and honey. [Omission of the comma after _eggs_ suggests a mixture.] Right: For breakfast we had oatmeal, bacon, eggs, and honey. =h. A comma should follow an expression like _he said_ which introduces a short quotation.= (For longer or more formal quotations use a colon.) Right: He shouted, "Come on! I dare you!" Right: Our captain replied, "We're ready." But for indirect quotations, a caution is necessary. Do not place a comma between a verb and a _that_ or _how_ clause which the verb introduces. Wrong: He explained, how the accident occurred. Right: He explained how the accident occurred. Wrong: The chauffeur told us, that the gasoline tank was empty. Right: The chauffeur told us that the gasoline tank was empty. =i. A comma is used to separate parts of a sentence which might erroneously be read together.= Confusing: Long before she had received a letter. Better: Long before, she had received a letter. Confusing: We turned the corner and the horse stopped throwing us off. Better: We turned the corner and the horse stopped, throwing us off. Confusing: Through the alumni gathered there went a thrill of dismay. Better: Through the alumni gathered there, went a thrill of dismay. Wrong: For a dime you can buy two pieces of pie or cake and ice cream. Right: For a dime you can buy two pieces of pie, or cake and ice cream. Right: The man whom everybody had for years regarded as a crank and a weakling, is now praised for his sagacity and his strength. Right: In a situation so critical as to require the utmost coolness of mind, he lost his wits completely. [Here the confusion might not be serious if the comma were omitted, but separation of the long introduction from the main clause is desirable.] =j. Do not use superfluous commas:= =1.= To mark a trivial pause: Needless use of comma: In the road, stood a wagon. Needless use of commas: The taking of notes, is a guarantee, against inattention, in class. Slight pauses in a sentence are taken care of by the good sense of the reader. Do not sprinkle commas when the sentence is moving along freely with no complication in the thought. Right: In the road stood a wagon. Right: The taking of notes is a guarantee against inattention in class. =2.= To separate an adjective from its noun: Wrong: A tall, solemn, antique, clock stood in the hallway. [The first two commas separate the adjectives from each other. There is no reason why _antique_ should be separated from the noun.] Right: A tall, solemn, antique clock stood in the hallway. =3.= Before the first word or phrase in a series unless the comma would be employed if the word or phrase stood alone: Wrong: He made a study of, gymnastics, medicine, and surgery. Right: He made a study of gymnastics, medicine, and surgery. Wrong: He had learned, to be prompt, to think clearly, and to write correctly. Right: He had learned to be prompt, to think clearly, and to write correctly. Exercise: 1. Before the workmen finished eating the tunnel caved in. Three Italian laborers were crushed, the others with the foreman escaped. 2. Sneed the new chairman proposed that the convention should meet at Cheyenne Wyoming. The suggestion however was according to reports not adopted. 3. He had a pen and an ink bottle was in the cupboard. By washing poor widows can earn but scant living. 4. Saunders asked, how I liked the Overland car as compared with the Chalmers, the Hudson and the Buick. I started to reply but at that moment we were interrupted. 5. People, who steal watermelons, say the stolen melons are sweetest. Farragut who was born in Tennessee was the North's ablest naval commander. The developer is a chemical, which reduces the silver salt. =The Semicolon= The semicolon represents a division in thought somewhat greater than that represented by a comma, and somewhat smaller than that represented by a period. It may represent grammatical separation and logical connection at the same time; that is, it may indicate that two statements are separate units in grammar, and are yet to be taken together to form a larger unit of logic or thought. =92a. The semicolon is used between coördinate clauses which are not joined by a conjunction.= (For a possible exception see 91b.). Wrong: He was alarmed in fact he was terrified. Right: He was alarmed; in fact he was terrified. Right: He drew up at the curb; he leaped from the car. Note.--Very often the writer may choose freely between the semicolon and the period; in such instances the use of the semicolon implies greater logical unity between the clauses than the use of the period would show. Unless this logical unity is distinct, the period is to be preferred. =b. The semicolon is sometimes used between coördinate clauses which are joined by a conjunction if the clauses are long, or if the clauses have commas within themselves, or if obscurity would result were the semicolon not used.= (Otherwise, see 91a.) Right: Very slowly the glow in the heavens deepened and extended itself along the eastern horizon; but at last the bright-red rim of the sun showed above the crest of the hill. Right: He arrived, so they tell me, after nightfall; and immediately going to a hotel, called for a room. Confusing: She enjoyed the dinners, and the dancing, and the music, and the whole gay round of fashionable life was a delight to her. Better. She enjoyed the dinners, and the dancing, and the music; and the whole gay round of fashionable life was a delight to her. =c. The semicolon is used between coördinate clauses which are joined by a formal conjunctive adverb (_hence_, _thus_, _then_, _therefore_, _accordingly_, _consequently_, _besides_, _still_, _nevertheless_, or the like).= Wrong: We have failed in this therefore let us try something else. Right: We have failed in this; therefore let us try something else. Wrong: He was tattered and muddy, besides he ate like a cormorant. Right: He was tattered and muddy; besides he ate like a cormorant. Note 1.--If a simple conjunction like _and_ is used in the sentences above, a comma will suffice. But a comma is not sufficient before a conjunctive adverb like _therefore_. Conjunctive adverbs may be clearly distinguished from simple conjunctions (See 91a). They cannot always be easily distinguished from subordinating conjunctions (see 90b, Note), but the distinction, when it can be made with certainty, is an aid to clear thinking. Note 2.--Good usage sometimes permits a comma to be used before a conjunctive adverb in short sentences where the break in the thought is not formal or emphatic. For instance, when the conjunctive adverb _so_ is used as a formal or emphatic connective, a semicolon is desirable (I won't go; so that's settled). But in the sentence, "I was excited, so I missed the target", a comma is sufficient. For the use of _so_ is here informal, and probably expresses degree as well as result. (Compare "I was so excited that I missed the target"). =d. The semicolon is not used before quotations, or after the "Dear Sir" in letters. Use a comma or a colon.= (See 91h, 93a, and 87b.) Wrong: Mother said; "Let me get my needle." Right: Mother said, "Let me get my needle." Exercise: 1. The eggs tasted musty, they were cold storage eggs. 2. You should have seen that old, formally kept house, you should have sat in that stuffy and immaculate parlor. 3. I objected to the plan however since he insisted upon it I yielded. 4. I suppose I must go if I don't he will be anxious. 5. Although the note is due on March 19, you have three days of grace, consequently you may pay it on March 22. =The Colon= =93a. The colon is used to introduce formally a word, a list, a statement or question, a series of statements or questions, or a long quotation.= Right: Only one man stood between Burr and the presidency: Jefferson. Right: My favorite novels are the following: _Ivanhoe_, _Henry Esmond_, and _The Mill on the Floss_. Right: The difficulty is this: Where is the money to come from? Right: The measure must be considered from several standpoints: Is it timely? Is it expedient? Is it just? Is it superior to the other measures proposed? Right: I shall do three things next year: study hard, take care of my health, and enter into various student activities. Right: Webster concluded with the following peroration: "When my eyes shall be turned for the last time to behold the sun in heaven," etc., etc. =b. The colon may be used before concrete illustrations of a general statement.= Right: The colors were various: blue, purple, emerald, and orange. Right: The day was propitious: the sun shone, the birds sang, the flowers sent forth their fragrance. Exercise: 1. The city must have these improvements paved streets more schools better sanitation and a park. 2. A guild comprised men of a single class tailors, fishmongers, or goldsmiths. 3. Everything was favorable, it was a wheat-raising district, there were no rival mills, the means of transportation were excellent. 4. The personal adornments of the eighteenth century "blood" were elaborate, wigs, cocked hat, colored breeches, red-heeled shoes, cane, and muff. 5. The chief of the engineers reported "The route, taken as a whole, is practicable enough, but near Clifton, where the yards must be placed, it leads through a rocky defile." =The Dash= =94a. The dash may be used instead of the marks of parenthesis, especially where informality is desired.= Right: She fell asleep--would you believe it?--in the middle of the lecture. Right: That fellow actually--of course this is between you and me--stole money from his father. =b. Insert a dash when a sentence is broken off abruptly.= Right: The next morning--let's see, what happened the next morning? =c. The dash may be used near the end of a sentence, before a summarizing statement or an afterthought.= Right: When you have carried in the wood and the water, and milked the cows, and fed all the stock and the poultry, and mended the harness--when you have done these things, you may consider the rest of the evening your own. Right: Barnes played a mischievous trick one day--in fact, Barnes was always into mischief. =d. The use of the dash to end sentences is childish.= Childish: At dawn I went on deck--far off to the left was a cloud, I thought, on the edge of the water--it grew more distinct as we angled toward it--it was land--before noon we had sailed into harbor. Right: At dawn I went on deck. Far off to the left was a cloud, I thought, on the edge of the water. It grew more distinct as we angled toward it. It was land. Before noon we had sailed into harbor. =e. A dash should be made about three times as long as a hyphen; otherwise it may be mistaken as the sign of a compound word.= Exercise: 1. The boy left the package on the where did that boy leave the package? 2. She was haughty independent as a queen in fact and she told him no. 3. The clatter of the other typewriters, the relentless movement of the hands of the clock, the calls from the press room for more copy, these made Sears write like mad. 4. He made her acquaintance what do you think of this by scribbling his name and address on some eggs he sold to a grocer. 5. He obtained a position in a big department store--his good taste was quickly recognized--within a month he was dressing the windows. =Parenthesis Marks and Brackets= =95a.= Parenthesis marks may be used to enclose matter foreign to the main thought of the sentence. (But see also 94a and 91e.) Right: His testimony is conclusive (unless, to be sure, we find that he has perjured himself). =b. A comma or a semicolon used at the end of a parenthesis should as a rule follow the mark of parenthesis rather than precede it.= Right: If there is snow on the ground (and I am sure there will be), we shall have plenty of sleighing. =c. When confirmatory symbols or figures are enclosed within parenthesis marks, they should follow rather than precede the words they confirm.= Wrong: They earn (3) dollars a day. Right: They earn three (3) dollars a day. [Or] They earn three dollars ($3) a day. =d. Do not use parenthesis marks to cancel a word or passage.= Draw a horizontal line through whatever is to be omitted. =e. Brackets are used to insert explanatory matter in a quotation which one gives from another writer.= Explanatory matter inserted by the original writer is enclosed within parenthesis marks. Right: "Bunyan's masterpiece (_The Pilgrim's Progress_)," declared the lecturer, "is out of harmony with the spirit of the age that produced it [the age of the Restoration]." (Here the explanatory words _the age of the Restoration_ are inserted by the person who is quoting the lecturer.) Exercise: 1. The supremacy of the horse-drawn vehicle is unless a miracle happens now gone forever. 2. My count shows (41) forty-one bales of cotton in the mill yard. 3. [Insert _the Marne_ as your explanation]: "It was this battle," said the lecturer, "that made the name of Joffre immortal." 4. [Insert _Florida_ as the explanation of the person you are quoting]: "In that state oranges are plentiful." 5. It was the opinion of Bailey and events proved him right that the government must assume control of the railroads. =Quotation Marks= =96a. Quotation marks should be used to enclose a direct, but not an indirect, quotation.= Right: "I am thirsty," he said. Wrong: He said "that he was thirsty." Right: He said that he was thirsty. =b. A quotation of several paragraphs should have quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph and at the end of the last paragraph.= =c. In narrative each separate speech, however short, should be enclosed within quotation marks=; but a single speech of several sentences should have only one set of quotation marks. Wrong: "Will you come? she pleaded. Certainly." Right: "Will you come," she pleaded. "Certainly." Wrong: He replied, "It was not for my own sake that I did this." "There were others whom I had to consider." "I can mention no names." Right: He replied, "It was not for my own sake that I did this. There were others whom I had to consider. I can mention no names." =d. Quotation marks may be used with technical terms, with slang introduced into formal writing, or with nicknames=; but not with merely elevated diction, with good English that resembles slang, with nicknames that have practically become proper names, or with fictitious names from literature. Permissible: The rime is called a "feminine rime". He is really "a corker". Their name for my friend was "Sissy". Better without the quotation marks: He was awed by "the grandeur of the mountains". "A humbug". "Fetch". "Stonewall" Jackson. He was a true "Rip Van Winkle". =e. Either quotation marks or italics may be used with words to which special attention is called.= (See the examples under 91e, Exception, 3.) Quotation marks are used with the titles of articles, of chapters in books, of individual short poems, and the like. Italics are used with the titles of books or of periodicals, with the names of ships, and with foreign words which are still felt to be emphatically foreign. =f. A quotation within a quotation should be enclosed in single quotation marks; a quotation within that, in double marks.= Right: "It required courage," the speaker said, "for a man to affirm in those days: 'I endorse every word of Patrick Henry's sentiment, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"'" =g. When a word is followed by both a quotation mark and a question mark or an exclamation point, the question mark or the exclamation point should come first if it applies to the quotation; last, if it applies to the main sentence.= Wrong: He shouted but one command, "Give them the bayonet"! Right: He shouted but one command, "Give them the bayonet!" Wrong: Did Savonarola say, "I recant?" Right: Did Savonarola say, "I recant"? Note.--Regarding the position of a comma, semicolon, or period at the end of a quotation, usage differs. Printers ordinarily place commas and periods inside the quotation marks, and semicolons outside, from considerations of spacing. But logic, not spacing, should determine the order, and all three marks should be treated alike. They should be placed within the quotation marks if they were a part of the original quotation; otherwise outside. In quoting manuscript, the quotation marks should enclose exactly what is in the original. In quoting oral discourse, a certain liberty is necessarily allowed. Correct: He said calmly, "It is I." Also correct, but not commonly used: He said calmly, "It is I". Correct, and in common use, but slightly illogical: He began, "Our Father which art in heaven." [The period should follow the quotation mark, since there is no period in the original quotation.] Correct, and in common use, but slightly illogical: Can you tell me the difference between "apt," "likely," and "liable"; between "noted" and "notorious"? Also correct: Can you tell me the difference between "apt", "likely", and "liable"; between "noted" and "notorious"? =h. When a quotation is interrupted by such an expression as _he said,_= =1. An extra set of quotation marks is employed, and the interpolated words are normally set off by commas.= Wrong: "I rise said he to second the motion." Right: "I rise," said he, "to second the motion." =2. A question mark or exclamation point should precede the interpolated expression if it would be used were the expression omitted.= Right: "'May I go?'" complained father, "is all that boy can ask." Right: "Merciful heavens!" he cried, "we are lost." =3. The expression should be followed by a semicolon if the semicolon would follow the preceding words in case the expression were omitted.= Right: "I admit it", he said; "it is true." =4. Neither the expression nor the words following it should begin with a capital.= Wrong: "We must be quiet", Said the old man, "If we expect to catch sight of a squirrel." Right: "We must be quiet", said the old man, "if we expect to catch sight of a squirrel." =i. An omission from a quotation is indicated by dots.= Right: "When a word is followed by both a quotation mark and ... an exclamation point, ... the exclamation point should come ... last, if it applies to the main sentence." [Abridged citation of g above.] =j. Do not use superfluous quotation marks:= 1. Around the title at the head of a theme (unless it is a quoted title); 2. As a label for humor or irony. Superfluous: The "abstemious" Mr. Crew ate an enormous dinner. Better: The abstemious Mr. Crew ate an enormous dinner. Exercise: 1. Carew says, "that the profit comes from selling knickknacks." 2. What's the matter with that horse? asked Williams. He's as frisky as if he had been shut up a week. 3. "Who's your favorite character in the play?, persisted Laura. Is it "Brutus"? No, answered Howard; I admire his wife "Portia". 4. "It's amazing, said Mrs. Phelps, how children love playthings. Helen Locke said yesterday, Hughie always tells me when I am putting him to bed, I want my Teddy bear". 5. "You see, said Daugherty, the two offices across the corridor from each ether." "One is the county clerk's." "The other is the county collector's." =The Apostrophe= =97a. In contracted words place the apostrophe where letters are omitted, and do not place it elsewhere.= Wrong: does'nt, theyr'e, oclock. Right: doesn't, they're, o'clock. =b. To form the possessive of a noun, singular or plural, that does not end in _s_, add '_s_.= Right: A hunter's gun, children's games, the cannon's mouth. =c. To form the possessive of a noun, singular or plural, that ends in _s_, place an apostrophe after (not before) the _s_ if there is no new syllable in pronunciation. If there is a new syllable in pronunciation, add _'s_.= Wrong: Moses's mandates, Keat's poems, Dicken's novels, those hunter's guns. Right: Moses' mandates, Keats's poems (or Keats' poems), Dickens' (or Dickens's) novels, those hunters' guns. =d. Do not use an apostrophe with the possessive adjectives _its_, _his_, _hers_, _ours_, _yours_, and _theirs_. But _one's_, _other's_, _either's_ take the apostrophe.= =e. Add _'s_ to form the plural of letters of the alphabet, of words spoken of as words, and sometimes numbers.= But do not form the regular plural of a word by adding _'s_ (See 77). Right: His _B's_, _8's_ (or _8s_), and _it's_ look much alike. Wrong: The Jones's, the Smith's, and the Brown's. Right: The Joneses, the Smiths, and the Browns. Exercise: 1. We don't know theyr'e dishonest. 2. The soldier's heads showed above the trenches. 3. Five 8es, three 7es, and two 12es make 85. 4. Pierce told the Keslers that Jones hogs were fatter than their's. 5. Its three oclock by his watch; five minutes past three by her's. =The Question Mark and the Exclamation Point= =98a. Place a question mark after a direct question, but not after an indirect question.= Wrong: What of it. What does it matter. Right: What of it? What does it matter? Wrong: He asked whether I belonged to the glee club? Right: He asked whether I belonged to the glee club. Note.--When the main sentence which introduces an indirect question is itself interrogatory, a question mark follows. Right: Did she inquire whether you had met her aunt? =b. A question mark is often used within a sentence, but should not be followed by a comma, semicolon, or period.= Wrong: "What shall I do?," he asked. Right: "What shall I do?" he asked. Wrong: But where are the stocks?, the bonds?, the evidences of prosperity? Right: But where are the stocks? the bonds? the evidences of prosperity? =c. A question mark within parentheses may be used to express uncertainty as to the correctness of an assertion.= Right: Shakespeare was born April 23 (?), 1564. Right: In 1340 (?) was born Geoffrey Chaucer. =d. The use of a question mark as a label for humor or irony is childish.= Superfluous: Immediately the social lion (?) rose to his feet. Better: Immediately the social lion rose to his feet. =e. The exclamation point is used after words, expressions, or sentences to show strong emotion.= Right: Hark! I hear horses. Give us a light there, ho! Note.--The lavish use of the exclamation point is not in good taste. Unless the emotion to be conveyed is strong, a comma will suffice. See 91e. Exercise: 1. What is my temperature, doctor. 2. "Shall we go by the old mill?", asked Newcomb? 3. Did Wu Ting Fang say, "The Chinese Republic will survive." 4. He inquired whether Lorado Taft is the greatest living American sculptor. 5. Farewell. Othello's occupation's gone. =99.= EXERCISE IN PUNCTUATION =A.= Punctuate the following sentences: 1. Why its ten oclock 2. It was a rainy foggy morning 3. Arthurs cousin said Lets go 4. I begged her to stay but she refused 5. His parents you know were wealthy 6. Near by the children were playing house 7. Ever since John has driven carefully 8. I smell something burning Etta 9. Well Harry are you ready for a tramp 10. I well remember a trip which I once took 11. When the day has ended the twilight comes 12. She was a poor lonely defenseless old woman 13. Trout bass and pickerel are often caught there 14. Lees army was defeated at Gettysburg Pennsylvania on July 3 1863 15. Students who are poor appreciate the value of an education 16. Clem Rogers who is poor as Jobs turkey has bought a phonograph 17. He had no resentment against the man who had injured him 18. He spoke to his father who sat on the veranda 19. The rifle which he used on this trip was the best he had 20. His long beard sticking out at an angle from his chin and his tall silk hat looked ridiculous =B.= Punctuate the following sentences: 1. I found the work difficult did you find it so 2. If they had agreed to buy things would have been different but they didn't 3. I could satisfy myself if need be with dreams and imaginary delights she must have realities 4. Well Im not disappointed its just what I expected 5. Hard roads are not only an advantage they are almost indispensable 6. The man who hesitates is lost the woman who hesitates is won 7. The nihilists accept no principle or creed they reject government and religion and all institutions which cramp the individuals desires 8. No longer are women considered weaklings although not so strong as man physically they are now assumed to have will and courage of their own 9. The Pilgrims wished to thank God so they prepared a feast 10. Our country roads are full of chuck holes consequently one must drive with caution 11. The first player advances ten paces the second eight the third six and so on 12. I told her it was her own fault she was too reticent and held herself aloof 13. He had complained of weariness therefore we left him in camp 14. The Panama Canal consists of four sections the Atlantic Level the Lake the Cut and the Pacific Level 15. There are three reasons why I do not like Ford cars first they rattle second they bump and third they never wear out 16. Protoplasm has been found to contain four elements carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen but by no artificial combination can these be made into the living substance 17. Phlox mignonette sweet peas cannas all these yield flowers until late in the fall. 18. He asked for hot water the mollycoddle as if this were a hotel 19. Is this seat occupied sir asked Brown who stood in the aisle 20. There are two types of democracy 1 a pure democracy and 2 a representative democracy =C.= Punctuate the following sentences: 1. And Harvey waiting all this time mind you sprang for the door 2. I want to go to Memphis Tennessee to the old house if it is still standing where I was born 3. My bill amounted to exactly counting the car fare nine dollars and ninety five cents 4. I do not believe it he cried then turning to the others in the group he asked nervously do you 5. Which is better to borrow money for ones school expenses or to work ones way 6. He swore swore like a pirate and lashed the horses 7. Dickens novel Martin Chuzzlewit is satirical 8. But what of the Dakotas of Minnesota of Wisconsin are they to give us no political support 9. The grain is then run into a bin called the weighing bin from this it is let down on to the scales 10. Lincoln showed very plainly what the phrase All men are created equal means and what its application was to the anti-slavery movement. 11. His name was lets see what was the fellows name. 12. He looks sharply for little points passed over by the average person are important to him 13. How uncomfortable I feel in a room whose windows are not covered by curtains I cannot describe 14. Some time ago he moved away I was sorry because he was a fine young man 15. I went to the lawyers office to hear the reading of my uncles will 16. Well well I havent seen you for years But youre the same stub nosed freckle faced good natured Tom 17. I did not stop long to consider the football togs were nearest at hand so in they went cleated shoes trousers sweater pads headgear and the rest 18. Today I shall outline explain and argue the subject which has already been announced to you namely The Distribution of Taxes in Illinois 19. His piping voice his long crooked nose his white hair falling over the shoulders of his faded blue coat his shuffling shambling gait as he hobbled up to Carletons Grocery with his basket all this I shall remember as long as I live 20. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these rights are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness 100. GENERAL EXERCISE Improve the following sentences, making as many changes as are necessary to express the thought clearly and accurately. =A.= 1. It don't sound right. 2. Us fellows hadn't ought to complain. 3. The decision effects my brother and I alike. 4. Following his breakfast he went up to the office. 5. One finds that beginning on a pipe organ is much more complicated than the piano. 6. She married before she was eighteen, she had never taken much interest in school work 7. New Year's Eve, a young lady who I was calling upon, and myself decided to fool the old folks. 8. Williams drove across town at full speed, this was against the ordinances. 9. Mr. Black, who had been laying on the sofa, rose and set down by myself. 10. The agricultural course is a study which every person should have a great deal of knowledge along that line. 11. Swinging around the curve, the open switch was seen in time, and directly the train stopped we rushed off of the cars. 12. I can say a little in regard to my expectations in connection with the next four years of my life, however. Expectations of work, pleasure, and perhaps a little sorrow. 13. An interesting experience of mine was a collection of insects made when I studied biology. 14. A man can talk to an animal, and he learns to obey him by repeating certain commands. 15. The life of a princess as well as a hermit are made happy by a little child, as illustrated in the stories of Pharaoh's daughter and Silas Marner. =B.= 1. Every one in the office were busy invoicing. 2. Their unconscious pranks and laughter is very amusing. 3. The tiger is a beautiful animal, it is also very ferocious. 4. Either he or she are good companions for you. 5. Again, take a student who has been forced to make his own way, the question may be harder to decide. 6. As for the proposition which is before you, if it was me, I would not even consider it. 7. The fly is the insect that causes more fatal deaths in a year than any other insect. 8. The success of a sponge cake depends upon two things. The beating of the eggs and the mixing of the flour in lightly. 9. James, a youth of such energy, and who is attractive in many ways, failed in his exams. 10. Fish are only found in the deep holes, and they are hard to get at. 11. Besides cigarettes, there are other forms of using tobacco, such as cigars, and in pipes, and chewing tobacco, making the total consumption very great. 12. I am endeavoring to secure for this position a man not only with ability as a manager, but one who is capable of understanding and sympathizing with rural community conditions. 13. Any one having any question to ask or who has trouble with their camera, may write to this department. 14. When I hear oatmeal it nauseates me. I can see a mental picture of the breakfast table where I sat nearly all last summer. 15. In ones second year in high school the books to be read are Burns poems, Miltons paradise Lost; Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, and several of Shakespeares plays. =C.= 1. He promised to on no consideration delay. 2. I heard a voice at the door which was familiar. 3. The most important part of a book is often to read the preface. 4. Observing carefully, a number of errors are seen to exist. 5. Unless one is very wealthy they cannot afford to own a car. 6. These kind of fellows usually make good athletes. 7. It was the custom of we campers to ride into town and back on freight cars, when in need of supplies. 8. As I was sitting near a radiator so I moved as I decided it was too warm there. 9. To thine own self be true is the advice Polonius gave to his son. 10. In order that Otto should not regain his political power back again, Sarphina put him in jail. 11. For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction is the idea which Emerson's essay on compensation begins. 12. To consult a Bible encyclopedia and read it concerning Easter, one learns quite a little about that religious holiday. 13. Never try to shoot a rabbit or any animal when they are not moving, for among hunters it is very poor sportsmanship to kill any animal before they have had a chance to get away. 14. We find that many of Whittier's poems were concerned with slavery, which he considered a very great moral wrong, and determined to do all in his power to eradicate this evil. 15. Rhetoric is required in order that a person may learn how to express their thoughts so as to be readily understood, and the ability to do this greatly increases the value of your knowledge. =D.= 1. Socialism is different than anarchy. 2. He ate the lunch instead of his sister. 3. The Volga is the longest of any river in Europe. 4. I come over to see if you will leave Tilly go on a picnic with us tomorrow. 5. The value of the birds are studied and the good results taught to the older children. 6. Despotism is where a ruler is not responsible to those under his authority. 7. When a boy or girl enters a high school they think they are very important. 8. I was anxious to begin eating, so no time was wasted by me. 9. They run out of ammunition, which caused them to loose the battle. 10. The mind is not only developed, but also the body. 11. He built a reservoir varying from 75 to 150 ft. in diameter and from 8 to 15 ft. high. 12. The most principal reason for going to college is so as to prepare myself for teaching. 13. While the room was not very large, yet it had a good-sized closet in which to put a trunk would be easy and lighted by a small window. 14. A college education is supposed to be general and thorough by training a man not only into something definite, but give him a wider scope from which to choose from. 15. Motion pictures give actual battle scenes showing just how the different countries carry on warfare, in taking care of the wounded, making ammunition, and how they discharge the artillery, and advance or retreat. =E.= 1. He acted like the rest did. 2. He don't see anything attractive about her. 3. Neither Admiral Beatty nor Admiral Sims are afraid to take chances. 4. The Girl's Campfire Organization was organized when the Boy Scouts organization was proved such a success. 5. Coal is found likely 15 ft. from the waters edge, extending horizontally under the cliff. 6. It is no sure sign that just because a student has took a course in literature, that he really enjoys the best reading. 7. One of the most noticeable characteristics about Lowell's letters were that they are brief, to the point, and emphatic. 8. On the license there will be found the laws regarding hunting and on the back of it tells when the different seasons are open. 9. The St. Louis Republic is a partisan democratic newspaper and thus it can be guessed as to what their editorials are like concerning political questions. 10. If the public in general is well posted on the subject and finds that the charity workers are in earnest, they are much more apt to donate. 11. Some were laughing, some acted serious, others like myself were merely looking on. 12. Entering the campus, the Library is seen, which is a building nicer than all the others. 13. The Ideal Starter starts the engine perfectly without leaving the driver's seat. 14. The fly feeds on decayed vegetable matter, and also the decayed animal. 15. It is true that some people keep a fire extinguisher. It is of minor importance when considering organized fire protection. It is organized fire protection with which we are chiefly concerned, so let us dismiss the former and proceed to the latter subject. =F.= 1. In olden days the curfew rung everywheres at 9 o'clock. 2. If a person was to become a charity worker, it would necessitate him giving time and effort. 3. I think most any person can appreciate a good joke when it is not on them. 4. Your clothing for the hunt should be warm and of goods that will not tear easy. 5. Life can be classified in four general stages. Infancy, Youth, Maturity, and Old Age. 6. At the sound of the summons I had to arise from my downy cot and hurry to the morning repast. 7. He was surprised at the way people lived in the city. Especially the dirt and misery of the slums. 8. The house is battered and dingy, being built twenty years ago by Mr. Robinson, and needs paint badly. 9. We hadn't scarcely more than begun the work when one of the engines got broke and we had to stop until it could be fixed. 10. Neither self-denial nor self-sacrifice are to be admired, or even pardoned, at the cost of happiness, Stevenson says. 11. The thing that took my eye most of all were the walls. Pennants, pictures, and souvenirs were hanging everywhere. 12. Grandmother had put the spectacles in the Bible which she had lost. 13. In the summer time the weather is warm but some people are complaining of the hot weather and who wish the weather would turn cooler but is it not this kind of weather that makes the plants grow, which in turn furnish us food? 14. Until athletics are demanded from the weaker students, the training will go to the one who does not need it, and the ones who do need it are sitting up on the bleachers exercising their lungs. 15. The people of olden times used pumps, but did not know why they worked, they thought it worked because "nature abhors a vacuum." =G.= 1. Each one of these three books are interesting. 2. You may put this hat in any desired shape you like. 3. We motored over to Bloomington which was much more pleasant than the train. 4. Every one of his statements are so clear that they cannot be misconstrued what they mean. 5. Analysis is when things are resolved into elements or parts. 6. She dropped the doll on the pavement, of which she was very fond. 7. He was offered money to keep still, but would not, thus showing his good character. 8. The first training center for training police dogs was in Hildesheim, Prussia, and was in the year 1896. 9. The draining of land not only increases the yield, and it greatly lengthens the season that the land may be worked. 10. He next stated the number of the founders of the Constitution, which were 39 in no. 11. The life of Doctor Kingsley is a good example of a man who has succeeded. 12. The fortunes of our country are now standing at the cannon's mouth, and one vote may stem the tide of disaster. 13. There was little scenery on an Elizabethan stage. While the parts intended for women were performed by men. 14. The cave which Tom Sawyer was lost in really existed. It was the cave just outside Hannibal, Missouri, it was near the Mississippi. Here was the place where Mark Twain was a boy. 15. Yes, and the buildings werent what they are now, do you remember how we used to go to the old log meeting house, that was up on stilts, and the pigs crawled under the floor and raised such a disturbance that the preacher had to stop and have the pigs chased out before he could continue the sermon? INDEX _The numbers refer to articles._ Abbreviations, 83, 90c Absolute expressions Defined, 58 Punctuation of, 91e _Accept_ and _except_, 67 _Ad_, 68 Addresses, 87b, 87e Adjectives Classes of, 58 Comparison of, 58 Distinguished from adverbs, 56 In a series, 91f, 91j2 Adverbs, Classes of, 58 Comparison of, 58 Distinguished from adjectives, 56 _Affect_ and _effect_, 67 _Aggravate_, 68 Agreement Of verbs, 52 Of pronouns, 51, 50i _Ain't_, 68 _All right_, 68 _Almost_, Position of, 27 _Allusion and illusion_, 67 _Already_ and _all ready_, 67 _And_ before a subordinate phrase or clause, 16, 17 _And_ used to excess, 14 _And which_ construction, 17 Antecedent Defined, 58 Faulty reference to, 20-23 _Anybody_, Number of, 51a Apostrophe In contractions, 97 With possessive, 97, 50f Application for a position, 87g Articles, Omission of, 3 _As_, Incorrect use of, 50a, 68 Aspect of the verb, 58 Auxiliary Defined, 58 Use of, 55e _Awful_, Abuse of, 68 Balanced sentence, 45 Balanced structure, 30, 45 Barbarisms, 66 _Because_ clauses, 5 _Because of_ phrases, 5 Note _Be_, Nominative with, 50c _Both ... and_, 31 Brackets, 95e Brevity for emphasis, 41, 60 Business letters, 87c _Bust_ or _busted_, 68 _But_ used to excess, 38 Note _Can_ and _may_, 67 _Cannot help but_, 34 Capitals, 81 Case Defined, 58 Use of, 50 Cause, Inaccurate statement of, 5 _Caused by_, 5 Note, 23, 68 Change in number or person, 33 Change in subject or voice, 32 Change in tense, 33, 55 Choppy sentences, 13 _Claim_, 68 Clauses Cause, 5 Coördinated loosely, 14, 12 Defined, 58 House-that-Jack-built, 38 Misplaced, 24 Misused as sentences, 1, 90b Restrictive and non-r., 91d Subordinate. Not to be used as complete sentences, 1 Subordination faulty, 15 To be reduced to phrases, 60 _When_ or _where_ clauses, 6 Clearness, 20-39 Climax, 44 Coherence, 24-29 Colon, 93 Collective nouns, Number of, 51c Colloquialisms, 65 Comma, 91, 92c Notes 1 and 2, 95b After quotation, 96 Note "Comma splice" or "comma fault," 18 Not used after question mark, 98b Comparison of adjectives and adverbs, 58 Comparisons, Inaccurate, 4 Compound sentence structure in excess, 12, 14 Compound words, 78 Concreteness, 63 Conjugation, 58 Conjunctions Defined, 58 List of, 36 Omitted, 37 Repeated carelessly, 38 Conjunctive adverbs Defined, 58 Punctuation with, 92c Connectives, 8, 36, 37, 38 Consonants Between syllables, 71, 85 Final (in spelling), 75 Construction Incomplete, 2 Mixed, 34 Split, 28 Contractions Apostrophe with, 97 When proper, 65b Coördination, Excessive, 12, 14 Correlatives, 31 _Could of_, 68 Dangling gerund, 23 Dangling participle, 23 Dash, 94 Dates, Writing of, 84, 91e Declension, 58 Definition, 6 Note Dialogue Paragraphing, 88c Punctuation before, 91h, 93a Punctuation in, 96 Diction, Faulty (list), 68 _Different than_, 68 Divided reference, 20 _Don't_, 51d Double capacity, Words in, 57 Double negative, 34 Note _Drownded_, 68 _Due to_, Proper use of, 5 Note, 23 Note, 68 _Each_, Number of, 51a _ei_ or _ie_, 74 _Either_, Number of, 51a _Either ... or_, 31 Ellipsis Defined, 58 Misuse of, 3, 23 Note _Emigrate_ and _immigrate_, 67 Emphasis By brevity, 41 By position, 40 By repetition, 47 By separation, 41 By subordination, 42, 14 By variety, 48 _Enthuse_, 68 _Etc._, Use of, 68 Euphemism, 61 _Ever_, Position of, 27 _Every_, _every one_, _everybody_, Number of, 51a Exclamation point, 98e Exact connective, 36 Exact word, 62 Figures, Use of, 84 Figures of speech, Mixed, 35 Final consonant (in spelling), 75 Final _e_ before a suffix, 76 _Fine_, Abuse of, 68 Fine writing, 61 Flowery language, 61 Formal invitations, 87h _Former_, 68 _Gent_, 68 Geographical names, 91e Gerund Dangling, 23 Defined, 58 With possessive, 50g Good use, 65, 66 _Gotten_, 68 Grammar, 50-59 Grammatical terms, 58 _Guess_, 68 Hackneyed expressions, 61 _Had ought_, 68 Handwriting, 80c _Hanged_ and _hung_, 67 _Healthy_ and _healthful_, 67 Historical present, 33 Note _However_, Position of, 27 _Human_, _humans_, 68 _Hygienic_ and _sanitary_, 67 Hyphen Between syllables, 85 In compound words, 78 Idioms, 65 Illogical thought, 4, 5, 6, 7 Imagery mixed, 35 Impersonal construction, Needless use of, 60 Improprieties, 66 Incomplete construction, 2 Indefinite _it_, _you_, _they_, 22 Note Indention of paragraphs, 88 Inflection, 58 Infinitive Case with, 50e Defined, 58 Sign of, to be repeated, 37 Split, 28 Tense of, 55 _Instants_ and _instance_, 67 Interjections Defined, 58 Punctuation of, 91c, 98e Invitations, Formal, 87h _Is when_ clauses, 6 _Is where_ clauses, 6 Italics, 82, 96e Its (possessive adjective), without apostrophe, 50f, 97d _Kind of_, 68 _Later_ and _latter_, 67 _Lead_ and _led_, 67 _Learn_ and _teach_, 67 _Leave_ and _let_, 67 Length of paragraph, 88b Length of sentences, 12, 13, 48b _Less_ and _fewer_, 67 Letters, 87 _Liable_ and _likely_, 67 _Lie_ and _lay_, 59D, 67 _Like_ (for _as_), 67, 68 List Of connectives, 36 Of principal parts, 54 Of grammatical terms, 58 Of words confused in meaning, 67 Of words incorrectly used, 68 Of words logically akin, 72 Of words confused in spelling, 73 For spelling, 79 _Loan_, 68 _Locate_, 68 Logic, 4, 5, 6, 7 Logical Agreement, 4, 5, 6 Logical Sequence, 25 _Lose_ and loose, 67 _Lots of_, 68 _Majority_ and _plurality_, 67 Manuscript, 80 _Might of_, 68 Misplaced word, 27 Mixed constructions, 34 Mixed imagery, 35 Modal aspects, 58 Mode Definition of, 58 Use of subjunctive, 55d Modifiers Grouping of, 24, 25 Needless separation of, 24, 27 Squinting, 26 Wrongly used as sentences, 1, 90b Money, 84c _Most_ (for _almost_), 66, 68 _Myself_, Needlessly used for _I_ or _me_, 68 Negative, Double, 34 Note _Neither_, Number of, 51a _Neither ... nor_, 31 _Nice_, Inaccurate use of, 62, 68 Nicknames, Quotations with, 96d _Not only ... but also_, 31 Nouns, Classes of, 58 Number Shift in, 33 _These kind_, etc., 51b _Each_, _Every_, etc., 51a Collective nouns, 51c Of verbs, 52 Numbers, Use of, 84 Formation of plural, 77d, 97e _O_ and _Oh_, 68 Objective case, 50d, 50e _Off of_, 68 Omission Of words, 3 From quotations, 96i _Only_, Position of, 27 Outlines, 86 Overlapping thought, 8 Note _Owing to_, Proper use of, 5 Note Paragraphs, 88 Parallel structure, 30, 31, 45 Parenthesis and parenthetical elements, 91e, 94a, 95 Participle Dangling, 23 Definition of, 58 Parts of speech, 58 _Party_, Abuse of, 68 Passive voice, not emphatic, 46 Past tense, Wrong forms of, 54 Past perfect tense, 55 Period, 90, 91b, 92a Note After quotation, 96g Note Not used after question mark, 98b "Period blunder," 1, 90b Periodic sentence, 43 Person, Change in, 33 Phonetic spelling, 71 Note Phrases Defined, 58 Not to be used as sentences, 1 Note Absolute, 91e Plurals, Spelling of, 77 Poetry to be separated from prose, 41, 80b Point of view, Shift in, 32 Ponderous language, 60 Possessive With gerund, 50g Apostrophe with, 50f, 97 Inanimate objects in, 50h _Practical and practicable_, 67 Predicate adjective, 58 Predicate noun, 58 Prefixes, 72 Prepositions Defined, 58 Omitted, 3, 37 Repeated carelessly, 38 Principal parts, 54 _Principal_ and _principle_, 67 Pronouns Agreement with antecedent, 50i Case of, 50 Kinds of, 58 Reference of, 20, 21, 22 Wrong use of _myself_, _yourself_, for _I_, _me_, _you_, 68 Pronunciation as a guide to spelling, 71 _Proof_ and _evidence_, 67 _Proposition_, Synonyms for, 62 _Proven_, 68 _Pseudo-_ and _quasi-_, 67 _Quiet_ and _quite_, 67 Question mark, 98 Quotation marks _vs._ italics, 82a Note 2, 96e Quotations Punctuation before, 91h, 92d, 93a Punctuation of, 96 Reason, Statement of, to be completed by a _that_ clause, 5 Redundance, 60 Reference Ambiguous, 20 Broad, 22 Divided, 20 Impersonal, 22 Note Remote, 20 To a clause, 22 To a title, 21 Note To an unemphatic word, 21 Weak, 21 Reflexive wrongly used for the simple pronoun, 68 Repetition Of connectives, good, 37; bad, 38 Of structure, good 47b; bad 48b Of words, good, 47a; bad, 48a _Respectfully_ and _respectively_, 67 Restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, 91d _Right smart_, 68 _Rise_ and _raise_, 59D, 67 _Said_, Synonyms for, 62 _Same_, Abuse of, 68 Scrappy sentences, 13 Semicolon, 91b, 92, 95b After quotation, 96g Note Not used after question mark, 98b Sequence of tense, 55 Sequence of thought, 25 Series, Punctuation of, 91f, 91g, 91j 3 _Shall_ and _will_, 53 Shift in number, person, or tense, 33 Shift in subject or voice, 32 _Should_ and _would_, 53 _Sit_ and _set_, 59D, 67 Slang, 66 Quotations with, 96d _So_, 36 Note, 68 _Some_, Abuse of, 68 _Somewheres_, 68 Sound, 64 Spacing, 80b Specific words, 63 Spelling, 70-79 Split construction, 28 Split infinitive, 28 Squinting, 26 _Stationary_ and _stationery_, 67 _Statue_, _stature_, and _statute_, 67 Stringy sentences, 12, 14 Subject in nominative case, 50a Subjunctive mode Defined, 58 Use of, 55d Subordinating conjunctions Defined, 58 Enumerated, 36 Subordination Necessary, 12, 13, 14 Faulty, 15, 16, 17, 42 _And which_, 17 Substantive defined, 58 _Such_, 68 Suffixes, 75, 76 Superlative degree in comparisons, 4, 58 _Sure_ and _surely_, 68 _Suspicion_, 68 Syllabication, 85 Syntax defined, 58 Tautology, 60 Note Technical terms, Quotations with, 96d Tense In dependent clauses, 55a In general statements, 55c Past Perfect, 55b Sequence of, 55 Shift in, 33 _Than_ or _as_, Case of pronouns after, 50a _That there_, 68 _Them_ (misused as adjective), 68 _These kind_, 51b _Those_, Omission of relative clause after, 2, 68 Thought undeveloped, 7 Title Capitals in, 81 Reference to, 21 Note Spacing, etc., 80a, 96j Quoted (books, periodicals, etc.), 82a, 96e Transitions, 8, 36 _Transpire_, 68 Triteness, 61 Undeveloped thought, 7 Unity, 10-19 Upside-down subordination, 15 Usage, Good, 65, 66 Verbals, 58 Verb, Forms of the, 58 _Ways_, 68 Weak reference, 21 _Where at_, 68 _While_, Abuse of, 36 _Win out_, 68 _Who_, _whoever_, 50b _Woods_, 68 _Would of_, 68 Wordiness, 60 Words Confused in meaning, 67 Confused in spelling, 73 Double capacity of, 57 Misused, 68 Omission of, 3 _Yourself_ wrongly used for _you_, 68 Transcriber's Notes: Article 7, Missing period added (Many passages are powerful, especially the grave-digging [Is grave-digging a passage?].) Article 13, Changed period to colon (Exercise:) Article 14, Changed period to colon (Exercise:) Article 24, Added missing article "a" (In the morning I found on my bed a heap of snow...) Article 25, Changed "them" to "then" (Do not begin one idea, abandon it for a second, and then return to the first.) Article 31, Added missing comma (not only ... but also ..., both ... and ...) Article 38, Changed "men to "man" (He was undoubtedly a brave man...) Article 38, Changed "trangressions" to "transgressions" (However, if it is used only for serious transgressions...) Article 39, Added missing parenthesis ((Consult 36 for a list of connectives.)) Article 54, Changed period to colon (Exercise:) Article 58, Changed "I was being taken" to "I must be taken" in the conjugation table for the verb "to take" as Present Indicative Obligative in Passive voice Article 65, Changed "idoms" to "idioms" (Study the following list of correct idioms) Article 65, Added missing commas (ain't it fierce?, can you beat it?, going some) Article 68, Added missing quotation mark ("We oughtn't (not hadn't ought) to make this error.") Article 68, Changed "Verb" to "Very" (Very. Accompanied by much when used with the past participle.) Article 71, Removed italic style for the word "compare" (compare occasion) Article 86, Corrected numbering in a list changing "2." to "3." (3. Place in order the headings of the following outline) Article 88, Added missing parenthesis ((In some instances the paragraph may consist of a single sentence.)) Article 88, Changed comma to period (We'll have a rope down to you in a minute.) Article 91, Added missing parenthesis ((She came and she was gone in a moment. McCoy talked and the rest of us listened.)) Article 91, Changed period to colon (Right: For breakfast we had oatmeal, bacon, eggs, and honey.) Article 92, Changed period to colon (Better: She enjoyed the dinners, and the dancing, and the music) Article 94, Changed "d." to "b.", and "b." to "d." (b. Insert a dash when a sentence is broken off abruptly.; d. The use of the dash to end sentences is childish.) Article 95, Changed "dedeclared" to "declared" ("Bunyan's masterpiece (The Pilgrim's Progress)," declared the lecturer) INDEX, Changed period to comma (Impersonal construction, Needless use of) 
12088	----	Distributed Proofreaders COMPOSITION-RHETORIC BY STRATTON D. BROOKS _Superintendent of Schools, Boston, Mass._ AND MARIETTA HUBBARD _Formerly English Department, High School La Salle, Illinois_ * * * * * NEW YORK - CINCINNATI - CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 1905 STRATTON D. BROOKS. Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. * * * * * Brooks's Rhet. W.P. 10 To MARCIA STUART BROOKS Whose teaching first demonstrated to the authors that composition could become a delight and pleasure, this book is dedicated...... PREFACE The aim of this book is not to produce critical readers of literature, nor to prepare the pupil to answer questions about rhetorical theory, but to enable every pupil to express in writing, freely, clearly, and forcibly, whatever he may find within him worthy of expression. Three considerations of fundamental importance underlie the plan of the book:-- First, improvement in the performance of an act comes from the repetition of that act accompanied by a conscious effort to omit the imperfections of the former attempt. Therefore, the writing of a new theme in which, the pupil attempts to avoid the error which occurred in his former theme is of much greater educational value than is the copying of the old theme for the purpose of correcting the errors in it. To copy the old theme is to correct a result, to write a new theme correctly is to improve a process; and it is this improvement of process that is the real aim of composition teaching. Second, the logical arrangement of material should be subordinated to the needs of the pupils. A theoretical discussion of the four forms of discourse would require that each be completely treated in one place. Such a treatment would ignore the fact that a high school pupil has daily need to use each of the four forms of discourse, and that some assistance in each should be given him as early in his course as possible. The book, therefore, gives in Part 1 the elements of description, narration, exposition, and argument, and reserves for Part II a more complete treatment of each. In each part the effort has been made to adapt the material presented to the maturity and power of thought of the pupil. Third, expression cannot be compelled; it must be coaxed. Only under favorable conditions can we hope to secure that reaction of intellect and emotion which renders possible a full expression of self. One of the most important of these favorable conditions is that the pupil shall write something he wishes to write, for an audience which wishes to hear it. The authors have, therefore, suggested subjects for themes in which high school pupils are interested and about which they will wish to write. It is hoped that the work will be so conducted by the teacher that every theme will be read aloud before the class. It is essential that the criticism of a theme so read shall, in the main, be complimentary, pointing out and emphasizing those things which the pupil has done well; and that destructive criticism be largely impersonal and be directed toward a single definite point. Only thus may we avoid personal embarrassment to the pupil, give him confidence in himself, and assure him of a sympathetic audience--conditions essential to the effective teaching of composition. The plan of the book is as follows:-- 1. Part 1 provides a series of themes covering description, narration, exposition, and argument. The purpose is to give the pupil that inspiration and that confidence in himself which come from the frequent repetition of an act. 2. Each theme differs from the preceding usually by a single point, and the teaching effort should be confined to that point. Only a false standard of accuracy demands that every error be corrected every time it appears. Such a course loses sight of the main point in a multiplicity of details, renders instruction ineffective by scattering effort, produces hopeless confusion in the mind of the pupil, and robs composition of that inspiration without which it cannot succeed. In composition, as in other things, it is better to do but one thing at a time. 3. Accompanying the written themes is a series of exercises, each designed to emphasize the point presented in the text, but more especially intended to provide for frequent drills in oral composition. 4. Throughout the first four chapters the paragraph is the unit of composition, but for the sake of added interest some themes of greater length have been included. Chapter V, on the Whole Composition, serves as a review and summary of the methods of paragraph development, shows how to make the transition from one paragraph to another, and discusses the more important rhetorical principles underlying the union of paragraphs into a coherent and unified whole. 5. The training furnished by Part 1 should result in giving to the pupil some fluency of expression, some confidence in his ability to make known to others that which he thinks and feels, and some power to determine that the theme he writes, however rough-hewn and unshapely it may be, yet in its major outlines follows closely the thought that is within his mind. If the training has failed to give the pupil this power, it will be of little advantage to him to have mastered some of the minor matters of technique, or to have learned how to improve his phrasing, polish his sentences, and distribute his commas. 6. Part II provides a series of themes covering the same ground as Part I, but the treatment of these themes is more complete and the material is adapted to the increased maturity and thought power of the pupils. By means of references the pupils are directed to all former treatments of the topics they are studying. 7. Part II discusses some topics usually treated in college courses in rhetoric. These have been included for three reasons: first, because comparatively few high school pupils go to college; second, because the increased amount of time now given to composition enables the high school to cover a wider field than formerly; and third, because such topics can be studied with profit by pupils in the upper years of the high school course. 8. It is not intended that the text shall be recited. Its purpose is to furnish a basis for discussion between teacher and pupils before the pupils attempt to write. The real test of the pupils' mastery of a principle discussed in the text will be their ability to put it into practice. Any judgment of the success or failure of the book should be based upon the quality of the themes which the pupils write. Criticisms and suggestions will be welcomed from those who use the book. The authors wish to express their obligation for advice and assistance to Professor Edward Fulton, Department of Rhetoric, University of Illinois; Messrs. Gilbert S. Blakely and H. E. Foster, Instructors in English, Morris High School, New York; Miss Elizabeth Richardson, Girls' High School, Boston; Miss Katherine H. Shute, Boston Normal School; Miss E. Marguerite Strauchon, Kansas City High School. The selections from Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Warner, Burroughs, Howells, and Trowbridge are used by permission of and by special arrangement with Hoaghton, Mifflin, and Company, publishers of their works. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Harper and Brothers; The Century Company; Doubleday, Page, and Company; and Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to use the selections to which their names are attached: to the publishers of the _Forum, Century, Atlantic Monthly, McClure's, Harper's, Scribner's_, and the _Outlook_ for permission to use extracts: and to Scott, Foresman, and Company; D. Appleton and Company; Henry Holt and Company; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Thomas Y. Crowell and Company; and Benjamin H. Sanborn and Company for permission to use copyrighted material. CONTENTS PART I 1. Expression of Ideas arising from Experience II. Expression of Ideas furnished by Imagination III. Expression of Ideas acquired through Language IV. The Purpose of Expression V. The Whole Composition VI. Letter Writing VII. Poetry PART II VIII. Description IX. Narration X. Exposition XI. Argument Appendix I. Elements of Form II. Review of Grammar III. Figures of Speech IV. The Rhetorical Features of the Sentence V. List of Synonyms VI. List of Words for Exercise in Word Usage Index PART 1 1. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS ARISING FROM EXPERIENCE +1. Pleasure in Expressing Ideas.+--Though we all enjoy talking, we cannot write so easily as we talk, nor with the same pleasure. We seldom talk about topics in which we are not interested and concerning which we know little or nothing, but we often have such topics assigned to us as subjects for compositions. Under such conditions it is no wonder that there is little pleasure in writing. The ideas that we express orally are those with which we are familiar and in which we are interested, and we tell them because we wish to tell them to some one who is likewise interested and who desires to hear what we have to say. Such expression of ideas is enjoyed by all. If we but choose to express the same kinds of ideas and for the same reason, there is an equal or even greater pleasure to be derived from the expression of ideas in writing. The purpose of this book is to show you how to express ideas _clearly, effectively_, and _with pleasure_. +2. Sources of Ideas.+--We must have ideas before we can express them. There are three sources from which ideas arise. We may gain them from experience; we may recombine them into new forms by the imagination; and we may receive them from others through the medium of language, either by conversation or by reading. Every day we add to our knowledge through our senses. We see and hear and do, and thus, through experience, acquire ideas about things. By far the greater part of expression has to do with ideas that have originated in this way. The first chapter in this book is concerned with the expression of ideas gained through experience. We may, however, think about things that have not actually occurred. We may allow our minds to picture a football game that we have not seen, or to plan a story about a boy who never existed. Nearly every one takes pleasure in such an exercise of the imagination. The second chapter has to do with the expression of ideas of this kind. We also add to our knowledge through the medium of language. Through conversation and reading we learn what others think, and it is often of value to restate these ideas. The expression of ideas so acquired is treated in the third chapter. +3. Advantages of Expressing Ideas Gained from Experience.+--Young people sometimes find difficulty in writing because they "have nothing to say." Such a reason will not hold in regard to ideas gained from experience. Every one has a multitude of experiences every day, and wishes to tell about some of them. Many of the things which happen to you or to your friends, especially some which occur outside of the regular routine of school work, are interesting and worth telling about. Thus experience furnishes an abundance of material suitable for composition purposes, and this material is of the best because the ideas are _sure to be your own_. The first requisite of successful composition is to have thoughts of your own. The expressing of ideas that are not your own is mere copy work, and seldom worth doing. Ideas acquired through experience are not only interesting and your own, but they are likely to be _clear_ and _definite_. You know what you do and what you see; or, if you do not, the effort to express your ideas so that they will be clear to others will make you observe closely for yourself. Still another advantage comes from the fact that your experiences are not presented to you through the medium of language. When experience furnishes the ideas, you are left free to choose for yourself the words that best set forth what you wish to tell. The things of your experience are the things with which you are most familiar, and therefore the words that best apply to them are those which you most often use and whose meanings are best known to you. Because experience supplies an abundance of interesting, clear, and definite ideas, which are your own and which may be expressed in familiar language, it furnishes better material for training in expression than does either imagination or reading. +4. Essentials of Expression.+--The proper expression of ideas depends upon the observance of two essentials: first, you should say what you mean; and second, you should say it clearly. Without these, what you say may be not only valueless, but positively misleading. If you wish your hearer to understand what occurred at a certain time and place, you must first of all know yourself exactly what did occur. Then you must express it in language that shall make him understand it as clearly as you do. You will learn much about clearness, later; but even now you can tell whether you know what is meant by each sentence which you hear or read. It is not so easy to tell whether what you say will convey clearly to another the meaning you intend to convey, but you will be helped in this if you ask yourself the questions: "Do I know exactly what happened?" "Have I said what I intended to say?" "Have I said it so that it will be clear to the listener?" +Oral Composition 1.+--_Report orally on one of the following:_-- 1. Were you so interested in anything yesterday that you told it to your parents or friends? Tell the class about it. 2. Tell about something that you have done this week, so that the class may know exactly what you did. 3. Name some things in which you have been interested within the last two or three months. Tell the class about one of them. 4. Tell the class about something that happened during vacation. Have you told the event exactly as it occurred? +5. Interest.+--In order to enjoy listening to a story we must take an interest in it, and the story should be so told as to arouse and maintain this interest. As you have listened to the reports of your classmates you have been more pleased with some than with others. Even though the meaning of each was clear, yet the interest aroused was in each case different. Since the purpose of a story is to entertain, any story falls short of its purpose when it ceases to be interesting. We must at all times say what we mean and say it clearly; but in story telling especially we must also take care that what we say shall arouse and maintain interest. +6. The Introduction.+--The story of an event should be introduced in such a manner as to enable the hearer to understand the circumstances that are related. Such an introduction contributes to clearness and has an important bearing upon the interest of the entire composition. In order to render our account of an event clear and interesting it is usually desirable to tell the hearers _when_ and _where_ the event occurred and _who_ were present. Their understanding of it may be helped further by telling such of the attendant circumstances as will answer the question, _Why_? If I begin my story by saying, "Last summer John Anderson and I were on a camping trip in the Adirondacks," I have told when, where, and who; and the addition of the words "on a camping trip" tells why we were in the Adirondacks, and may serve to explain some of the events that are to follow. Even the statement of the place indicates in some degree the trend of the story, for many things that might occur "in the Adirondacks" could not occur in a country where there are no mountains. Certainly the story that would follow such an introduction would be expected to differ from one beginning with the words, "Last summer John Anderson and I went to visit a friend in New York." It is not always necessary to tell when, where, who, and why in the introduction, but it is desirable to do so in most cases of oral story telling. These four elements may not always be stated in incidents taken from books, for the reader may be already familiar with them from the preceding portions of the book. The title of a printed or written story may serve as an introduction and give us all needed information. In relating personal incidents the time element is seldom omitted, though it may be stated indirectly or indefinitely by such expressions as "once" or 'lately.' In many stories the interest depends upon the plot, and the time is not definitely stated. EXERCISE Notice what elements are included in each of the following introductions:-- 1. Saturday last at Mount Holly, about eight miles from this place, nearly three hundred people were gathered together to see an experiment or two tried on some persons accused of witchcraft. 2. On the morning of the 10th instant at sunrise, they were discovered from Put-in-Bay, where I lay at anchor with the squadron under my command. 3. It was on Sunday when I awoke to the realization that I had quitted civilization and was afloat on an unfamiliar body of water in an open boat. 4. Up and down the long corn rows Pap Overholt guided the old mule and the small, rickety, inefficient plow, whose low handles bowed his tall, broad shoulders beneath the mild heat of a mountain June sun. As he went--ever with a furtive eye upon the cabin--he muttered to himself, shaking his head. 5. After breakfast, I went down to the Saponey Indian town, which is about a musket shot from the fort. 6. The lonely stretch of uphill road, upon whose yellow clay the midsummer sun beat vertically down, would have represented a toilsome climb to a grown and unencumbered man. To the boy staggering under the burden of a brimful carpet bag, it seemed fairly unscalable; wherefore he stopped at its base and looked up in dismay to its far-off, red-hot summit. 7. One afternoon last summer, three or four people from New York, two from Boston, and a young man from the Middle West were lunching at one of the country clubs on the south shore of Long Island, and there came about a mild discussion of the American universities. 8. "But where is the station?" inquired the Judge. "Ain't none, boss. Dis heah is jes a crossing. Train's about due now, sah; you-all won't hab long fer to wait. Thanky, sah; good-by; sorry you-all didn't find no birds." The Judge picked up his gun case and grip and walked toward his two companions waiting on the platform a few yards away. Silhouetted against the moonlight they made him think of the figure 10, for Mr. Appleton was tall and erect, and the little Doctor short and circular. 9. I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; "Good speed!" cried the watch, as the gate bolts undrew, "Speed!" echoed the wall to us galloping through. Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast. --Browning. +Oral Composition II.+--_Relate orally to the class some incident in which you were personally concerned._ The following may suggest a subject:-- 1. How I made friends with the squirrels. 2. A trick of a tame crow. 3. Why I missed the train. 4. How a horse was rescued. 5. Lost and found. 6. My visit to a menagerie. (When preparing to relate this incident ask yourself first whether you know exactly what happened. Consider then how to begin the story so that your hearer will know when and where it happened and who were there. Include in the beginning any statement that will assist the reader in understanding the events which follow.) +7. The Point of a Story.+--It is not necessary that a story be concerned with a thrilling event in order to be interesting. Even a most commonplace occurrence may be so told that it is worth listening to. It is more important that a story have a point and be so told that this point will be readily appreciated than that it deal with important or thrilling events. The story should lead easily and rapidly to its point, and when this is reached the end of the story should not be far distant. The beginning of a story will contain statements that will assist us in appreciating the point when we come to it, but if the point is plainly stated near the beginning, or even if it is too strongly suggested, our story will drag. At what point in the following selection is the interest greatest? During the Civil War, I lived in that portion of Tennessee which was alternately held by the conflicting armies. My father and brothers were away, as were all the other men in the neighborhood, except a few very old ones and some half-grown boys. Mother and I were in constant fear of injury from stragglers from both armies. We had never been disturbed, for our farm was a mile or more back from the road along which such detachments usually moved. We had periods of comparative quiet in which we felt at ease, and then would come reports of depredation near at hand, or rumors of the presence of marauding bands in neighboring settlements. One evening such a rumor came to us, and we were consequently anxious. Early next morning, before the fog had lifted, I caught sight of two men crossing the road at the far end of the orchard. They jumped over the fence into the orchard and disappeared among the trees. I had but a brief glimpse of them, but it was sufficient to show me that one had a gun over his shoulder, while the other carried a saber. "Quick, Mother, quick!" I cried. "Come to the window. There are soldiers in the orchard." Keeping out of sight, we watched the progress of the men through the orchard. Our brief glimpses of them through the trees showed that they were not coming directly to the house, but were headed for the barn and sheds, and in order to keep out of sight, were following a slight ravine which ran across the orchard and led to the back of the barns. Mother and I were very much excited and hardly knew what to do. Finally it was determined to hide upstairs in hopes that the men were bent on stealing chickens or pigs, and might leave without disturbing the house. We locked the doors and went upstairs, taking with us the old musket and the butcher knife. We could hear the men about the barn, and after what seemed an interminable time we heard them coming towards the house. Though shaking all over, I summoned courage enough to go to the window and look out of a hole in the shade. As the men came into sight around the corner, I screamed outright, but from relief rather than fear, for the men were not soldiers, but Grandpa Smith and his fourteen-year-old grandson. They stopped at the well to get a drink, and when we opened the window, the old man said, "We're just on our way to mow the back lot and stopped to grind the scythe on your stone. We broke ours yesterday." Then he picked up the scythe which in the fog I had taken for a saber, while the grandson again shouldered his pitchfork musket. What effect would it have on the interest aroused by the preceding story to begin it as follows? "One morning during the Civil War, I saw two of my neighbors, Grandpa Smith and his grandson, crossing our orchard, one carrying a scythe and the other a pitchfork." Why is the expression, "before the fog had lifted," used near the beginning of the story? Would a description of the appearance of the house, the barn, or the persons add to the interest aroused by the story? Is it necessary to add anything to the story? EXERCISE In each of the following selections decide where the interest reaches its climax. Has anything been said in the beginning of any of them which suggests what the point will be, or which helps you to appreciate it when you come to it? 1. The next evening our travelers encamped on a sand bar, or rather a great bank of sand, that ran for miles along one side of the river. They kept watch as usual, Leon taking the first turn. He seated himself on a pile of sand and did his best to keep awake; but in about an hour after the rest were asleep, he felt very drowsy and fell into a nap that lasted nearly half an hour, and might have continued longer had he not slid down the sand hill and tumbled over on his side. This awoke him. Feeling vexed with himself, he rubbed his eyes and looked about to see if any creature had ventured near. He first looked towards the woods, for of course that was the direction from which the tigers would come; but he had scarcely turned himself when he perceived a pair of eyes glancing at him from the other side of the fire. Close to them another pair, then another and another, until, having looked on every side, he saw himself surrounded by a complete circle of glancing eyes. It is true they were small ones, and some of the heads which he could see by the blaze were small. They were not jaguars, but they had an ugly look. They looked like the heads of serpents. Was it possible that a hundred serpents could have surrounded the camp? Brought suddenly to his feet, Leon stood for some moments uncertain what to do. He believed that the eyes belonged to snakes which had just crept out of the river; and he feared that any movement on his part would lead them to attack him. Having risen to his feet, his eyes were above the level of the blaze, and he was able in a little while to see more clearly. He now saw that the snakelike heads belonged to creatures with large oval bodies, and that, besides the fifty or more which had come up to look at the fire, there were whole droves of them upon the sandy beach beyond. As far as he could see on all sides, the bank was covered with them. A strange sight it was, and most fearful. For his life he could not make out what it meant, or by what sort of wild animals he was surrounded. He could see that their bodies were not larger than those of small sheep; and, from the way in which they glistened in the moonlight, he was sure they had come out of the river. He called to the Indian guide, who awoke and started to his feet in alarm. The movement frightened the creatures round the fire; they rushed to the shore, and were heard plunging by hundreds into the water. The Indian's ear caught the sounds, and his eye took in the whole thing at a glance. "Turtles," he said. "Oh," said the lad; "turtles, are they?" "Yes, master," answered the guide. "I suppose this is one of their great hatching places. They are going to lay their eggs in the sand." --Captain Mayne Reid. Would the preceding incident be interesting if we were told at the beginning that the boy and the Indian had encamped near a hatching place of turtles? 2. Not every story that reads like fiction is fact, but the _Brooklyn Eagle_ assures its readers that the one here quoted is quite true. The man who told it was for many years an officer of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company in Illinois, and had annual passes over all the important railroads in the country. His duties took him to Springfield, the state capital, and as he generally went by the Chicago, Alton & St. Louis road, the conductors on that line knew him so well that they never asked to see his pass. "One day I received a telegram summoning me to meet one of the officers of my company at Aurora the next morning. I had only a short time to catch my train to Chicago, and in my haste left my passbook behind. I did not find this out until I reached Chicago, and was about to take the last train for Aurora that night. Then I saw that the conductor, a man brought over from the Iowa division, was a stranger, and the fact that I would need my pass reminded me that I did not have it. "I told the conductor the situation, but he said he could not carry me on my mere representation that I had a pass. "Why, man," said I, "I am an officer of the company, going to Aurora on company business, and this is the last train that will get me there in time. You must take me." "He was polite, but firm. He said he was a new man on this division, and could not afford to make any mistakes. "When I saw that he was determined, I rushed off to the telegraph office; but it was too late to catch anybody authorized to issue passes, so I settled it in my mind that I must go by carriage, and the prospect of an all-night ride over bad roads through the dark was anything but inviting. Indeed, it was so forbidding that I resolved to make one more appeal to the conductor. "You simply must take me to Aurora!" I said, with intense earnestness. "I can't do it," he answered. "But I believe you are what you represent yourself to be, and I will lend you the money personally. It is only one dollar and twelve cents." "Well, sir, you could have knocked me down with the flat side of a palm-leaf fan. I had more than two thousand dollars in currency in my pocket, but it had never for an instant occurred to me that I could pay my fare and ride on that train. I showed the conductor a wad of money that made his eyes stick out. "I thought it was funny," said he, "that a man in your position couldn't raise one dollar and twelve cents. It was that that made me believe you were playing a trick to see if I would violate the rule." "The simple truth was, I had ridden everywhere on passes so many years, that it did not occur to me that I could ride in any other way." +Oral Composition III.+[Footnote: Oral compositions should be continued throughout the course. A few minutes may be profitably used once or twice each week in having each member of the class stand before the class and relate briefly some incident which he has witnessed since the last meeting of the class. Exercises like those on page 53 also will furnish opportunities for oral work.]--_Relate to the class some personal incident suggested by one of the following subjects_:-- 1. A day with my cousin. 2. Caught in the act. 3. A joke on me. 4. My peculiar mistake. 5. My experience on a farm. 6. My experience in a strange Sunday school. 7. What I saw when I was coming to school. (In preparation for this exercise, consider the point of your story. What must you tell first in order to enable the hearers to understand the point? Can you say anything that will make them want to know what the point is without really telling them? Can you lead up to it without too long a delay? Can you stop when the point has been made?) +8. Theme Writing and Correcting.+--Any written exercise, whether long or short, is called a theme throughout this book. Just as one learns to skate by skating, so one learns to write by writing; therefore many themes will be required. Since the clear expression of thought is one of the essential characteristics of every theme, theme correction should be primarily directed to improvement in clearness. The teacher will need to assist in this correction, but the really valuable part is that which you do for yourself. After you leave school you will need to decide for yourself what is right and what is best, and it is essential that you now learn how to make such decisions. To aid you in acquiring a habit of self-correction, questions or suggestions follow the directions for writing each theme. In Theme I you are to express clearly to others something that is already clear to you. +Theme I.+-_Write a short theme on one of the subjects that you have used for an oral composition._ (After writing this theme, read it aloud to yourself. Does it read smoothly? Have you told what actually happened? Have you told it so that the hearers will understand you? Have you said what you meant to say? Consider the introduction. Has the story a point?) +9. The Conclusion.+--Since the point of a story marks the climax of interest, it is evident that the conclusion must not be long delayed after the point has been reached. If the story has been well told, the point marks the natural conclusion, and a sentence or two will serve to bring the story to a satisfactory end. If a suitable ending does not suggest itself, it is better to omit the conclusion altogether than to construct a forced or flowery one. Notice the conclusion of the incident of the Civil War related on page 18. +Theme II.+-_Write a short theme suggested by one of the following subjects:_-- 1. A school picnic. 2. A race. 3. The largest fire I have seen. 4. A skating accident. 5. A queer mistake. 6. An experience with a tramp. (Correct with reference to meaning and clearness. Consider the introduction; the point; the conclusion.) +10. Observation of Actions.+--Many of our most interesting experiences arise from observing the actions of others. A written description of what we have observed will gain in interest to the reader, if, in addition to telling what was done, we give some indication of the way in which it was done. A list of tools a carpenter uses and the operations he performs during the half hour we watch him, may be dull and uninteresting; but our description may have an added value if it shows his manner of working so that the reader can determine whether the carpenter is an orderly, methodical, and rapid worker or a mere putterer who is careless, haphazard, and slow. Two persons will perform similar actions in very different ways. Our description should be so worded as to show what the differences are. +Theme III.+--_Write a theme relating actions._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. A mason, blacksmith, painter, or other mechanic at work. 2. How my neighbor mows his lawn. 3. What a man does when his automobile breaks down. 4. Describe the actions of a cat, dog, rabbit, squirrel, or other animal. 5. Watch the push-cart man a half-hour and report what he did. (Have you told exactly what was done? Can you by the choice of suitable words show more plainly the way in which it was done? Does this theme need to have an introduction? A point? A conclusion?) +11. Selection of Details.+--You are at present concerned with telling events that actually happen; but this does not mean that you need to include everything that occurs. If you wish to tell a friend about some interesting or exciting incident at a picnic, he will not care to hear everything that took place during the day. He may listen politely to a statement of what train you took and what you had in your lunch basket, but he will be little interested in such details. In order to maintain interest, the point of your story must not be too long delayed. Brevity is desirable, and details that bear little relation to the main point, and that do not prepare the listener to understand and appreciate this point, are better omitted. +Theme IV.+--_Write about something that you have done. Use any of the following subjects, or one suggested by them:_-- 1. My first hunt. 2. Why I was tardy. 3. My first fishing trip. 4. My narrow escape. 5. A runaway. 6. What I did last Saturday. (Read the theme aloud to yourself. Does it read smoothly? Have you said what you meant to say? Have you expressed it clearly? Consider the introduction; the point; the conclusion. Reject unnecessary details.) +12. Order of Events.+--The order in which events occur will assist in establishing the order in which to relate them. If you are telling about only one person, you can follow the time order of the events as they actually happened; but if you are telling about two or more persons who were doing different things at the same time, you will need to tell first what one did and then what another did. You must, however, make it clear to the reader that, though you have told one event after the other, they really happened at the same time. In the selection below notice how the italicized portions indicate the relation in time that the different events bear to one another. At the beach yesterday a fat woman and her three children caused a great commotion. They had rigged themselves out in hired suits which might be described as an average fit, for that of the mother was as much too small as those of the children were too large. They trotted gingerly out into the surf, wholly unconscious that the crowd of beach loungers had, for the time, turned their attention from each other to the quartet in the water. By degrees the four worked out farther and farther until a wave larger than usual washed the smallest child entirely off his feet, and caused the mother to scream lustily for help. The people on the beach started up, and two or three men hastened to the rescue, but their progress was impeded by the crowd of frightened girls and women _who were scrambling and splashing towards the shore_. The mother's frantic efforts to reach the little boy were rendered ineffectual by the two girls, _who at the moment of the first alarm had been strangled_ by the salt water and _were now clinging_ desperately to her arms and _attempting_ to climb up to her shoulders. _Meanwhile_, the lifeboat man was rowing rapidly towards the scene, but it seemed to the onlookers _who had rushed to the platform railing_ that he would never arrive. _At the same time_ a young man, _who had started from the diving raft some time before_, was swimming towards shore with powerful strokes. He _now_ reached the spot, caught hold of the boy, and lifted him into the lifeboat, which had _at last_ arrived. Such expressions as _meanwhile, in the meantime, during, at last, while_, etc., are regularly used to denote the kind of time relations now under discussion. They should be used when they avoid confusion, but often a direct transition from one set of actions to another can be made without their use. Notice also the use of the relative clause to indicate time relations. +Theme V.+-_Write a short theme, using some one of the subjects named under the preceding themes or one suggested by them. Select one which you have not already used._ (Have you told enough to enable the reader to follow easily the thread of the story and to understand what you meant to tell? If your theme is concerned with more than one set of activities, have you made the transition from one to another in such a way as to be clear to the reader? Have you expressed the transitions with the proper time relations? What other questions should you ask yourself while correcting this theme?) SUMMARY 1. There is a pleasure to be derived from the expression of ideas. 2. There are three sources of ideas: experience, imagination, language. 3. Ideas gained from experience may be advantageously used for composition purposes because-- _a._ They are interesting. _b._ They are your own. _c._ They are likely to be clear and definite. _d._ They offer free choice of language. 4. The two essentials of expression are-- _a._ To say what you mean. _b._ To say it clearly. 5. A story should be told so as to arouse and maintain interest. Therefore,-- _a._ The introduction usually tells when, where, who, and why. _b._ Every story worth telling has a point. _c._ Only such details are included as are essential to the development of the point. _d._ The conclusion is brief. The story comes to an end shortly after the point is told. 6. Care must be taken to indicate the time order, especially when two or more events occur at the same time. 7. The correction of one's own theme is the most valuable form of correction. II. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS FURNISHED BY IMAGINATION +13. Relation of Imagination to Experience.+--All ideas are based upon and spring from experience, and the imagination merely places them in new combinations. For the purpose of this book, however, it is convenient to distinguish those themes that relate real events as they actually occurred from those themes that relate events that did not happen. That body of writing which we call literature is largely composed of works of an imaginative character, and for this reason it has sometimes been carelessly assumed that in order to write one must be possessed of an excellent imagination. Such an assumption loses sight of the fact that imaginative writings cover but one small part of the whole field. The production of literature is the business of a few, while every one has occasion every day to express ideas. It is evident that by far the greater part of the ideas we are called upon to express do not require the use of the imagination, but exercises in writing themes of an imaginative character are given here because there is pleasure in writing such themes and because practice in writing them will aid us in stating clearly and effectively the many ideas arising from our daily experiences. +14. Advantages and Disadvantages of Imaginative Theme Writing.+--Ideas furnished by the imagination are no less your own than are those furnished by experience, and the same freedom in the choice of language prevails. Such ideas are, however, not likely to be so clear and definite. At the time of their occurrence they do not make so deep and vital an impression upon you. If not recorded as they occur, they can seldom be recalled in the original form. Even though you attempt to write these imaginary ideas as you think them, you can and do change and modify them as you go along. This lack of clearness and permanent form, while it seems to give greater freedom, carries with it disadvantages. In the first place the ideas are less likely to be worth recording, and in the second place it is more difficult to give them a unity and directness of statement that will hold the attention and interest of the reader until the chief point is reached. +15. Probability.+--Not everything that the imagination may furnish is equally worth expressing. If you choose to write about something for which imagination supplies the ideas, you may create for yourself such ideas as you wish. Their order of occurrence and their time and place are not determined by outward events, but solely by the mind itself. The events are no longer real and actual, but may be changed and rearranged without limit. An imaginative series of events may conform closely to the real and probable, or it may be manifestly improbable. Which will be of greater interest will depend upon the reader, but it will be found that the story which comes nearest to reality is most satisfactory. In relating fairy tales we confessedly attempt to tell events not possible in the real world, but in relating tales of real life, however imaginary, we should tell the events so that everything seems both possible and probable. An imaginative story, in which the persons seem to be real persons who do and say the things that real persons do and say, will be found much more satisfactory than a story that depends for its outcome on something manifestly impossible. He who really does the best in imaginative writing is the one who has most closely observed the real events of everyday life, and states his imaginary events so that they seem real. +Theme VI.+--_Write a short theme, using one of the subjects below. You need not tell something that actually happened, but what you tell should be so told that your readers will think it might have happened._ 1. A trip in a sailboat. 2. The travels of a penny. 3. How I was lost. 4. A cat's account of a mouse hunt. 5. The mouse's account of the same hunt. 6. My experience with a burglar. 7. The burglar's story. +16. Euphony.+--Besides clearness in a composition there are other desirable qualities. To one of these, various names have been applied, as "euphony," "ease," "elegance," "beauty," etc. Of two selections equally clear in meaning one may be more pleasing than the other. One may seem harsh and rough, while the other flows along with a satisfying ease and smoothness. If the thought that is in our mind fails to clothe itself in suitable language and appropriate figures, we can do little by conscious effort toward improving the beauty of the language; but by avoiding choppy sentences and inharmonious combinations of words and phrases, we may remove from our compositions much that is harsh and rough. That quality which we call ease or euphony is better detected by the ear than by the eye, and for this reason it has been suggested that you read each theme aloud to yourself before presenting it to the class. Such a reading will assist you to determine whether you have made your meaning clear and to eliminate some of the more disagreeable combinations. +17. Variety.+--Of the many elements which affect the euphony of a theme none is more essential than variety. The constant repetition of the same thing grows monotonous and distasteful, while a pleasing variety maintains interest and improves the story. For the sake of this variety we avoid the continual use of the same words and phrases, substituting synonyms and equivalent expressions if we have need to repeat the same idea many times. Most children begin every sentence of a story with "and," or perhaps it is better to say that they conclude many sentences with "and-uh," leaving the thought in suspense while they are trying to think of what to say next. High school pupils are not wholly free from this habit, and it is sometimes retained in their written work. This excessive use of _and_ needs to be corrected. An examination of our language habits will show that nearly every one has one or more words which he uses to excess. A professor of rhetoric, after years of correcting others, discovered by underscoring the word _that_ each time it occurred in his own writing that he was using it twice as often as necessary. _Got_ is one of the words used too frequently, and often incorrectly. EXERCISES 1. In the following selection notice how each sentence begins. Compare it with one of your own themes. I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my woodpile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, and the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with each other. Having once got hold, they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants; that it was not a _duellum_, but a _bellum_,--a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and the dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed--the only battlefield I ever trod while the battle was raging.... On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.--Thoreau. 2. Examine one of your own themes. If some word occurs frequently, underscore it each time, and then substitute words or expressions for it in as many places as you can. If necessary, reconstruct the sentences so as to avoid using the word in some cases. Notice how these substitutions give a variety to your expression and improve the euphony of your composition. Theme VII.--_Write a short story suggested by one of the following subjects:_-- 1. The trout's revenge. 2. A sparrow's mistake. 3. A fortunate shot. 4. The freshman and the professor. 5. What the bookcase thought about it. (Correct with reference to meaning and clearness. Cross out unnecessary _ands_. Consider the beginnings of the sentences. Can you improve the euphony by a different choice of words?) 18. Sentence Length.--Euphony is aided by securing a variety in the length of sentences. In endeavoring to avoid the excessive use of _and_, some pupils obtain results illustrated by the following example:-- Jean passed through the door of the church. He saw a child sitting on one of the stone steps. She was fast asleep in the midst of the snow. The child was thinly clad. Her feet, cold as it was, were bare. A theme composed wholly of such a succession of short sentences is tedious. Especially when read aloud does its monotony become apparent. Though the thought in each sentence is complete, the effect is not satisfactory to the reader, because the thought of the whole does not come to him as fast as his mind can act. Such an arrangement of sentences might be satisfactory to young children, because it would agree with their habits of thought; but as one grows in ability to think more rapidly, he finds that longer and more complicated sentences best express his thoughts and are best understood by those for whom he writes. We introduce sentences of different length and different structure, because they more clearly express the thought of the whole and state it in a form more in accordance with the mental activity of the hearer. When we have done this, we at the same time secure a variety that avoids monotony. In attempting to avoid a series of short sentences, care should be taken not to go to the other extreme. Sentences should not be overloaded. Too many adjectives or participles or subordinate clauses will render the meaning obscure. The number of phrases and clauses that may safely be introduced will be determined by the ability of the mind to grasp the meaning readily and accurately. It is sometimes quite as important to separate a long sentence into shorter ones as it is to combine short ones into those of greater length. Notice in the following selection the different ways in which several ideas have been brought into the same sentence without rendering the meaning obscure:-- Loki made his way across a vast desert moorland, and came, after three days, into the barren hill country and among the rugged mountains of the South. There an earthquake had split the rocks asunder, and opened dark and bottomless gorges, and hollowed out many a low-walled cavern, where the light of day was never seen. Along deep, winding ways, Loki went, squeezing through narrow crevices, creeping under huge rocks, and gliding through crooked clefts, until he came at last into a great underground hall, where his eyes were dazzled by a light that was stronger and brighter than the day; for on every side were glowing fires, roaring in wonderful little gorges, and blown by wonderful little bellows. +Theme VIII.+--_Write a story suggested by one of the following subjects:_-- 1. School in the year 2000. 2. The lost door key. 3. Our big bonfire. 4. Kidnapped. 5. A bear hunt. 6. A mistake in the telegram. 7. How Fido rescued his master. (Can you render the meaning more clear by uniting short sentences into longer ones, or by separating long sentences into shorter ones? Can you omit any _ands_? How many of the sentences begin with the same word? Can you change any of those words? Pick out the words which show the subordinate relation of some parts to others. Do all of the incidents in your story seem probable?) +19. Conversation.+--It must not be inferred from the preceding section that short sentences are never to be used. They are quite as necessary as long ones, and in some cases, such as the portraying of strong emotion, are more effective. Even a succession of short sentences may be used with good results to describe rapid action. In conversation, also, sentences are generally short, and often grammatically incomplete, though they may be understood by the hearer. Sometimes this incompleteness is justified by the idiom of the language, but more often it is the result of carelessness on the part of the speaker. The hearer understands what is said either because he knows about what to expect, or because the expression is a familiar one. Such carelessness not only causes the omission of words grammatically necessary, but brings about the incorrect pronunciation of words and their faulty combination into sentences. You speak much more often than you write. Your habits of speech are likely to become permanent and your errors of speech will creep into your written work. It is important therefore that you watch your spoken language. Occasions will arise when the slang expressions that you so freely use will seem inappropriate, and it will be unfortunate indeed if you find that you have used the slang so long that you have no other words to take their place. An abbreviated form of _gymnasium_ or of _mathematics_ may not attract attention among your schoolmates, but there are circles where such abbreviations are not used. By watching your own speech you will find that some incorrect forms are very common. Improvement can be made by giving your attention to one of them, such as the use of _guess_, or of _got_, or of _don't_ and _doesn't_. In making a written report of conversation you should remember that short sentences predominate. A conversation composed of long sentences would seem stilted and made to order. What each person says, however short, is put into a separate division and indented. Explanatory matter accompanying the conversation is placed with the spoken part to which it most closely relates. Notice the indentations and the use of quotation marks in several printed reports of conversation. +20. Ideas from Pictures.+--If you look at a picture and then attempt to tell some one else what you see, you will express ideas gained by experience. A picture may, however, cause a very different set of ideas to arise. Look at the picture on page 38. Can you imagine the circumstances that preceded the situation shown by the picture? Or again, can you not begin with that situation and imagine what would be done next? If you write out either of the series of events, the theme, though suggested by the picture, will be composed of ideas furnished by the imagination. In the writing of a story suggested by a picture, the situation given in the picture should be made the point of greatest interest, and should be accounted for by relating a series of events supposed to have preceded it. +Theme IX.+--_Write a story that will account for the condition shown in the picture on page 38._ (Correct with reference to clearness and meaning. Do you need to change the sentence length either for the sake of clearness or for the sake of variety? Cross out unnecessary _ands_. Underscore _got_ and _then_ each time you have used them. Can the reader follow the thread of your story to its chief point?) [Illustration] +21. Vocabulary.+--A word is the symbol of an idea, and the addition of a word to one's vocabulary usually means that a new idea has been acquired. The more we see and hear and read, the greater our stock of ideas becomes. As our life experiences increase, so should our supply of words increase. We may have ideas without having the words with which to express them, and we may meet with words whose meanings we do not know. In either case there is chance for improvement. When you have a new idea, find out how best to express it, and when you meet with a new word, add it to your vocabulary. It is necessary to distinguish between our reading vocabulary and our writing vocabulary. There are many words that belong only to the first. We know what they mean when we meet them in our reading, but we do not use them in our writing. Our speaking vocabulary also differs from that which we employ in writing. We use words and phrases on paper that seldom appear in our speech, and, on the other hand, many of the words that we speak do not appear in our writing. There is, however, a constant shifting of words from one to another of these three groups. When we meet an unknown word, it usually becomes a part of our reading vocabulary. Later it may appear in our written work, and finally we may use it in speaking. We add a word to our reading vocabulary when we determine its meaning, but _we must use it_ in order to add it to our writing and speaking vocabulary. A conscious effort to aid in this acquisition of words is highly desirable. A limited vocabulary indicates limited ideas. If one is limited to _awfully_ in order to express a superlative; if his use of adjectives is restricted to _nice, jolly, lovely_, and _elegant;_ if he must always _abominate_ and never _abhor_, _detest, dislike_, or _loathe;_ if he can only _adore_ and not _admire, respect, revere_, or _venerate_,--then he has failed, indeed, to know the possibilities and beauties of English. Such a language habit shows a mind that has failed to distinguish between ideas. The best way to study the shades of meaning and the choice of words is in the actual production of a theme wherein there is need to bring out these differences in meaning by the use of words; but some help may be gained from a formal study of synonyms and antonyms and of the distinction in use and meaning between words which are commonly confused with each other. For this purpose such exercises are given in the Appendix. +22. Choice of Words.+--Even though our words may express the proper meaning, the effect may not be a desirable one unless we use words suited to the occasion described and to the person writing. Pupils of high school age know the meaning of many words which are too "bookish" for daily use by them. Edward Everett Hale might use expressions which would not be suitable for a freshman's composition. Taste and good judgment will help you to avoid the unsuitable or grandiloquent. The proper selection of words not only implies that we shall avoid the wrong word, but also that we shall choose the right one. A suitable adjective may give a clearer image than is expressed by a whole sentence; a single verb may tell better how some one acted than can be told by a lengthy explanation. Since narration has to do with action, we need in story telling to be especially careful in our choice of verbs. What can you say of the suitability of the words in the following selection, taken from an old school reader? _Mrs. Lismore._ You are quite breathless, Charles; where have you been running so violently? _Charles._ From the poultry yard, mamma, where I have been diverting myself with the bravado of the old gander. I did not observe him till he came toward me very fiercely, when, to induce him to pursue me, I ran from him. He followed, till, supposing he had beaten me, he returned to the geese, who appeared to receive him with acclamations of joy, cackling very loud, and seeming actually to laugh, and to enjoy the triumph of their gallant chief. _Emma._ I wish I had been with you, Charles; I have often admired the gambols of these beautiful birds, and wondered how they came by the appellation of _silly_, which is generally bestowed on them. I remember Martha, our nursery maid, used often to call me a _silly goose_. How came they to deserve that term, mamma? they appear to me to have as much intelligence as any of the feathered tribe. _Mrs. Lismore._ I have often thought with you, Emma, and supposed that term, like many others, misapplied, for want of examining into the justice of so degrading an epithet. +23. Improbability.+--Up to this point we have been concerned with relating events that _could_ exist, though we knew that they _did_ not. We may, however, imagine a series of events that are manifestly impossible. There is a pleasure in inventing improbable stories, and if we know from the beginning that they are to be so, we enjoy listening to them. Such tales are more satisfactory to young persons than to older ones, as is shown by our declining interest in fairy stories as we grow older. By limiting the improbability to a part of the story, it is possible to give an air of reality to the whole. Though the conditions described in a story about a trip to the moon might be wholly impossible, yet the reader for the time being might feel that the events were actually happening if the characters in the story were acting as real men would act under similar circumstances. In stories such as those of Thompson-Seton, where the animals are personified, the impossibilities are forgotten, because the actions and situations are so real. In fairy stories and similar tales neither characters nor actions are in any way limited by probability. +Theme X.+--_Write a short story suggested by one of the subjects below. Make either the characters or their surroundings seem real._ 1. A week in Mars. 2. Exploring the lake bottom. 3. The cat's defense of her kittens. (_a_) As told by the cat. (_b_) As told by the dog. 4. How the fox fooled the hound. 5. Diary of a donkey. 6. A biography of Jack Frost. (Correct with reference to meaning and clearness and two other points to be assigned by the teacher.) +24. How to Increase One's Vocabulary.+--In your daily work do what you can to add words to your reading vocabulary, and especially to increase your writing vocabulary. In the conversation of others and in reading you will meet with many new words, and you should attempt to make them your own. To do this, four things must be attended to:-- 1. _Spelling._ Definite attention should be given to each new word until its form both as written and as printed is indelibly stamped upon the mind. In your general reading and in each of the subjects that you will study in the high school you will meet unfamiliar words. It is only by mastering the spelling of each new word _when you first meet it_ that you can insure yourself against future chagrin from bad spelling. A part of the time in each high school subject may well be devoted to the mastering of the words peculiar to that subject. 2. _Pronunciation._ The complete acquisition of a word includes its pronunciation. In reading aloud and in speaking, we have need to know it, and faulty pronunciation is considered an indication of lack of culture. 3. _Meaning._ This includes more than the ability to give the definition as found in the dictionary. It is possible to recite such definitions glibly without in reality knowing the meaning of the word defined. It is necessary to connect the word definitely and permanently in our mind with the idea for which it is the symbol and to be able to distinguish the idea clearly from others closely related to it. 4. _Use._ The actual use of a word is very important. If a word is to come into our speaking and writing vocabulary, we must use it. It is important that the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning be determined when you _first_ meet the word, and it is equally important that the word be _used_ soon and often. +Theme XI.+--_Write a short story suggested by one of the following subjects. It may be wholly improbable, if you choose._ 1. The good fairy. 2. Mary's luck. 3. The man in the moon. 4. The golden apple. 5. A wonderful fountain pen. 6. The goobergoo and the kantan. (Correct with reference to meaning and clearness and two other points to be assigned by the teacher.) SUMMARY 1. The clear expression of the ideas connected with our daily experiences is of greater importance to most of us than is the production of literature. 2. Ideas furnished by imagination may be advantageously used for composition purposes, because-- _a._ They are your own. _b._ They offer free choice of language. They are less desirable than those gained from experience, because-- _a._ They generally lack clearness and permanency. _b._ They are less likely to be worth recording. _c._ It is more difficult to give them that unity and directness of statement that will keep the interest of the reader. 3. An imaginative series of events may seem probable or improbable. He who most closely observes real life and states his imaginary events so that they seem real will succeed best in imaginative writing. 4. Euphony is a desirable quality in a composition. 5. Variety aids euphony. It is gained by-- _a._ Avoiding the repetition of the same words and phrases. _b._ Beginning our sentences in various ways. _c._ Using sentences of different lengths. 6. Conversation is usually composed of short sentences. 7. Pictures may suggest ideas suitable for use in compositions. 8. Our reading, writing, and speaking vocabularies differ. Each should be increased. With each new word attention should be given to-- _a._ Spelling. _b._ Pronunciation. _c._ Meaning. _d._ Use. III. EXPRESSION OF IDEAS ACQUIRED THROUGH LANGUAGE +25. Language as a Medium through Which Ideas are Acquired.+--We have been considering language as a means of expression, an instrument by which we can convey to others the ideas which come to us from experience and imagination. We shall now consider it from a different point of view. Language is not merely a means of expressing ideas, but it is also a medium through which ideas are acquired. It has a double use: the writer must put thought into language; the reader must get it out. A large part of your schooling has been devoted to acquiring ideas from language, and these ideas may be used for purposes of composition. _Since it is absolutely necessary to have ideas before you can express them_, it will be worth while to consider for a time how to get them from language. +26. Image Making.+--Read the following selection from Hawthorne and form a clear mental image of each scene:-- At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and venerable woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt the ax, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantic. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides around the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness, with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon.... A war party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantic around a keg of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs. Did you form clear mental images? Can you picture them all at the same time, or must you turn your attention from one image to another? The formation of the proper mental images will be aided by making a persistent effort to create them. Many words do not cause us to form images; for example, _goodness, innocence, position, insurance_; but when the purpose of a word is to set forth an image, we should take care to get the correct one. In this the dictionary will not always help us. We must distinguish between the ability to repeat a definition and the power to form an accurate image of the thing defined. The difficulty of forming correct images by the use of dictionary definitions is so great that the definitions are frequently accompanied by pictures. EXERCISES Notice the different mental images that come to you as you read each of the following selections. Distinguish words that cause images to arise from those that do not. 1. Before these fields were shorn and tilled, Full to the brim our rivers flowed; The melody of waters filled The fresh and boundless wood; And torrents dashed, and rivulets played, And fountains spouted in the shade. --Bryant: _An Indian at the Burial Place of his Fathers_. 2. At that moment the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the driftwood. Heyward felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of the scout and Uncas. When their foes, who leaped over the black rocks that divided them, with long bounds, uttering the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the rifle of Hawkeye slowly rose among the shrubs and poured out its fatal contents. The foremost Indian bounded like a stricken deer and fell headlong among the clefts of the island. --Cooper: _Last of the Mohicans_. 3. The towering flames had now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies, one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the courtyard. The vanquished of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighboring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky red. The maniac figure of the Saxon Ulrica was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chosen, tossing her arms abroad with wild exaltation as if she reigned empress of the conflagration which she had raised. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gave way and she perished in the flames which had consumed her tyrant. --Scott: _Ivanhoe_. 4. Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. --Longfellow: _The Village Blacksmith_. 5. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door; "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door-- Only this, and nothing more." --Edgar A. Poe: _The Raven_. 6. Where with black cliffs the torrents toil, He watch'd the wheeling eddies boil, Till, from their foam, his dazzled eyes Beheld the River Demon rise; The mountain mist took form and limb Of noontide hag or goblin grim. --Scott: _Lady of the Lake_. 7. On nearer approach he was still more surprised at the singularity of the stranger's appearance. He was a short, square-built old fellow, with thick, bushy hair and a grizzled beard. His dress was of the antique Dutch fashion--a cloth jerkin strapped around the waist--several pairs of breeches, the outer ones of ample volume, decorated with rows of buttons down the sides and bunches at the knees. He bore on his shoulder a stout keg that seemed full of liquor, and made signs for Rip to approach and assist him with his load. --Washington Irving: _Rip Van Winkle_. +27. Complete and Incomplete Images.+--Some sentences have for their purpose the presentation of an image, but in order to form that image correctly and completely, we must be familiar with the words used. If an unfamiliar word is introduced, the mind may omit entirely the image represented, or may substitute some other for it. Notice the image presented by this sentence from Henry James: "Her dress was dark and rich; she had pearls around her neck and an old rococo fan in her hand." If the meaning of _rococo_ is unknown to you, the image which you form will not be exactly the one that Mr. James had in mind. The pearls and the dress may stand out clearly in your image, but the fan will be lacking or indistinct. The whole may be compared to a photograph of which a part is blurred. If your attention is directed to the fan, you may recall the word _rococo_, but not the image represented by it. If your attention is not called to the fan, the mind is satisfied with the indistinct image, or substitutes for it an image of some other fan. Such an image is therefore either incomplete or inaccurate. An oath in court provides that we shall "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," but, in forming images, it is not always possible to hold our minds to such exactness. We are prone to picture more or less than the words convey. In fact, in some forms of prose, and often in poetry, the author purposely takes advantage of this habit of the mind and wishes us to enlarge with creations of our own imagination the bare image that his words convey. Such writing, however, aims to give pleasure or to arouse our emotions. It calls out something in the reader even more strongly than it sets forth something in the writer. This suggestiveness in writing will be considered later, but for the present it will be well for you to bear in mind that most language has for its purpose the exact expression of a definite idea. Much of the failure in school work arises from the careless substitution of one image for another, and from the formation of incomplete and inaccurate images. EXERCISES _A._ Make a list of the words in the following selections whose meanings you need to look up in order to make the images exact and complete. Do not attempt to memorize the language of the definition, but to form a correct image. 1. The sun stared brazenly down on a gray farmhouse, on ranges of whitewashed outbuildings, and on a goodly array of dark-thatched ricks. 2. In his shabby frieze jacket and mud-laden brogans, he was scarcely an attractive object. 3. In a sunlit corner of an old coquina fort they came suddenly face to face with a familiar figure. 4. Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country seat. Across its antique portico Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all: "Forever--never! Never--forever!" --Longfellow: _The Old Clock on the Stairs_. 5. There was a room which bore the appearance of a vault. Four spandrels from the corners ran up to join a sharp cup-shaped roof. The architecture was rough, but very strong. It was evidently part of a great building. 6. The officer proceeded, without affecting to hear the words which escaped the sentinel in his surprise; nor did he again pause, until he had reached the low strand, and in a somewhat dangerous vicinity to the western water bastion of the fort. 7. She stood on the top step under the _porte-cochère_, on the extreme edge, so that the toes of her small slippers extended a little over it. She bent forward, and then tipped back on the high, exiguous heels again. 8. Before the caryatides of the fireplace, under the ancestral portraits, a valet moves noiselessly about, arranging the glistening silver service on the long table and putting in order the fruits, sweets, and ices. 9. No sooner is the heavy gate of the portal passed than one sees from afar among the leafage the court of honor, to which one comes along an alley decorated uniformly with upright square shafts like classic termae in stone and bronze. The impression of the antique lines is striking: it springs at once to the eyes, at first in this portico with columns and a heavy entablature, but lacking a pediment. _B._ Read again the selections beginning on page 46. Do you form complete images in every case? _C._ Notice in each of your lessons for to-day what images are incomplete. Bring to class a list of the words you would need to look up in order to form complete images. Do not include all the words whose meanings are not clear, but only those that assist in forming images. +Theme XII.+--_Form a clear mental image of some incident, person, or place. Write about it, using such words as will give your classmates complete and accurate images. The following may suggest a subject:_-- 1. A party dress I should like. 2. My room. 3. A cozy glen. 4. In the apple orchard. 5. Going to the fire. 6. The hand-organ man. 7. A hornets' nest. 8. The last inning. 9. An exciting race. (Consider what you have written with reference to the images which the _reader_ will form. Do you think that when the members of the class hear your theme, each will form the same images that you had in mind when writing? Notice how many of your sentences begin in the same way. Can you rewrite them so as to give variety?) +28. Reproduction of Images.+--If we were asked to tell about an accident which we had seen, we could recall the various incidents in the order of their occurrence. If the accident had occurred recently, or had made a vivid impression upon us, we could easily form mental images of each scene. If we had only read a description of the accident, it would be more difficult to recall the image; because that which we gain through language is less vitally a part of ourselves than is that which comes to us through experience. When called upon to reproduce the images suggested to us by language, our memory is apt to concern itself with the words that suggested the image, and our expression is hampered rather than aided by this remembrance. The author has made, or should have made, the best possible selection of words and phrases. If we repeat his language, we have but memory drill or copy work; and if we do not, we are limited to such second-class language as we may be able to find. Word memory has its uses, but it is less valuable than image memory. It is necessary to distinguish carefully between the images that a writer presents and the words that he uses. If a botany lesson should consist of a description of fifteen different leaves, a pupil deficient in image memory will attempt to memorize the language of the book. A better-trained pupil, on meeting such a term as _serrated_, will ask himself: "Have I ever seen such a leaf? Can I form an image of it?" If so, his only task will be to give the new name, _serrated_, to the idea that he already has. In a similar way he will form images for each of the fifteen leaves described in the lesson. The language of the book may help him form these images, but he will make no attempt to commit the language to memory. With him, "getting the lesson" means forming images and naming them, and reciting the lesson will be but talking about an image that he has clearly in mind. Try this in your own lessons. If we are called upon to reproduce the incidents and scenes of some story that has been read to us, our success will depend upon the clearness of the images that we have formed. Our efforts should be directed to making the images as definite and vivid as possible, and our memory will be concerned with the recalling of these images in their proper order, and not with the language that first caused them to appear. EXERCISES 1. Report orally some interesting incident taken from a book which you have recently read. Do not reread the story. Use such language as will cause the class to form clear mental images. 2. Report orally upon some chapter selected from Cooper's _Last of the Mohicans_ or Scott's _Ivanhoe_. 3. Read a portion of Scott's _Lady of the Lake_, and report orally what happened. 4. Report orally some incident that you have read about in a magazine. Select one that caused you to form images, and tell it so that the hearers will form like images. +Theme XIII.+--_Reproduce a story read to you by the teacher._ (Before writing, picture to yourself the scenes and recall the order of their occurrence. If it is necessary to condense, omit events of the least importance.) +29. Comparison.+--Writing which contains unfamiliar words fails to call up complete and definite images. It is often difficult to form the correct mental picture, even though the words in themselves are familiar. Definitions, explanations, and descriptions may cause us to understand correctly, but our understanding usually can be improved by means of a comparison. We can form an image of an object as soon as we know what it is like. If I wished you to form an image of an okapi, a lengthy description would give you a less vivid picture than the statement that it was a horselike animal, having stripes similar to those of a zebra. If an okapi were as well known to you as is a horse, the name alone would call up the proper image, and no comparison would be necessary. By means of it we are enabled to picture the unfamiliar. In this case the comparison is literal. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, our language becomes figurative, and usually takes the form of a simile or metaphor. Similes and metaphors are of great value in rendering thought clear. They make language forceful and effective, and they may add much to the beauty of expression. We may speak of an object as being like another, or as acting like another. If the comparison is imaginative rather than literal, and is directly stated, the expression is a simile. Similes are introduced by _like, as_, etc. He fought like a lion. The river wound like a serpent around the mountains. If two things are essentially different, but yet have a common quality, their _implied comparison_ is a metaphor. A metaphor takes the form of a statement that one is the other. "He was a lion in the fight." "The river wound its serpent course." Sometimes inanimate objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals are given the attributes of human beings. Such a figure is called personification, and is in fact a modified metaphor, since it is based upon some resemblance of the lower to the higher. This music crept by me upon the waters. Time is a very bankrupt, and owes more than he is worth to season. Nay, he's a thief, too; have you not heard men say, That time comes stealing on by night and day? --Shakespeare. +30. Use of Figures of Speech.+--The three figures of speech, simile, metaphor, and personification, are more frequently used than are the others. Figures of speech are treated in a later chapter, but some suggestions as to their use will be of value to beginners. 1. Never write for the purpose of using figures of speech. Nearly everything that we need to say can be well expressed in plain, bare English, and the ability to express our thoughts in this way is the essential thing. If a figure that adds to the force and clearness of your expression occurs to you, use it without hesitation. A figure may also add to the beauty of our expression. The examples to be found in literature are largely of this character. If well used, they are effective, but the beginner should beware of a figure that is introduced for decorative purposes only. An attempt to find figures of speech in ordinary prose writing will show how rarely they are used. 2. The figures should fit the subject in hand. Some comparisons are appropriate and some are not. If the writer is familiar with his subject and deeply in earnest, the appropriate figures will rise spontaneously in his mind. If they do not, little is gained by seeking for them. 3. The effectiveness of a comparison, whether literal or figurative, depends upon the familiarity of the reader with one of the two things compared. To say that a petrel resembled a kite would be of no value to one who knew nothing of either bird. Similarly a figure is defective if neither element of the comparison is familiar to the readers. 4. Suitable figures give picturesqueness and vivacity to language, but hackneyed figures are worse than none. 5. Elaborate and long-drawn-out figures, or an overabundance of short ones, should be avoided. 6. A figure must be consistent throughout. A comparison once begun must be carried through without change; mixing figures often produces results which are ridiculous. The "mixed metaphor" is a common blunder of beginners. This fault may arise either from confusing different metaphors in the same sentence, or from blending literal language with metaphorical. The following will serve to illustrate:-- 1. [Confused metaphor.] Let us pin our faith to the rock of perseverance and honest toil, where it may sail on to success on the wings of hope. 2. [Literal and figurative blended.] Washington was the father of his country and a surveyor of ability. 3. When the last awful moment came, the star of liberty went down with all on board. 4. The glorious work will never be accomplished until the good ship "Temperance" shall sail from one end of the land to the other, and with a cry of "Victory!" at each step she takes, shall plant her banner in every city, town, and village in the United States. 5. All along the untrodden paths of the future we see the hidden footprints of an unseen hand. 6. The British lion, whether it is roaming the deserts of India, or climbing the forests of Canada, will never draw in its horns nor retire into its shell. 7. Young man, if you have the spark of genius in you, water it. EXERCISES Are the images which you form made more vivid by the use of the figures in the following selections? 1. She began to screech as wild as ocean birds. 2. And when its force expended, The harmless storm was ended; And as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea-- 3. As a demon is hurled by an angel's spear, Heels over head, to his proper sphere-- Heels over head and head over heels,-- Dizzily down the abyss he wheels,-- So fell Darius. --J.T. Trowbridge. 4. In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point. --Hawthorne. 5. Poverty, treading close at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last. --Hawthorne. 6. Friendships begin with liking or gratitude--roots that can be pulled up. --George Eliot. 7. Nearing the end of the narrative, Ben paced up and down the narrow limits of the tent in great excitement, running his fingers through his hair, and barking out a question now and then. 8. A sky above, Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move. --Lowell. 9. In days of public commotion every faction, like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp followers, a useless and heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a defeat. --Macaulay. 10. It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. --Macaulay. 11. And close behind her stood Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men, Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, And labor. Each was like a Druid rock, Or like a spire of land that stands apart Cleft from the main and wall'd about with mews. --Tennyson. 12. But bland the smile that, like a wrinkling wind On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines. --Tennyson. 13. The rush of affairs drifts words from their original meanings, as ships drag their anchors in a gale, but terms sheltered from common use hold to their moorings forever. --Mill. +Theme XIV.+--_Write a story suggested by the picture on page 59 or by one of the following subjects:_-- 1. A modern fable. 2. The willow whistle. 3. How I baked a cake. 4. The delayed picnic. 5. The missing slipper. 6. A misdirected letter. 7. A ride on a raft. 8. The rescue of Ezekiel. 9. A railway experience. 10. A soldier's soldier. (Do you think the reader will form the images you wish him to form? Consider what you have written with reference to climax. (See Section 7.) Have you needed to use figures? If so, have you used them in accordance with the suggestions on page 55? If you have used the word _only_, is it placed so as to give the correct meaning?) +31. Determination of Meaning Requires More than Image Making.+--The emphasis laid upon image making should not lead to the belief that this is all that is necessary in order to determine what is meant by the language we hear or read. Image making is important, but much of our language is concerned with presenting ideas of which no mental pictures can be formed. [Illustration] This very paragraph will serve as an illustration of such language. Our understanding of language of this kind depends upon our knowledge of the meanings of words, upon our understanding of the relations between word groups, or parts of sentences, and especially upon our appreciation of the relations in thought that sentences bear to one another. Each of these will be discussed in the following pages. Later it will be necessary to consider the relations in thought existing among paragraphs. +32. Word Relations.+--In order to get the thought of a sentence, we must understand the relations that exist between the words and word groups (phrases and clauses) that compose it. If the thought is simple, and expressed in straightforward terms, we grasp it readily and without any conscious effort to determine these relations. If the thought is complex, the relations become more complicated, and before we are sure that we know what the writer intends to say it may be necessary to note with care which is the main clause and which are the subordinate clauses. In either case our acquiring the thought depends upon our understanding the relations between words and word groups. We may understand them without any knowledge of the names that have been applied to them in grammar, but a knowledge of the names will assist somewhat. These relations are treated in the grammar review in the Appendix and need not be repeated here. +33. Incomplete Thoughts.+--We have learned (Section 27) that the introduction of unfamiliar words may cause us to form incomplete images. When the language is not designed to present images, we may, in a similar way, fail to get its real meaning if we are unfamiliar with the words used. If you do not know the meaning of _fluent_ and _viscous_, you will fail to understand correctly the statement, "Fluids range from the peculiarly fluent to the peculiarly viscous." If we wish to think precisely what the writer intended us to think, we must know the meanings of the words he uses. Many of us are inclined to substitute other ideas than those properly conveyed by the words of the writer, and so get confused or incomplete or inaccurate ideas. The ability to determine exactly what images the writer suggests, and what ideas his language expresses, is the first requisite of scholarship and an important element of success in life. EXERCISES _A._ The first step in acquiring knowledge is to determine what it is that we do not know. Just which word or words in each of the following sentences keep you from understanding the full meaning of the sentence? Notice that a dictionary definition will not always make the meaning clear. 1. It is really more scientific to repeat a quotation from a political speech correctly, or to pass on a story undistorted, than it is to know of the rings of Saturn or the striation of diatoms. 2. The process of testing a hypothesis requires great caution in order to prevent mistakes. 3. The aërial foliage stem is the most favorable for studying stem structure. 4. Taken collectively, isotherms indicate the distribution of mean temperature over the region embraced in the map. 5. Vibrations of the membrane of the tympanum are "damped" by the ossicles of the middle ear, which also receive and pass on the auditory tremors to the membrane closing the oval window. 6. In the battle which followed, the mobile Roman legion, arranged in open order three ranks deep, proved its superiority over the massive Macedonian phalanx. 7. The narrow and dissected forms have been attributed to the scarcity of carbon dioxide and oxygen in the water. _B._ Make a list of words in your lessons in other subjects for to-day that you need to look up in order to understand the lessons. This should be done daily, whether assigned or not. 34. +Choice of Words Adapted to the Reader.+--Words familiar to the reader should be used. Since the reader's ability to understand the thought of a paragraph depends to some extent upon his understanding of the words employed, it is necessary for the writer to choose words that will be understood by those whom he addresses. Of course we cannot tell whether a particular word will be understood by our readers, but, in case there is doubt, it is well to substitute one that is more likely to be understood. When you have written anything, it is well to ask yourself the question, Have I used words with which _the reader_ is probably familiar? +Theme XV.+---_Write a theme about one of the following subjects, using words that you think will be understood by your readers:_-- 1. How we breathe. 2. How to make a kite. 3. The causes of the seasons. 4. Why wood floats on water. 5. The use of baking powder. 6. The difference between arithmetic and algebra. (Have you said what you meant to say? Have you used words that your reader will understand? Find your longest sentence. Is its meaning clear? Notice the short sentences. Should some of them be united into a longer one?) +35. Word Selection.+--There are many shades of meaning which differ but little, and a careful writer will select just the word that best conveys his thought. The reader needs to be no less careful in determining the exact meaning that the writer intends to convey. Exercises in synonyms are thus of double importance (Section 21). Another source of error, both in acquiring and expressing thought, arises from the confusion of similar words. Some similarity of spelling causes one word to be substituted for another. There are many words and expressions that are so often interchanged that some time may be spent with profit upon exercises in determining their correct usage. These usually consist of brief reports to the class that set forth the meanings of the words, show their uses, and illustrate their differences. In preparing such reports, determine the meaning of the words from as many sources as are available. The usual meaning can be determined from the dictionary. A fuller treatment is given in some dictionaries in a chapter on faulty diction. Additional material may be found in many of the text-books on rhetoric, and in special books treating of word usage. After you are sure that you know the correct use, prepare a report for the class that shall make that use clear to others. In the simplest form this will consist of definitions and sentences in which the words are correctly used. The following examples, handed in by pupils, will serve to illustrate such reports:-- 1. A _council_ is an assembly of persons convened for consultation or deliberation. _Counsel_ is used to indicate either (1) an opinion as the result of consultation or (2) a lawyer engaged to give advice or to act as advocate in court. Lewis furnishes the following example of the use of these two words: "The plaintiff's _counsel_ held a _council_ with his partners in law, and finally gave him as his best _counsel_ the advice that he should drop the suit; but, as Swift says, 'No man will take _counsel_, but every man will take money,' and the plaintiff refused to accept the advice unless the _counsel_ could persuade the defendant to settle the case out of court by paying a large sum." 2. The correct meaning of _transpire_ may perhaps be best understood by considering its derivations. It comes from _trans_, through, and _spiro_, to breathe, from which it gets its meaning, to escape gradually from secrecy. It is frequently used incorrectly in the sense of to happen, but both Webster and the Standard dictionary condemn this use of the word. The latter says that it is often so misused especially in carelessly edited newspapers, as in "Comments on the heart-rending disaster which transpired yesterday are unnecessary, but," etc. When _transpire_ is correctly used, it is not a synonym of _happen_. A thing that happened a year ago may transpire to-day, that is, it may "become known through unnoticed channels, exhale, as it were, through invisible pores like a vapor or a gas disengaging itself." Many things which happen in school, thus become known by being passed along in a semi-secret manner until nearly all know of them though few can tell just how the information was spread. _Transpire_ may properly be applied to such a diffusion of knowledge. +Theme XVI.+--_Report as suggested above on any one of the following groups of words:_-- 1. Allude, mention. 2. Beside, besides. 3. Character, reputation. 4. Degrade, demean, debase. 5. Last, latest, preceding. 6. Couple, pair. 7. Balance, rest, remainder. (Have you made clear the correct use of the words under discussion? Can you give examples which do not follow the dictionaries so closely as do the illustrative reports above?) NOTE.--Lists of words suitable for exercises similar to the above are given in the Appendix. The teacher will assign them to such an extent and at such times as seems desirable. One such lesson a week will be found profitable. +36. Sentence Relations.+--What we read or hear usually consists of several sentences written or spoken together. The meaning of any particular sentence may depend upon the sentence or sentences preceding. In order to determine accurately the meaning of the whole, we must understand the relation in thought that each sentence bears to the others. Notice the two sentences: "Guns are dangerous. Boys should not use them." Though the last sentence is independent, it gets its meaning from the first. In the following selection consider each sentence apart from the others. Notice that the meaning of the whole becomes intelligible only when the sentences are considered in their relations to each other. Once upon a time, a notion was started, that if all the people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronometers were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to be made on the great occasion. When the time came, everybody had his ears so wide open, to hear the universal ejaculation of Boo,--the word agreed upon,--that nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fiji Islands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never so still since the creation.--Holmes. Gutenberg did a great deal of his work in secret, for he thought it was much better that his neighbors should know nothing of what he was doing. So he looked for a workshop where no one would be likely to find him. He was now living in Strasburg, and there was in that city a ruined old building where, long before his time, a number of monks had lived. There was one room in the building which needed only a little repairing to make it fit to be used. So he got the right to repair the room and use it as his workshop. In all good writing we find a similar dependence in thought. Each sentence takes a meaning because of its relation to some other. The personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives, adverbial phrases indicating time or place, conjunctions, and such expressions as _certainly, however, on the other hand_, etc., are used to indicate more or less directly a relation in thought between the phrase or sentence in which they occur and some preceding one. If the reader cannot readily determine to what they refer, the meaning becomes obscure or ambiguous. The pronominal adjectives and the personal pronouns are especially likely to be used in such a way as to cause ambiguity. Care must be taken to use them so as to keep the meaning clear, and your own good sense will help you in this more than rules. Notice in your reading how frequently expressions similar to those mentioned above are used. +Theme XVII.+--_Write a theme suggested by one of the following subjects:_-- 1. The last quarter. 2. An excursion with the physical geography class. 3. What I saw while riding to town. 4. The broken bicycle. 5. An hour in the study hall. 6. Seen from my study window. (Are your sentences so arranged that the relation in thought is clear? Are the personal pronouns and pronominal adjectives used so as to avoid ambiguity? Does your story relate real events or imaginary ones? If imaginary events are related, have you made them seem probable?) +37. Getting the Main Thought.+--In many cases the relation in thought is not directly indicated, and we are left to determine it from the context, just as we decide upon the meaning of a word because of what precedes or follows it. In this case the meaning of a particular sentence may be made clear if we have in mind the main topic under discussion. Many pupils fail in recitations because they do not distinguish that which is more important from that which is less so. If a dozen pages of history are assigned, they cannot master the lesson because it is too long to be memorized, and they are not able to select the three or four things of importance with which it is really concerned. Thirty or forty minor details are jumbled together without any clear knowledge of the relations that they bear either to one another or to the main thoughts of the lesson. In the following selection but three things are discussed. Determine what they are, but not what is said about them. In all the ages the extent and value of flood plains have been increased by artificial means. Dikes or levees are built to regulate the spread and flow of the water and to protect the land from destructive floods. Dams and reservoirs are constructed for the storage of water, which is led by a system of canals and ditches to irrigate large tracts of land which would be otherwise worthless. By means of irrigation, the farmer has control of his water supply and is able to get larger returns than are possible where he depends upon the irregular and uncertain rainfall. It is estimated that in the arid regions of western United States there are 150,000 square miles of land which may be made available for agriculture by irrigation. Perhaps in the future the valley of the lower Colorado may become as productive as that of the Nile. Streams are the easiest routes of travel and commerce. A river usually furnishes from its mouth well up toward its source a smooth, graded highway, upon which a cargo may be transported with much less effort than overland. If obstructions occur in the form of rapids or falls, boat and cargo are carried around them. It is often easy to pass by a short portage or "carry" from one stream system across the divide to another. In regions which are not very level the easiest grades in every direction are found along the streams, and the main routes of land travel follow the stream valleys. In traversing a mountainous region, a railroad follows the windings of some river up to the crest of the divide, which it crosses through a pass, or often by a tunnel, and descends the valley of some stream on the other side. Man is largely indebted to streams for the variety and beauty of scenery. Running water itself is attractive to young and old. A landscape without water lacks its chief charm. A child instinctively finds its way to the brook, and the man seeks beside the river the pleasure and recreation which no other place affords. Streams have carved the surface of the land into an endless variety of beautiful forms, and a land where stream valleys are few or shallow is monotonous and tiresome. The most common as well as the most celebrated beauty of scenery in the world, from the tiny meanders of a meadow brook to the unequaled grandeur of the Colorado canyons, is largely due to the presence and action of streams. --Dryer: _Lessons in Physical Geography_. In the above selection we find that each group of sentences is related to some main topic. A more extended observation of good writing will give the same result. Men naturally think in sentence groups. A group of sentences related to each other and to the central idea is called a +paragraph.+ +38. Topic Statement.+--In the three paragraphs of the selection on page 67, notice that the first sentence in each tells what the paragraph is about. In a well-written paragraph it is possible to select the phrase or sentence that states the main thought. If such a sentence does not occur in the paragraph itself, one can be framed that will express clearly and concisely the chief idea of the paragraph. This brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of a paragraph is called the topic statement. In order to master the thought of what we read we must be able to select or to make the successive topic statements, and in order to express our own thoughts clearly we must write our paragraphs so that our readers may easily grasp the topic statement of each. When expressed in the paragraph, the topic statement may be a part of a sentence, a whole sentence, or it may extend through two sentences. It is usual to place the topic statement first, but it may be preceded by one or more introductory sentences, or even withheld until the end of the paragraph. For emphasis it may be repeated, though usually in a slightly different form. EXERCISES Determine the topic statements of the following paragraphs. If one is not expressed, make one. 1. No less valuable is the mental stimulus of play. The child is trained by it to quick perception, rapid judgment, prompt decision. His imagination cunningly suggests a thousand things to be done, and then trains the will and every power of body and mind in the effort to do them. The sports of childhood are admirably adapted to quicken the senses and sharpen the wits. Nature has effective ways in her school of securing the exercise which is needed to develop every mental and every bodily power. She fills the activity brimful of enjoyment, and then gives her children freedom, assured that they will be their own best teachers. --Bradley 2. Our Common Law comes from England, and originated there in custom. It is often called the unwritten law, because unwritten in origin, though there are now many books describing it. Its principles originated as habits of the people, five hundred, eight hundred, years ago, perhaps some of them back in the time when the half-savage Saxons landed on the shores of England. When the time came that the government, through its courts, punished the breach of a custom, from that time the custom was a law. And so the English people acquired these laws, one after another, just as they were acquiring at the same time the habits of making roads, using forks at table, manufacturing, meeting in Parliament, using firearms, and all the other habits of civilization. When the colonists came to America, they brought the English Common Law with them, not in a book, but in their minds, a part of their life, like their religion. --Clark: _The Government_. 3. Accuracy is always to be striven for but it can never be attained. This fact is only fully realized by scientific workers. The banker can be accurate because he only counts or weighs masses of metal which he assumes to be exactly equal. The Master of the Mint knows that two coins are never exactly equal in weight, although he strives by improving machinery and processes to make the differences as small as possible. When the utmost care is taken, the finest balances which have been constructed can weigh 1 lb. of a metal with an uncertainty less than the hundredth part of a grain. In other words, the weight is not accurate, but the inaccuracy is very small. No person is so stupid as not to feel sure that the height of a man he sees is between 3 ft. and 9 ft.; some are able by the eye to estimate the height as between 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 8 in.; measurement may show it to be between 5 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. 7 in., but to go closer than that requires many precautions. Training in observation and the use of delicate instruments thus narrow the limits of approximation. Similarly with regard to space and time, there are instruments with which one millionth of an inch, or of a second, can be measured, but even this approximation, although far closer than is ever practically necessary, is not accuracy. In the statement of measurements there is no meaning in more than six significant figures, and only the most careful observations can be trusted so far. The height of Mount Everest is given as 29,002 feet; but here the fifth figure is meaningless, the height of that mountain not being known so accurately that two feet more or less would be detected. Similarly, the radius of the earth is sometimes given as 3963.295833 miles, whereas no observation can get nearer the truth than 3963.30 miles. --Mill: _The Realm of Nature_. (Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons.) 4. The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all the inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial prejudices, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were for almost every practical purpose farther from Reading than they are now from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they are now from Vienna. --Macaulay: _History of England_. 5. He touched New England at every point. He was born a frontiersman. He was bred a farmer. He was a fisherman in the mountain brooks and off the shore. He never forgot his origin, and he never was ashamed of it. Amid all the care and honor of his great place here he was homesick for the company of his old neighbors and friends. Whether he stood in Washington, the unchallenged prince and chief in the Senate, or in foreign lands, the kingliest man of his time in the presence of kings, his heart was in New England. When the spring came, he heard far off the fife bird and the bobolink calling him to his New Hampshire mountains, or of the waves on the shore at Marshfield alluring him with a sweeter than siren's voice to his home by the summer sea. --George F. Hoar: _Daniel Webster_. 6. Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one; no long and lingering autumn, pompous with many-colored leaves and the glow of Indian summer. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Erelong the sun hardly rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day; only at noon they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red, fiery glow, as of a sunset, burns along the horizon and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells. --Longfellow: _Rural Life in Sweden_. 7. Extreme _busyness_, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they _cannot_ be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in the gold mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they fall into a stupid trance, with their eyes open. To see them, you would suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you would imagine they were paralyzed or alienated; and yet very possibly they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material amusement, and not one thought to rub against another while they wait for the train. Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is smoked out, the snuffbox is empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright on a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as being Success in Life. --Robert Louis Stevenson. (Copyright, by Charles Scribner's Sons.) _B._ Examine the themes which you have written. Does each paragraph have a topic statement? Have you introduced sentences which do not bear upon this topic statement? Are the paragraphs real ones treating of a single topic, or are they merely groups of sentences written together without any close connection in thought? +Theme XVIII.+--_State two or three advantages of public high schools over private boarding schools. Use each as a topic statement and develop it into a short paragraph._ (Add to each topic statement such sentences as will prove to a pupil of your own age that the topic statement states a real advantage. Include in each paragraph only that which bears upon the topic statement. Consider the definition of a paragraph on page 68. Does this definition apply to your paragraphs?) +39. Reproduction of the Thought of a Paragraph.+--Our ability to reproduce the thought of what we read will depend largely upon our ability to select the topic statements. In preparing a lesson for recitation it is evident that we must first determine definitely the topic statement of each paragraph. These may bear upon one general subject or upon different subjects. The three paragraphs on page 67 are all concerned with one subject, the uses of rivers. A pupil preparing to recite them would have in mind, when he went to class, an outline about as follows:-- General subject: The uses of rivers. First topic statement: The fertility of flood plains is improved by irrigation. Second topic statement: Streams are the easiest routes of travel and commerce. Third topic statement: Man is indebted to streams for beauty of scenery. While such a clear statement is the first step toward a proper understanding of the lesson, it is not enough. In order to understand thoroughly a topic statement, we need explanation or illustration. The idea is not really our own until we have thought about it in its relations to other knowledge already in our possession. In order to know whether you understand the topic statements, the teacher will ask you to discuss them. This may be done by telling what the writer said about them, or by giving thoughts and illustrations of your own, but best of all, by doing both. It is necessary, then, to know in what way the writer develops each topic statement. Read the following paragraph:-- The most productive lands in the world are flood plains. At every period of high water, a stream brings down mantle rock from the higher grounds, and deposits it as a layer of fine sediment over its flood plain. A soil thus frequently enriched and renewed is literally inexhaustible. In a rough, hilly, or mountainous country the finest farms and the densest population are found on the "bottom lands" along the streams. The flood plain most famous in history is that of the river Nile in Egypt. For a distance of 1500 miles above its mouth this river flows through a rainless desert, and has no tributary. The heavy spring rains which fall upon the highlands about its sources produce in summer a rise of the water, which overflows the valley on either side. Thus the lower Nile valley became one of the earliest centers of civilization, and has supported a dense population for 7000 years. The conditions in Mesopotamia, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, are similar to those along the lower Nile, and in ancient times this region was the seat of a civilization perhaps older than that of Egypt. The flood plains of the Ganges in India, and the Hoang in China, are the most extensive in the world, and in modern times the most populous. The alluvial valley of the Mississippi is extremely productive of corn, cotton, and sugar cane. --Dryer: _Lessons in Physical Geography_. Notice that the first sentence gives the topic statement, flood plains are productive. The second and third sentences tell why this is so, and the rest of the paragraph is given up to illustrations. In preparing this paragraph for recitation the pupil should have in mind an outline about as follows:-- Topic statement: Flood plains are the most productive lands in the world. 1. Reasons. 2. Examples: (_a_) Bottom lands. (_b_) Nile. (_c_) Tigris and Euphrates. (_d_) Ganges. (_e_) Hoang. (_f_) Mississippi. In order to make such an outline, the relative importance of the ideas in the paragraph must be mastered. A recitation that omitted the topic statement or the reasons would be defective, while one that omitted one or more of the examples might be perfect, especially if the pupil could furnish other examples from his own knowledge. The illustration about bottom lands is a general one, and should suggest specific cases that could be included in the recitation. The details in regard to the Nile might be included if they happened to be recalled at the time of the recitation, but even the omission of all mention of the Nile might not materially detract from the value of the recitation. The effort to remember minor details hinders real thought-getting power. It is better not to write this outline. The use of notes or written outlines at the time of the recitation soon establishes a habit of dependence that renders real scholarship an impossibility. With such an analysis of the thought clearly in mind, the pupil need not attempt to remember the language of the writer. EXERCISES _A._ Complete the partial outline given for the paragraph below. Which of the illustrations might be omitted from a recitation? For which can you furnish different illustrations? Mountain ranges have great influence upon climate, political geography, and commerce. Many of them form climatic boundaries. The Cordilleras of western America and the Scandinavian mountains arrest the warm, moist, western winds which rise along those great rock barriers to cooler altitudes, where their water vapor is condensed and falls as rain, so that the country on the windward side of the mountains is wet and that on the leeward side is dry. Mountain chains stretching east and west across central Asia protect the southern part of the continent from frigid arctic winds. The large winter tourist traffic of the Riviera is due to the mountains that shield this favored French-Italian coast from the north and northeast continental winds, giving it a considerably warmer winter's temperature than that of Rome, two and a half degrees farther south. As North America has no mountain barriers across the pathway of polar winds, they sweep southward even to the Gulf of Mexico and have twice destroyed Florida's orange groves within a decade. Mountain ranges are conspicuous in political geography because they are the natural boundary between many nations and languages, as the Pyrenees between France and Spain, the Alps between Austria and Italy, and the Himalayas between Tibet and India. Mountains sometimes guard nations from attack by the isolation they give, and therefore promote national unity. Thus the Swiss are among the few peoples in Europe who have maintained the integrity of their state. Commercially, mountains are of great importance as a source of water, which they store in snow, glaciers, and lakes. Snow and ice, melting slowly on the mountains, are an unfailing source of supply for perennial rivers, and thus promote navigation. Mountains are the largest source of water-power, which is more valuable than ever now that electricity is employed to transmit it to convenient centers for use in the industries. A large part of the mining machinery in the United States is run by water power. Switzerland, which has no coal, turns the wheels of its mills with water. Mountains supply most of the metals and minerals, and are therefore the scene of the largest mining industry. They are also among the greatest sources of forest wealth. Though the slopes are not favorable for agriculture they afford good pasturage, and the débris of the rocks washed into the valleys and plains by mountain torrents supplies good soil. Thus the Appalachians have been worn down to a comparatively low level, and the soil formed from their rock particles is the basis of large husbandry. The scenic attractions of many mountain regions is a source of large revenue. The Alps attract crowds of tourists, who spend about twenty million dollars a year in Switzerland and Austria, and give to many thousands of persons. --Adams: _Commercial Geography_. OUTLINE (to be completed) Mountain ranges have great influence upon-- I. Climate. Why? Where? _a, b,_ etc. II. Political geography. Why? Where? _a, b,_ etc. III. Commerce. Why? Where? _a, b,_ etc. _B._ Make an outline of the following paragraph:-- 1. The armor of the different classes was also accurately ordered by the law. The first class was ordered to wear for the defense of the body, brazen helmets, shields, and coats of mail, and to bear spears and swords, excepting the mechanics, who were to carry the necessary military engines and to serve without arms. The members of the second class, excepting that they had bucklers instead of shields and wore no coats of mail, were permitted to bear the same armor and to carry the sword and spear. The third class had the same armor as the second, excepting that they could not wear greaves for the protection of their legs. The fourth had no arms excepting a spear and a long javelin. The fifth merely carried slings and stones for use in them. To this class belonged the trumpeters and horn blowers. --Gilman: _Story of Rome_. _C._ In preparing your other lessons for to-day, make outlines of the paragraphs. +Theme XIX.+--_Reproduce the thought of some paragraph read to you by the teacher._ (Do not attempt to remember the language. Try to get the main thought of what is read and then write a paragraph which sets forth that same idea. Use different illustrations if you can.) NOTE.--This theme may be repeated as many times as seems desirable. +40. Importance of the Paragraph.+--Emphasis needs to be laid upon the importance of the paragraph. Our ability to express our thoughts clearly depends, to a large extent, upon our skill in constructing paragraphs. The writing of correct sentences is not sufficient. Though each of a series of sentences may be correct, they may, as a whole, say but little, and that very poorly; while another set of sentences, which cluster around some central idea, may set it forth most effectively. It is only by giving our sentence groups that unity of thought which combines them into paragraphs that we make them most effective. A well-constructed paragraph will make clear some idea, and a series of such paragraphs, related to each other and properly arranged, will set forth the sum of our thoughts on any subject. +41. Paragraph Length.+--The proper length of a paragraph cannot be determined by rule. Sometimes the thought to be presented will require several sentences; sometimes two or three will be sufficient. A single illustration may make a topic statement clear, or several illustrations may be required. The writer must judge when he has included enough to make his meaning understood, and must avoid including so much that the reader will become weary. Usually a paragraph that exceeds three hundred words will be found too long, or else it will contain more than one main idea, each of which could have been presented more effectively in a separate paragraph. +42. Indentation.+--In written and printed matter the beginning of a paragraph is indicated by an indentation. Indentation does not make a paragraph, but we indent because we are beginning a new paragraph. Indentation thus serves the same purpose as punctuation. It helps the reader to determine when we have finished one main thought and are about to begin another. Beginners are apt to use indentations too frequently. There are some special uses of indentation in letter writing, printed conversation, and other forms, but for ordinary paragraph division the indentation is determined by the thought, and its correct use depends upon clear thinking. Can the following selection be improved by reparagraphing? Outside in the darkness, gray with whirling snowflakes, he saw the wet lamps of cabs shining, and he darted along the line of hansoms and coupés in frantic search for his own. "Oh, there you are," he panted, flinging his suit case up to a snow-covered driver. "Do your best now; we're late!" And he leaped into the dark coupé, slammed the door, and sank back on the cushions, turning up the collar of his heavy overcoat. There was a young lady in the farther corner of the cab, buried to her nose in a fur coat. At intervals she shivered and pressed a fluffy muff against her face. A glimmer from the sleet-smeared lamps fell across her knees. Down town flew the cab, swaying around icy corners, bumping over car tracks, lurching, rattling, jouncing, while its silent occupants, huddled in separate corners, brooded moodily at their respective windows. Snow blotted the glass, melting and running down; and over the watery panes yellow light from shop windows played fantastically, distorting vision. Presently the young man pulled out his watch, fumbled for a match box, struck a light, and groaned as he read the time. At the sound of the match striking, the young lady turned her head. Then, as the bright flame illuminated the young man's face, she sat bolt upright, dropping the muff to her lap with a cry of dismay. He looked up at her. The match burned his fingers; he dropped it and hurriedly lighted another; and the flickering radiance brightened upon the face of a girl whom he had never before laid eyes on. "Good heavens!" he said, "where's my sister?" The young lady was startled but resolute. "You have made a dreadful mistake," she said; "you are in the wrong cab--" +Theme XX.+--_Write a theme using one of the subjects below:_-- 1. A personal incident. 2. The advantages and disadvantages of recesses. 3. Complete the story commenced in the selection just preceding. (Make a note of the different ideas you may discuss. Which are important enough to become topic statements? Which may be grouped together in one paragraph? In what order shall they occur? After your theme is written, consider the paragraphs. Does the definition apply to them? Are any of them too short or too long?) +43. Reasons for Studying Paragraph Structure.+--A knowledge of the way in which a paragraph is constructed will aid us in determining the thought it contains. There are several methods of developing paragraphs, and usually one of these is better suited than another to the expression of our thought. Attention given to the methods used by others will enable us both to understand better what we read, and to employ more effectively in our own writing that kind of paragraph which best expresses our thought. Hence we shall give attention to the more common forms of paragraph development. +44. Development by Giving Specific Instances.+--If you hear a general statement, such as, "Dogs are useful animals," you naturally think at once of some of the ways in which they are useful, or of some particular occasion on which a dog was of use. If a friend should say, "My dog, Fido, knows many amusing tricks," you would expect the friend to tell you some of them. A large part of our thinking consists of furnishing specific instances to illustrate general ideas which arise. Since the language we use is but the expression of the thoughts we have, it happens that many of our paragraphs are made up of general statements and the specific instances used to illustrate these statements. When the topic sentence is a general statement, we naturally seek to supply specific instances, and the writer will most readily make his meaning clear by furnishing such illustrations. Either one or many instances may be used. The object is to explain the topic statement or to prove its truth, and a good writer will use that number of instances which best accomplishes his purpose. In the following selection notice how the topic statement, set forth and repeated in the first part of the paragraph, is illustrated in the last part by means of several specific instances:-- Nine tenths of all that goes wrong in this world is because some one does not mind his business. When a terrible accident occurs, the first cry is that the means of prevention were not sufficient. Everybody declares we must have a new patent fire escape, an automatic engine switch, or a high-proof non-combustible sort of lamp oil. But a little investigation will usually show that all the contrivances were on hand and in good working order; the real trouble was that somebody didn't mind his business; he didn't obey orders; he thought he knew a better way than the way he was told; he said, "Just this once I'll take the risk," and in so doing, he made other people take the risk too; and the risk was too great. At Toronto, Canada, not long ago, a conductor, against orders, ran his train on a certain siding, which resulted in the death of thirty or forty people. The engineer of a mill, at Rochester, N.Y., thought the engine would stand a higher pressure than the safety valve indicated, so he tied a few bricks to the valve to hold it down; result--four workmen killed, a number wounded, and a mill blown to pieces. The _City of Columbus_, an iron vessel fitted out with all the means of preservation and escape in use on shipboard, was wrecked on the best-known portion of the Atlantic coast, on a moonlight night, at the cost of one hundred lives, because the officer in command took it into his head to save a few ship-lengths in distance by hugging the shore, in direct disobedience to the captain's parting orders. The best-ventilated mine in Colorado was turned into a death trap for half a hundred miners because one of the number entered with a lighted lamp the gallery he had been warned against. Nobody survived to explain the explosion of the dynamite-cartridge factory in Pennsylvania, but as that type of disaster almost always is due to heedlessness, it is probable that this instance is not an exception to the rule. --Wolstan Dixey: _Mind Your Business_. EXERCISES _A._ Which sentences make the general statements, and which furnish specific instances, in the following paragraphs? My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of maternal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy. Another traveler, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever pointed pencil, the cataract was made to thunder. In a little talk which we had together, he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as to widen the American falls, and contract those of the Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who declared that, upon the whole, the sight was worth looking at; there certainly was an immense water power here; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were succeeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his attention, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horseshoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down--down-- down--struck upon the fragment of the Table Rock. --Hawthorne: _My Visit to Niagara_. No wonder he learned English quickly, for he was ever on the alert--no strange word escaped him, no unusual term. He would say it over and over till he met a friend, and then demand its meaning. One day he came to me with a very troubled face. "Madame," he said, "please tell me why shall a man, like me, like any man, be a 'bluenose'?" "A what?" I asked. "A 'bluenose.' So he was called in the restaurant, but he seemed not offended about it. I have looked in my books; I can't find any disease of that name." With ill-suppressed laughter I asked, "Do you know Nova Scotia and Newfoundland?" "I hear the laugh in your voice," he said; then added, "Yes, I know both these places." "They are very cold and foggy and wet," I explained. But with brightening eyes he caught up the sentence and continued: "And the people have blue noses, eh? Ha! ha! Excuse me, then, but is a milksop a man from some state, or some country, too?" At tea some one used the word "claptrap." "What's that?" quickly demanded the student in our midst. "'Claptrap'--'clap' is so (he struck his hands together); 'trap' is for rats--what is, then, 'claptrap'?" "It is a vulgar or unworthy bid for applause," I explained. "Bah!" he contemptuously exclaimed. "I know him,--that cheap actor who plays at the gallery. He is, then, in English a 'clap-trapper,' is he not?" It was hardly possible to meet him without having a word or a term offered thus for explanation. --Clara Morris: _Alessandro Salvini_ ("McClure's"). _B._ Write six sentences which might be developed into paragraphs by giving specific instances. +Theme XXI.+--_Write a paragraph by furnishing specific instances for one of the following topic statements:_-- 1. Nine tenths of all that goes wrong in this world is because some one does not mind his business. 2. It requires a man of courage and perseverance to become a pioneer. 3. Even the wisest teacher does not always punish the boy who is most at fault. 4. It is impossible to teach a dog many amusing tricks. 5. Even so stupid a creature as a chicken may sometimes exhibit much intelligence. 6. Carelessness often leads into difficulty. 7. Our school clock must see many interesting things. 8. Our first impressions are not always our best ones. 9. I am a very busy lead pencil, for my duties are numerous. 10. Dickens's characters are taken from the lower classes of people. 11. Some portions of the book I am reading are very interesting. (Do your specific instances really illustrate the topic statement? Have you said what you intended to say? Can you omit any words or sentences? Have you used _and_ or _got_ unnecessarily?). +45. Development by Giving Details.+--Many general statements lead to a desire to know the details, and the writer may make his idea clearer by giving them. The statement, "The wedding ceremony was impressive," at once arouses a desire to know the details. If a friend should say, "I enjoyed my trip to the city," we wish him to relate that which pleased him. These details assist us in understanding the topic statement, and increase our interest in it. Notice in the paragraphs below how much is added to our understanding of the topic statement by the sentences that give the details:-- 1. I left my garden for a week, just at the close of a dry spell. A season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the transformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairly jumped forward. The tomatoes, which I left slender plants, eaten of bugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had become stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of them had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out of the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes--I will not speak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus. There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it had sprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my head. --Warner: _My Summer in a Garden_. 2. The wedding ceremony was solemn and beautiful, in the church on the estate. At the door of the palace stood the mother of the bride, to greet her return from the ceremony with the blessing, "May you always have bread and salt," as she served her from a loaf of black bread, with a salt cellar in the center, as is the Russian custom for prince and peasant. Just at this dramatic moment a courier dashed up with a telegram from the Czar and Czarina, and their gifts for the bride,--a magnificent tiara and necklace of diamonds. The other presents were already displayed in a magnificent room; but we saw their splendor through the glass of locked cases,--a precaution surprising to an Englishwoman. The large swan of forcemeat was the only reminder of boyar customs at the rather Parisian feast. Wine was served between the courses, with a toast; while guests in turn left their seats to express their sentiments to bride and groom, who stood to receive them. --Mary Louise Dunbar: _The Household of a Russian Prince_ ("Atlantic Monthly "). +Theme XXII.+--_Write a paragraph by giving details for one of the following topic statements:_-- 1. There were many interesting things on the farm where I spent my summer vacation. 2. The sounds heard in the forest at night are somewhat alarming to one who is not used to the language of the woods. 3. I am always much amused when the Sewing Circle meets at my mother's house. 4. Good roads are of advantage to farmers in many ways. 5. A baseball game furnishes abundant opportunity to exercise good judgment. 6. I remember well the first time that I visited a large city. 7. I shall never forget my first attempt at milking a cow. 8. The haunted house is a square, old-fashioned one of the colonial type. 9. A mouse suddenly entering the class room caused much disturbance. 10. A freshman's trials are numerous. (Do the details bear upon the main idea? If the paragraph is long and rambling, condense by omitting the least important parts. By changing the order of the sentences, can you improve the paragraph?) +46. Details Related in Time-Order.+--The experiences of daily life follow each other in time, and when we read of a series of events we at once think of them as having occurred in a certain time-order. To assist in establishing the correct time-order, the writer should generally state the details of his story in the order in which they occurred. The method of showing time relations for simultaneous events has been discussed in Section 11. If the narrative is of considerable length, it may be divided into paragraphs, each dealing with some particular stage of its progress. The time relations among the sentences within the paragraph and among the paragraphs themselves should be such that the reader may readily follow the thread of the story to its main point. Narrative paragraphs often do not have topic sentences. In the following selection from _Black Beauty_ notice how the time relations give unity of thought both to the paragraphs and to the whole selection:-- He hung my rein on one of the iron spikes, and was soon hidden among the trees. Lizzie was standing quietly by the side of the road, a few paces off, with her back to me. My young mistress was sitting easily, with a loose rein, humming a little song. I listened to my rider's footsteps until he reached the house, and heard him knock at the door. There was a meadow on the opposite side of the road, the gate of which stood open. As I looked, some cart horses and several young colts came trotting out in a very disorderly manner, while a boy behind was cracking a great whip. The colts were wild and frolicsome. One of them bolted across the road and blundered up against Lizzie. Whether it was the stupid colt or the loud cracking of the whip, or both together, I cannot say, but she gave a violent kick and dashed off into a headlong gallop. It was so sudden that Lady Anne was nearly unseated, but she soon recovered herself. I gave a long, shrill neigh for help. Again and again I neighed, pawing the ground impatiently, and tossing my head to get the rein loose. I had not long to wait. Blantyre came running to the gate. He looked anxiously about, and just caught sight of the flying figure now far away on the road. In an instant he sprang to the saddle. I needed no whip, no spur, for I was as eager as my rider. He saw it; and giving me a free rein, and leaning a little forward, we dashed after them. For about a mile and a half the road ran straight, then bent to the right; after this it divided into two roads. Long before we came to the bend my mistress was out of sight. Which way had she turned? A woman was standing at her garden gate, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking eagerly up the road. Scarcely drawing rein, Lord Blantyre shouted, "Which way?" "To the right!" cried the woman, pointing with her hand, and away we went up the right-hand road. For a moment we caught sight of Lady Anne; another bend, and she was hidden again. Several times we caught glimpses of the flying rider, only to lose her again. We scarcely seemed to gain ground upon her at all. An old road mender was standing near a heap of stones, his shovel dropped and his hands raised. As we came near he made a sign to speak. Lord Blantyre drew the rein a little. "To the common, to the common, sir! She has turned off there." I knew this common very well. It was, for the most part, very uneven ground, covered with heather and dark-green bushes, with here and there a scrubby thorn tree. There were also open spaces of fine, short grass, with ant-hills and mole turns everywhere--the worst place I ever knew for a headlong gallop. We had just turned on to the common, when we caught sight again of the green habit flying on before us. My mistress's hat was gone, and her long brown hair was streaming behind her. Her head and body were thrown back, as if she were pulling with all her remaining strength, and as if that strength were nearly exhausted. It was clear that the roughness of the ground had very much lessened Lizzie's speed, and there seemed a chance that we might overtake her. While we were on the highroad, Lord Blantyre had given me my head; but now, with a light hand and a practiced eye, he guided me over the ground in such a masterly manner that my pace was scarcely slackened, and we gained on them every moment. About halfway across the common a wide dike had recently been cut and the earth from the cutting cast up roughly on the other side. Surely this would stop them! But no; scarcely pausing, Lizzie took the leap, stumbled among the rough clods, and fell. --Anne Sewell: _Black Beauty_. +Theme XXIII.+--_Write a brief narrative giving unity to the paragraphs by means of the time relations._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. An adventure on horseback. 2. A trip with the engineer. 3. A day on the river. 4. Fido's mishaps. 5. An inquisitive crow. 6. The unfortunate letter carrier. 7. Teaching a calf to drink. 8. The story of a silver dollar. 9. A narrow escape. 10.An afternoon at the circus. 11.A story accounting for the situation shown in the picture on page 90. (Do you need more than one paragraph? If so, is each a group of sentences treating of a single topic? Can the reader follow the thread of your story? Leave out details not essential to the main point.) +47. Order of Details Determined by Position in Space.+--The order of presentation of details may be determined by the position that the details themselves occupy in space. In description we wish both to give a correct general impression of the thing described, and to make certain details clear. The general impression should be given in the first sentence or two and the details should follow. The effectiveness of the details will depend upon their order of presentation. When one looks at a scene the eye passes from one object to another near it; similarly when one is recalling the scene the image of one thing naturally recalls that of an adjoining one. A skillful writer takes advantage of this habit of thinking, and states the details in his description in the order in which we would naturally see them if we were actually looking at them. By so doing he most easily presents to our minds the image he wishes to convey. [Illustration] In the following paragraphs notice that we get first an impression of the general appearance, to which we are enabled to add new details as the description proceeds. The companion of the church dignitary was a man past forty, thin, strong, tall, and muscular; an athletic figure, which long fatigue and constant exercise seemed to have left none of the softer part of the human form, having reduced the whole to brawn, bones, and sinews, which had sustained a thousand toils, and were ready to dare a thousand more. His head was covered with a scarlet cap, faced with fur, of that kind which the French call _mortier_, from its resemblance to the shape of an inverted mortar. His countenance was therefore fully displayed, and its expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not of fear, upon strangers. High features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive, had been burnt almost into negro blackness by constant exposure to the tropical sun, and might, in their ordinary state, be said to slumber after the storm of passion had passed away; but the projection of the veins of the forehead, the readiness with which the upper lip and its thick black mustache quivered upon the slightest emotion, plainly intimated that the tempest might be again and easily awakened. His keen, piercing, dark eyes told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued and dangers dared, and seemed to challenge opposition to his wishes, for the pleasure of sweeping it from his road by a determined exertion of courage and of will; a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance and a sinister expression to one of his eyes, which had been slightly injured on the same occasion, and of which the vision, though perfect, was in a slight and partial degree distorted. The upper dress of this personage resembled that of his companion in shape, being a long monastic mantle; but the color, being scarlet, showed that he did not belong to any of the four regular orders of monks. On the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a cross of a peculiar form. This upper robe concealed what at first view seemed rather inconsistent with its form, a shirt, namely, of linked mail, with sleeves and gloves of the same, curiously plaited and interwoven, as flexible to the body as those which are now wrought in the stocking loom out of less obdurate materials. The fore part of his thighs, where the folds of his mantle permitted them to be seen, were also covered with linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, or thin plates of steel, ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armor. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person. He rode, not a mule, like his companion, but a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war horse, which a squire led behind, fully accoutered for battle, with a chamfron or plaited headpiece upon his head, having a short spike projecting from the front. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-ax, richly inlaid with Damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed headpiece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. A second squire held aloft his master's lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole, or streamer, bearing a cross of the same form with that embroidered upon his cloak. He also carried his small triangular shield, broad enough at the top to protect the breast, and from thence diminishing to a point. It was covered with a scarlet cloth, which prevented the device from being seen. --Scott: _Ivanhoe_. Notice also how the description proceeds in an orderly way from one thing to another, placing together in the description those which occur together in the person described. Just as we turn our eyes naturally from one thing to another near it in space, so in a paragraph should our attention be called from one thing to that which naturally accompanies it. If the first sentence describes a man's eyes, the second his feet, and a third his forehead, our mental image is likely to become confused. If a description covers several paragraphs, each may be given a unity by placing in it those things which are associated in space. EXERCISES _A._ If you were to write three paragraphs describing a man, which of the following details should be included in each paragraph? (_a_) eyes, (_b_) shoes, (_c_) size, (_d_) complexion, (_e_) general appearance, (_f_) hair, (_g_) carriage, (_h_) trousers,(_i_) mouth, (_j_) coat, (_k_) nose. _B._ Make a list of the details which might be mentioned in describing the outside of a church. Arrange them in appropriate groups. _C._ In the following paragraphs which sentences give the general outline and which give details? Are the details arranged with reference to their position in space? Can the paragraph be improved by rearranging them? 1. We came finally to a brook more wild and mysterious than the others. There were a half dozen stepping-stones between the path we were on and the place where it began again on the opposite side. After a few missteps and much laughter we were landed at last, but several of the party had wet feet to remember the experience by. We found ourselves in a space that had once been a clearing. A tumbledown chimney overgrown with brambles and vines told of an abandoned hearthstone. The blackened remnants of many a picnic camp fire strewed the ground. A slight turn brought us to the spot where the Indian Spring welled out of the hillside. The setting was all that we could have hoped for,--great moss-grown rocks wet and slippery, deep shade which almost made us doubt the existence of the hot August sunshine at the edge of the forest, cool water dripping and tinkling. A half-dozen great trees had been so undermined by the action of the water long ago that they had tumbled headlong into the stream bed. There they lay, heads down, crisscross--one completely spanning the brook just below the spring--their tangled roots like great dragons twisting and thrusting at the shadows. The water trickled slowly over the smooth rocky bottom as if reluctant to leave a spot enchanted. A few yards below, the overflow from Indian Spring joined the main stream, and their waters mingled in a pretty little cataract. We went below and looked back at it. How it wrinkled and paused over the level spaces, played with the bubbles in the eddies, and ran laughing and turning somersaults wherever the ledges were abrupt. --Mary Rodgers Miller: _The Brook Book_. (Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page & Co.) 2. Rowena was tall in stature, yet not so much so as to attract observation on account of superior height. Her complexion was exquisitely fair, but the noble cast of her head and features prevented the insipidity which sometimes attaches to fair beauties. Her clear blue eyes, which sat enshrined beneath a graceful eyebrow of brown, sufficiently marked to give expression to the forehead, seemed capable to kindle as well as to melt, to command as well as to beseech. Her profuse hair, of a color betwixt brown and flaxen, was arranged in a fanciful and graceful manner in numerous ringlets, to form which art had probably been aided by nature. These locks were braided with gems, and being worn at full length, intimated the noble birth and free-born condition of the maiden. A golden chain, to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal, hung around her neck. She wore bracelets on her arms, which were bare. Her dress was an under gown and kirtle of pale sea-green silk, over which hung a long loose robe, which reached to the ground, having very wide sleeves, which came down, however, very little below the elbow. This robe was crimson, and manufactured out of the very finest wool. A veil of silk, interwoven with gold, was attached to the upper part of it, which could be, at the wearer's pleasure, either drawn over the face and bosom after the Spanish fashion, or disposed as a sort of drapery round the shoulders. --Scott: _Ivanhoe_. +Theme XXIV.+--_Write a paragraph and arrange the details with reference to their association in space._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Ichabod Crane. 2. Rip Van Winkle. 3. The man who lives near us. 4. A minister I met yesterday. 5. Our family doctor. 6. The gymnasium. 7. A fire engine. 8. The old church. 9. The shoe factory. 10. Some character in the book you are reading. (Which sentence gives the general impression and which sentences give the details? Are the details arranged with reference to their real space order? Should others be added? Can any be omitted? Will the reader form the mental image you wish him to form?) +48. Development by Comparison.+--In Section 29 we found that comparison, whether literal or figurative, aided us in forming mental images of objects. In a similar way events and general principles may be explained by making suitable comparisons. We are continually comparing one thing with another. Every idea tends to recall other ideas that are similar to it or in contrast with it. When an unfamiliar idea is presented to us we at once seek to associate it with similar ideas already known to us. A writer, therefore, will make his meaning clear by furnishing, the desired comparisons. If these are familiar to us, they enable us to understand the new ideas presented. Even when both ideas in the comparison are unfamiliar, each may gain in clearness by comparison with the other. In comparing two objects, events, or principles we may point out that they are _not_ alike in certain respects. A comparison that thus emphasizes differences, rather than likenesses, becomes a contrast. The contrast may be given in a single sentence or in a single paragraph, but often a paragraph or more may be required for each of the two ideas contrasted. EXERCISE Notice how comparisons and contrasts are used in the following paragraphs:-- 1. Niagara is the largest cataract in the world, while Yosemite is the highest; it is the volume that impresses you at Niagara, and it is the height of Yosemite and the grand surroundings that make its beauty. Niagara is as wide as Yosemite is high, and if it had no more water than Yosemite has, it would not be of much consequence. The sound of the two falls is quite different: Niagara makes a steady roar, deep and strong, though not oppressive, while Yosemite is a crash and rattle, owing to the force of the water as it strikes the solid rock after its immense leap. 2. It is not only in appearance that London and New York differ widely. They also speak with different accents, for cities have distinctive accents as well as people. Tennyson wrote about "streaming London's central roar"; the roar is a gentle hum compared with the din which tingles the ears of visitors to New York. The accent of New York is harsh, grating, jarring. The rattle of the elevated railroad, the whir of the cable cars, the ringing of electric-car bells, the rumble of vehicles over the hard stones, the roar of the traffic as it reëchoes through the narrow canyons of down-town streets, produce an appalling combination of discords. The streets of New York are not more crowded than those of London, but the noise in London is subdued. It is more regular, less jarring and piercing. The muffled sounds in London are due partly to the wooden and asphalt pavements, which deaden the sounds. London must be soothing to the New Yorker, as the noise of New York is at first disconcerting to the Londoner.--_Outlook._ 3. Now their separate characters are briefly these. The man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention; his energy for adventure, for war, and for conquest wherever war is just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for rule, not for battle, and her intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, and their places. --Ruskin: _Sesame and Lilies_. +Theme XXV.+--_Write a paragraph using comparison or contrast._ Suggested topics:-- 1. The school, a beehive. 2. The body, a steam engine. 3. Two generals about whom you have read. 4. Girls, boys. 5. Two of your studies. 6. Graded school work, high school work. 7. Animal life, plant life. 8. Two of your classmates. (Have you used comparison or contrast? Have you introduced any of the other methods of development? Have you developed the paragraph so that the reader will understand fully your topic statement? Omit sentences not really needed.) +49. Development by Stating Cause and Effect.+--We are better satisfied with our understanding of a thing if we know the causes which have produced it or the effects which follow it. Likewise we feel that another has mastered the topic statement of a paragraph if he can answer the question, Why is this so? or, What will result from this? When either is stated, we naturally begin to think about the other. The idea of a topic statement may, therefore, be satisfactorily developed by stating its causes or its effects. A cause may be stated and the effects given or the effects may be made the topic statement for which we account by giving its causes. The importance of the relation of cause and effect to scientific study is discussed in the following paragraph from Mill:-- The relation of cause and effect is the fundamental law of nature. There is no recorded instance of an effect appearing without a previous cause, or of a cause acting without producing its full effect. Every change in nature is the effect of some previous change and the cause of some change to follow; just as the movement of each carriage near the middle of a long train is a result of the movement of the one in front and a precursor of the movement of the one behind. Facts or effects are to be seen everywhere, but causes have usually to be sought for. It is the function of science or organized knowledge to observe all effects, or phenomena, and to seek for their causes. This twofold purpose gives richness and dignity to science. The observation and classifying of facts soon become wearisome to all but the specialist actually engaged in the work. But when reasons are assigned, and classification explained, when the number of causes is reduced and the effects begin to crystallize into essential and clearly related parts of one whole, every intelligent student finds interest, and many, more fortunate, even fascination in the study. --Mill: _The Realm of Nature_. (Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons.) EXERCISES _A._ In your reading, notice how often the effects are indicated by the use of some one of the following expressions: _as a result, accordingly, consequently, for, hence, so, so that, thus._ _B._ Which sentences state causes and which state effects in the following paragraphs? 1. The power of water to dissolve most minerals increases with its temperature and the amount of gases it contains. Percolating water at great depths, therefore, generally dissolves more mineral matter than it can hold in solution when it reaches the surface, where it cools, and, being relieved of pressure, much of its carbonic acid gas escapes to the atmosphere or is absorbed by aquatic plants or mosses. Hence, deep-seated springs are usually surrounded by a deposit of the minerals with which the water is impregnated. Sometimes this deposit may even form large hills; sometimes it forms a mound around the spring, over the sides of which the water falls, while the spray, evaporating from surrounding objects, leaves them also incrusted with a mineral deposit. Percolating water evaporating on the sides and roof of limestone caverns, leaves the walls incrusted with carbonate of lime in beautiful masses of crystals. Water slowly evaporating as it drips from the roof of caverns to the floor beneath leaves a deposit on both places, which gradually grows downward from the roof as a _stalactite_, and upward from the floor as a _stalagmite_, until these meet and form one continuous column of stone. --Hinman: _Eclectic Physical Geography_. 2. The frequent use of cigars or cigarettes by the young seriously affects the quality of the blood. The red blood corpuscles are not fully developed and charged with their normal supply of life-giving oxygen. This causes paleness of the skin, often noticed in the face of the young smoker. Palpitation of the heart is also a common result, followed by permanent weakness, so that the whole system is enfeebled, and mental vigor is impaired as well as physical strength. Observant teachers can usually tell which of the boys under their care are addicted to smoking, simply by the comparative inferiority of their appearance, and by their intellectual and bodily indolence and feebleness. After full maturity is attained the evil effects of commencing the use of tobacco are less apparent; but competent physicians assert that it cannot be safely used by those under the age of forty. --Macy-Norris: _Physiology for High Schools_. 3. In many other ways, too, the Norman Conquest affected England. For example, before long all the best places in the Church were filled with foreigners. But most of the new bishops and abbots were far superior in morals and education to the Englishmen whom they succeeded. They were also devoted to the Pope of Rome, and soon made the English National Church a part of the Roman Catholic Church. But William, while willing to bow to the Pope as his chief in religious matters, refused to give way to him in things which concerned only this world. No former English king had done that, he knew, and no more would he. This union with the Roman Catholic Church was of the greatest benefit to England, as it brought her once more into connection with the educated men of Europe. Indeed, Lanfranc, the Conqueror's Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the best and wisest men of his day. --Higginson and Channing: _English History for American Readers_. +Theme XXVI.+--_Develop one of the following topic statements into paragraphs by stating causes or effects:_-- 1. A government which had no soldiers to call upon in an emergency would not last long. 2. One of the first needs of a new country is roads. 3. The number of people receiving public support is smaller in this country than in Europe. 4. An efficient postal system is a great aid to civilization. 5. A straight stream is an impossibility in nature. 6. Mountain ranges have great influence upon climate. 7. The United States holds first place as a manufacturing nation. 8. There are many swift rivers in New England. 9. Towns or cities are located at the mouths of navigable rivers. (Which sentences state causes and which state effects? Would the effects which you have stated really follow the given causes?) +50. Development by Repetition.+--The repetition of a thought in different form will often make plain that which we do not at first understand. This is especially true if the repetitions are accompanied by new comparisons. In every school the teacher makes daily use of repetition in her efforts to explain to the pupils that which they do not understand. In a similar way a writer makes use of this tendency of ours, and develops the idea of the topic sentence by repetition. Each sentence should, however, do more than merely repeat. It should add something to the central idea, making this idea clearer, more definite, or more emphatic. If repetition is excessive and purposeless, it becomes a fault. Repetition may extend through the whole paragraph, or it may be used to explain any sentence or any part of a sentence. It may tell what the thing is or what it is not, and in effect becomes a definition setting limits to the original idea. EXERCISE Notice how the idea in the topic statement of each of the following paragraphs is repeated in those which follow:-- 1. No man ever made a complete new system of law and gave it to a people. No monarch, however absolute or powerful, ever had the power to change the habits of a people to that extent. Revolution generally means, not a change of law, but merely a change of government officials; even when it is a change from monarchy to democracy. Our Revolution made practically no changes in the criminal and civil laws of the colonies. --Clark: _The Government_. 2. People talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty to do just what a man likes. I call that man free who fears doing wrong, but fears nothing else. I call that man free who has learned the most blessed of all truths,--that liberty consists in obedience to the power, and to the will, and to the law that his higher soul reverences and approves. He is not free because he does what he likes; but he is free because he does what he ought, and there is no protest in his soul against the doing. --Frederick William Robertson. 3. This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they had lived from childhood, and where they were as much at ease as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilderness was an open book. Nothing at rest or in motion escaped them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indentation of the soil, which no white man could see, all told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their ears. --Theodore Roosevelt: _The Winning of the West_. 4. Public enterprises, whether conducted by the municipality or committed to the public service corporation, exist to render public services. Streets are public highways. They exist for the people's use. Nothing should be placed in them unless required to facilitate their use by or for the people. Only the general need of water, gas, electricity, and transportation justifies the placing of pipes and wires and tracks in the streets. The public need is the sole test and measure of such occupation. To look upon the streets as a source of private gain, or even municipal revenue, except as incidents of their public use, is to disregard their public character. Adequate service at the lowest practicable rates, not gain or revenue, is the test. The question is, not how much the public service corporation may gain, but what can be saved to the people by its employment. --Edwin Burrett Smith: _The Next Step in Municipal Reform_ ("Atlantic Monthly"). +Theme XXVII.+--_Develop one of the following topic statements into a paragraph, using the method, of repetition as far as possible:_-- 1. It is difficult to become angry with one who is always good-natured. 2. It is gloomy in the woods on a rainy day. 3. The government is always in need of honest men. 4. Rural free delivery of mail will have a great effect on country life. 5. Not every boy in school uses his time to the best advantage. 6. Haste is waste. 7. Regular exercise is one of the essentials of good health. (Have the repetitions really made the idea of the topic sentence clearer or more emphatic or more definite? What other methods of development have you used?) +51. Development by a Combination of Methods.+--A paragraph should have unity of thought, and, so long as this unity of thought is kept, it does not matter what methods of development are used. A dozen paragraphs taken at random will show that combinations are very frequent. Often it will be difficult to determine just how a paragraph has been developed. In general, however, it may be said that an indiscriminate mixture of methods is confusing and interferes with unity of thought. If more than one is used, it requires skillful handling to maintain such a relation between them that both contribute to the clear and emphatic statement of the main thought. The paragraph from Dryer, page 74, shows a combination of cause and effect with specific illustrations; that from Wolstan Dixey, page 81, shows a combination of repetition with specific instances. EXERCISES What methods of paragraph development, or what combinations of methods, are used in the following selections? 1. I believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his power, or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what he can do and say and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. All great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence; Albert Dürer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, "It cannot be better done"; Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a curious undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. And they see something divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, and incredibly merciful. --Ruskin. 2. The first thing to be noted about the dress of the Romans is that its prevalent material was always woolen. Sheep raising for wool was practiced among them on an extensive scale, from the earliest historic times, and the choice breeds of that animal, originally imported from Greece or Asia Minor, took so kindly to the soil and climate of Italy that home-grown wool came even to be preferred to the foreign for fineness and softness of quality. Foreign wools were, however, always imported more or less, partly because the supply of native wools seems never to have been quite sufficient, partly because the natural colors of wools from different parts varied so considerably as to render the art of the dyer to some extent unnecessary. Thus, the wools of Canusium were brown or reddish, those of Pollentia in Liguria were black, those from the Spanish Baetica, which comprised Andalusia and a part of Granada, had either a golden brown or a grayish hue; the wools of Asia were almost red; and there was a Grecian fleece, called the crow colored, of which the natural tint was a peculiarly deep and brilliant black. --Preston and Dodge: _'The Private Life of the Romans_. 3. Art has done everything for Munich. It lies on a large flat plain sixteen hundred feet above the sea and continually exposed to the cold winds from the Alps. At the beginning of the present century it was but a third-rate city, and was rarely visited by foreigners; since that time its population and limits have been doubled, and magnificent edifices in every style of architecture erected, rendering it scarcely secondary in this respect to any capital in Europe. Every art that wealth or taste could devise seems to have been spent in its decoration. Broad, spacious streets and squares have been laid out; churches, halls, and colleges erected, and schools of painting and sculpture established which drew artists from all parts of the world. --Taylor: _Views Afoot_. 4. In all excursions to the woods or to the shore the student of ornithology has an advantage over his companions. He has one more, avenue of delight. He, indeed, kills two birds with one stone and sometimes three. If others wander, he can never get out of his way. His game is everywhere. The cawing of a crow makes him feel at home, while a new note or a new song drowns all care. Audubon, on the desolate coast of Labrador, is happier than any king ever was; and on shipboard is nearly cured of his seasickness when a new gull appears in sight. --Burroughs: _Wake Robin_. +Theme XXVIII.+--_Write a paragraph, using any method or combination of methods which best suits your thought. Use any of the subjects hitherto suggested that you have not already used._ (Is every sentence related to the topic statement so that your paragraph possesses unity? What methods of development have you used?) +52. The Topical Recitation.+--In conducting a recitation the teacher may ask direct questions about each part of a paragraph or she may ask a pupil to discuss some topic. Such a topical recitation should be an exercise in clear thinking rather than in word memory, and in order to prepare for it, the pupil should have made a careful analysis of the thought in each paragraph similar to that discussed on page 74. When this analysis has been made he will have clearly in mind the topic statement and the way it has been developed, and will be able to distinguish the essential from the non-essential elements. A topical recitation demands that the pupil know the main idea and be able to develop it in one of the following methods, or by a combination of them: (1) by giving specific instances, (2) by giving details, (3) by giving comparisons or contrasts, (4) by giving causes or effects, and (5) by repetition. Thoughts so mastered are our own. We understand them and believe them; and consequently we can explain them, or describe them, or prove them to others. We can furnish details or instances, originate comparisons, or state causes and effects. _When ideas gained from language have thus become our own, we do not need to remember the language in which they were expressed, and not until then do they become proper material for composition purposes._ +53. Outlining Paragraphs.+--Making an outline of a paragraph that we have read brings the thought clearly before our mind. In a similar way we may make our own thoughts clear and definite by attempting to prepare in advance an outline of a paragraph that we are about to write. Arranging the material that we have in mind and deciding upon the order in which we shall present it, will both help us to understand the thought ourselves, and enable us to present it more effectively to others. EXERCISES _A._ Prepare for recitation the following selection from Newcomer's introduction to Macaulay's _Milton and Addison:_-- There were two faculties of Macaulay's mind that set his work far apart from other work in the same field,--the faculties of organization and illustration. He saw things in their right relation and he knew how to make others see them thus. If he was describing, he never thrust minor details into the foreground. If he was narrating, he never "got ahead of his story." The importance of this is not sufficiently recognized. Many writers do not know what organization means. They do not know that in all great and successful literary work it is nine tenths of the labor. Yet consider a moment. History is a very complex thing: divers events may be simultaneous in their occurrence; or one crisis may be slowly evolving from many causes in many places. It is no light task to tell these things one after another and yet leave a unified impression, to take up a dozen new threads in succession without tangling them and without losing the old ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion. Such is the narrator's task, and it was at this task that Macaulay proved himself a past master. He could dispose of a number of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for example, runs his account of the dramatist Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman." On the other hand, when it is a question of a great crisis, like the impeachment of Warren Hastings, he knew how to prepare for it with elaborate ceremony and to portray it in a scene of the highest dramatic power. This faculty of organization shows itself in what we technically name structure; and logical and rhetorical structure may be studied at their very best in his work. His essays are perfect units, made up of many parts, systems within systems, that play together without clog or friction. You can take them apart like a watch and put them together again. But try to rearrange the parts and the mechanism is spoiled. Each essay has its subdivisions, which in turn are groups of paragraphs. And each paragraph is a unit. Take the first paragraph of the essay on Milton: the word _manuscript_ appears in the first sentence, and it reappears in the last; clearly the paragraph deals with a single very definite topic. And so with all. Of course the unity manifests itself in a hundred ways, but it is rarely wanting. Most frequently it takes the form of an expansion of a topic given in the first sentence, or a preparation for a topic to be announced only in the last. These initial and final sentences-- often in themselves both aphoristic and memorable--serve to mark with the utmost clearness the different stages in the progress of the essay. Illustration is of more incidental service, but as used by Macaulay becomes highly organic. For his illustrations are not farfetched or laboriously worked out. They seem to be of one piece with his story or his argument. His mind was quick to detect resemblances and analogies. He was ready with a comparison for everything, sometimes with half a dozen. For example, Addison's essays, he has occasion to say, were different every day of the week, and yet, to his mind, each day like something--like Horace, like Lucian, like the "Tales of Scheherezade." He draws long comparisons between Walpole and Townshend, between Congreve and Wycherley, between Essex and Villiers, between the fall of the Carlovingians and the fall of the Moguls. He follows up a general statement with swarms of instances. Have historians been given to exaggerating the villainy of Machiavelli? Macaulay can name you half a dozen who did so. Did the writers of Charles's faction delight in making their opponents appear contemptible? "They have told us that Pym broke down in a speech, that Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that the Earl of Northumberland cudgeled Henry Marten, that St. John's manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that Cromwell had a red nose." Do men fail when they quit their own province for another? Newton failed thus; Bentley failed; Inigo Jones failed; Wilkie failed. In the same way he was ready with quotations. He writes in one of his letters: "It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can." Thus we see his mind doing instantly and involuntarily what other minds do with infinite pains, bringing together all things that have a likeness or a common bearing. It is precisely these talents that set Macaulay among the simplest and clearest of writers, and that accounts for much of his popularity. People found that in taking up one of his articles they simply read on and on, never puzzling over the meaning of a sentence, getting the exact force of every statement, and following the trend of thought with scarcely a mental effort. And his natural gift of making things plain he took pains to support by various devices. He constructed his sentences after the simplest normal fashion, subject and verb and object, sometimes inverting for emphasis, but rarely complicating, and always reducing expression to the barest terms. He could write, for example, "One advantage the chaplain had," but it is impossible to conceive of his writing, "Now, amid all the discomforts and disadvantages with which the unfortunate chaplain was surrounded, there was one thing which served to offset them, and which, if he chose to take the opportunity of enjoying it, might well be regarded as a positive advantage." One will search his pages in vain for loose, trailing clauses and involved constructions. His vocabulary was of the same simple nature. He had a complete command of ordinary English and contented himself with that. He rarely ventured beyond the most abridged dictionary. An occasional technical term might be required, but he was shy of the unfamiliar. He would coin no words and he would use no archaisms. Foreign words, when fairly naturalized, he employed sparingly. "We shall have no disputes about diction," he wrote to Napier, Jeffrey's successor; "the English language is not so poor but that I may very well find in it the means of contenting both you and myself." _B._ Recite upon some topic taken from your other lessons for the day. Let the class tell what method of development you have used. _C._ Make a collection of well-written paragraphs illustrating each of the methods of development. +Theme XXIX.+--_Write two paragraphs using the same topic statement, but developing each by a different method._ Suggested topic statements:-- 1. The principal tools of government are buildings, guns, and money. 2. The civilized world was never so orderly as now. 3. Law suits take time, especially in cities; sometimes they take years. 4. There is a difference between law and justice. 5. We cry for a multitude of reasons of surprising variety. 6. In the growth of a child nothing is more surprising than his ceaseless activity. 7. Education for the children of a nation is a benefit to the whole nation. (Have you said what you intended to say? What methods of development have you used? Is the main thought of the two paragraphs the same even though they begin with the same sentence?) SUMMARY 1. Language is (1) a means of expressing ideas, and (2) a medium through which ideas are acquired. 2. The acquisition of ideas by means of language requires:-- _a._ That we know the meanings of words, and so avoid forming incomplete images (Section 27) and incomplete thoughts (Section 33). _b._ That we understand the relations in thought existing among words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs (Section 32). 3. Ideas acquired through language may be used for composition purposes-- _a._ Provided we form complete and accurate images and do not confuse the image with the language that suggested it (Section 28). _b._ Provided we make the main thoughts so thoroughly our own that we can furnish details and instances, originate comparisons, or state causes and effects, and thus become able to describe them or explain them, or prove them to others (Section 52). Until both _a_ and _b_ as stated above are done, ideas acquired through language are undesirable for composition purposes. 4. Comparisons aid in the forming of correct images. They may be literal or imaginative. If imaginative, they become figures of speech. 5. Figures of speech. (Complete list in the Appendix.) _a._ A simile is a direct comparison. _b._ A metaphor is an implied comparison. _c._ Personification is a modified metaphor, assigning human attributes to objects, abstract ideas, or the lower animals. 6. Suggestions as to the use of figures of speech. _a._ Never write for the purpose of using them. _b._ They should be appropriate to the subject. _c._ One of the two things compared must be familiar to the reader. _d._ Avoid hackneyed figures. _e._ Avoid long figures. _f._ Avoid mixed metaphors. 7. Choice of words. _a._ Use words presumably familiar to the reader. _b._ Use words that express your exact meaning. Do not confuse similar words. _e._ Avoid the frequent use of the same word (Section 17). 8. Ambiguity of thought must be avoided. Care must be exercised in the use of the forms which show relations in thought between sentences, especially with pronouns and pronominal adjectives (Section 36). 9. A paragraph is a group of sentences related to each other and to one central idea. 10. The topic statement of a paragraph is a brief comprehensive summary of the contents of the paragraph. 11. Methods of paragraph development. A paragraph may be developed-- _a._ By giving specific instances (Section 44). _b._ By giving details (Section 45). The order in which the details are told may be determined by-- (1) The order of their occurrence in time (Section 46). (2) Their position in space (Section 47). _c._ By comparison or contrast (Section 48). _d._ By stating cause and effect (Section 49). _e._ By repetition (Section 50). _f._ By any suitable combination of the methods stated above. 12. The topical recitation demands-- _a._ That the pupil get the central idea of the paragraph and be able to make the topic statement. _b._ That he be able to determine the relative importance of the remaining ideas in the paragraph. _c._ That he know by which of the five methods named above the paragraph has been developed. _d._ That he be able to furnish details, instances, and comparisons of his own. (See Sections 37, 38, 39, 52, 53.) IV. THE PURPOSE OF EXPRESSION +54. Kinds of Composition.+--When considered with reference to the purpose in the mind of the writer, there are two general classes of writing,--that which informs, and that which entertains. The language that we use should make our meaning clear, arouse interest, and give vividness. Writing that informs will lay greatest emphasis on clearness, though it may at the same time be interesting and vivid. We do not add to the value of an explanation by making it dull. On the other hand, writing that entertains, though it must be clear, will lay greater emphasis on interest and vividness. That language is best which combines all three of these characteristics. The writer's purpose will determine to which the emphasis shall be given. Composition is also divided into description, narration, exposition, and argument (including persuasion). These are called forms of discourse. It will be found that this division is also based upon the purpose for which the composition is written. You have occasion to use each of these forms of discourse daily; you describe, you narrate, you explain, you argue, you persuade. You have used language for these purposes from your infancy, and you are now studying composition in order to acquire facility and effectiveness in that use. When this chapter is completed, you will have considered each of the four forms of discourse in an elementary way. A more extended treatment is given in later chapters. EXERCISES _A._ To which of the two general classes of composition would each of the following belong? 1. A business letter. 2. The story of a runaway. 3. A description of a lake written by a geologist. 4. A description of a lake written by a boy who was camping near it. 5. A letter to a friend describing a trip. 6. A text-book on algebra. 7. An application for a position as stenographer. 8. A recipe for making cake. 9. How I made a cake. 10. How to make a kite. 11. A political speech. 12. A debate. _B._ Could a description be written for the purpose of entertaining? Could the same object be described for the purpose of giving information? _C._ To which general class do narratives belong? Explanations? Arguments? +55. Discourse Presupposes an Audience.+--The object of composition is communication, and communication is not concerned with one's self alone. It always involves two,--the one who gives and the one who receives. If its purpose is to inform, it must inform _somebody_; if to entertain, it must entertain _somebody_. To be sure, discourse may be a pleasure to us, because it is a means of self-expression, but it is _useful_ to us because it conveys ideas to that other somebody who hears or reads it. We describe in order that another may picture that which we have experienced; we narrate, events for the entertainment of others; we explain to others that which we understand; and we argue in order to prove to some one the truth of a proposition or to persuade him to action. Thus all discourse, to be useful, demands an audience. Its effective use requires that the writer shall give quite as much attention to the way in which that reader will receive his ideas as he gives to the ideas themselves. "Speaking or writing is, therefore, a double-ended process. It springs from me, it penetrates him; and both of these ends need watching. Is what I say precisely what I mean? That is an important question. Is what I say so shaped that it can readily be assimilated by him who hears? This is a question of quite as great consequence and much more likely to be forgotten.... As I write I must unceasingly study what is the line of least intellectual resistance along which my thought may enter the differently constituted mind; and to that line I must subtly adjust, without enfeebling my meaning. Will this combination of words or that make the meaning clear? Will this order of presentation facilitate swiftness of apprehension or will it clog the movement?"[Footnote: Professor George Herbert Palmer: _Self-cultivation in English_.] In the preceding chapters emphasis has been laid upon the care that a writer must give to saying exactly what he means. This must never be neglected, but we need to add to it a consideration of how best to adapt what we say to the interest and intelligence of our readers. It will become clear in writing the following theme that the discussion of paragraph development in Chapter III was in reality a discussion of methods of adapting our discourse to the mental habits of our readers. +Theme XXX.+--_Write a theme showing which one of the five methods of paragraph development proceeds most nearly in accordance with the way the mind usually acts._ (This theme will furnish a review of the methods of paragraph development treated in Chapter III. If possible, write your theme without consulting the chapter. "Think it out" for yourself. After the theme has been written, review paragraph development treated in Chapter III. Can you improve your theme? What methods of development have you used?) +56. Selecting a Subject.+--Sometimes our theme subjects are chosen for us, but usually we shall need to choose our own subjects. What we should choose depends both upon ourselves and upon those for whom we write. The elements which make a subject suitable for the reader will be considered later. In so far as the writer is concerned, two things determine the suitableness of a subject:-- First, the writer's knowledge of the subject. We cannot make ideas clear to others unless they are clear to us. Our information must be clearly and definitely our own before we can hope to present it effectively. This is one of the advantages possessed by subjects arising from experience. Any subject about which we know little or nothing, should be rejected. We must not, however, reject a subject too soon. When it is first thought of we may find that we have but few ideas about it, but by thinking we may discover that our information is greater than it at first seemed. We may be able to assign reasons or to give instances or to originate comparisons or to add details, and by these processes to amplify our knowledge. Even if we find that we know but little about the subject from our own experience, we may still be able to use it for a composition subject by getting our information from others. We may from conversation or from reading gain ideas that we can make our own and consequently be able to write intelligently. Care must be taken that this "reading up" on a subject does not fill our minds with smatterings of ideas that we think we understand because we can remember the language in which they were expressed; but reading, _supplemented by thinking_, may enable us to write well about a subject concerning which on first thought we seem to know but little. Second, the writer's interest in the subject. It will be found difficult for the writer to present vividly a subject in which he himself has no special interest. Enthusiasm is contagious, and if the writer has a real interest in his subject, he is likely to present his material in such a manner as to arouse interest in others. In our earlier years we are more interested in the material presented by experience and imagination than in that presented by reading, but as we grow older our interest in thoughts conveyed to us by language increases. As we enlarge our knowledge of a subject by reading and by conversation, so we are likely to increase our interest in that subject. A boy may know but little about Napoleon, but the effort to inform himself may cause him to become greatly interested. This interest will lead him to a further search for information about Napoleon, and will at the same time aid in making what he writes entertaining to others. EXERCISES _A._ About which of the following subjects do you now possess a sufficient knowledge to enable you to write a paragraph? In which of them are you interested? Which would you need to "read up" about? 1. Golf. 2. Examinations. 3. Warships. 4. Wireless telegraphy. 5. Radium. 6. Tennis. 7. Automobiles. 8. Picnics. 9. Printing. 10. Bees. 11. Birds. 12. Pyrography. 13. Photography. 14. Beavers. 15. Making calls. 16. Stamp collecting. 17. The manufacture of tacks. 18. The manufacture of cotton. 19. The smelting of zinc. 20. The silver-plating process. _B._ Make a list of thirty things about which you know something. _C._ Bring to class a list of five subjects in which you are interested. _D._ Make a list of five subjects about which you now possess a sufficient knowledge to enable you to write a paragraph. +Theme XXXI.+--_Write a short theme: Select a suitable subject from the lists in the preceding exercise._ (What method or methods of paragraph development have you used? Have your paragraphs unity of thought?) +57. Subject Adapted to Reader.+--We may be interested in a subject and possess sufficient knowledge to enable us to treat it successfully, but it may still be unsuitable because it is not adapted to the reader. Some knowledge of a subject and some interest in it are quite as necessary on the part of the reader as on that of the writer, though in the beginning this knowledge and interest may be meager. The possibility of developing both knowledge and interest must exist, however, or the writing will be a failure. It would be difficult to make "Imperialism" interesting to third grade pupils, or "Kant's Philosophy" to high school pupils. Even if you know enough to write a valuable "Criticism" of _Silas Marner_, or a real "Review" of the _Vicar of Wakefield_, the work is time wasted if your readers do not have a breadth of knowledge sufficient to insure a vital and appreciative interest in the subject. You must take care to select a subject that is of present, vital interest to your readers. +58. Sources of Subjects.+--Thought goes everywhere, and human interest touches everything. The sources of subjects are therefore unlimited; for anything about which we think and in which we are interested may become a suitable subject for a paragraph, an essay, or a book. Such subjects are everywhere--in what we see and do, in what we think and feel, in what we hear and read. We relate to our parents what a neighbor said; we discuss for the teacher an event in history, or a character in literature; we show a companion how to make a kite or work a problem in algebra; we consider the advantages of a commercial course or relate the pleasures of a day's outing,--in each case we are interested, we think, we express our thoughts, and so are practicing oral composition with _subjects that may be used for written exercises_. +59. Subjects should be Definite.+--Both the writer and the reader are more interested in definite and concrete subjects than in the general and abstract ones, and we shall make our writing more interesting by recognizing this fact. One might write about "Birds," or "The Intelligence of Birds," or "How Birds Protect their Young," or "A Family of Robins." The last is a specific subject, while the other three are general subjects. Of these, the first includes more than the second; and the second, more than the third. A person with sufficient knowledge might write about any one of these general subjects, but it would be difficult to give such a subject adequate treatment in a short theme. Though a general subject may suggest more lines of thought, our knowledge about a specific subject is less vague, and consequently more usable. We really know more about the specific subject, and we have a greater interest in it. The subject, "A Family of Robins," indicates that the writer knows something interesting that he intends to tell. Such a subject compels expectant attention from the reader and aids in arousing an appreciative interest on his part. On first thought, it would seem easier to write about a general subject than about a specific one, but this is not the case. A general subject presents so many lines of thought that the writer is confused, rather than aided, by the abundance of material. A skilled and experienced writer possessing a large fund of information may treat general subjects successfully, but for the beginner safety lies only in selecting definite subjects and in keeping within the limits prescribed. The "Women of Shakespeare" might be an interesting subject for a book by a Shakespearean scholar, but it is scarcely suitable for a high school pupil's theme. +60. Narrowing the Subject.+--It is often necessary to narrow a subject in order to bring it within the range of the knowledge and interest of ourselves and of our readers. A description of the transportation of milk on the electric roads around Toledo would probably be more interesting than an essay on "Freight Transportation by Electricity," or on "Transportation." The purpose that the writer has in mind, and the length of the article he intends to write, will affect the selection of a subject. "Transportation" might be the subject of a book in which a chapter was given to each important subdivision of it; but it would be quite as difficult to treat such a subject in three hundred words as it would be to make use of three hundred pages for "The Transportation of Milk at Toledo." A general subject may suggest many lines of thought. It is the task of the writer to select one about which he knows something or can learn something, in which both he and his readers are interested, or can become interested, and for which the time and space at his disposal are adequate. EXERCISES _A._ Arrange the subjects in each of the following groups so that the most general ones shall come first:-- 1. The intelligence of wild animals. How a fox escaped from the hounds. How animals escape destruction by their enemies. Animals. 2. The benefits that arise from war. The defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons by Marius. War. The value of military strength to the Romans. 3. Pleasure. A summer outing in the Adirondacks. Value of vacations. Catching bass. _B._ Narrow ten of the following subjects until the resulting subject may be treated in a single paragraph:-- 1. Fishing. 2. Engines. 3. Literature. 4. Heroes of fiction. 5. Cooking. 6. Houses. 7. Games. 8. Basketball. 9. Cats. 10. Canaries. 11. Sympathy. 12. Sailboats. 13. Baseball. 14. Rivers. 15. Trees. C. A general subject may suggest several narrower subjects, each of which would be of interest to a different class of persons; for example-- General subject,--Education. Specific subjects,-- 1. Methods of conducting recitations. (Teachers.) 2. School taxes. (Farmers.) 3. Ventilation of school buildings. (Architects.) In a similar way, narrow each of the following subjects so that the resulting subjects will be of interest to two or more classes of persons:-- Subjects Classes 1. Vacations. 1. Farmers. 2. Mathematics. 2. High School Pupils. 3. Picnics. 3. Ministers. 4. Civil service. 4. Merchants. 5. Elections. 5. Sailors. 6. Botany. 6. Girls. 7. Fish. 7. Boys. +Theme XXXII.+--_Write a paragraph about one of narrowed subjects._ (Does your paragraph have unity of thought? What methods of development have you used? Have you selected a subject which will be of interest to your readers?) +61. Selecting a Title.+--The subject and the title may be the same, but not necessarily so. The statement of the subject may require a sentence of considerable length, while a title is best if short. In selecting this brief title, it is well to get one which will attract the attention and arouse the curiosity of a reader without appearing obviously to do so. A peculiar or unusual title is not at all necessary, though if properly selected such a title may be of value. Care must be taken not to have the title make a promise that the theme cannot fulfill. If it does, the effect is unsatisfactory. EXERCISES _A._ Discuss the appropriateness of the titles for the subjects in the following:-- 1. Title: "My Kingdom for a Horse." Subject: An account of a breakdown of an automobile at an inconvenient time. 2. Title: A Blaze of Brilliance. Subject: Description of a coaching parade. 3. Title: A Brave Defense. Subject: An account of how a pair of birds drove a snake away from their nest. 4. Title: The Banquet Book. Subject: Quotations designed for general reference, and also as an aid in the preparation of the toast list, the after-dinner speech, and the occasional address. 5. Title: Dragons of the Air. Subject: An account of extinct flying reptiles. 6. Title: Rugs and Rags. Subject: A comparison of the rich and the poor, from a socialistic point of view. 7. Title: Lives of the Hunted. Subject: A true account of the doings of five quadrupeds and three birds. 8. Title: The Children of the Nations. Subject: A discussion of colonies and the problems of colonization. _B._ Supply an appropriate title for a story read by the teacher. _C._ Suggest a title, other than the one given it, for each magazine article you have read this month. +62. Language Adapted to the Reader.+--A writer may select a subject with reference to the knowledge and interest of his readers; he may develop his paragraphs in accordance with the methods studied in Chapter III, and yet he may fail to make his meaning clear, because he has not used language suited to the reader. Fortunately, the language that we understand and use is that which is most easily understood by those of equal attainments with ourselves. It therefore happens that when writing for those of our own age and attainments, or for those of higher attainments, we usually best express for them that which we make most clear and pleasing to ourselves. But if we write for younger people, or for those of different interests in life, we must give much attention to adapting what we write to our readers. Before writing it is well to ask, For whom am I writing? Then, if necessary, you should modify your language so that it will be adapted to your readers. Can you tell for what kind of an audience each of the following is intended? In the field both teams played faultless ball, not the semblance of an error being made. Besides backing up their pitchers in this fashion, both local and visiting athletes turned sensational plays. The element of luck figured largely in the result. In the first inning Dougherty walked and Collins singled. Dougherty had third base sure on the drive, but stumbled and fell down between second and third, and he was an easy out. Boston got its only run in the second. Parent sent the ball to extreme left for two bases. He stole third nattily when catcher Sugden tried to catch him napping at the middle station. Ferris scored him with a drive to left. St. Louis promptly tied the score in its half. Wallace opened with a screeching triple to the bulletin board. At that he would not have scored if J. Stahl had not contributed a passed ball, Heidrick, Friel, and Sugden, the next three batters, expiring on weak infield taps. The Browns got the winning run in the sixth on Martin's triple and Hill's swift cut back of first. Lachance knocked the ball down and got his man at the initial sack, but could not prevent the tally. --_Boston Herald._ His name was Riley, and although his parents had called him Thomas, to the boys he had always been "Dennis," and by the time he had reached his senior year in college he was quite ready to admit that his "name was Dennis," with all that slang implied. He had tried for several things, athletics particularly, and had been substitute on the ball nine, one of the immortal second eleven backs of the football squad, and at one time had been looked upon as promising material for a mile runner on the track team. But it was always his luck not quite to make anything. He couldn't bat up to 'varsity standard, he wasn't quite heavy enough for a Varsity back, and in the mile run he always came in fresh enough but could not seem to get his speed up so as to run himself out, and the result was that, although he finished strong and with lots of running in him, the other fellows always reached the tape first, even though just barely getting over and thoroughly exhausted. Now "Dennis" had made up his mind at Christmas time that he actually would have one more trial on the track, and that his family, consisting of his mother and a younger brother, both of them great believers in and very proud of Thomas, should yet see him possessed of a long-coveted "Y." So he went out with the first candidates in the spring, and the addition of the two-mile event to the programme of track contests gave him a distance better suited to his endurance. There were a half-dozen other men running in his squad, and Dennis, from his former failures, was not looked upon with much favor, or as a very likely man. But he kept at it. When the first reduction of the squad was made, some one said, "Denny's kept on just to pound the track." With the middle of March came some class games, and Dennis was among the "also rans," getting no better than fourth place in the two-mile. The worst of it was that he knew he could have run it faster, for he felt strong at the finish, but had no burst of speed when the others went up on the last lap. But in April he did better, and it soon developed that he was improving. The week before the Yale-Harvard games he was notified that he was to run in the two-mile as pace maker to Lang and Early, the two best distance men on the squad. Nobody believed that Yale would win this event, although it was understood that Lang stood a fair chance if Dennis and Early could carry the Harvard crack, Richards, along at a fast gait for the first mile. So it was all arranged that Early should set the pace for the first half mile, and Dennis should then go up and carry the field along for a fast second half. Then, after the first mile was over, Early and Dennis should go out as fast as they could, and stay as long as they could in the attempt to force the Harvard man and exhaust him so that Lang could come up, and, having run the race more to his liking, be strong enough to finish first. The day of the games came, and with it a drenching rain, making the track heavy and everybody uncomfortable. But as the inter-collegiates were the next week, it was almost impossible to postpone the games, and consequently it was decided to run them off. As the contest progressed, it developed that the issue would hang on the two-mile event, and interest grew intense. When the call for starters came, Dennis felt the usual trepidation of a man who is before the public for the first time in a really important position. But the feeling did not last long, and by the time he went to his mark he had made up his mind that that Harvard runner should go the mile and a half fast at any rate, or else be a long way behind. At the crack of the pistol the six men went off, and, according to orders, during the first mile Early and Dennis set the pace well up. Richards, the Harvard man, let them open up a gap on him in the first half-mile, and, being more or less bothered by the conditions of the wet track, he seemed uncertain whether the Yale runners were setting the pace too high or not, and in the second half commenced to move up. In doing this his team mates gradually fell back until they were out of it, and the order was Dennis, Early, Richards, and Lang. At the beginning of the second mile, Early, whose duty it was to have gone up and helped Dennis make the pace at the third half-mile, had manifestly had enough of it, and, after two or three desperate struggles to keep up, was passed by Richards. When, therefore, they came to the mile and a half, Dennis was leading Richards by some fifteen yards, and those who knew the game expected to see the Harvard man try to overtake Dennis, and in so doing exhaust himself, so that Lang, who was running easily in the rear, could come up and in the last quarter finish out strong. Dennis, too, was expecting to hear the Harvard man come up with him pretty soon, and knew that this would be the signal for him to make his dying effort in behalf of his comrade, Lang. As they straightened out into the back stretch Richards did quicken up somewhat, and Dennis let himself out. In fact, he did this so well that as they entered upon the last quarter Richards had not decreased the distance, and indeed it had opened up a little wider. But where was Lang? Dennis was beginning to expect one or the other of these two men to come up, and, as he turned into the back stretch for the last time, it began to dawn upon him, as it was dawning upon the crowd, that the pace had been too hot for Lang, and, moreover, that Yale's chance depended on the despised Dennis, and that the Harvard runner was finding it a big contract to overhaul the sturdy pounder on the wet track. But Richards was game, and commenced to cut the gap down. As they turned into the straight, he was within eight yards of Dennis. But Dennis knew it, and he ran as he had never run before. He could fairly feel the springing tread of Richards behind him, and knew it was coming nearer every second. But into the straight they came, and the crowd sprang to its feet with wild yells for Dennis. Twenty yards from home Richards, who had picked up all but two yards of the lead, began to stagger and waver, while Dennis hung to it true and steady, and breasted the tape three yards in advance, winning his "Y" at last! --Walter Camp: _Winning a "Y"_ ("Outlook") In which of the preceding accounts were you more interested? Which made the more vivid impression? Which would be better suited for a school class composed of boys and girls? Which for a newspaper report? In attempting to relate a contest it is essential that the writer know what really happened, and in what order it happened, but his successful presentation will depend to some extent upon the consideration given to adapting the story to the audience. A person thoroughly conversant with the game will understand the technical terms, and may prefer the first account to the second, but those to whom the game is not familiar would need to have so much explanation of the terms used that the narration would become tedious to those already familiar with the terms. In order to make an account of a game interesting to persons unfamiliar with that game, we must introduce enough of explanation to make clear the meaning of the terms we use. +Theme XXXIII.+--_Write a theme telling some one who does not understand the game about some contest which you have seen_. Suggested subjects:-- 1. A basket ball game. 2. A football game. 3. A tennis match. 4. A baseball game. 5. A croquet match. 6. A golf tournament. 7. A yacht race. 8. A relay race. (Have you introduced technical terms without making the necessary explanations? Have you explained so many terms that your narrative is rendered tedious? Have you related what really happened, and in the proper time order? Have your paragraphs unity? Can you shorten the theme without affecting the clearness or interest? Does _then_ occur too frequently?) +Theme XXXIV.+--_Write a theme, using the same subject that you used for Theme XXXIII. Assume that the reader understands the game._ (Will the reader get the whole contest clearly in mind? Can you shorten the account? Compare this theme with Theme XXXIII.) +63. Explanation of Terms.+--Any word that alone or with its modifiers calls to mind a single idea, is a term. When applied to a particular object, quality, or action, it is a specific term; but when applied to any one of a class of objects, qualities, or actions, it is a general term. For example: _The Lake_, referring to a lake near at hand, is a specific term; but _a lake_, referring to any lake, is a general term. In Theme XXXIII you had occasion to explain some of the terms used. If, in telling about a baseball game, you mentioned a particular "fly," your statement was description or narration; but if some one should ask what you meant by "a fly," your answer would be general in character; that is, it would apply to all "flies," and would belong to that division of composition called exposition. Exposition is but another name for explanation. It is always concerned with that which is general, while description and narration deal with particular cases. We may describe a particular lake; but if we answer the question, What is a lake? the answer would apply to any lake, and would be exposition. Explanation of the meaning of general terms is one form of exposition. +64. Definition by Synonyms.+--If we are asked to explain the meaning of a general term, our reply in many cases will be a brief definition. Often it is sufficient to give a synonym. For example, in answer to the question, What is exposition? we make its meaning clearer by saying, Exposition is explanation. Definition by synonym is frequently used because of its brevity. In the smaller dictionaries the definitions are largely of this kind. For example: to desert, _to abandon_; despot, _tyrant_; contemptible, _mean or vile_; to fuse, _to blend_; inviolable, _sacred_. Synonyms are, however, seldom exact, but a fair understanding of a term may be gained by comparing it with its synonyms and discussing the different shades of meaning. Such a discussion, especially if supplemented by examples showing the correct use of each term, is a profitable exercise in exposition. For example:-- Both _discovery_ and _invention_ denote generally something new that is found out in the arts and sciences. But the term _discovery_ involves in the thing discovered not merely novelty, but curiosity, utility, difficulty, and consequently some degree of importance. All this is less strongly involved in invention. But there are yet wider differences. One can only discover what has in its integrity existed before the discovery, while invention brings a thing into existence. America was discovered. Printing was invented. Fresh discoveries in science often lead to new inventions in the industrial arts. Indeed, discovery belongs more to science; invention, to art. Invention increases the store of our practical resources, and is the fruit of search. Discovery extends the sphere of our knowledge, and has often been made by accident. --Smith: _Synonyms Discriminated_. If exactness is desired, this is obtained by means of the logical definition, which will be discussed in a later chapter. +Theme XXXV.+--Explain the meaning of the words in one of the following groups:_-- 1. Caustic, satirical, biting. 2. Imply, signify, involve. 3. Martial, warlike, military, soldierlike. 4. Wander, deviate, err, stray, swerve, diverge. 5. Abate, decrease, diminish, lessen, moderate. 6. Emancipation, freedom, independence, liberty. 7. Old, ancient, antique, antiquated, obsolete. 8. Adorn, beautify, bedeck, decorate, ornament, 9. Active, alert, brisk, lively, spry. +65. Use of Simpler Words.+--In defining terms by giving a synonym we must be careful to choose a synonym which will be most likely to be understood by our listeners, or our explanation will be of no avail. For instance, in explaining the term _abate_ to a child, if we say it means _to diminish_, and he is unfamiliar with that word, he is made none the wiser by our explanation. If we tell him that it means _to grow less_, he will, in all probability, understand our explanation. Very many words in our language have equivalents that may be substituted, the one for the other. Much of our explanation to children and to those whose attainments are less than our own consists in substituting common, everyday words for less familiar ones. EXERCISE Give familiar equivalents for the following words:-- 1. emancipate. 2. procure. 3. opportunity. 4. peruse. 5. elapsed. 6. approximately. 7. abbreviate. 8. constitute. 9. simultaneous. 10. familiar. 11. deceased. 12. oral. 13. adhere. 14. edifice. 15. collide. 16. suburban. 17. repugnance. 18. grotesque. 19. equipage. 20. exaggerate. 21. ascend. 22. financial. 23. nocturnal. 24. maternal. 25. vision. 26. affinity. 27. cohere. 28. athwart. 29. clavicle. 30. omnipotent. 31. enumerate. 32. eradicate. 33. application. 34. constitute. 35. employer. 36. rendezvous. 37. obscure. 38. indicate. 39. prevaricate. +66. Definitions Need to be Supplemented.+--The purpose of exposition is to make clear to others that which we understand ourselves. If the mere statement of a definition does not accomplish this result, we may often make our meaning clear by supplementing the definition with suitable comparisons and examples. In making use of comparisons and examples we must choose those with which our readers are familiar, and we must be sure that they fairly represent the term that we wish to illustrate. +Theme XXXVI.+--_Explain any one of the following terms. Begin with as exact a definition as you can frame._ 1. A "fly" in baseball. 2. A "foul" in basket ball. 3. A "sneak." 4. A hero. 5. A "spitfire." 6. A laborer. 7. A capitalist. 8. A coward. 9. A freshman. 10. A "header." (Is your definition exact, or only approximately so? How have you made its meaning clear? Can you think of a better comparison or a better example? Can your meaning be made clearer, or be more effectively presented, by arranging your material in a different order?) +67. General Description.+--We may often make clear the meaning of a term by giving details. In describing a New England village we might enumerate the streets, the houses, the town pump, the church, and other features. This would be specific description if the purpose was to have the reader picture some particular village; but if the purpose was to give the reader a clear conception of the general characteristics of all New England villages, the paragraph would become a general description. Such a general description would include all the characteristics common to all the members of the class under discussion, but would omit any characteristic peculiar to some of them. For example, a general description of a windmill includes the things common to all windmills. If an object is described more for the purpose of giving a clear conception of the class of which it is a type than for the purpose of picturing the object described, we have a general description. Such a description is in effect an enlarged definition, and is exposition rather than description. It is sometimes called scientific description because it is so commonly employed by writers of scientific books. Notice the following examples of general description:-- 1. Around every house in Broeck are buckets, benches, rakes, hoes, and stakes, all colored red, blue, white, or yellow. The brilliancy and variety of colors and the cleanliness, brightness, and miniature pomp of the place are wonderful. At the windows there are embroidered curtains with rose-colored ribbons. The blades, bands, and nails of the gayly painted windmills shine like silver. The houses are brightly varnished and surrounded with red and white railings and fences. The panes of glass in the windows are bordered by many lines of different hues. The trunks of all the trees are painted gray from root to branch. Across the streams are many little wooden bridges, each painted as white as snow. The gutters are ornamented with a sort of wooden festoon perforated like lace. The pointed façades are surmounted with a small weathercock, a little lance, or something resembling a bunch of flowers. Nearly every house has two doors, one in front and one behind, the last for everyday entrance and exit, the former opened only on great occasions, such as births, deaths, and marriages. The gardens are as peculiar as the houses. The paths are hardly wide enough to walk in. One could put his arms around the flower beds. The dainty arbors would barely hold two persons sitting close together. The little myrtle hedges would scarcely reach to the knees of a four-year-old child. 2. Ginseng has a thick, soft, whitish, bulbous root, from one to three inches long,--generally two or three roots to a stalk,--with wrinkles running around it, and a few small fibers attached. It has a peculiar, pleasant, sweetish, slightly bitter, and aromatic taste. The stem or stalk grows about a foot high, is smooth, round, of a reddish green color, divided at the top into three short branches, with three to five leaves to each branch, and a flower stem in the center of the branches. The flower is small and white, followed by a large, red berry. It is found growing in most of the states in rich, shady soils. 3. As a general proposition, the Scottish hotel is kept by a benevolent-looking old lady, who knows absolutely nothing about the trains, nothing about the town, nothing about anything outside of the hotel, and is non-committal regarding matters even within her jurisdiction. Upon arrival you do not register, but stand up at the desk and submit to a cross-examination, much as if you were being sentenced in an American police court. Your hostess always wants twelve hours' notice of your departure, so that she can make out your bill--a very arduous, formidable undertaking. The bill is of prodigious dimensions, about the size of a sheet of foolscap paper, lined and cross-lined for a multitude of entries. When the account finally reaches you, it closely resembles a design for a cobweb factory. Any attempt to decipher the various hieroglyphics is useless--it can't be done. The only thing that can be done is to read the total at the foot of the page and pay it. --_Hotels in Scotland_ ("Kansas City Star"). +Theme XXXVII.+--_Write a general description of one of the following:_-- 1. A bicycle. 2. A country hay barn. 3. A dog. 4. A summer cottage. 5. An Indian wigwam. 6. A Dutch windmill. 7. A muskrat's house. 8. A robin's nest. 9. A blacksmith's shop. 10. A chipmunk. 11. A threshing machine. 12. A sewing circle. (The purpose is not to picture a particular object, but to give a general notion of a class of objects. Cross out everything in your theme that applies only to some particular object. Have you included enough to make your meaning clear?) +Theme XXXVIII.+--_Using the same title as for Theme XXXVII, write a specific description of some particular object._ (How does it differ from the general description? What elements have you introduced which you did not have in the other? Which sentence gives the general outline? Are your details arranged with regard to their proper position in space? Will the reader form a vivid picture--just the one you mean him to have?) +68. General Narration.+--Explanations of a process of manufacture, methods of playing a game, and the like, often take the form of generalized narration. Just as we gain a notion of the appearance of a sod house from a general description, so may we gain a notion of a series of events from a general narration. Such a narration will not tell what some one actually did, but will relate the things that are characteristic of the process or action under discussion whenever it happens. Such general narration is really exposition. EXERCISES _A._ Notice that the selection below is a generalized narration, showing what a hare does when hunted. In it no incident peculiar to some special occasion is introduced. She [the hare] generally returns to the beat from which she was put up, running, as all the worlds knows, in a circle, or sometimes something like it, we had better say, that we may keep on good terms with the mathematical. At starting, she tears away at her utmost speed for a mile or more, and distances the dogs halfway; she then turns, diverging a little to the right or left, that she may not run into the mouths of her enemies--a necessity which accounts for what we call the circularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and stratagem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of her track. --Richard Atton. _B_. The selection below narrates an actual hunt. Notice in what respects it differs from the preceding selection. Sir Roger is so keen at this sport that he has been out almost every day since I came down; and upon the chaplain's offering to lend me his easy pad, I was prevailed on yesterday morning to make one of the company. I was extremely pleased, as we rid along, to observe the general benevolence of all the neighborhood towards my friend. The farmers' sons thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old knight as he passed by; which he generally requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry after their fathers and uncles. After we had rid about a mile from home, we came upon a large heath, and the sportsmen began to beat. They had done so for some time, when, as I was at a little distance from the rest of the company, I saw a hare pop out from a small furze brake almost under my horse's feet. I marked the way she took, which I endeavored to make the company sensible of by extending my arm; but to no purpose, till Sir Roger, who knows that none of my extraordinary motions are insignificant, rode up to me and asked me if puss was gone that way? Upon my answering "Yes," he immediately called in the dogs, and put them upon the scent. As they were going off, I heard one of the country fellows muttering to his companion, that 'twas a wonder they had not lost all their sport, for want of the silent gentleman's crying, "Stole away." This, with my aversion to leaping hedges, made me withdraw to a rising ground, from whence I could have the pleasure of the whole chase, without the fatigue of keeping in with the hounds. The hare immediately threw them above a mile behind her; but I was pleased to find, that instead of running straight forwards, or, in hunter's language, "flying the country," as I was afraid she might have done, she wheeled about, and described a sort of circle round the hill, where I had taken my station, in such manner as gave me a very distinct view of the sport. I could see her first pass by, and the dogs some time afterwards, unraveling the whole track she had made, and following her through all her doubles. I was at the same time delighted in observing that deference which the rest of the pack paid to each particular hound, according to the character he had acquired among them: if they were at a fault, and an old hound of reputation opened but once, he was immediately followed by the whole cry; while a raw dog, or one who was a noted liar, might have yelped his heart out without being taken notice of. The hare now, after having squatted two or three times, and been put up again as often, came still nearer to the place where she was at first started. The dogs pursued her, and these were followed by the jolly knight, who rode upon a white gelding, encompassed by his tenants and servants, and cheering his hounds with all the gayety of five and twenty. One of the sportsmen rode up to me, and told me that he was sure the chase was almost at an end, because the old dogs, which had hitherto lain behind, now headed the pack. The fellow was in the right. Our hare took a large field just under us, followed by the full cry in view. I must confess the brightness of the weather, the cheerfulness of everything around me, the chiding of the hounds, which was returned upon us in a double echo from two neighboring hills, with the hallooing of the sportsmen, and the sounding of the horn, lifted my spirits into a most lively pleasure, which I freely indulged because I was sure it was innocent. If I was under any concern, it was on account of the poor hare, that was now quite spent, and almost within the reach of her enemies; when the huntsman getting forward, threw down his pole before the dogs. They were now within eight yards of that game which they had been pursuing for almost as many hours; yet on the signal before mentioned they all made a sudden stand, and though they continued opening as much as before, durst not once attempt to pass beyond the pole. At the same time Sir Roger rode forward, and alighting, took up the hare in his arms; which he soon after delivered up to one of his servants with an order, if she could be kept alive, to let her go in his great orchard; where it seems he has several of these prisoners of war, who live together in a very comfortable captivity. I was highly pleased to see the discipline of the pack, and the good nature of the knight, who could not find in his heart to murder a creature that had given him so much diversion. --Budgell: _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_. +Theme XXXIX.+--_Explain one of the following by the use of general narration:_-- 1. Baking bread. 2. How paper is made. 3. How to play tennis (or some other game). 4. Catching trout. 5. Life at school. 6. How to pitch curves. (Have you arranged your details with reference to their proper time-order? Have you introduced unnecessary details? Have your paragraphs unity? Underscore _then_ each time you have used it.) +69. Argument.+--Especially in argument is it evident that language presupposes an audience. The fact that we argue implies that some one does not agree with us. The purpose of our argument is to convince some one else of the truth of a proposition which we ourselves believe, and he who wishes to succeed in this must give careful attention to his audience. The question which must always be in the mind of the writer is, What facts shall I select and in what order shall I present them in order to convince my reader? The various ways of arguing are more fully treated in a later chapter, but a few of them are given here. +70. The Use of Explanation in Argument.+--In preparing an argument we must consider first the amount of explanation that it will be necessary to make. We cannot expect one to believe a proposition the meaning of which he does not understand. Often the explanation alone is sufficient to convince the hearer. Suppose you are trying to gain your parents' consent to take some course of study. They ask for an explanation of the different courses, and when they know what each contains they are already convinced as to which is best for you. If you are trying to convince a member of your school board that it would be well to introduce domestic science into the high school, and he already understands what is meant by the term "domestic science," you not only waste time in explaining it, but you make him appear ignorant of what he already understands. With him you should proceed at once to give your reasons for the advisability of the introduction of this branch into your school. On the other hand, if you are talking with a member who does not understand the term, an explanation will be the first thing necessary. It is evident, therefore, that the amount of explanation that we shall make depends upon the previous knowledge of the audience addressed. If we explain too much, we prejudice our case; and if we explain too little, the reader may fail to appreciate the arguments that follow. The point of the whole matter, then, is that explanation is the first step in argument, and that in order to determine the amount necessary we must consider carefully the audience for which our argument is intended. +71. Statement of Advantages and Disadvantages.+ An argument is often concerned with determining whether it is expedient to do one thing or another. Such an argument frequently takes the form of a statement of the advantages that will follow the adoption of the course we recommend, or of the disadvantages that the following of the opposite course will cause. If a corporation should ask for a franchise for a street railway, the city officials might hold the opinion that a double track should be laid. In support of this opinion they would name the advantageous results that would follow from the use of a double track, such as the avoidance of delays on turnouts, the lessening of the liability of accidents, the greater rapidity in transportation, etc. On the other hand, the persons seeking the franchise might reply that a double track would occupy too much of the street and become a hindrance to teams, or that the advantages were not sufficient to warrant the extra expense. Concerning such a question there can be no absolute decision. We are not discussing what is right, but what is expedient, and the determination of what is expedient is based upon a consideration of advantages or disadvantages. In deciding, we must balance the advantages against the disadvantages and determine which has the greater weight. If called upon to take one side or the other, we must consider carefully the value of the facts counting both for and against the proposition before we can make up our mind which side we favor. You must bear in mind that a thing may not be an advantage because you believe it to be. That which seems to you to be the reason why you should take some high school subject, may seem to your father or your teacher to be the very reason why you should not. In writing arguments of this kind you must take care to select facts that will appeal to your readers as advantages. Notice the following editorial which appeared in the _Boston Latin School Register_ shortly after a change was made whereby the pupils instead of the teachers moved from room to room for their various recitations:-- The new system of having the classes move about from room to room to their recitations has been in use for nearly a month, and there has been sufficient opportunity for testing its practicability and its advantages. There is no doubt that the new system alters the old form of recesses, shortening the two regular ones, but giving three minutes between recitations as a compensation for this loss. Although theoretically we have more recess time than formerly, in the practical working out of the system we find that the three minutes between recitations is occupied in gathering up one's books, and reaching the next recitation room; besides this, that there is often some confusion in reaching the various classrooms, and that there are many little inconveniences which would not occur were we sitting at our own desks. On the other hand, as an offset to these disadvantages, there is the advantage of a change of position, and a respite from close attention, with a breathing spell in which to get the mind as well as the books ready for another lesson. The masters have in every recitation their own maps and reference books, with which they can often make their instruction much more forceful and interesting. Besides that, they have entire control of their own blackboards, and can leave work there without fear of its being erased to make room for that of some other master. The confusion will doubtless be lessened as time goes on and we become more used to the system. Even the first disadvantage is more or less offset by the fact that the short three-minute periods, although they cannot be used like ordinary recesses, yet serve to give us breathing space between recitations and to lessen the strain of continuous application; so that, on the whole, the advantages seem to counterbalance the disadvantages. EXERCISES What advantages and disadvantages can you think of for each of the following propositions? State them orally. 1. All telephone and telegraph wires in cities should be put under ground. 2. The speed of bicycles and automobiles should be limited to eight miles per hour. 3. High school football teams should not play match games on regular school days. 4. High school pupils should not attend evening parties excepting on Fridays and Saturdays. 5. Monday would be a better day than Saturday for a school holiday. 6. The school session should be lengthened. +Theme XL.+--_Write two paragraphs, one of which shall give the advantages and the other the disadvantages that would arise from the adoption of any one of the following:_ 1. This school should have a longer recess. 2. This school should have two hours for the noon recess. 3. This school should be in session from eight o'clock until one o'clock. 4. All the pupils in this school should be seated in one room. 5. The public library should be in the high school building. 6. The football team should be excused early in order to practice. 7. This school should have a greater number of public entertainments. +72. Explanation and Argument by Specific Instances.+--Often we may make the meaning of a general proposition clear by citing specific instances. If these instances are given for the purpose of explanation merely, the paragraph is exposition. If, however, the aim is not merely to cause the reader to understand the proposition, but also to believe that it is true, we have argument. In either case we have a paragraph developed by specific instances as discussed in Section 44. Notice how in the following paragraph the author brings forward specific cases in order to prove the proposition:-- Nearly everything that an animal does is the result of an inborn instinct acted upon by an outward stimulus. The margin wherein intelligent choice plays a part is very small.... Instinct is undoubtedly often modified by intelligence, and intelligence is as often guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not hesitate long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence--the lower form of which we call cunning--and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and cry about a hawk, or an owl, or boldly attack him, they show intelligence in its simpler form, the intelligence that recognizes its enemies, prompted again by the instinct of self-preservation. When a hawk does not know a man on horseback from a horse, it shows a want of intelligence. When a crow is kept away from a corn-field by a string stretched around it, the fact shows how masterful is its fear and how shallow its wit. When a cat or a dog or a horse or a cow learns to open a gate or a door, it shows a degree of intelligence--power to imitate, to profit by experience. A machine could not learn to do it. If the animal were to close the door or gate behind it, that would be another step in intelligence. But its direct wants have no relation to the closing of the door, only to the opening of it. To close the door involves an afterthought that an animal is not capable of. A horse will hesitate to go upon thin ice or frail bridges. This, no doubt, is an inherited instinct which has arisen in its ancestors from their fund of general experience with the world. How much with them has depended upon a secure footing! A pair of house-wrens had a nest in my well-curb; when the young were partly grown and heard any one enter the curb, they would set up a clamorous calling for food. When I scratched against the sides of the curb beneath them like some animal trying to climb up, their voices instantly hushed; the instinct of fear promptly overcame the instinct of hunger! Instinct is intelligence, but it is not the same as acquired individual intelligence; it is untaught. John Burroughs: _Some Natural History Doubts_ ("Harper's"). EXERCISES What facts or instances do you know which would lead you to believe either the following propositions or their opposites? 1. Dogs are intelligent. 2. Only excellent pupils can pass the seventh grade examination. 3. Some teachers do not ask fair questions on examination. 4. Oak trees grow to be larger than maples. 5. Strikes increase the cost to the consumer. 6. A college education pays. 7. Department stores injure the trade of smaller stores. 8. Advertising pays. +Theme XLI.+--_Write a paragraph, proving by one or more examples one of the propositions in the preceding exercise:_ (Do your examples really illustrate what you are trying to prove? Do they show that the proposition is always true or merely that it is true for certain cases? Would your argument cause another to believe the proposition?) +73. The Value of Debate.+--Participation in oral debate furnishes excellent practice in accurate and rapid thinking. We may choose one side of a question and may write out an argument which, considered alone, and from our point of view, seems convincing, but when this is submitted to the criticism of some one of opposite views, or when the arguments in favor of the other side of the question are brought forward, we are not so sure that we have chosen the side which represents the truth. The ability to think "on one's feet," to present arguments concisely and effectively, and to reply to opposing arguments, giving due weight to those that are true, and detecting and pointing out those that are false, is an accomplishment of great practical value. Such ability comes only from practice, and the best preparation for it is the careful writing out of arguments. +74. Statement of the Question.+--The subject of debate may be stated in the form of a resolution, a declarative sentence, or a question; as, "Resolved that the recess should be lengthened," or "The recess should be lengthened," or, "Should the recess be lengthened?" In any case, the affirmative must show why the recess should be lengthened, and the negative why it should not be lengthened. In a formal debate the statement of the question and its meaning should be definitely determined in advance. Care must be taken to state it so that no mere quibbling over the meanings of terms can take the place of real arguments. Even if the subject of debate is so stated that this is possible, any self-respecting debater will meet the question at issue fairly and squarely, preferring defeat to a victory won by juggling with the meanings of terms. +75. Is Belief Necessary in Debate?+--If we are really arguing for a purpose, we should believe in the truth of the proposition which we support. If the members of the school board were discussing the desirability of building a new schoolhouse, each would speak in accordance with his belief. But if a class in school should debate such a question, having in mind not the determination of the question, but merely the selection and arrangement of the arguments for and against the proposition in the most effective way, each pupil might present the side in which he did not really believe. EXERCISES Consider each of the following propositions. Do you believe the affirmative or the negative? 1. This city needs a new high school building. 2. All the pupils in the high school should be members of the athletic association. 3. The school board should purchase an inclosed athletic field. 4. The street railway should carry pupils to and from school for half fare. 5. There should be a lunch room in this school. 6. Fairy stories should not be told to children. +Theme XLII.+--_Write a paragraph telling why you believe one of the propositions in the preceding exercise:_ (What questions should you ask yourself while correcting your theme?) +76. Order of Presentation.+--If you were preparing to debate one of the propositions in the preceding exercise, you would need to have in mind both the reasons for and against it. Next you would consider the order in which these reasons should be discussed. This will be determined by the circumstances of each debate, but generally the emphatic positions, that is, the first and the last, will be given to those arguments that seem to you to have the greatest weight, while those of less importance will occupy the central portion of your theme. +77. The Brief.+--If, after making a note of the various advantages, examples, and other arguments that you wish to use in support of one of the propositions in Section 75, you arrange these in the order in which you think they can be most effectively presented, the outline so formed is called a brief. Its preparation requires clear thinking, but when it is made, the task of writing out the argument is not difficult. When the debate is to be spoken, not read, the brief, if kept in mind, will serve to suggest the arguments we wish to make in the order in which we wish to present them. The brief differs from the ordinary outline in that it is composed of complete sentences. Notice the following brief:-- Manual Training should be substituted for school athletics. _Affirmative_ 1. The exercise furnished by manual training is better adapted to the developing of the whole being both physical and mental; for-- _a._ It requires the mind to act in order to determine what to do and how to do it. _b._ It trains the muscles to carry out the ideal of the mind. 2. The effect of manual training on health is better; for-- _a._ Excessive exercise, harmful to growing children, is avoided. _b._ Dangerous contests are avoided. 3. The final results of manual training are more valuable; for-- _a._ The objects made are valuable. _b._ The skill of hand and eye may become of great practical value in after life. 4. The moral effect of manual training is better; for-- _a._ Athletics develops the "anything to win" spirit, while manual training creates a wholesome desire to excel in the creation of something useful or beautiful. _b._ Dishonesty in games may escape notice, but dishonesty in workmanship cannot be concealed. _c._ Athletics fosters slovenliness of dress and manners, while manual training cultivates the love of the beautiful. 5. The beneficial results of manual training have a wider effect upon the school; for-- _a._ But comparatively few pupils "make the team" and receive the maximum athletic drill, while all pupils can take manual training. +78. Refutation or Indirect Argument.+--In debate we need to consider not only the arguments in favor of our own side, but also those presented by our opponents. That part of our theme which states our own arguments is called direct argument, and that part in which we reply to our opponents is called indirect argument or refutation. It is often very important to show that the opposing argument is false or, if true, has been given an exaggerated importance that it does not really possess. If, however, the argument is true and of weight, the fact should be frankly acknowledged. Our desire for victory should not cause us to disregard the truth. If the argument of our opponent has been so strong that it seems to have taken possession of the audience, we must reply to it in the beginning. If it is of less weight, each separate point may be discussed as we take up related points in our own argument. Often it will be found best to give the refutation a place just preceding our own last and strongest argument. From the foregoing it will be seen that each case cannot be determined by rule, but must be determined for itself, and it is because of the exercise of judgment required, that practice in debating is so valuable. A dozen boys or girls may, with much pleasure and profit, spend an evening a week as a debating club. +Theme XLIII.+--_Prepare a written argument for or against one of the propositions in Section 75._ (Make a brief. Re-arrange the arguments that you intend to use until they have what seems to you the best order. Consider the probable arguments on the other side and what reply can be made. Answer one or two of the strongest ones. If you have any trivial arguments for your own side, either omit them or make their discussion very brief.) +79. Cautions in Debating.+--When we have made a further study of argument we shall need to consider again the subject of debating. In the meantime a few cautions will be helpful. 1. Be fair. A debate is in the nature of a contest, and is quite as interesting as any other contest. The desire to win should never lead you to take any unfair advantage or to descend to mere quibbling over the statement of the proposition or the meanings of the terms. Win fairly or not at all. 2. Be honest with yourself. Do not present arguments which you know to be false, in the hope that your opponent cannot prove their falsity. This does not mean that you cannot present arguments in favor of a proposition unless you believe it to be true, but that those you do present should be real arguments for the side that you uphold, even though you believe that there are weightier ones on the other side. Do not use an example that seems to apply if you know that it does not. You are to "tell the truth and nothing but the truth," but in debate you may tell only that part of the "whole truth" which favors your side of the proposition. 3. Do not allow your desire for victory to overcome your desire for truth. Do not argue for the sake of winning, nor develop the habit of arguing in season and out. In the school and outside there are persons who, like Will Carleton's Uncle Sammy, "were born for arguing." They use their own time in an unprofitable way, and what is worse, they waste the time of others. They are not seeking for truth, but for controversy. It is quite as bad to doubt everything you hear as it is to believe everything. 4. Remember that mere statement is not argument. The fact that you believe a proposition does not make it true. In order to carry weight, a statement must be based on principles and theories that _the audience_ believes. 5. Remember that exhortation is not argument. Entreaty may persuade one to action, but in debate you should aim to convince the intellect. Clear, accurate thinking on your own part, so that you may present sound, logical arguments, is the first essential. +Theme XLIV.+--_Prepare a written argument for or against one of the following propositions:_-- 1. Boys who cannot go to college should take a commercial course in the high school. 2. Novel reading is a waste of time. 3. Asphalt paving is more satisfactory than brick. 4. Foreign skilled labor should be kept out of the United States. 5. Our own town should be lighted by electricity. 6. Athletic contests between high schools should be prohibited. (Consider your argument with reference to the cautions given in Section 79.) SUMMARY 1. The purpose of discourse may be to inform or to entertain. 2. The forms of discourse are-- _a._ Description. _b._ Narration. _c._ Exposition. _d._ Argument (Persuasion). 3. Discourse presupposes an audience, and we must select a subject and use language adapted to that audience. 4. The suitableness of a subject is determined-- _a._ By the writer's knowledge of the subject. (1) This may be based on experience, or (2) It may be gained from others through conversation and reading. _b._ By the writer's interest in the subject. (1) This may exist from the first, or (2) It may be aroused by our search for information. _c._ By adaptability of the subject to the reader. It should be of present, vital interest to him. 5. Subjects. _a._ The sources of subjects are unlimited. _b._ Subjects should be definite. They often need to be narrowed in order to be made definite. _c._ The title should be brief and should be worded so as to arouse a desire to hear the theme. 6. Exposition is explanation. 7. We may make clear the meaning of a term-- _a._ By using synonyms. _b._ By using simpler words. _c._ By supplementing our definitions with examples or comparisons. 8. General description includes the characteristics common to all members of a class of objects. 9. General narration is one form of exposition. It relates the things that characterize a process or action whenever it occurs. 10. Argument. _a._ Explanation is the first step in argument. _b._ A statement of advantages and disadvantages may assist us to determine which side of a question we believe. _c._ Specific instances may be used either for explanation or argument. 11. Debate. _a._ The subject of the debate may be stated in the form of a resolution, a declarative sentence, or a question. _b._ The most important arguments should be given the first and last positions. _c._ A brief will assist us in arranging our arguments in the most effective order. _d._ The refutation of opposing arguments should usually be placed just before our own last and strongest argument. _e._ Cautions in debating. (1) Be fair. (2) Be honest with yourself. (3) Do not allow your desire for victory to overcome your desire for truth. (4) Remember that mere statement is not argument. (5) Remember that exhortation is not argument. V. THE WHOLE COMPOSITION +80. General Principles of Composition.+--There are three important principles to be considered in every composition: unity, coherence, and emphasis. Though not always named, each of these has been considered and used in our writing of paragraphs. The consideration of methods of securing unity, coherence, and emphasis in the composition as a whole is the purpose of this chapter. It will serve also as a review and especially as an enlarged view of paragraph development as treated in Chapter III, for the methods discussed with regard to the whole composition are the same that are used in applying the three principles to single paragraphs. +81. Unity.+--A composition possesses unity if all that it contains bears directly upon the subject. It is evident that the title of the theme determines in a large degree the matter that should be included. Much that is appropriate to a theme on "Bass Fishing" will be found unnecessary in a theme entitled "How I caught a Bass." It is easier to secure unity in a theme treating of a narrow, limited subject than in one treating of a broad, general subject. The first step toward unity is, therefore, the selection of a limited subject and a suitable title (see Sections 58-61); the second is the collection of all facts, illustrations, and other material which may appropriately be used in a theme having the chosen title. +82. Coherence.+--A composition is given coherence by placing the ideas in such an order that each naturally suggests the one which follows. If the last paragraph is more closely related in thought to the first paragraph than it is to the intervening ones, the composition lacks coherence. Similarly, that paragraph is coherent in which the thought moves forward in an orderly way with each sentence growing out of the preceding one. In describing the capture of a large trout a boy might state that he broke his pole. Then he might tell what kind of pole he had, why he did not have a better one, what poles are best adapted to trout fishing, etc. Though each of these ideas is suggested by the preceding, the story still lacks coherence because the boy will need later to go back and tell us what happened to him or to the trout when the pole broke. If a description of the kind of pole is necessary in order to make the point of the story clear, it should have been introduced earlier. Stopping at the moment of vital interest to discuss fishing poles, spoils the effect of the story. Good writers are very skillful in the early introducing of details that will enable the reader to appreciate the events as they happen, and they are equally skillful in omitting unnecessary details. The proper selection of these details gives unity, and their introduction at the proper place gives coherence to a narrative. By saying, "I am getting ahead of my story," the narrator confesses that coherence is lacking. Read again the selection on page 106. +83. Emphasis.+--If we desire to make one part of a theme more emphatic than another, we may do so by giving a prominent position to that part. In debating we give the first place and the last to the strongest arguments. In simple narration the order in which incidents must be related is fixed by the time-order of their occurrence, but even in a story the point gains in force if it is near the close. Because these two positions are the ones of greatest emphasis, a poor beginning or a bad ending will ruin an otherwise good story. Emphasis may also be affected by the proportional amount of attention and space given to the different parts of a theme. The extent to which any division of a theme should be developed depends upon the purpose and the total length of the theme. A biography of Grant might appropriately devote two or three chapters to his boyhood, while a short sketch of his life would treat his boyhood in a single paragraph. In determining the amount of space to be given to the different parts of a composition, care must be taken that the space assigned to each shall be proportional to its importance, the largest amount of space being devoted to the part which is of greatest worth. Emphasis is sometimes given by making a single sentence into a paragraph. This method should be used with care, for such a paragraph may be too short for unity because it does not include all that should be said about the topic statement, and though it makes that statement emphatic, fails to make its meaning clear. Clearness, unity, and coherence are of more importance than emphasis, and usually, if a theme possesses the first three qualities, it will possess the fourth in sufficient measure. +84. The Outline.+--An outline will assist us in securing unity, coherence, and emphasis. 1. The first step in making an outline has relation to unity. Unity requires that a theme include only that which pertains to the subject. There are always many more ideas that seem to bear upon a subject than can be included in the theme. We may therefore jot down brief notes that will suggest our ideas on the subject, and then we should reject from this list all that seem irrelevant or trivial. We should also reject the less important ideas which pertain directly to the subject if without them we have all that are needed in order to fulfill the purpose of the theme. Which items in the following should be omitted as not necessary to the complete treatment of the subject indicated by the title? Should anything be added? _My First Partridge_ Where I lived ten years ago. Kinds of game: partridge, quail, squirrels. Partridge drumming. My father went hunting often. How he was injured. Birch brush near hemlock; partridge often found in such localities. Loading the gun. Going to the woods. Why partridge live near birch brush. Fall season. Hunting for partridge allowed from September to December. Tramping through the woods. Something moving. Creeping up. How I felt; excited; hand shook. Partridge on log. Gun failed to go off; cocking it properly. The shot; the recoil. The flurry of the bird. How partridges fly. How they taste when cooked. Getting the bird. Going home. Partridges are found in the woods; quail in the fields. What my sister said. My brother's interest. My father's story about shooting three partridges with one shot. What mother did. 2. The second step in outline making has relation to coherence. After we have rejected from our notes all items which would interfere with the unity of our theme, we next arrange the remaining items in a coherent order. One method of securing coherence is illustrated by a simple narrative which follows the time-order. We naturally group together in our memory those events which occurred at a given time, and in recalling a series of events we pass in order from one such group to another. These groups form natural paragraph units, and the placing of them in their actual time-order gives coherence to the composition. After rejecting the unnecessary items in the preceding list, re-arrange the remaining ones in a coherent order. How many paragraphs would you make and what would you include in each? 3. The third step in making an outline has relation to emphasis. In some outlines emphasis is secured by placing the more important points first, in others by placing them last. In this particular outline we have a natural time-order to follow, and emphasis will be determined mainly by the relative proportion to be given to different paragraphs. Do not give unimportant paragraphs too much space. Be sure that the introduction and the conclusion are short. +Theme XLV.+--_Write a personal narrative at least three paragraphs in length._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. How I was saved from drowning. 2. The largest string of fish I ever caught. 3. An incident of the skating season. 4. What I did on Christmas day. 5. A Saturday with my grandmother. 6. To the city and back. (Make an outline. Keep in mind unity, coherence, and emphasis. Consider each paragraph with reference to unity, coherence, and emphasis.) +85. Development of a Composition with Reference to the Time-Order.+-- Of the several methods of developing a composition let us consider first that of giving details in the natural time-order. (See Section 46.) If a composition composed of a series of paragraphs possesses coherence, each paragraph is so related to the preceding ones that the thought goes steadily forward from one to another. Often the connection in thought is so evident that no special indication needs to be made, but if the paragraphs are arranged with reference to a time-order, this time-order is usually indicated. Notice how the relation in time of each paragraph to the preceding is shown by the following sentences of parts of sentences taken in order from a magazine article entitled "Yachting at Kiel," by James B. Connolly:-- 1. It was slow waiting in Travemunde. The long-enduring twilight of a summer's day at fifty-four north began to settle down... 2. The dusk comes on, and on the ships of war they seem to be getting nervous... 3. The dusk deepens... 4. It is getting chilly in the night air, with the rations running low, and the charterers of some of the fishing boats decide to go home... 5. It is eleven o'clock--dark night--and the breeze is freshening, when the first of the fleet heaves in sight... 6. After that they arrive rapidly... 7. At midnight there is still no _Meteor_... 8. Through the entire night they keep coming... 9. Next morning... +Theme XLVI.+--_Write a narrative, four or more paragraphs in length, showing the time-order._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The race up the river. 2. The life of some well-known man. 3. The cake that fell. 4. Retell some incident that you have recently read. 5. Relate some personal experience. 6. A story suggested by the picture on page 160. (Make an outline. Consider the unity, coherence, and emphasis of each paragraph separately. Then consider the unity, coherence, and emphasis of the whole composition. Notice what expressions you have used to indicate the relations in time. Have you used the same expression too often?) +86. Development of a Composition with Reference to Position in Space.+-- A second method of development is to relate details with reference to their position in space. [Illustration] Just as we may give either a paragraph or a whole theme coherence by following a given time-order, so may we make a paragraph or a whole theme coherent by arranging the parts in an order determined by their position in space. In developing a theme by this method we simply apply to the whole theme the principles discussed for the development of a paragraph (Section 47). In a description composed of several paragraphs, each paragraph should contain a group of details closely related to one another in space. The paragraphs should be constructed so that each shall possess unity and coherence within itself, and they should be so arranged that we may pass most easily from the group of images presented by one paragraph to the images presented by the next. In narration, the space arrangement may supplement time-order in giving coherence. If the most attractive features of an art room are its wall decorations, five paragraphs describing the room may be as follows:-- 1. Point of view: general impression. 2. The north wall: general impression; details. 3. The east wall: general impression; details. 4. The south wall: general impression; details. 5. The west wall: general impression; details. It is easy to imagine a room in the description of which the following paragraphs would be appropriate:-- 1. Point of view. 2. The fireplace. 3. The easy-chair. 4. The table. 5. The bookcase. 6. The cozy nook. Such an arrangement of paragraphs would give coherence. Unity would be secured by including in each only that which properly belonged to it. There are many words and expressions which indicate the relative position of objects. The paragraph below is an illustration of the method of development described in Section 47. Notice the words which indicate the location of the different details in the scene. If each of these details should be developed into a paragraph the italicized expressions would serve to introduce these paragraphs and would show the relative positions of the objects described. The beauty of the sea and shore was almost indescribable: _on one side_ rose Point Loma, grim, gloomy as a fortress wall; _before_ me stretched away to the horizon the ocean with its miles of breakers curling into foam; _between_ the surf and the city, wrapped in its dark blue mantle, lay the sleeping bay; _eastward_ the mingled yellow, red, and white of San Diego's buildings glistened in the sunlight like a bed of coleus; _beyond_ the city heaved the rolling plains rich in their garb of golden brown, _from which_ rose the distant mountains, tier on tier, wearing the purple veil which Nature here loves oftenest to weave for them; while _in the foreground_, like a jewel in a brilliant setting, stood the Coronado. --Stoddard: _California_. +Theme XLVII.+--_Write a description three or more paragraphs in length._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Some well-known building (exterior). 2. A prominent person. 3. An attractive room. 4. The interior of a church. (Consider your outline with reference to unity, coherence, and proportion of parts. When the theme is completed, consider the unity, coherence, and emphasis of each paragraph and of the composition as a whole.) +87. Paragraph Relations.+--Relations in thought other than those of time and space may be indicated by the use of certain words and phrases. Such expressions as, _however, nevertheless, consequently, indeed, moreover, at all events_, etc., are often used to indicate a relation in thought between paragraphs. Notice how _nevertheless_, at the beginning of the selection below, serves to connect it in thought with a preceding paragraph not printed here. Notice also the relations in thought shown by the italicized words. These and similar words are used to make the transition from one paragraph to the next. _Nevertheless_, Howe was at last in possession of Philadelphia, the object of his campaign, and with his communications by water open. He had consumed four months in this business since he left New York, three months since he landed near the Elk River. His prize, now that he had got it, was worth less than nothing in a military point of view, and he had been made to pay a high price for it, not merely in men, but in precious time, for while he was struggling sluggishly for Philadelphia, Burgoyne, who really meant something very serious, had gone to wreck and sunk out of sight in the northern forests. _Indeed_, Howe did not even hold his dearly bought town in peace. After the fall of the forts, Greene, aided by Lafayette, who had joined the army on its way to the Brandywine, made a sharp dash and broke up an outlying party of Hessians. _Such things_ were intolerable, they interfered with personal comfort, and they emanated from the American army which Washington had now established in strong lines at Whitemarsh. _So_ Howe announced that in order to have a quiet winter, he would drive Washington beyond the mountains. Howe did not often display military intelligence, but that he was profoundly right in this particular intention must be admitted. In pursuit of his plan, _therefore_, he marched out of Philadelphia on December 4th, drove off some Pennsylvania militia on the 5th, considered the American position for four days, did not dare to attack, could not draw his opponent out, returned to the city, and left Washington to go into winter quarters at Valley Forge, whence he could easily strike if any move was made by the British army. --Henry Cabot Lodge. +88. The Transition Paragraph.+--Just as a word or phrase may serve to denote the relation in thought between paragraphs, so may a whole paragraph be used to carry over the thought from one group of paragraphs to another in the same theme. Such a paragraph makes a transition from one general topic or method of treating the subject of the theme to some other general topic or to the consideration of the subject from a different point of view. This transitional paragraph may summarize the thought of the preceding paragraph in addition to announcing a change of topic; or it may mark the transition to the new topic and set it forth in general terms. +89. The Summarizing Paragraph.+--Frequently we give emphasis to our thought by a final paragraph summarizing the main points of the theme. Such a summary is in effect a restatement of the topic sentences of our paragraphs. If our theme has been coherent, these sentences stated in order will need but little changing to make a coherent paragraph. In a similar way, it is of advantage to close a long paragraph with a sentence which repeats the topic statement or summarizes the thought of the paragraph. See the last sentence in Section 57. +90. Development of a Composition by Comparison or Contrast.+--The third method of development is that of comparison or contrast. Nearly every idea which we have suggests one that is similar to it or in contrast with it. We are thus led to make comparisons or to state contrasts. When these are few and brief, they may make a single paragraph (Section 48). If our comparisons or contrasts are extended, they may make several paragraphs, and thus a whole theme may be developed by this method. In such a theme no fixed order of presentation is determined by the actual occurrence in time or space of that which we present. Consequently, in outlining a theme of this kind, we must devote special attention to arranging our paragraphs in an order that shall give coherence and emphasis. +Theme XLVIII.+--_Write a theme of three or more paragraphs developed by comparison._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Compare men with verbs (active, passive, transitive, intransitive, defective, redundant, auxiliary, copulative, etc.). 2. Show that the body resembles a machine. 3. In what way is the school like a factory? 4. How do two books that you have read differ? 5. Compare Lincoln and McKinley. How alike? How different? 6. How can you tell an oak tree from an elm tree? 7. Without naming them, compare two of your friends with each other. 8. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of public high schools with those of private academies. +91. Development of a Composition by Use of Generalization and Facts.+-- Using the fourth method of development, we may give an entire composition to the explanation of the meaning of a general proposition or to the demonstration of the truth of such a proposition. To accomplish this purpose we state facts or instances that illustrate the meaning of the proposition or that show it to be true. In such a composition each important fact or instance may be given a separate paragraph, while several minor facts or illustrations may be properly combined in the same paragraph. (See Section 44.) Greater emphasis may also be given the more important facts by assigning them to the emphatic positions. Notice how by specific instances the following selection illustrates the truth of the generalization set forth in the second sentence and restated in the last sentence. DEGENERATION THROUGH QUIESCENCE While parasitism is the principal cause of degeneration among animals, yet it is not the sole cause. It is evident that if for any other reason animals should become fixed, and live inactive lives, they would degenerate. There are not a few instances of degeneration due simply to a quiescent life, unaccompanied by parasitism. The Tunicata, or sea squirts, are animals which have become simple through degeneration, due to the adoption of a sedentary life, the withdrawal from the crowd of animals and from the struggle which it necessitates. The young tunicate is a free-swimming, active, tadpolelike, or fishlike creature, which possesses organs very like those of the adult of the simplest fishes or fishlike forms. That is, the sea squirt begins life as a primitively simple vertebrate. It possesses in its larval stage a notochord, the delicate structure which precedes the formation of a backbone, extending along the upper part of the body below the spinal cord. The other organs of the young tunicate are all of vertebral type. But the young sea squirt passes a period of active and free life as a little fish, after which it settles down and attaches itself to a shell or wooden pier by means of suckers, and remains for the rest of its life fixed. Instead of going on and developing into a fishlike creature, it loses its notochord, its special sense organs, and other organs; it loses its complexity and high organization, and becomes a "mere rooted bag with a double neck," a thoroughly degenerate animal. A barnacle is another example of degeneration through quiescence. The barnacles are crustaceans related most nearly to the crabs and shrimps. The young barnacle just from the egg is a six-legged, free-swimming nauplius, very like a young prawn or crab, with a single eye. In its next larval stage it has six pairs of swimming feet, two compound eyes, and two antennae or feelers, and still lives an independent free-swimming life. When it makes its final change to the adult condition, it attaches itself to some stone, or shell, or pile, or ship's bottom, loses its compound eyes and feelers, develops a protecting shell, and gives up all power of locomotion. Its swimming feet become changed into grasping organs, and it loses most of its outward resemblance to the other members of its class. Certain insects live sedentary or fixed lives. All the members of the family of scale insects (Coccidae), in one sex at least, show degeneration that has been caused by quiescence. One of these coccids, called the red orange scale, is very abundant in Florida and California and in other fruit-growing regions. The male is a beautiful, tiny, two-winged midge, but the female is a wingless, footless, little sack, without eyes or other organs of special sense, which lies motionless under a flat, thin, circular, reddish scale composed of wax and two or three cast skins of the insect itself. The insect has a long, slender, flexible, sucking beak, which is thrust into the leaf or stem or fruit of the orange on which the "scale bug" lives, and through which the insect sucks the orange sap, which is its only food. It lays eggs under its body, and thus also under the protecting wax scale, and dies. From the eggs hatch active little larval "scale bugs," with eyes and feelers, and six legs. They crawl from under the wax scale and roam about over the orange tree. Finally, they settle down, thrusting their sucking beak into the plant tissue, and cast their skin. The females lose at this molt their legs and eyes and feelers. Each becomes a mere motionless sack capable only of sucking up sap and laying eggs. The young males, however, lose their sucking beak and can no longer take food, but they gain a pair of wings and an additional pair of eyes. They fly about and fertilize the sacklike females, which then molt again and secrete the thin wax scale over them. Throughout the animal kingdom loss of the need of movement is followed by the loss of the power to move and of all structures related to it. --Jordon and Kellogg: _Animal Life_. Has the principle of unity been observed in the above selection; that is, of the many things that might be told about a sea squirt, a barnacle, or a scale bug, have the authors selected only those which serve to illustrate degeneration through quiescence? Instead of one generalization supported by a series of facts to each of which a paragraph is given, we may have several subordinate generalizations relating to the subject of the theme. Each of these subordinate generalizations may become the topic statement of a paragraph which is further developed by giving specific instances or by some other method of paragraph development. Such an order, that is, generalization followed by the facts which illustrate it, is coherent; but care must be taken to give each fact under the generalization to which it is most closely related. On the other hand, our theme may be made coherent by giving the facts first, and then the generalization that they establish. +Theme XLIX.+--_Write a theme of three or more paragraphs illustrating or proving some general statement by means of facts or specific instances._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Young persons should not drink coffee. 2. Reasons for the curfew bell. 3. Girls wear their hair in a variety of ways. 4. There are several kinds of boys in this school. 5. Civilization increases as the facilities for transportation increase. 6. Trolley roads are of great benefit to the country. 7. Presence of mind often averts danger. +92. Development of a Composition by Stating Cause and Effect.+--The statement of the causes of an event or condition may be used as a fifth method of development. The principle, however, is not different from that applied to the development of a paragraph by stating cause and effect (Section 49). If several causes contribute to the same effect, each may be given a separate paragraph, or several minor ones may be combined in one paragraph. For the sake of unity we must include each fact, principle, or statement in the paragraph to which it really belongs. The coherent order is usually that which proceeds from causes to effects rather than that which traces events backward from effects to causes. +Theme L.+--_Write a theme of three or more paragraphs, stating causes and effects._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Why hospitals are necessary. 2. Why cigarette smoking is dangerous. 3. Why girls should take music lessons. 4. The effect of climate upon health. 5. The effect of rainfall upon the productivity and industries of a country. 6. The effect of mountains, lakes, or rivers upon exploration and travel. 7. What connection is there between occupation and height above the sea level, and why? 8. Why our city is located where it is. 9. Why I came late to school. +93. Combination of Methods of Development.+--Frequently the presentation of our thought is made most effective by using some combination of the methods of development discussed in this chapter. Time and place are often interwoven, comparisons and contrasts flash into mind, general statements need specific illustration, or results demand immediate explanation--all in the same theme. Sometimes the order of coherence will be in doubt, for cause and effect demand a different order of statement from that which would be given were we to follow either time-order or position in space. In such cases we must choose whether it is most important to tell first _why_ or _when_ or _where_. The only rule that can be suggested is to do that which will make our meaning most clear, because it is for the sake of the clear presentation of our thought that we seek unity, coherence, and emphasis. +Theme LI.+--_Write a theme of several paragraphs. Use any method of development or any combination of methods._ (Choose your own subject. After the theme is written make a list of all the questions you should ask yourself about it. Correct the theme with reference to each point in your list of questions.) SUMMARY 1. General principles of composition. _a._ Unity. _b._ Coherence. _c._ Emphasis. (1) By position. (2) By proportion of parts. 2. An outline assists in securing unity, coherence, and emphasis. 3. Methods of composition development: A composition may be developed-- _a._ With reference to time-order. _b._ With reference to position in space. _c._ By use of comparison and contrast. _d._ By stating generalization and facts. _e._ By stating cause and effect. _f._ By any suitable combination of the above methods. 4. Transition and summary paragraphs may occur in compositions. VI. LETTER WRITING +94. Importance of Good Letter Writing.+--Letter writing is the form of written language used by most of us more frequently than any other form. The importance of good letter writing is therefore obvious. Business, personal, and social relations necessitate the writing of letters. We are judged by those letters; and in order that we may be considered businesslike, educated, and cultured, it is necessary that we should be able to write good letters, not only as regards the form but also as regards the subject-matter. The writing of good letters is often the means of securing desirable positions and of keeping up pleasant and helpful friendships. Since this form of composition plays so important a part in our lives and the lives of those about us, it is worthy of careful study. The subject-matter is the most important part of the letter, but adherence to usages generally adopted is essential to successful letter writing. Some of these usages may seem trivial in themselves, but a lack of attention to them shows either ignorance or carelessness on the part of the writer, and the consequences resulting from this inattention are often anything but trivial. Applicants for good positions have been rejected either because they did not know the correct usages of letter writing, or because they did not heed them. In no other form of composition are the rules concerning form so rigid; hence the need of knowledge and carefulness concerning them. +95. Paper.+--The nature of the letter determines to some extent our choice of paper. Business letters are usually written on large paper, about ten by eight inches in size, while letters of friendship and notes of various kinds are written on paper of smaller size. White or delicately tinted paper is always in good taste for all kinds of letters. The use of highly tinted paper is occasionally in vogue with some people, but failure to use it is never an offense against the laws of good taste. It is customary now to use unruled paper for all kinds of letters as well as for other forms of compositions. For letters of friendship four-page paper is preferred to that in tablet form. The order in which the pages are used may vary; but whatever the order is, it should not be confusing to the reader. Black ink should always be used. The writing should be neat and legible. Attention should be paid to margin, paragraphs, and indentation. In fact, all the rules of theme writing apply to letter writing, and to these are added several others. +96. The Beginning of a Letter.+--Certain forms for the beginning of letters have been agreed upon, and these forms should be followed. The beginning of a letter usually includes the heading, the address of the person or persons to whom the letter is sent, and the salutation. Notice the following examples:-- (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | 171 Miles Ave., | | Cleveland, Ohio. | | Oct. 21, 1905. | | Marshall Field & Co., | | State St., Chicago, Ill. | | | | Gentlemen: | | | (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | Ottawa, Ill. | | Nov. 9, 1905. | | Dear Harold, | | | (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | 1028 Jackson Boulevard, | | Chicago Ill. | | Nov. 10, 1905. | | Messrs. Johnson & Foote, | | 120 Main St., | | Pittsfield, Mass. | | | | Dear Sirs, | | | (4) ______________________________________________________ | | | 120 P Street, | | Lincoln, Neb. | | Oct. 17, 1905. | | My dear Mrs. Scott, | | | (5) ______________________________________________________ | | | Boston, Mass., Nov. 23, 1905. | | | | Dear Mother, | | | (6) ______________________________________________________ | | | 33 Front St., | | Adrian, Mich. | | Nov. 30, 1905. | | Miss Gertrude Brown, | | 228 Warren Ave., Chicago, Ill. | | | | Dear Madam: | | | (7) ______________________________________________________ | | | New Hartford, Conn. | | Nov. 3, 1905. | | My dear Henry, | | | The heading of a letter includes the address of the writer and the date of the writing. When numerous letters are sent from one place to another, the street and number may after a time be omitted from the heading. Example (5) illustrates this. A son living in Boston has written to his mother frequently and no longer considers it necessary to write the street and number in every letter. If there is any doubt in the writer's mind as to whether his address will be remembered or not, he should include it in the letter. If the writer lives in a small place where the street and number will not be needed in a reply sent to him, it is unnecessary for him to make use of it in his letter. When the street and number are omitted, the heading may be written on one line, as in example (5), but the use of two lines is preferable. Custom has decreed that the proper place for the heading is in the right-hand upper corner of the first page. Sometimes, especially in business letters, we find the writer's address at the close of the letter, but for the sake of convenience it is preferably placed at the beginning. The first line should be about one inch and a half from the top of the page. The second line should begin a little to the right of the first line, and the third line, a little to the right of the second line. Attention should be paid to proper punctuation in each line. In a comparatively few cases we may find that the omission of the date of the letter will make no difference to the recipient, but in most cases it will cause annoyance at least, and in many cases result in serious trouble both to ourselves and to those who receive our letters. We should not allow ourselves to neglect the date even in letters of apparently no great importance. If we allow the careless habit of omitting dates to develop, we may some day omit a date when the omission will affect affairs of great importance. This date should include the day, month, and year. It is better to write out the entire year, as 1905, not '05. In business letters it is customary to write the address of the person or persons addressed at the left side of the page. Either two or three lines may be used. The first line of this address should be one line lower than the last line of the heading. Notice examples (1), (3), and (6). When the address is thus written, the salutation is commonly written one line below it. Sometimes the salutation is commenced at the margin, and sometimes a little to the right of the address. Where there is no address, the salutation is written a line below the date and begins with the margin, as in examples (2), (4), (5), and (7). The form of salutation naturally depends upon the relations existing between the correspondents. The forms _Dear Sir, My dear Sir, Madam, My dear Madam, Dear Sirs, Gentlemen_, are used in formal business letters. The forms _Dear Miss Robinson, My dear Mrs. Hobart, Dear Mr. Fraser, My dear Mr. Scott_, are used in business letters when the correspondents are acquainted with each other. The same forms are also used in letters of friendship when the correspondents are not well enough acquainted with each other to warrant the use of the more familiar forms, _My dear Mary, Dear Edmund, My dear Friend, Dear Cousin, My dear little Niece_. There is no set rule concerning the punctuation of the salutation. The comma, the colon, or the semicolon may be used either alone or in connection with the dash. The comma alone seems to be the least formal of all, and the colon the most so. Hence the former is used more frequently in letters of friendship, and the latter more frequently in business letters. +97. Body of the Letter.+--The body of the letter is the important part; in fact, it is the letter itself, since it contains the subject-matter. It will be discussed under another head later, and is only mentioned here in order to show its place in connection with the beginning of a letter. As a rule, it is best to begin the body of our letters one line below, and either directly underneath or to the right of the salutation. It is not improper, however, especially in business letters, to begin it on the same line with the salutation. A few examples will be sufficient to show the variations of the place for beginning the main part of the letter. (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | 1694 Cedar Ave., | | Cleveland, Ohio. | | June 23, 1905. | | Messrs. Hanna, Scott & Co., | | Aurora, Ill. | | | | Gentlemen:--I inclose a money order for $10.00, | | etc. | | | (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | Everett, Washington. | | Oct. 20, 1905. | | My dear Robert, | | We are very glad that you have decided to make | | us a visit, etc. | | | (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | Greenwich, N.Y. | | Sept. 19, 1905. | | My dear Miss Russ, | | Since I have been Miss Clark's assistant, etc. | | | (4) ______________________________________________________ | | | 2 University Ave., | | Nashville, Tenn. | | April 19, 1905. | | The American Book Company, | | 300 Pike St., | | Cinncinnati, O. | | | | Dear Sirs:--Please send me by express two copies | | of Halleck's English Literature, etc. | | | +98. Conclusion of a Letter.+--The conclusion of a letter includes what is termed the complimentary close and the signature. Certain forms have been agreed upon, which should be closely followed. Our choice of a complimentary close, like that of a salutation, depends upon the relations existing between us and those to whom we are writing. Such forms as _Your loving daughter, With love, Ever your friend, Your affectionate mother_, should be used only when intimate relations exist between correspondents. In letters where existing relations are not so intimate and in some kinds of business letters the forms _Sincerely yours, Yours very sincerely,_ may be used appropriately. The most common forms in business letters are _Yours truly_ and _Very truly yours_. The forms _Respectfully yours,_ or _Yours very respectfully,_ should be used only when there is occasion for some special respect, as in writing to a person of high rank or position. The complimentary close should be written one line below the last line of the main part of the letter, and toward the right-hand side of the page. Its first word should commence with a capital, and a comma should be placed at its close. The signature properly belongs below and a little to the right of the complimentary close. Except in cases of familiar relationship, the name should be signed in full. It is difficult to determine the spelling of unfamiliar proper names if they are carelessly written. It is therefore important in writing to strangers that the signature should be made plainly legible in order that they may know how to address the writer in their reply. A lady should make it plain whether she is to be addressed as _Miss_ or _Mrs._ This can be done either by placing the title _Miss_ or _Mrs._ in parentheses before the name, or by writing the whole address below and to the left of the signature. Boys and men may often avoid confusion by signing their first name instead of using only initials. Notice the following examples of the complimentary close and signature:-- (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | Appleton, Wisconsin. | | Sept. 3, 1905. | | | | My dear Cousin, | | | | | | (Body of letter.) | | | | | | Yours with love, | | Gertrude Edmonds. | | | (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | 192 Lincoln Ave., | | Worcester, Mass. | | Nov. 25, 1905. | | | | L.B. Bliss & Co., | | 109 Summer St., | | Boston, Mass. | | | | | | Dear Sirs; | | | | (Body of letter.) | | | | | | | | Very truly yours, | | Walter A. Cutler. | | | (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | Paxton, Ill. | | July 3, 1905. | | | | American Typewriter Co., | | 263 Broadway, New York. | | | | | | Gentlemen: | | | | | | (Body of letter.) | | | | | | | | Very truly yours, | | (Miss) Jennie R. McAllister. | | | (4) ______________________________________________________ | | | May 5, 1905. | | | | Daniel Low & Co., | | 232 Essex St., Salem, Mass. | | | | | | Dear Sirs; | | | | | | (Body of letter.) | | | | | | | | Mary E. Ball | | | | Mrs. George W. Ball, | | 415 Fourth St., | | La Salle, Ill. | | | (5) ______________________________________________________ | | | Marshalltown, Iowa. | | Oct. 3, 1905. | | | | My dear Miss Meyer, | | | | | | (Body of letter.) | | | | | | Sincerely yours, | | Dorothy Doddridge. | | | EXERCISE Write suitable headings, salutations, complimentary endings, and signatures for the following letters:-- 1. To Spaulding & Co., Wabash Ave., Chicago, Ill., ordering their rules for basket ball. 2. To your older brother. 3. To the school board, asking for a gymnasium. 4. To some business house, making application for a position. 5. To the governor of your state. 6. From one stranger to another. 7. From an older brother to his little sister. 8. From a boy living in New Orleans to the father of his most intimate friend. +99. The Envelope.+--The direction on the envelope, commonly called the superscription, consists of the name and address of the person or persons to whom the letter is sent. This direction should be written in a careful and _courteous manner_, and should include all that is necessary to insure the prompt delivery of the letter to the proper destination. The superscription may be arranged in three or four lines, each line beginning a little to the right of the preceding line. The name should be written about midway between the upper and lower edges of the envelope, and there should be nearly an equal amount of space left at each side. If there is any difference, there should be less space at the right than at the left. The street and number may be written below the name, and the city or town and state below. The street and number may be properly written in the lower left-hand corner. This is also the place for any special direction that may be necessary for the speedy transmission of the letter; for example, "In care of Mr. Charles R. Brown." Women should be addressed as _Miss_ or _Mrs._ In case the woman is married, her husband's first name and middle initial are commonly used, unless it is known that she prefers to have her own first name used. Men should be addressed as _Mr._, and a firm may in many cases be addressed as _Messrs._ It is considered proper to use the titles _Dr._, _Rev._, etc., in directing an envelope to a man bearing such a title, but it would be entirely out of place to address the wife of a physician or clergyman as _Mrs. Dr._ or _Mrs. Rev._ The names of states may be abbreviated, but care should be taken that these abbreviations be plainly written, especially when there are other similar abbreviations. In compound names, as North Dakota and West Virginia, do not abbreviate one part of the compound and write out the other. Either abbreviate both or write out both. If any punctuation besides the period after abbreviations is used, it consists of a comma after each line. It is the custom now to omit such punctuation. Either form is in good taste, but whichever form is adopted, it should be employed throughout the entire superscription. The comma should not be used in one line and omitted in another. Notice the following forms of correct superscriptions:-- (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Mr. Milo R. Maltbie | 85 West 118th St. | New York. |______________________________________________________ (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Mr. John D. Clark | New York | N.Y. | | Teachers College | Columbia University. |______________________________________________________ (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Mrs. Edgar N. Foster | South Haven | Mich. | | Avery Beach Hotel. | ______________________________________________________ (4) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Miss Louise M. Baker | Nottingham | Ohio. | | Box 129. |______________________________________________________ (5) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Dr. James M. Postle | De Kalb | Ill. | |______________________________________________________ (6) ______________________________________________________ | | | | | Miss Ida Morrison | Chicago | Ill. | | | 1048 Warren Ave. |______________________________________________________ EXERCISE Write proper superscriptions to letters written to the following:-- 1. Thaddeus Bolton, living at 524 Q Street, Lincoln, Nebraska. 2. The wife of a physician of your acquaintance. 3. James B. Angell, President of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 4. Your mother, visiting some relative or friend. 5. The publishers Allyn and Bacon, 878 Wabash Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 6. Edward Harrington, living at 1962 Seventh Avenue, New York. 7. To a friend at a seaside resort. 8. To a friend visiting your uncle in Oakland, California. +100. The Great Rule of Letter Writing.+--The great rule of letter writing is, Never write a letter which you would not be willing to see in print over your own signature. That which you _say_ in anger may be discourteous and of little credit to you, but it may in time be forgotten; that which you _write_, however, may be in existence an untold number of years. Thousands of letters are now on exhibition whose authors never had such a use of them in mind. If you ever feel like writing at the end of a letter, "Burn this as soon as you read it," do not send it, but burn the letter yourself. Before you sign your name to any letter read it over and ask yourself, "Is this letter in form and contents one which would do me credit if it should be published?" +101. Business Letters.+--Since the purpose of business letters is to inform, they should, first of all, be characterized by clearness. In asking for information, be sure that you state your questions so that there shall be no doubt in the mind of the recipient concerning the information that you desire. In giving information, be equally sure to state facts so clearly that there can be no possibility of a mistake. Brevity is the soul of business letters as well as of wit. Business men are busy men. They have no time to waste in reading long letters, but wish to gain their information quickly. Hence we should aim to state the desired facts in as concise a manner as possible, and we should give only pertinent facts. Short explanations may sometimes be necessary, but nothing foreign to the subject-matter should ever be introduced. While we should aim to make our letters short, they should not be so brief as to appear abrupt and discourteous. It shows lack of courtesy to omit important words or to make too frequent use of abbreviations. We should answer a business letter as soon as possible. This answer, besides giving the desired information, should include a reference to the letter received and an acknowledgment of inclosures, if there were any. All questions should receive courteous replies. The facts should be arranged in a form that will be convenient for the recipient. As a rule it is best to follow the order which the writer has used in his letter, but in some cases we may be able to state our facts more definitely and concisely if we follow some other order. What has been said in general about attention to forms in letter writing might well be emphasized here, for business men are keen critics concerning letters received. Be careful to use the correct forms already suggested. Also pay attention to punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Write only on one side of the paper and fold the letter correctly. In fact, be businesslike in everything connected with the writing of business letters. A few examples are here given for your notice:-- (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | Ypsilanti, Mich. | | April 4, 1905. | | | | Mr. William Wylie, | | 807 Linn St., Peoria, Ill. | | | | Dear Mr. Wylie; | | Inclosed is a letter from Superintendent Rogers | | of Rockford, Ill. The position of teacher of | | mathematics is vacant. The salary may not be so | | much as you now receive, but in many respects the | | position is a desirable one. I advise you to apply | | for it. | | Sincerely yours, | | Charles M. Gates. | | | (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | 586 State St., | | Chicago, Ill. | | July 20,1905. | | | | Mrs. Charles H. McNett, | | 2345 Franklin St., | | Denver, Colorado. | | | | Dear Madam:--Your card of July 9th is at hand. We | | beg to say that we sent you the books by express, | | prepaid, July 9th, and they have probably reached | | you by this time. If you have not received them, | | please notify us, and we will send a tracer after | | them. | | Very truly yours, | | Brown and Sherman. | | | | | (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | Elgin High School, | | Elgin, Ill. | | Sept. 4, 1905. | | | | | | Miss Ella B. Walker, | | Herkimer, New York. | | | | My dear Miss Walker: | | I am very sorry to have to trouble you, | | but I am desirous of obtaining some information | | concerning the High School Library. Will you kindly | | let me know whether the card catalogue was kept up | | to date prior to your departure and also whether the | | accession book was in use up to that time? | | I shall be greatly indebted to you if you will | | give me this information. | | Very sincerely yours, | | Edward J. Taylor. | | | EXERCISE Write at least three of the following suggested letters, paying attention to the rules for writing business letters:-- 1. Write to a dry goods firm, asking them to send you one of their catalogues. 2. Write to the manager of a football team of some town near yours, proposing a game. 3. Write the reply. 4. In reply to an advertisement, write an application for the position of clerk or bookkeeper. 5. Write to the publishers of some magazine, asking them to change your address from 27 K Street, Toledo, Ohio, to 2011 Prospect Avenue, Beatrice, Nebraska. 6. Suppose yourself doing postgraduate work in your high school. Write to the president of some college, asking him concerning advanced credit. +102. Letters of Friendship.+--While a great deal of information may be obtained from some letters of friendship, the real purpose of such letters is, usually, not to give information, but to entertain. You will notice that the information derived from letters of friendship differs from that found in business letters. Its nature is such that of itself it gives pleasure. Our letters to our relatives, friends, and acquaintances are but visits on paper, and it should be our purpose to make these visits as enjoyable as possible. So much depends upon the circumstances attendant upon the writing of letters of friendship, that it is impossible to make any definite statement as to what they should contain. We may say in general that they should contain matter interesting to the recipient, and that they should be characterized by vividness and naturalness. Interesting material is a requisite, but that of itself is not sufficient to make an entertaining letter. Interesting material may be presented in so unattractive and lifeless a manner that much of its power to please is lost. Let your letters be full of life and spirit. In your descriptions, narrations, and explanations, express yourself so clearly and so vividly that those who read your letters will be able to understand exactly what you mean. EXERCISES 1. Write a letter to a classmate who has moved to another town, telling him of the school of which he was once a member. 2. Write to a friend, describing your visit to the World's Fair at St. Louis. 3. Suppose yourself away from home. Write a letter to your little brother or sister at home. 4. If you have ever been abroad, describe in a letter some place of interest that you have visited. 5. Write to a friend who is fond of camping, about your camping experience. 6. Suppose your mother is away from home on a visit. Write her about the home life. 7. Write to a friend, describing a party that you recently attended. 8. Suppose you have moved from one town to another. In a letter compare the two towns. +103. Adaptation to the Reader.+--The golden rule of letter writing is, Adapt the letter to the reader. Although the letter is an expression of yourself, yet it should be that kind of expression which shall most interest and please your correspondent. In business letters the necessity of brevity and clearness forces attention to the selection and arrangement of details. In letters to members of the family or to intimate friends we must include many very minor things, because we know that our correspondent will be interested in them, but a rambling, disjointed jumble of poorly selected and ill-arranged details becomes tedious. What we should mention is determined by the interests of the readers, and the successful letter writer will endeavor to know what they wish to have mentioned. In writing letters to our friends we ought to show that sympathetic interest in them and their affairs which we should have if we were visiting with them. On occasion, our congratulations should be prompt and sincere. In reading letters we must not be hasty to take offense. Many good friendships have been broken because some statement in a letter was misconstrued. The written words convey a meaning very different from that which would have been given by the spoken word, the tone of voice, the smile, and the personal presence. So in our writing we must avoid all that which even borders on complaint, or which may seem critical or fault-finding to the most sensitive. +104. Notes.+--Notes may be divided in a general way into two classes, formal and informal. Formal notes include formal invitations, replies, requests, and announcements. Informal notes include informal invitations and replies, and also other short communications of a personal nature on almost every possible subject. +105. Formal Notes.+--A formal invitation is always written in the third person. The lines may be of the same length, or they may be so arranged that the lines shall be of different lengths, thus giving the page a somewhat more pleasing appearance. The heading, salutation, complimentary close, and signature are all omitted. The address of the sender may be written below the body of the letter. Many prefer it a little to the left, and the date is sometimes written below it. Others, however, prefer it directly below or a little to the right. Replies to formal invitations should always be written in the third person, and should in general follow the style of the invitation. The date and the hour of the invitation should be repeated in the reply, and this reply should be sent immediately after receiving the invitation. A few examples are here given to show the correct forms of both invitations and replies:-- (1) ______________________________________________________ | | | Mr. and Mrs. Frederick William Thompson | | request the pleasure of your company | | on Monday evening, December thirtieth, | | at half-past eight o'clock. | | | (2) ______________________________________________________ | | | Miss Barrows accepts with pleasure Mr. and | | Mrs. Thompson's invitation for Monday evening, | | December thirtieth, at half-past eight o'clock. | | | (3) ______________________________________________________ | | | Mr. Morris regrets that a previous engagement | | prevents his accepting Mr. and Mrs. Thompson's | | kind invitation for Monday evening, December | | the thirtieth. | | | (4) ______________________________________________________ | | | Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Elliott request the | | pleasure of Mr. John Barker's company at dinner | | on Wednesday, December sixth, at seven o'clock. | | | | 1068 Euclid Ave. | | | (5) ______________________________________________________ | | | Mr. Barker regrets his inability to accept | | Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Elliott's invitation to | | dinner at seven o'clock, Wednesday, December | | sixth. | | | EXERCISE 1. Write an invitation to a golden wedding. 2. Mrs. Homer A. Payne invites Miss Eva Milton to dine with her next week Thursday at eight o'clock. Write out a formal invitation. 3. Write regrets to Mrs. Payne's invitation. 4. Write an acceptance of the same invitation. 5. Write a formal invitation to a party to be given in honor of your guest, Miss Grace Mason. +106. Informal Notes.+--Informal invitations and replies may contain the same subject-matter as formal invitations and replies. The only difference is in the form in which they are written. The informal invitation is in form similar to a letter except that the same exactness about the heading is not required. Sometimes the heading is written and sometimes it is omitted entirely. The address of the one sending the invitation and the date may be written below the body of the note to the left of the signature. The reply to an informal invitation should always be informal, but the date and hour should be repeated as in replies to formal invitations. A great many informal notes not included in invitations and replies are constantly written. These are simply brief letters of friendship, and the purposes for which they are written are exceedingly varied. When we write congratulations or words of condolence, when we introduce one friend to another, when we thank some one for a gift, and when we give words of advice, and in many other instances, we make use of informal notes. They should be simple, personal, and as a rule confined to but one subject. Notice the following examples of informal notes:-- (1) _________________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Mrs. Lathrop, | | | | Will you not give us the pleasure of your company | | at dinner, on next Friday evening at seven o'clock? Miss Todd | | of Philadelphia is visiting us, and we wish our friends to meet | | her. | | | | Very sincerely yours, | | Ethel M. Trainor. | | 840 Forest Avenue, | | Dec. 5, 1905. | | | (2) _________________________________________________________________ | | | Dec. 6, 1905. | | | | My dear Mrs. Trainor, | | | | I sincerely regret that I cannot accept your invitation | | to dinner next Friday evening, for I have made a previous | | engagement which it will be impossible for me to break. | | | | Yours most sincerely, | | Emma Lathrop. | | | (3) _________________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Blanche, | | | | Mr. Gilmore and I are planning for a little party | | Thursday evening of this week. I hope you have no other | | engagement for that evening, as we shall be pleased to have | | you with us. | | Very cordially yours, | | Margaret Gilmore. | | | (4) ______________________________________________________________ | | | My dear Margaret, | | | | Fortunately I have no other engagement for this | | week Thursday evening, and I shall be delighted to spend an | | evening with you and your friends. | | | | Very sincerely yours, | | Blanche A. Church. | | | EXERCISE Write the following informal notes:-- 1. Write to a friend, asking him or her to lend you a book. 2. Write an invitation to an informal trolley, tennis, or golf party. 3. Write the reply. 4. Invite one of your friends to spend his or her vacation with you. 5. Write a note to your sister, asking her to send you your theme that you left at home this morning. 6. Mrs. Edgar A. Snow invites Miss Mabel Minard to dine with her. Write out the invitation. 7. Write the acceptance. VII. POETRY [Footnote: _To the Teacher._--Since the expression of ideas in metrical form is seldom the one best suited to the conditions of modern life, it has not seemed desirable to continue the themes throughout this chapter. The study of this chapter, with suitable illustrations from the poems to which the pupils have access, may serve to aid them in their appreciation of poetry. This appreciation of poetry will be increased if the pupils attempt some constructive work. It is recommended, therefore, that one or more of the simpler kinds of metrical composition be tried. For example, one or two good ballads may be read and the pupils asked to write similar ones. Some pupils may be able to write blank verse.] +107. Purpose of Poetry.+--All writing aims to give information or to furnish entertainment (Section 54). Often the same theme may both inform and entertain, though one of these purposes may be more prominent than the other. Prose may merely entertain, or it may so distinctly attempt to set forth ideas clearly that the giving of pleasure is entirely neglected. In poetry the entertainment side is never thus subordinated. Poetry always aims to please by the presentation of that which is beautiful. All real poetry produces an aesthetic effect by appealing to our aesthetic sense; that is, to our love of the beautiful. In making this appeal to our love of the beautiful, poetry depends both upon the ideas it contains and upon the forms it uses. Like prose, it may increase its aesthetic effect by appropriate phrasing, effective arrangement, and subtle suggestiveness, but it also makes use of certain devices of language such as rhythm, rhyme, etc., which, though they may occur in writings that would be classed as prose, are characteristic of poetry. Much depends upon the ideas that poetry contains; for mere nonsense, though in perfect rhyme and rhythm, is not poetry. But it is not the idea alone which makes a poem beautiful; it is the form as well. The merely trivial cannot be made beautiful by giving it poetical form, but there are many poems containing ideas of small importance which please us because of the perfection of form. We enjoy them as we do the singing of the birds or the murmuring of the brooks. In fact, poetry is inseparable from its characteristic forms. To sort out, re-arrange, and paraphrase into second-class prose the ideas which a poem contains is a profitless and harmful exercise, because it emphasizes the intellectual side of a work which was created for the purpose of appealing to our aesthetic sense. +108. Rhythm.+--There are several forms characteristic of poetry, by the use of which its beauty and effectiveness are enhanced. Of these, rhythm is the most prominent one, without which no poetry is possible. In its widest sense, rhythm indicates a regular succession of motions, impulses, sounds, accents, etc., producing an agreeable effect. Rhythm in poetry consists of the recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables in regular succession. In poetry, care must be taken to make the accented syllable of a word come at the place where the rhythm demands an accent. The regular recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables produces a harmony which appeals to our aesthetic sense and thus enhances for us the beauty of poetry. Read the following selections so as to show the rhythm:-- 1. We were crowded in the cabin; Not a soul would dare to speak; It was midnight on the waters And a storm was on the deep. --James T. Fields. 2. Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O sea! But the tender grace of a day that is dead Will never come back to me. --Tennyson. 3. Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor --Poe. 4. Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. --Tennyson. 5. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage. --Lovelace. 6. Merrily swinging on brier and weed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link, Spink, spank, spink, Snug and safe is this nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers. Chee, chee, chee. --Bryant. 7. Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" --Browning. +109. Feet.+--The metrical effect of the preceding selections is produced by the regular recurrence of accented and unaccented syllables. A group of accented and unaccented syllables is called a foot. There are four regular feet in English verse, the iambus, the anapest, the trochee, and the dactyl. Three irregular feet, the pyrrhic, the spondee, the amphibrach, are occasionally found in lines, but not in entire poems, and are often considered merely as substitutes for regular feet. For the sake of convenience the accented syllables are indicated thus: _, and the unaccented syllables thus: U. _An iambus_ is a foot consisting of two syllables with the accent on the last. U _| U _| U _| U _| U _| Let not ambition mock their useful toil. --Gray. U _|U _| U _|U _| He prayeth best who loveth best U _| U _| U _| All things both great and small; _ U | U _| U _|U _| For the dear God who loveth us, U _| U _|U _| He made and loveth all. --Coleridge. _An anapest_ is a foot consisting of three syllables with the accent on the last. U U _| U U _|U U _| I am monarch of all I survey. U U _ | U U _ | U U _ | I would hide with the beasts of the chase. _A trochee_ is a foot consisting of two syllables with the accent on the first. _ U | _ U | _ U | _ U| Double, double, toil and trouble. --Shakespeare. _ U | _ U |_ U |_ U | Let us then be up and doing, _ U| _ U | _U | _ | With a heart for any fate, _ U |_ U | _ U|_ U | Still achieving, still pursuing, _ U | _ U |_ U | _ | Learn to labor and to wait. --Longfellow. _A dactyl_ is a foot consisting of three syllables with the accent on the first. _ U U | _ U U | Cannon to right of them, _ U U | _ U U | Cannon to left of them, _ U U | _ U U | Cannon in front of them, _ U U |_ U | Volleyed and thundered. --Tennyson. It will be convenient to remember that two of these, the iambus and the anapest, have the accent on the last syllable, and that two, the trochee and the dactyl, have the accent on the first syllable. _A spondee_ is a foot consisting of two syllables, both of which are accented about equally. It is an unusual foot in English poetry. U _ | _ _ | U _| U _ | Come now, blow, Wind, and waft us o'er. _A pyrrhic_ is a foot consisting of two syllables both of which are unaccented. It is frequently found at the end of a line. U _ | U _ | U _|U U Life is so full of misery. _An amphibrach_ is a foot consisting of three syllables, with the accent on the second. U _ U U _ U| U _ U| U _ | Creator, Preserver, Redeemer and friend. +110. Names of Verse.+--A single line of poetry is called a verse. A stanza is composed of several verses. When a verse consists of one foot, it is called a monometer; of two feet, a dimeter; of three feet, a trimeter; of four feet, a tetrameter; of five feet, a pentameter; and of six feet, a hexameter. _ U Monometer. Slowly. _ U U| _ U U | Dimeter. Emblem of happiness. _ U| _U| _ U | Trimeter. Like a poet hidden. _ U| _ U| _ U | _ U | Tetrameter. Tell me not in mournful numbers. U _ |U _ |U _| U _ | U _ | Pentameter. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath. _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U Hexameter. This is the forest primeval; the murmuring pines and U | _ U | the hemlocks. When we say that a verse is of any particular kind, we do not mean that every foot in that line is necessarily of the same kind. Verse is named by stating first the prevailing foot which composes it, and second the number of feet in a line. A verse having four iambic feet is called iambic tetrameter. So we have dactylic hexameter, trochaic pentameter, iambic trimeter, anapestic dimeter, etc. EXERCISES _A._ Mark the accented and unaccented syllables in the following selections, and name the kind of verse:-- 1. Build me straight, O worthy Master! Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel That shall laugh at all disaster And with wave and whirlwind wrestle. --Longfellow. 2. I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care. --Whittier. 3. For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar. --Tennyson. 4. Chanting of labor and craft, and of Wealth in the pot and the garner; Chanting of valor and fame, and the man who can, fall with the foremost, Fighting for children and wife, and the field which his father bequeathed him, Sweetly and solemnly sang she, and planned new lessons for mortals. --Kingsley. 5. Have you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told, Of the limitless realms of the air, Have you read it,--the marvelous story Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer? --Longfellow. _B._ 1. Find three poems written in iambic verse, and three written in trochaic verse. 2. Write at least one stanza, using iambic verse. 3. Write at least one stanza, using the same kind of verse that you find in Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." 4. Write two anapestic lines. +111. Variation in Rhythm.+--The name given to a verse is determined by the foot which prevails, but not every foot in the line needs to be of the same kind. Just as in music we may substitute a quarter for two eighth notes, so may we in poetry substitute one foot for another, provided it is given the same amount of time. Notice in the following that the rhythm is perfect and the beat regular, although a three-syllable anapest has been substituted in the second line for a two-syllable iambus:-- U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, U _ | U _ | U _| U U _ | U _ | Where heaves the turf in many a moldring heap, _ U | U _ | U _ | U _ |U _ | Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The following from _Evangeline_ illustrates the substitution of trochees for dactyls:-- _ U U | _ U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U | Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed. _ U U | _ U | _ U U | _ U | _ U U|_ U Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October _ U U | _ U U |_ U | _ U U | _ U U |_ U | Seize them and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean. _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ U Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre. It is evident that one foot can be substituted for another if the accent is not changed. Since both the iambus and the anapest are accented on the last syllable, they may be interchanged. The trochee and the dactyl are both accented on the first syllable and may, therefore, be interchanged. There are some exceptions to the general rule that in substituting one foot for another the accented syllable must be kept in the same part of the foot. Occasionally a poem in which the prevailing foot is iambic has a trochee for the first foot of a line in order that it may begin with an accented syllable. At the beginning of a line the change of accent is scarcely noticeable. _ U | U _ | U _ |U _ | Over the rail my hand I trail. _ U | U _ | U _ | U _ | Silent the crumbling bridge we cross! But if the reader has once fallen into the swing of iambic verse, the substitution of a trochee will bring the accent at an unexpected place, interrupt the smooth flow of the rhythm, and produce a harsh and jarring effect. Such a change of accent is justified only when the sense of the verse leads the reader to expect the changed accent, or when the emphasis thus given to the sense of the poem more than compensates for the break in the rhythm produced by the change of accent. Another form of metrical variation is that in which there are too few or too many syllables in a foot. This generally occurs at the end of a line, but may occur at the beginning. If a syllable is added or omitted skillfully, the rhythm will be unbroken. When the feet are accented on the last syllable,--that is, when the verse is iambic or anapestic,--an extra syllable may be added at the end of a line. U _ |U U _ |U _ | U I stood on the bridge at midnight, U U _ | U _ |U U _ | As the clocks were striking the hour; U U _ | U _ | U _|U And the Moon rose o'er the city, U _ | U _ | U _ | Behind the dark church tower. --Longfellow. U _ | U _ |U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | Girt round with rugged moun[tains], the fair Lake Constance lies, U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ |U _ | In her blue heart reflect[ed] shine back the starry skies; U _ | U _ | U _ | U _ |U _ | U _ | And watching each white cloud[let] float silently and slow, U _ | U _ | U _ | U _| U _ | U _| You think a piece of heav[en] lies on our earth below. --Adelaide A. Procter. In the second illustration the extra syllables have the same relative position in the metrical scheme as in the first, though they appear to be in the middle of the line. The pauses fill in the time and preserve the rhythm unbroken. When the feet are accented on the first syllable--as in trochaic or dactylic verse--a syllable may be omitted from the end of a line as in the second and fourth below. _ U U | _ U U | _ U U| _ U | Up with the lark in the first flush of morning, _ U U | _ U U | _ U U | _ | Ere the world wakes to its work or its play; _ U U| _ U U | _ U U | _ U | Off for a spin to the wide-stretching country, _ U U | _ U U | _ U U|_ | Far from the close, stifling city away. Sometimes we find it necessary to suppress a syllable in order to make the rhythm more nearly perfect. Syllables may be suppressed in two ways: by suppressing a vowel at the end of a word when the next word commences with a vowel; by suppressing a vowel within a word. The former method is termed elision, and the latter, slurring. U _ | U _ |U _ | U _ | U _ | Thou glorious mirror where the Almighty's form U U _ U |U _| U _ | U Glasses itself in tempests. --Byron. An accented syllable often takes the place of an entire foot. This occurs most frequently at the end of a line, but it is sometimes found at the beginning. Occasionally whole lines are formed in this way. If a pause or rest is made, the rhythm will be unbroken. u _ | u _ | u _ | Break, break, break, U U _ | U _ | U _ | On thy cold gray stones, O sea! U U _ | U U _ | U _|U And I would that my tongue could utter U _ | U U _ |U _| The thoughts that arise in me. --Tennyson. We frequently find verses in which a syllable is lacking at the close of the line; we also find many verses in which an extra syllable is added. Verse that contains the number of syllables required by its meter is said to be acatalectic; if it contains more than the required number of syllables, it is said to be hypercatalectic; and if it lacks a syllable, it is termed catalectic. It is difficult to tell whether a line has the required number of syllables or not when it is taken by itself; but by comparing it with the line prevailing in the rest of the stanza we are enabled to tell whether it is complete or not. Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_ is written in iambic pentameter verse. Knowing this, we can detect the hypercatalectic and catalectic lines. U _| U _ | U _| U _| U _ | You all did see that on the Lupercal U _ | U _| U _ |U _| U _| I thrice presented him a kingly crown U _| U _ |U _ | U _ | U _| U Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition? U _| U _ | U _ | U _ | U Yet Brutus says he was ambitious. --Shakespeare. +112. Cesura.+--Besides the pauses caused by rests or silences there is the cesural pause which needs to be considered in reading verse. A cesura is a pause determined by the sense. It coincides with some break in the sense. It is found in different parts of the verse and may be entirely lacking. Its observance does not noticeably interfere with the rhythm. In the following selection it is marked thus: ||. U _ | U _ | U _| U _ | The sun came up || upon the left, _ U| U _ | U _ | Out of the sea || came he; U _| U _ | U _| U _| And he shone bright, || and on the right U _ | U_ | U _ | Went down || into the sea --Coleridge. Lives of great men || all remind us We can make our lives || sublime, And, departing, || leave behind us, Footprints || on the sands of time. --Longfellow. Read the selections on page 197 so as to indicate the position of the cesural pauses. +113. Scansion.+--Scansion is the separation of a line into the feet which compose it. In order to scan a line we must determine the rhythmic movement of it. The rhythmic movement determines the accented syllables. Sometimes in scanning, merely the accented syllables are marked. Usually the whole metrical scheme is indicated, as in the examples on page 199. EXERCISE Scan the following selections. Note substitutions and elusions. 1. The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is gone. --Francis W. Bourdillon. 2. Laugh, and the world laughs with you, Weep, and you weep alone; For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own. --Ella Wheeler Wilcox. 3. Hear the robin in the rain, Not a note does he complain. But he fills the storm refrain With music of his own. --Charles Coke Woode. 4. The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old back wall And the baron's retainers are blithe and gay, And keeping their Christmas holiday. --Thomas Haynes Bagley. +114. Rhyme.+--Rhyme is a regular recurrence of similar sounds. In a broad sense, it may include sounds either terminal or not, but as here used it refers to terminal sounds. Just as we expect a recurrence of accent in a line, so may we expect a recurrence of similar sounds at the end of certain lines of poetry. The interval between the rhymes may be of different lengths in different poems, but when the interval is once established, it should be followed throughout the poem. A rhyme out of place jars upon the rhythmic perfection of a stanza just as an accent out of place interferes with the rhythm of the verse. Not only should the rhymes occur at expected places, but they should be the expected rhymes; that is, real rhymes. If we are expecting a word which will rhyme with _blossom_ and find _bosom_, or if we are expecting a rhyme for _breath_ and find _beneath_, the effect is unpleasant. The rhymes named above are based on spelling, while a real rhyme is based on sound. A correct rhyme should have precisely the same vowel sounds and the final consonants should be the same, but the initial consonant should be different. For example: _death, breath; home, roam; tongue, young; debating, relating_. Notice the arrangement of the rhymes in the following selections:-- 1. My soul to-day is far away, Sailing the Vesuvian Bay; My winged boat, a bird afloat, Swims round the purple peaks remote. --T. Buchanan Read. 2. I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down the valley. By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges. --Tennyson. 3. I know it is a sin For me to sit and grin At him here; But the old three-cornered hat And the breeches, and all that, Are so queer! --Holmes. 4. The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. --Tennyson. 5. Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering in a foreign strand! If such there be, go mark him well: For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim: Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. --Scott. +115. Blank Verse.+--When rhyme is omitted, we have blank verse. This is the most dignified of all kinds of verse, and is, therefore, appropriate for epic and dramatic poetry, where it is chiefly found. Most blank verse makes use of the iambic pentameter measure, but we find many exceptions. Read the following examples of blank verse so as to show the rhythm:-- 1. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not like the quarry slave at night Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach the grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. --Bryant. 2. I stood upon the steps-- The last who left the door--and there I found The lady and her friend. The elder turned And with a cordial greeting took my hand, And rallied me on my forgetfulness. Her eyes, her smile, her manner, and her voice. Touched the quick springs of memory, and I spoke Her name. She was my mother's early friend Whose face I had not seen in all the years That had flown over us, since, from her door, I chased her lamb to where I found--myself. --Holland. +116. The Stanza.+--Some of our verse is continuous like Milton's _Paradise Lost_ or Shakespeare's plays, but much of it is divided into groups called stanzas. The lines or verses composing a stanza are bound together by definite principles of rhythm and rhyme. Usually stanzas of the same poem have the same structure, but stanzas of different poems show a variety of structure. Two of the most simple forms are the couplet and the triplet. They often form a part of a continuous poem, but they are occasionally found in divided poems. 1. The western waves of ebbing day Roll'd o'er the glen their level way. --Scott. 2. A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid; Her satin snood, her silken plaid, Her golden brooch such birth betray'd. --Scott. A stanza of four lines is called a quatrain. The lines of quatrains show a variety in the arrangement of their rhymes. The first two lines may rhyme with each other and the last two with each other; the first and fourth may rhyme and the second and third; or the rhymes may alternate. Notice the example on page 208, and also the following:-- 1. I ask not wealth, but power to take And use the things I have aright. Not years, but wisdom that shall make My life a profit and delight. --Phoebe Cary. 2. I count this thing to be grandly true: That a noble deed is a step toward God,-- Lifting the soul from the common sod To a purer air and a broader view. --Holland. A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter verse with alternate rhymes is called an elegiac stanza. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds. --Gray. The Tennysonian stanza consists of four iambic tetrameter lines in which the first line rhymes with the fourth, and the second with the third. Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before. --Tennyson. Five and six line stanzas are found in a great variety. The following are examples:-- 1. We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. --Shelley. 2. And if I should live to be The last leaf upon the tree In the spring. Let them smile as I do now, At the old forsaken bough Where I cling. --Holmes. 3. The upper air burst into life; And a hundred fire flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about; And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. --Coleridge. The Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines: the first eight are iambic pentameters, and the last line is an iambic hexameter or Alexandrine. Burns makes use of this stanza in _The Cotter's Saturday Night._ The following stanza from that poem shows the plan of the rhymes:-- O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content! And oh! may Heaven their simple lives prevent From luxury's contagion, weak and vile! Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand a wall of fire around their much beloved isle. EXERCISES _A._ Scan the following:-- Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. --Wordsworth. Into the sunshine, Full of light, Leaping and flashing From morn to night! --Lowell. _B._ Name each verse in the following stanza:-- Hear the sledges with the bells-- Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight-- Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. --Poe. +117. Kinds of Poetry.+-There are three general classes of poetry: narrative, lyric, and dramatic. _A. Narrative poetry_, as may be inferred from its name, relates events which may be either real or imaginary. Its chief varieties are the epic, the metrical romance or lesser epic, the tale, and the ballad. _An epic_ poem is an extended narrative of an elevated character that deals with heroic exploits which are frequently under supernatural control. This kind of poetry is characterized by the intricacy of plot, by the delineation of noble types of character, by its descriptive effects, by its elevated language, and by its seriousness of tone. The epic is considered as the highest effort of man's poetic genius. It is so difficult to produce an epic that but few literatures contain more than one. Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, Virgil's _Aeneid_, the German _Nibelungenlied_, the Spanish _Cid_, Dante's _Divine Comedy_, and Milton's _Paradise Lost_ are important epics found in different literatures. A _metrical romance_ or lesser epic is a narrative poem, shorter and less dignified than the epic. Longfellow's _Evangeline_ and Scott's _Marmion_ and _Lady of the Lake_ are examples of this kind of poetry. _A metrical tale is_ a narrative poem somewhat simpler and shorter than the metrical romance, but more complex than the ballad. Longfellow's _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, Tennyson's _Enoch Arden_, and Lowell's _Vision of Sir Launfal_ are examples of the tale. _A ballad_ is the shortest and most simple of all narrative poems. It relates but a single incident and has a very simple structure. In this kind of poetry the interest centers upon the incident rather than upon any beauty or elegance of language. Many of the Robin Hood Ballads are well known. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_ and Longfellow's _Wreck of the Hesperus_ are other examples of the ballad. It may be well to note here that it is not always possible to draw definite lines between two different kinds of narrative poetry. In fact, there will sometimes be a difference of opinion as regards the classification. _B. Lyric poetry_ was the name originally applied to poetry that was to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, but now the name is often applied to poems that are not intended to be sung at all. Lyric poetry deals primarily with the feelings and emotions. Love, hate, jealousy, grief, hope, and praise are emotions that may be expressed in lyric poetry. Its chief varieties are the song, the ode, the elegy, and the sonnet. A _song_ is a short poem intended to be sung. Songs may be divided into sacred and secular. _Jerusalem, the Golden_, and _Lead, Kindly Light_, are examples of sacred songs. Secular songs may be patriotic, convivial, or sentimental. An _ode_ expresses exalted emotion and is more complex in structure than the song. Some of the best odes in our language are Dryden's _Ode to St. Cecilia_, Wordsworth's _Ode on Intimations of Immortality_, Keats's _Ode on a Grecian Urn_, Shelley's _Ode to a Skylark_, and Lowell's _Commemoration Ode_. An _elegy_ is a lyric pervaded by the feeling of grief or melancholy. Milton's _Lycidas_, Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, and Gray's _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_ are all noted elegies. A _sonnet_ is a lyric poem of fourteen lines which deals with a single idea or sentiment. It is not a stanza taken from a poem, but is a complete poem itself. In the Italian sonnet and those modeled after it, the emotional feeling rises through the first two quatrains, reaching its climax at or near the end of the eighth line, and then subsides through the two tercets which make up the remaining six lines. If the sentiment expressed does not adjust itself to this ebb and flow, it is not suitable for a sonnet. Milton's sonnet on his blindness is one of the best. Notice the emotional transition in the middle of the eighth line. This sonnet will also illustrate the fixed rhyme scheme:-- When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent, which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest he, returning, chide; Doth God exact day labor, light denied? I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need, Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait. There is a form of sonnet called the Shakespearean which differs in its arrangement from the Italian sonnet. _C. Dramatic poetry_ relates the occurrence of human events, and is designed to be spoken on the stage. If the drama has an unhappy ending, it is _a tragedy_. As is becoming in such a theme, the language is dignified and impressive, and the whole appeals to our deeper emotions. If the drama has a happy conclusion, it is _a comedy_. Here the movement is quicker, the language less dignified, and the effort is to make the whole light and amusing. PART II Description, Narration, Exposition, and Argument have been treated in an elementary way in Part I. A more extensive treatment of each is given in Part II. It has been deemed undesirable to repeat in Part II many things which have been previously treated. The treatment of any one of the forms of discourse as given in Part II is not complete. By reference to the index all the sections treating of any phase of any one subject may be found. [Illustration: See page 224, _C._] VIII. DESCRIPTION +118. Description Defined.+--By means of our senses we gain a knowledge of the world. We see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; and the ideas so acquired are the fundamental elements of our knowledge, without which thinking would be impossible. It, therefore, happens that much of the language that we use has for its purpose the transmission to others of such ideas. Such writing is called description. We may, therefore, define description as that form of discourse which has for its purpose the formation of an image. As here used, the term _image_ applies to any idea presented by the senses. In a more limited sense it means the mental picture which is formed by aid of sight. It is for the purpose of presenting images of this kind that description is most often employed. It is most frequently concerned with images of objects seen, less frequently with sounds, and seldom with ideas arising through touch, taste, and smell. In this chapter, therefore, we shall consider chiefly the methods of using language for the purpose of arousing images of objects seen. +119. Order of Observation.+--In description we shall find it of advantage to use such language that the reader will form the image in the same way as he would form an image from actual observation. There is a customary and natural order of observation, and if we present our material in that same order, the mind more easily forms the desired image. Our first need in the study of description is to determine what this natural order of observation is. Look at the building across the street. Your _first_ impression is that of size, shape, and color. Almost instantly, but nevertheless _secondly_, you add certain details as to roof, door, windows, and surroundings. Further observation adds to the number of details, such as the size of the window panes or the pattern of the lattice work. Our first glance may assure us that we see a train, our second will tell us how many cars, our third will show us that each car is marked Michigan Central. The oftener we look or the longer we look, the greater is the number of details of which we become conscious. Any number of illustrations will show that we first see the general outline, and after that the details. We do not observe the details one by one and then combine them into an object, but we first see the object as a whole, and our first impression becomes more vivid as we add detail after detail. Following this natural order of observation a description should begin with a sentence that will give the reader a general impression of the whole. Notice the beginnings of the following selections. After reading the italicized sentence in each, consider the image that it has caused you to form. The door opened upon the main or living room. _It was a long apartment with low ceiling and walls of hewn logs chinked and plastered and all beautifully whitewashed and clean._ The tables, chairs, and benches were all homemade. On the floor were magnificent skins of wolf, bear, musk ox, and mountain goat. The walls were decorated with heads and horns of deer and mountain sheep, eagle's wings, and a beautiful breast of a loon, which Gwen had shot and of which she was very proud. At one end of the room a huge stone fireplace stood radiant in its summer decorations of ferns and grasses and wildflowers. At the other end a door opened into another room, smaller, and richly furnished with relics of former grandeur. --Connor: _The Sky Pilot_. _The stranger was of middle height, loosely knit and thin, with a cunning, brutal face._ He had a bullet-shaped head, with fine, soft, reddish brown hair; a round, stubbly beard shot with gray; and small, beady eyes set close together. He was clothed in an old, black, grotesquely fitting cutaway coat, with coarse trousers tucked into his boot tops. A worn visored cloth cap was on his head. In his right hand he carried an old muzzle-loading shotgun. --George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's"). +120. The Fundamental Image.+--The first impression of the object as a whole is called the fundamental image. The beginning of a description should cause the reader to form a correct general outline, which will include the main characteristics of the object described. While the fundamental image lacks definiteness and exactness, yet it must be such that it shall not need to be revised as we add the details. If one should begin a description by saying, "Opposite the church there is a large two-story, brick house with a conservatory on the left," the reader would form at once a mental picture including the essential features of the house. Further statements about the roof, the windows, the doors, the porch, the yard, and the fence, would each add something to the picture until it was complete. The impression with which the reader started would be added to, but not otherwise changed. But if we should conclude the description with the statement, "This house was distinguished from its neighbors by the fact that it was not of the usual rectangular form, but was octagonal in shape," the reader would find that the image which he had formed would need to be entirely changed. It is evident that if the word _octagonal_ is to appear at all, it must be at the beginning. Care must be taken to place all the words that affect the fundamental image in the sentence that gives the general characteristics of that which we are describing. Hawthorne begins _The House of the Seven Gables_ as follows:-- Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon street; the house is the old Pyncheon house; and an elm tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon elm. On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Pyncheon street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,--the great elm tree and the weather-beaten edifice. Later he gives a detailed description of the house on the morning of its completion as follows:-- Maule's lane, or Pyncheon street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind. There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of the street, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of the walls was overspread. On every side the seven gables pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney. The many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make among men's daily interests. EXERCISES _A._ Select the sentence or part of a sentence which gives the fundamental image in each of the following selections:-- 1. It was a big, smooth-stone-faced house, product of the 'Seventies, frowning under an outrageously insistent Mansard, capped by a cupola, and staring out of long windows overtopped with "ornamental" slabs. Two cast-iron deer, painted death-gray, twins of the same mold, stood on opposite sides of the front walk, their backs toward it and each other, their bodies in profile to the street, their necks bent, however, so that they gazed upon the passer-by--yet gazed without emotion. Two large, calm dogs guarded the top of the steps leading to the front door; they also were twins and of the same interesting metal, though honored beyond the deer by coats of black paint and shellac. --Booth Tarkington: _The Conquest of Canaan_ ("Harper's"). 2. At the first glance, Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an old-fashioned dressing gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly, and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was the spirit of a man that could not walk. The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding, it had the light of reason in it-- seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished. --Hawthorne: _The House of the Seven Gables_. 3. One of the best known of the flycatchers all over the country is the kingbird. He is a little smaller than a robin, and all in brownish black, with white breast. He has also white tips to his tail feathers, which look very fine when he spreads it out wide in flying. Among the head feathers of the kingbird is a small spot of orange color. This is called in the books a "concealed patch," because it is seldom seen, it is so hidden by the dark feathers. --Mary Rogers Miller: _The Brook Book_. (Copyright, 1902, by Doubleday, Page and Co.) Notice the use of a comparison in establishing a correct fundamental image in example 3. _B._ Select five buildings with which the members of the class are familiar. Write a single sentence for each, giving the fundamental image. Read these sentences to the class. Let them determine for which building each is written. _C._ Notice the pictures on page 218. Write a single sentence for each, giving the fundamental image. +Theme LII.+--_Write a paragraph, describing something with which you are familiar._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The county court house. 2. The new church. 3. My neighbor's house. 4. Where we go fishing. 5. A neighboring lake. 6. A cozy nook. (Underscore the sentence that gives the fundamental image. Will the reader get from it at once a correct general outline of the object to be described? Will he need to change the fundamental image as your description proceeds?) +121. Point of View.+--What we shall see first depends upon the point of view. Seen from one position, an object or a landscape will present a different appearance from that which it will present when viewed from another position. A careful writer will give that fundamental image that would come from actual observation if the reader were looking at the scene described from the point of view chosen by the writer. He will not include details that cannot be seen from that position even though he knows that they exist. Notice that the following descriptions include only that which can be seen from the place indicated in the italicized phrases:-- _Forward from the bridge_ he beheld a landscape of wide valleys and irregular heights, with groves and lakes and fanciful houses linked together by white paths and shining streams. The valleys were spread below, that the river might be poured upon them for refreshment in day of drought, and they were as green carpets figured with beds and fields of flowers and flecked with flocks of sheep white as balls of snow; and the voices of shepherds following the flocks were heard afar. As if to tell him of the pious inscription of all he beheld, the altars out under the open sky seemed countless, each with a white-gowned figure attending it, while processions in white went slowly hither and thither between them; and the smoke of the altars half risen hung collected in pale clouds over the devoted places. Wallace: _Ben-Hur_. (Copyright, 1880. Harper and Bros.) The house stood unusually near the river, facing eastward, and standing four-square, with an immense veranda about its sides, and a flight of steps in front, spreading broadly downward, as we open our arms to a child. _From the veranda_ nine miles of river were seen; and in their compass near at hand, the shady garden full of rare and beautiful flowers; farther away broad fields of cane and rice, and the distant quarters of the slaves, and on the horizon everywhere a dark belt of cypress forest. --Cable: _Old Creole Days_. +122. Selection of Details Affected by Point of View.+--A skillful writer will not ask his reader to perform impossible feats. We cannot see the leaves upon a tree a mile away, and so should not describe them. The finer effects and more minute details should be included only when our chosen point of view brings us near enough to appreciate them. In the selection below, Stevenson tells only as much about Swanston cottage as can be seen at a distance of six miles. So saying she carried me around the battlements _towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress and indeed to a bastion_ almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight. Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills. The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars. And to this she directed my attention. "You see those marks?" she said. "We call them the Seven Sisters. Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them. That is Swanston cottage, where my brother and I are living." --Stevenson: _St. Ives_. (Copyright, 1897. Charles Scribner's Sons.) Notice in the selection below that for objects _near at hand_ details so small as the lizard's eye are given, but that these details are not given, when we are asked to observe things far away. Slow though their march had been, by this time _they had come to the end of the avenue, and were in the wide circular sweep before the castle._ They stopped here and stood looking off over the garden, with its somber cypresses and bright beds of geranium, down upon the valley, dim and luminous in a mist of gold. Great, heavy, fantastic-shaped clouds, pearl-white with pearl-gray shadows, piled themselves up against the scintillant dark blue of the sky. In and out among the rose trees _near at hand_, where the sun was hottest, heavily flew, with a loud bourdonnement, the cockchafers promised by Annunziata,--big, blundering, clumsy, the scorn of their light-winged and businesslike competitors, the bees. Lizards lay immobile as lizards cast in bronze, only their little glittering, watchful pin heads of eyes giving sign of life. And of course the blackcaps never for a moment left off singing. --Henry Habland: _My Friend Prospero_ ("McClure's"). _We round a corner of the valley, and beyond, far below us, looms the town of Sorata. From this distance_ the red tile roofs, the soft blue, green, and yellow of its stuccoed walls, look indescribably fresh and grateful. A closer inspection will probably dissipate this impression; it will be squalid and dirty, the river-stone paving of its street will be deep in the accumulation of filth, dirty Indian children will swarm in them with mangy dogs and bedraggled ducks, the gay frescoes of its walls will peel in ragged patches, revealing the 'dobe of their base, and the tile roofs will be cracked and broken. But from the heights at this distance and in the warm glow of the afternoon sun it looks like a dainty fairy village glistening in a magic splendor against the Titanic setting of the Andes. --Charles Johnson Post: _Across the Highlands of the World_ ("Harper's"). Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles. Halfway down Hangs one that gathers sampire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebble chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. --Shakespear: _King Lear_ +123. Implied Point of View.+--Often the point of view is not specifically stated, but the language of the description shows where the observer is located. Often such an implied point of view gives a delicate touch to a description that could not be obtained by direct statements. In which of the following selections is the point of view merely implied? 1. Thus pondering and dreaming, he came by the road down a gentle hill with close woods on either hand; and so into the valley with a swift river flowing through it; and on the river a mill. So white it stood among the trees, and so merrily whirred the wheel as the water turned it, and so bright blossomed the flowers in the garden, that Martimor had joy of the sight, for it reminded him of his own country. --Henry Van Dyke: _The Blue Flower_. (Copyright, 1902. Charles Scribner's Sons.) 2. There is an island off a certain part of the coast of Maine,--a little rocky island, heaped and tumbled together as if Dame Nature had shaken down a heap of stones at random from her apron, when she had finished making the larger islands, which lie between it and the mainland. At one end, the shoreward end, there is a tiny cove, and a bit of silver sand beach, with a green meadow beyond it, and a single great pine; but all the rest is rocks, rocks. At the farther end the rocks are piled high, like a castle wall, making a brave barrier against the Atlantic waves; and on top of this cairn rises the lighthouse, rugged and sturdy as the rocks themselves; but painted white, and with its windows shining like great, smooth diamonds. This is Light Island. --Laura E. Richards: _Captain January_. +124. Changing Point of View.+--We cannot see the four sides of a house from the same place, though we may wish to have our reader know how each side looks. It is, therefore, necessary to change our point of view. It is immaterial whether the successive points of view are named or merely implied, providing the reader has due notice that we have changed from one to the other, and that for each we describe only what can be seen from that position. A description of a cottage that by its wording leads us to think ourselves inside of the building and then tells about the yard would be defective. Notice the changing point of view in the following:-- At long distance, looking over the blue waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in clear weather, you might think that you saw a lonely sea gull, snow-white, perching motionless on a cobble of gray rock. Then, as your boat drifted in, following the languid tide and the soft southern breeze, you would perceive that the cobble of rock was a rugged hill with a few bushes and stunted trees growing in the crevices, and that the gleaming speck near the summit must be some kind of a building,--if you were on the coast of Italy or Spain you would say a villa or a farmhouse. Then as you floated still farther north and drew nearer to the coast, the desolate hill would detach itself from the mainland and become a little mountain isle, with a flock of smaller islets clustering around it as a brood of wild ducks keep close to their mother, and with deep water, nearly two miles wide, flowing between it and the shore; while the shining speck on the seaward side stood clearly as a low, whitewashed dwelling with a sturdy, round tower at one end, crowned with a big eight-sided lantern--a solitary lighthouse. --Henry Van Dyke: _The Keeper of the Light_. (Copyright, 1905. Charles Scribner's Sons.) +125. Place of Point of View in Paragraph.+--The point of view may be expressed or only implied or wholly omitted, but in any case the reader must assume one in order to form a clear and accurate image. Beginners will find that they can best cause their readers to form the desired images by stating a point of view. When the point of view is stated it must of necessity come early in the paragraph. We have already learned that the beginning of a description should present the fundamental image. For this reason the first sentence of a description frequently includes both the point of view and the fundamental image. EXERCISES _A._ Consider the following selections with reference to-- (_a_) The point of view. (_b_) The fundamental image. (_c_) The completeness of the images which you have formed (see Sections 26, 27). 1. The Lunardi [balloon], mounting through a stagnant calm in a line almost vertical, had pierced the morning mists, and now swam emancipated in a heaven of exquisite blue. Below us by some trick of eyesight, the country had grown concave, its horizon curving up like the rim of a shallow bowl--a bowl heaped, in point of fact, with sea fog, but to our eyes with a froth delicate and dazzling as a whipped syllabub of snow. Upon it the traveling shadow of the balloon became no shadow, but a stain; an amethyst (you might call it) purged of all grosser properties than color and lucency. At times thrilled by no perceptible wind, rather by the pulse of the sun's rays, the froth shook and parted; and then behold, deep in the crevasses vignetted and shining, an acre or two of the earth of man's business and fret--tilled slopes of the Lothians, ships dotted on the Firth, the capital like a hive that some child had smoked--the ear of fancy could almost hear it buzzing. --Stevenson: _St. Ives_. (Copyright, 1897. Charles Scribner's Sons.) 2. When Aswald and Corinne had gained the top of the Capitol, she showed him the Seven Hills and the city, bound first by Mount Palatinus, then by the walls of Servius Tullius, which inclose the hills, and by those of Aurelian, which still surround the greatest part of Rome. Mount Palatinus once contained all Rome, but soon did the imperial palace fill the space that had sufficed for a nation. The Seven Hills are far less lofty now than when they deserted the title of steep mountains, modern Rome being forty feet higher than its predecessor, and the valleys which separated them almost filled up by ruins; but what is still more strange, two heaps of shattered vases have formed new hills, Cestario and Testacio. Thus, in time, the very refuse of civilization levels the rock with the plain, effacing in the moral, as in the material world, all the pleasing inequalities of nature. --Madame De Staël: _Corinne: Italy_. _B._--Select five descriptions from the following books and note whether each has a point of view expressed or implied:-- Cooper: Last of the Mohicans. Scott: Ivanhoe. Scott: Lady of the Lake. Irving: Sketch Book. Burroughs: Wake Robin. Van Dyke: The Blue Flower. Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham. Muir: Our National Parks. Kate Douglas Wiggin: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. +Theme LIII.+--_Write a descriptive paragraph beginning with a point of view and a fundamental image._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The crossroads inn. 2. A historical building. 3. The shoe factory. 4. The gristmill. 5. The largest store in town. 6. The union station. (In your description underscore the sentence giving the point of view. Can you improve the description by using a different point of view? Will the reader form at once a correct general outline? Will the entire description enable the reader to form a clear and accurate image?) +126. Clear Seeing.+-Clear statement depends upon clear seeing. Not only must we choose an advantageous point of view, but we must be able to reproduce what can be seen from that location. We may write a description while we are looking at the object, but it is frequently convenient to do the writing when the object is not visible. Oral descriptions are nearly always made without having the object at hand. When we attempt to describe we examine not the object itself, but our mental image of it. It is evident that at least the essential features of this mental picture must stand out clearly and definitely, or we shall be unable to make our description accurate. The habit of accurate observation is a desirable acquisition, and our ability in this direction can be improved by effort. It is not the province of this book to provide a series of exercises which shall strengthen habits of accurate observation. Many of your studies, particularly the sciences, devote much attention to training the observing powers, and will furnish many suitable exercises. A few have been suggested below merely to emphasize the point that every successful effort in description must be preceded by a definite exercise in clear seeing. EXERCISE 1. Walk rapidly past a building. Form a mental picture of it. Write down as many of the details as you can. Now look at the building again and determine what you have left out. 2. Call to mind some building with which you are familiar. Write a list of the details that you recall. Now visit the building and see what important ones you have omitted. 3. While looking at some scene make a note of the important details. Lay this list away for a day. Then recall the scene. After picturing the scene as vividly as you can, read your notes. Do they add anything to your picture? 4. Make a list of the things on some desk that you cannot see but with which you are familiar; for example, the teacher's desk. At the first opportunity notice how accurate your list is. 5. Look for some time at the stained glass windows of a church or at the wall paper of the room. What patterns do you notice that you did not see at first? What colors? 6. Make a list of the objects visible from your bedroom window. When you go home notice what you have omitted. 7. Practice observation contests similar to the following: Let two or more persons pass a store window. Each shall then make a list of what the window contains. Compare lists with one another. +Theme LIV.+--_Write a description of some dwelling._ (Select a house that you can see on the way home. Choose a point of view and notice carefully what can be seen from it. When you are ready to write, form as vivid a mental picture of the house as you can. Write the sentence that gives the fundamental image. Add such of the details as will enable the reader to form an accurate image.) +127. Selection of Essential Details.+--After deciding upon a point of view and such general characteristics as are essential to the forming of a correct outline of the object to be described, we must next give our attention to the selection of the details. If our description has been properly begun, this general outline will not be changed, but each succeeding phrase or sentence will add to the clearness and distinctness of the picture. Our first impression of a house may include windows, but the mention of them later will bring them out clearly on our mental picture much as the details appear when one is developing a negative in photography. If the peculiarities of an object are such as to effect its general form, they need to be stated in the opening sentence; but when the peculiar or distinguishing characteristic does not affect the form, it may be introduced later. If we say, "On the corner across the street from the post office there is a large, two-story, red brick store," the reader can form at once a general picture of such a store. Only those things which give a general outline have been included. As yet nothing has been mentioned to distinguish the store from any other similar one. If some following sentence should be, "Though not wider, it yet presents a more imposing appearance than its neighbors, because the door is placed at one side, thus making room for a single wide display window instead of two stuffy, narrow ones," a detail has been added which, though not changing the general outline, makes the picture clearer and at the same time emphasizes the distinguishing feature of this particular store. EXERCISES 1. Observe your neighbor's barn. What would you select as its characteristic feature? 2. Take a rapid glance at some stranger whom you meet. What did you notice most vividly? 3. In what respect does the Methodist church in your city differ from the other church buildings? 4. Does your pet dog differ from others of the same breed in appearance? In actions? +Theme LV.+--_Write a descriptive paragraph, using one of the following subjects:_-- 1. A mountain view. 2. An omnibus. 3. A fort. 4. A lighthouse. 5. A Dutch windmill. 6. A bend in the river. 7. A peculiar structure. 8. The picture on this page. (Underscore the sentence that pictures the details most essential to the description. Consider the unity of your paragraph. Section 81.) [Illustration] +128. Selection and Subordination of Minor Details.+--In many descriptions the minor details are wholly omitted, and in all descriptions many that might have been included have been omitted. A proper number of such details adds interest and clearness to the images; too many but serve to render the whole obscure. If properly selected and effectively presented, minor details add much to the beauty or usefulness of a description, but if strung together in short sentences, the effect may be both tiresome and confusing. A mere catalogue of facts is not a good description. They must be arranged so that those which are the more important shall have the greater prominence, while those of less importance shall be properly subordinated. Often minor details may be stated in a word or phrase inserted in the sentence which gives the general view. Notice the italicized portion of the following: "Opposite the church, _and partly screened by the scraggly evergreens of a broad, unkempt lawn_, there is a large, octagonal, brick house, with a conservatory on the left." This arrangement adds to the general view and gives a better result than would be obtained by describing the lawn in a separate sentence. Often a single adjective adds some element to a description more effectively than can be done with a whole sentence. Notice how much is added by the use of _scraggly_ and _unkempt_. EXERCISES Make a careful study of the following selections with reference to the way in which the minor details are presented. Can any of them be improved by re-arranging them? 1. At night, as I look from my windows over Kassim Pasha, I never tire of that dull, soft coloring, green and brown, in which the brown of roofs and walls is hardly more than a shading of the green of the trees. There is the lonely curve of the hollow, with its small, square, flat houses of wood; and above, a sharp line of blue-black cypresses on the spine of the hill; then the long desert plain, with its sandy road, shutting in the horizon. Mists thicken over the valley, and wipe out its colors before the lights begin to glimmer out of it. Below, under my windows, are the cypresses of the Little Field of the Dead, vast, motionless, different every night. Last night each stood clear, tall, apart; to-night they huddle together in the mist, and seem to shudder. The sunset was brief, and the water has grown dull, like slate. Stamboul fades to a level mass of smoky purple, out of which a few minarets rise black against a gray sky with bands of orange fire. Last night, after a golden sunset, a fog of rusty iron came down, and hung poised over the jagged level of the hill. The whole mass of Stamboul was like black smoke; the water dim gray, a little flushed, and then like pure light, lucid, transparent, every ship and every boat sharply outlined in black on its surface; the boats seemed to crawl like flies on a lighted pane. --Arthur Symons: _Constantinople: An Impression_ ("Harper's"). 2. The boy was advancing up the road, carrying a half-filled pail of milk. He was a child of perhaps ten years, exceedingly frail and thin, with a drawn, waxen face, and sick, colorless lips and ears. On his head he wore a thick plush cap, and coarse, heavy shoes upon his feet. A faded coat, too long in the arms, drooped from his shoulders, and long, loose overalls of gray jeans broke and wrinkled about his slender ankles. --George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's"). 3. They met few people abroad, even on passing from the retired neighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables into what was ordinarily the more thronged and busier portion of the town. Glistening sidewalks, with little pools of rain, here and there, along their unequal surface; umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in the shop windows, as if the life of trade had concentered itself in that one article; wet leaves of the horse-chestnut or elm trees, torn off untimely by the blast, and scattered along the public way; an unsightly accumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which perversely grew the more unclean for its long and laborious washing;--these were the more definable points of a very somber picture. In the way of movement, and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver protected by a water-proof cap over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post office, together with an editor, and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What a treasure trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them! --Hawthorne: _The House of the Seven Gables_. +Theme LVI.+--_Write a description of one of the following:_-- 1. A steamboat. 2. An orchard. 3. A colonial mansion. 4. A wharf. 5. A stone quarry. 6. A shop. (Consider what you have written with reference to the point of view, fundamental image, and essential details. After these have been arranged to suit you, notice the way in which the minor details have been introduced. Have you given undue prominence to any? Can a single adjective or phrase be substituted for a whole sentence? Think of the image which your words will produce in the mind of the reader. Consider your theme with reference to unity. Section 81.) +129. Arrangement of Details.+--The quality of a description depends as much upon the arrangement of the material as upon the selection. Under paragraph development we have discussed the necessity of arranging the details with reference to their natural position in space (see Sections 47 and 86). Such an arrangement is the most desirable one and should be departed from only with good reason. Such departures may, however, be made, as shown in the following selection:-- A pretty picture the lad made as he lay there dreaming over his earthly possessions--a pretty picture in the shade of the great elm, that sultry morning of August, three quarters of a century ago. The presence of the crutch showed there was something sad about it; and so there was; for if you had glanced at the little bare brown foot, set toes upward on the curbstone, you would have discovered that the fellow to it was missing-- cut off about two inches above the ankle. And if this had caused you to throw a look of sympathy at his face, something yet sadder must long have held your attention. Set jauntily on the back of his head was a weather-beaten dark blue cloth cap, the patent leather frontlet of which was gone; and beneath the ragged edge of this there fell down over his forehead and temples and ears a tangled mass of soft yellow hair, slightly curling. His eyes were large and of a blue to match the depths of a calm sky above the treetops: the long lashes which curtained them were brown; his lips were red, his nose delicate and fine, and his cheek tanned to the color of ripe peaches. It was a singularly winning face, intelligent, frank, not describable. On it now rested a smile, half joyous, half sad, as though his mind was full of bright hopes, the realization of which was far away. From the neck fell the wide collar of a white cotton shirt, clean but frayed at the elbows, and open and buttonless down to his bosom. Over this he wore an old-fashioned satin waistcoat of a man, also frayed and buttonless. His dress was completed by a pair of baggy tow breeches, held up by a single tow suspender fastened to big brown horn buttons. --James Lane Allen: _Flute and Violin_. (Copyright, 1892, Harper and Brothers.) The details are not stated with reference to their natural position in space, but they are given in the probable order of observation. If we were to look upon such a boy, the crutch would attract our attention and would lead us to look at once for the reason why a crutch was needed. The writer skillfully uses the sympathy thus aroused as a means of transition to the face. In the remainder of the description the natural position in space is closely followed. +Theme LVII.+-_Write a description of one of the following:_-- 1. The bayou. 2. Looking down the mountain. 3. Looking up the mountain. 4. The floorwalker. 5. An old-fashioned rig. 6. A house said to be haunted. 7. The deacon. (Consider the arrangement of details with reference to their position in space. Consider your paragraphs with reference to coherence and emphasis. Sections 82 and 83.) +130. Effectiveness in Description.+--Every part of a description should aid in rendering it effective, and this effectiveness is as much the purpose of the principles previously discussed as it is of those which follow. This paragraph is inserted here to separate more or less definitely those things which can be done under direction from those which cannot be determined by rule. Up to this point emphasis has been laid upon the clear presentation of a mental image as the object of description. But the clear presentation of mental images is not all there is to description. A point of view, a fundamental image, a judicious selection of essential and minor details and the relating of them with reference to their natural position in space, may set forth an image clearly and yet fail to be satisfactory as a description. For the practical affairs of life it may be sufficient to limit ourselves to clear images set forth barely and sparely, but there is a pleasure and a profit in using the subtler arts of language, in placing a word here or a phrase there that shall give a touch of beauty or a flash of suggestiveness and so save our descriptions from the commonplace. It is to these less easily demonstrated methods of giving strength and beauty that we wish now to turn our attention. +131. Word Selection.+--The effectiveness of our description will depend largely upon our right choice of words. If our range of vocabulary is limited, the possibility of effective description is correspondingly limited. Only when our working vocabulary contains many words may we hope to choose with ease the one most suitable for the effective expression of the idea we wish to convey. To prepare a list of words that may apply and then attempt to write a theme that shall make use of them is a mechanical process of little value. The idea we wish to express should call up the word that exactly expresses it. If our ideas are not clear or our vocabulary is limited, we may be satisfied with the trite and commonplace; but if our experience has been broad or our reading extended, we may have at command the word which, because it is just the right one, gives individuality and force to our phrasing. Every one is familiar with dogs, and has in his vocabulary many words which he applies to them, but a reading of one or two good dog stories, such as _Bob, Son of Battle_, or _The Call of the Wild_, will show how wide is the range of such words and how much the description is enhanced by their careful use. EXERCISE Consider the following selections with reference to the choice of words which add to the effectiveness of the descriptions:-- 1. She was a little, brown, thin, almost skinny woman with big, rolling, violet-blue eyes and the sweetest manners in the world. 2. The sounds and the straits and the sea with its plump, sleepy islands lay north and east and south. 3. The mists of the Cuchullins are not fat, dull, and still, like lowland and inland mists, but haggard, and streaming from the black peaks, and full of gusty lines. We saw them first from the top of Beimna-Caillach, a red, round-headed mountain hard by Bradford, in the isle of Skye. Shortly after noon the rain came up from the sea and drew long delicate gray lines against the cliffs. It came up licking and lisping over the surface of Cornisk, and drove us to the lee of rocks and the shelter of our ponchos, to watch the mists drifting, to listen to the swell and lull of the wind and the patter of the cold rain. There were glimpses now and then of the inner Cuchullins, a fragment of ragged sky line, the sudden jab of a black pinnacle through the mist, the open mouth of a gorge steaming with mist. We climbed the great ridge, at length, of rock and wet heath that separates Cornisk from Glen Sligachan, slowly through the fitful rain and driving cloud, and saw Sgurr-nan-Gillian, sharp, black, and pitiless, the northernmost peak and sentinel of the Cuchullins. The yellow trail could be seen twisting along the flat, empty glen. Seven miles away was a white spot, the Sligachan Hotel. I think it must be the dreariest glen in Scotland. The trail twists in a futile manner, and, after all, is mainly bog holes and rolling rocks. The Red Hills are on the right, rusty, reddish, of the color of dried blood, and gashed with sliding bowlders. Their heads seem beaten down, a Helot population, and the Cuchullins stand back like an army of iron conquerors. The Red Hills will be a vanished race one day, and the Cuchullins remain. Arthur Colton: _The Mists o' Skye_ ("Harper's"). +132. Additional Aids to Effectiveness.+--Comparison and figures of speech not only aid in making our picture clear and vivid, but they may add a spice and flavor to our language, which counts for much in the effectiveness and beauty of our description. Notice the following descriptions:-- He was a mongoose, rather like a little cat in his fur and his tail, but quite like a weasel in his head and his habits. His eyes and the end of his restless nose were pink; he could scratch himself anywhere he pleased, with any leg, front or back, that he chose to use; he could fluff up his tail till it looked like a bottle brush, and his war cry as he scuttled through the long grass was Rikk-tikk-tikki-tikki-tikk. --Kipling: _Jungle Book_. Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of his saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers' legs; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a scepter, and, as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called; and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed, as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight. --Irving: _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_. +Theme LVIII.+--_Write a description of one of the following:_-- 1. My cat. 2. The pony at the farm. 3. The glen. 4. The prairie. 5. The milldam. 6. The motorman. 7. The picture on this page. [Illustration] (Consider the effectiveness of your description. Can you improve your choice of words? Have you used comparisons or figures, and if so, do they improve your description? Consider your theme with reference to euphony. Section 16.) +133. Classes of Objects Frequently Described.+--There is no limit to the things that we may wish to describe, but there are certain general classes of objects that are described more frequently than others. We have greater occasion to describe men or places than we have to describe pictures or trees. A person may be an accurate observer having a large vocabulary applicable to one class of objects, and thus be able to describe objects of that class clearly and effectively; though at the same time, on account of limited experience and small vocabulary, he cannot well describe objects belonging to some other class. The ability to observe accurately the classes of objects named below, and to appreciate descriptions of such objects when made by others, is a desirable acquisition. Every effort should be made to master as many as possible of the words applicable to each class of objects. A slight investigation will show how great is the number of such words with which we are unfamiliar. 1. _Descriptions of buildings or portions of buildings._ In most buildings the basement story is heaviest, and each succeeding story increases in lightness; in the Ducal palace this is reversed, making it unique amongst buildings. The outer walls rest upon the pillars of open colonnades, which have a more stumpy appearance than was intended, owing to the raising of the pavement in the piazza. They had, however, no base, but were supported by a continuous stylobate. The chief decorations of the palace were employed upon the capitals of these thirty-six pillars, and it was felt that the peculiar prominence and importance given to its angles rendered it necessary that they should be enriched and softened by sculpture, which is interesting and often most beautiful. The throned figure of Venice above bears a scroll inscribed: _Fortis, justa, trono furias, mare sub pede, pono_. (Strong and just, I put the furies beneath my throne, and the sea beneath my foot.) One of the corners of the palace joined the irregular buildings connected with St. Mark's, and is not generally seen. There remained, therefore, only three angles to be decorated. The first main sculpture may be called the "Fig-tree angle," and its subject is the "Fall of Man." The second is "the Vine angle," and represents the "Drunkenness of Noah." The third sculpture is "the Judgment angle," and portrays the "Judgment of Solomon." --Hare: _Venice_. +Theme LIX.+--_Write a description of the exterior of some building._ +Theme LX.+--_Write a description of some room._ +Theme LXI.+--_Write a description of some portion of a building, such as an entrance, spire, window, or stairway._ (Consider each description with reference to-- _a._ Point of view. _b._ Fundamental image. _c._ Selection of essential details. _d._ Selection and subordination of minor details. _e._ Arrangement of details with reference to their natural positions in space. _f._ Effective choice of words and comparisons.) 2. _Natural features: valleys, rivers, mountains, etc._ Beyond the great prairies and in the shadow of the Rockies lie the Foothills. For nine hundred miles the prairies spread themselves out in vast level reaches, and then begin to climb over softly rounded mounds that ever grow higher and sharper, till here and there, they break into jagged points and at last rest upon the great bases of the mighty mountains. These rounded hills that join the prairies to the mountains form the Foothill Country. They extend for about a hundred miles only, but no other hundred miles of the great West are so full of interest and romance. The natural features of the country combine the beauties of prairie and of mountain scenery. There are valleys so wide that the farther side melts into the horizon, and uplands so vast as to suggest the unbroken prairie. Nearer the mountains the valleys dip deep and ever deeper till they narrow into canyons through which mountain torrents pour their blue-gray waters from glaciers that lie glistening between the white peaks far away. --Connor: _The Sky Pilot_. Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands; Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf In cluster; then a molder'd church; and higher A long street climbs to one tall tower'd mill; And high in heaven behind it a gray down With Danish barrows, and a hazelwood, By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes Green in a cuplike hollow of the down. --Tennyson: _Enoch Arden_. +Theme LXII.+--_Write a description of some valley, mountain, field, woods, or prairie._ +Theme LXIII.+--_Write a description of some stream, pond, lake, dam, or waterfall._ (Consider especially your choice of words.) 3. _Sounds or the use of sounds._ And the noise of Niagara? Alarming things have been said about it, but they are not true. It is a great and mighty noise, but it is not, as Hennepin thought, an "outrageous noise." It is not a roar. It does not drown the voice or stun the ear. Even at the actual foot of the falls it is not oppressive. It is much less rough than the sound of heavy surf-- steadier, more homogeneous, less metallic, very deep and strong, yet mellow and soft; soft, I mean, in its quality. As to the noise of the rapids, there is none more musical. It is neither rumbling nor sharp. It is clear, plangent, silvery. It is so like the voice of a steep brook-- much magnified, but not made coarser or more harsh--that, after we have known it, each liquid call from a forest hillside will seem, like the odor of grapevines, a greeting from Niagara. It is an inspiriting, an exhilarating sound, like freshness, coolness, vitality itself made audible. And yet it is a lulling sound. When we have looked out upon the American rapids for many days, it is hard to remember contented life amid motionless surroundings; and so, when we have slept beside them for many nights, it is hard to think of happy sleep in an empty silence. --Mrs. Van Rensselaer: _Niagara_ ("Century"). Yell'd on the view the opening pack; Rock, glen, and cavern, paid them back; To many a mingled sound at once The awaken'd mountain gave response. A hundred dogs bay'd deep and strong, Clatter'd a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, A hundred voices join'd the shout; With hark, and whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cower'd the doe; The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din Return'd from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, wide and still, On the lone wood and mighty hill. --SCOTT: _Lady of the Lake_. +Theme LXIV.+--_Describe some sound or combination of sounds, or write a description introducing sounds._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Alone in the house. 2. In the woods at night. 3. Beside the brook. 4. In the factory. 5. A day at the beach. 6. Before the Fourth. 7. On the seashore. (Notice especially the words that indicate sound.) 4. _Color or the use of color._ A gray day! soft gray sky, like the breast of a dove; sheeny gray sea with gleams of steel running across; trailing skirts of mist shutting off the mainland, leaving Light Island alone with the ocean; the white tower gleaming spectral among the folding mists; the dark pine tree pointing a somber finger to heaven; the wet, black rocks, from which the tide had gone down, huddling together in fantastic groups as if to hide their nakedness. --Laura E. Richards: _Captain January_. The large branch of the Po we crossed came down from the mountains which we were approaching. As we reached the post road again they were glowing in the last rays of the sun, and the evening vapors that settled over the plain concealed the distant Alps, although the snowy top of the Jungfrau and her companions the Wetterhorn and Schreckhorn rose above it like the hills of another world. A castle or church of brilliant white marble glittered on the summit of one of the mountains near us, and, as the sun went down without a cloud, the distant summits changed in hue to a glowing purple, mounting almost to crimson, which afterwards darkened into a deep violet. The western half of the sky was of a pale orange and the eastern a dark red, which blended together in the blue of the zenith, that deepened as twilight came on. --Taylor: _Views Afoot_. +Theme LXV.+--_Write a description in which the color element enters largely._ 5. _Animals, birds, fishes, etc._ The Tailless Tyke had now grown into an immense dog, heavy of muscle and huge of bone. A great bull head; undershot jaw, square and lengthy and terrible; vicious yellow gleaming eyes; cropped ears; and an expression incomparably savage. His coat was a tawny lionlike yellow, short, harsh, dense; and his back running up from shoulder to loins ended abruptly in a knoblike tail. He looked like the devil of a dog's hell, and his reputation was as bad as his looks. He never attacked unprovoked; but a challenge was never ignored and he was greedy of insults. --Alfred Ollivant: _Bob, Son of Battle_. (Copyright, Doubleday and McClure.) Read the description of the kingbird (page 224), and of the mongoose (page 242). +Theme LXVI.+--_Write a description of some animal, bird, or fish._ (What questions should you ask yourself about each description you write?) 6. _Trees and plants._ How shall kinnikinnick be told to them who know it not? To a New Englander it might be said that a whortleberry bush changed its mind one day and decided to be a vine, with leaves as glossy as laurel, bells pink-striped and sweet like the arbutus, and berries in clusters and of scarlet instead of black. The Indians call it kinnikinnick, and smoke it in their pipes. White men call it bearberry, I believe; and there is a Latin name for it, no doubt, in the books. But kinnikinnick is the best,--dainty, sturdy, indefatigable kinnikinnick, green and glossy all the year round, lovely at Christmas and lovely among flowers at midsummer, as content and thrifty on bare, rocky hillsides as in grassy nooks, growing in long, trailing wreaths, five feet long, or in tangled mats, five feet across, as the rock or the valley may need, and living bravely many weeks without water, to make a house beautiful. I doubt if there be in the world a vine I should hold so precious, indoors and out. --Helen Hunt Jackson: _Bits of Travel at Home_. A mango tree is beautiful and attractive. It grows as large as the oak, and has a rich and glossy foliage. The fruit is shaped something like a short, thick cucumber, and is as large as a large pear. It has a thick, tough skin, and a delicious, juicy pulp. When ripe it is a golden color. A tree often bears a hundred bushels of mangoes. --Marian M. George. +Theme LXVII.+--_Write a description of some tree that you have seen._ (Consider your theme with reference to the general principles of composition treated in Chapter V.) +134. Description of Persons: Character Sketches.+--The general principles of description are applicable to the description of a person, and should be followed for the purpose of presenting a clear and vivid image. Our interest, however, so naturally runs beyond the appearance and is concerned with the character, that most descriptions of persons become character sketches. Even the commonest terms of description, such as _keen gray eyes, square chin, rugged countenance_, are interpreted as showing character, and depart to some degree from pure description. Often the sole purpose of description is to show character, and only those details are introduced which accomplish this purpose. In life we judge a man's character by his actions, and so in the character sketch we are led to infer his character from what he does. The character indicated by his appearance is corroborated by a statement of his actions and especially by showing how he acts. (See Section 10.) Sometimes no descriptive matter is given, but we are left to make our own picture to fit the character indicated by the actions. In many books the descriptive elements which would enable us to form an image of some person are distributed over several pages, each being introduced where it supplements and emphasizes the character shown by the actions. Notice the following examples:-- The Rev. Daniel True stood beside the holy table. For such a scene, perhaps for any scene, he was a memorable figure. He had the dignity of early middle life, but none of its signs of advancing age. His hair was quite black, and curled on his temples boyishly; his mustache, not without a worldly cut, was as dark as his hair, and concealed a mouth so clean and fine that it was an ethical mistake to cover it. He had sturdy shoulders, although not quite straight; they had the scholar's stoop; his hands were thin, with long fingers; his gestures were sparing and significant; his expression was so sincere that its evident devoutness commanded respect; so did his voice, which was authoritative enough to be a little priestly and lacking somewhat in elocutionary finish as the voices of ministers are apt to be, but genuine, musical, persuasive, at moments vibrant with oratorical power. He had a warm eye and a lovable smile. He was every inch a minister, but he was every nerve a man. --Elizabeth Stuart Phelps: _A Sacrament_ ("Harper's"). She was not more than fifteen. Her form, voice, and manner belonged to the period of transition from girlhood. Her face was perfectly oval, her complexion more pale than fair. The nose was faultless; the lips, slightly parted, were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth warmth, tenderness, and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded by drooping lids and long lashes; and, in harmony with all, a flood of golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined down her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in doubt whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms of feature and person were added others more--an indefinable air of purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to such as think much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips, she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she crossed her hands upon her breast, as in adoration and prayer; often she raised her head like one listening eagerly for a calling voice. Now and then midst his slow utterance, Joseph turned to look at her, and, catching the expression kindling her face as with light, forgot his theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on. --Lew Wallace: _Ben-Hur_. (Copyright, 1880, Harper and Bros.) When Washington was elected general of the army he was forty-three years of age. In stature he a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and well proportioned; his chest broad, his figure stately, blending dignity of presence with ease of manner. His robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his early life in the wilderness, his habit of occupation out of doors, and his rigid temperance, so that few equalled him in strength of arm or power of endurance. His complexion was florid, his hair dark brown, his head in shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed formed to give expression and escape to scornful anger. His dark blue eyes, which were deeply set, had an expression of resignation and an earnestness that was almost sad. --Bancroft. There were many Englishmen of great distinction there, and Tennyson was the most conspicuous among the guests. Tennyson's appearance was very striking and his figure might have been taken as a living illustration of romantic poetry. He was tall and stately, wore a great mass of thick, long hair--long hair was then still worn even by men who did not affect originality; his frame was slightly stooping, his shoulders were bent as if with the weight of thought; there was something entirely out of the common and very commanding in his whole presence, and a stranger meeting him in whatever crowd would probably have assumed at once that he must be a literary king. --Justin McCarthy: _Literary Portraits from the Sixties_ ("Harper's"). The door opened and there appeared to these two a visitor. He was a young man, and tall,--so tall that, even with his hat off, his head barely cleared the ceiling of the low-studded room. He was slim and fair-haired and round-shouldered. He had the pink and white complexion of a girl; soft, fair hair; dark, serious eyes; the high, white brow of a thinker; the nose of an aristocrat; and he was in clerical garb. --Sewall Ford: _The Renunciation of Petruo_ ("Harper's"). EXERCISE Notice the pictures on page 253. Can you determine from the picture anything about the character of the person? Just what feature in each helps you in this? +Theme LXVIII.+--_Describe some person known to most of the class._ (Do not name the person, but combine description and character sketching so that the class may be able to tell whom you mean.) [Illustrations] +135. Impression of a Description.+--Often the effectiveness of a description is determined more by the impression which it makes upon our feelings than by the vividness of the picture which it presents. Read the following description of the Battery in New York by Howells. Notice how the details which have been selected emphasize the "impression of forlornness." The sickly trees, the decrepit shade, the mangy grass plots, hungry-eyed and hollow children, the jaded women, silent and hopeless, the shameless houses, the hard-looking men, unite to give the one impression. Even the fresh blue water of the bay, which laughs and dances beyond, by its very contrast gives greater emphasis to the melancholy and forlorn appearance of the Battery. All places that fashion has once loved and abandoned are very melancholy; but of all such places, I think the Battery is the most forlorn. Are there some sickly locust trees there that cast a tremulous and decrepit shade upon the mangy grass plots? I believe so, but I do not make sure; I am certain only of the mangy grass plots, or rather the spaces between the paths, thinly overgrown with some kind of refuse and opprobrious weed, a stunted and pauper vegetation proper solely to the New York Battery. At that hour of the summer morning when our friends, with the aimlessness of strangers who are waiting to do something else, saw the ancient promenade, a few scant and hungry-eyed little boys and girls were wandering over this weedy growth, not playing, but moving listlessly to and fro, fantastic in the wild inaptness of their costumes. One of these little creatures wore, with an odd, involuntary jauntiness, the cast-off best dress of some happier child, a gay little garment cut low in the neck and short in the sleeves, which gave her the grotesque effect of having been at a party the night before. Presently came two jaded women, a mother and a grandmother, that appeared, when they crawled out of their beds, to have put on only so much clothing as the law compelled. They abandoned themselves upon the green stuff, whatever it was, and, with their lean hands clasped outside their knees, sat and stared, silent and hopeless, at the eastern sky, at the heart of the terrible furnace, into which in those days the world seemed cast to be burnt up, while the child which the younger woman had brought with her feebly wailed unheeded at her side. On one side of the women were the shameless houses out of which they might have crept, and which somehow suggested riotous maritime dissipation; on the other side were those houses in which had once dwelt rich and famous folk, but which were now dropping down to the boarding-house scale through various unhomelike occupations to final dishonor and despair. Down nearer the water, and not far from the castle that was once a playhouse and is now the depot of emigration, stood certain express wagons, and about these lounged a few hard-looking men. Beyond laughed and danced the fresh blue water of the bay, dotted with sails and smokestacks. --Howells: _Their Wedding Journey_. The successive images of the preceding selection are clear enough, but they are bound together by a common purpose, which is the creation of a single impression. Often, however, a description may present, not a single impression, but a series of such impressions, to which a unity is given by the fact that they are all connected with one event, or occur at the same time, or in the same place. Such a series of impressions is illustrated in the following:-- It is a phenomenon whose commonness alone prevents it from being most impressive, that departure of the night-express. The two hundred miles it is to travel stretch before it, traced by those slender clews, to lose which is ruin, and about which hang so many dangers. The drawbridges that gape upon the way, the trains that stand smoking and steaming on the track, the rail that has borne the wear so long that it must soon snap under it, the deep cut where the overhanging mass of rocks trembles to its fall, the obstruction that a pitiless malice may have placed in your path, you think of these after the journey is done, but they seldom haunt your fancy while it lasts. The knowledge of your helplessness in any circumstances is so perfect that it begets a sense of irresponsibility, almost of security; and as you drowse upon the pallet of the sleeping car and feel yourself hurled forward through the obscurity, you are almost thankful that you can do nothing, for it is upon this condition only that you can endure it; and some such condition as this, I suppose, accounts for many heroic acts in the world. To the fantastic mood which possesses you equally, sleeping or waking, the stoppages of the train have a weird character, and Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, and Stamford are rather points in dreamland than well-known towns of New England. As the train stops you drowse if you have been waking, and wake if you have been in a doze; but in any case you are aware of the locomotive hissing and coughing beyond the station, of flaring gas-jets, of clattering feet of passengers getting on and off; then of some one, conductor or station master, walking the whole length of the train; and then you are aware of an insane satisfaction in renewed flight through the darkness. You think hazily of the folk in their beds in the town left behind, who stir uneasily at the sound of your train's departing whistle; and so all is blank vigil or a blank slumber. --Howells: _Their Wedding Journey_. +136. Impression as the Purpose of Description.+--The impression that it gives may become the central purpose of a description. It is evident in Howells's description of the Battery that the purpose was the creating of an impression of forlornness, and that the author kept this purpose in mind when choosing the details. If his aim had been to enable us to form a clear picture of the Battery in its physical outlines, he would have chosen different details and would have presented them in different language. The same scene or object may present a different appearance to two different observers because each may discover a different set of likenesses or resemblances and so select different essential characteristics. An artist will paint a picture that centers around some one feature. Each added detail seems but to set forth and increase the effect of this central element of the picture. Similarly the observer will in his description lay emphasis on the central point and will select details that bear a helpful relation to it. If he wishes to present the picture of a valley, he will lay emphasis on its fundamental image and essential details with reference to its appearance; but if his desire is to present the impression of fertility or of rural simplicity and quiet, the elements that are important for the producing of the desired impression may not be at all the ones essential to his former picture. When the presentation of a picture is our central purpose, we attempt to present it as it appears to us, and select details that will enable others to form the desired image; but if we desire to set forth how a scene affected us, we must choose details that will make our reader feel as we felt. +137. Necessity of Observing our Impressions.+--In order to write a description which shall give our impression of an object or scene, we must know definitely what that impression is. Just as clear seeing is necessary for the reproduction of definite images, so is the clear perception of our impressions necessary to their reproduction. Furthermore, we may know what our impressions are without being able to select those elements in a scene that have produced them; but in order to write a description that shall affect others as the scene itself affected us, we must know what these elements are and emphasize them in the description. Thus it becomes necessary to pay attention both to our impression and to the selection of those details which create that impression. One glance at a room may cause us to believe that the housekeeper is untidy. If we wish to convey this impression to our reader, our description must include the details that give that impression of untidiness to us. Nor are we limited to sight alone, for our impressions may be made stronger by the aid of the other senses. Sound and smell and taste may supplement the sight, and though they add little to the clearness, yet they add much to the impression which we get. Within the cabin, through which Basil and Isabel now slowly moved, there were numbers of people lounging about on the sofas, in various attitudes of talk or vacancy; and at the tables there were others reading _Lothair_, a new book in the remote epoch of which I write, and a very fashionable book indeed. There was in the air that odor of paint and carpet which prevails on steamboats; the glass drops of the chandeliers ticked softly against each other, as the vessel shook with her respiration, like a comfortable sleeper, and imparted a delicious feeling of coziness and security to our travelers. --Howells: _Their Wedding Journey_. +138. Impression Limited to Experience.+--If we attempt to write a description for the sake of giving an impression, it must be an impression that we have ourselves experienced. If the sight of the gorge of Niagara has filled us with a feeling of sublimity and awe, we shall find it hard to write a humorous account of it. If we see the humorous elements of a situation, we cannot easily make our description give the impression of grief. Neither can we successfully imitate the impressions of others. No two persons are affected in the same way by the same thing. Our age, our temperament, our emotional attitude, and all of our past experiences affect our way of looking at things and modify the impressions which we get. The successful presentation of our impression will depend largely upon the definite perception of our feelings. +139. Impression Affected by Mood.+--Not only is our impression affected by details in the scene observed, but it is even more largely influenced by our mood at the time of the observation. The same landscape may cheer at one time and dishearten at another. To-day we see the ridiculous; to-morrow, the sad and sorrowful. A thousand things may change our mood, but under certain general conditions, certain impressions are likely to arise. There is something in the air of spring, or the heat of summer, which affects us all. The weather, too, has its effect. Sunshine and shadow find answering attitudes in our feelings, and the skillful writer takes advantage of these emotional tendencies. Not far we fared-- The river left behind--when, looking back, I saw the mountain in the searching light Of the low sun. Surcharged with youthful pride In my adventure, I can ne'er forget The disappointment and chagrin which fell Upon me; for a change had passed. The steep Which in the morning sprang to kiss the sun, Had left the scene; and in its place I saw A shrunken pile, whose paths my steps had climbed, Whose proudest height my humble feet had trod. Its grand impossibilities and all Its store of marvels and of mysteries Were flown away, and would not be recalled. --Holland: _Katrina_. +140. Union of Image and Impression.+--Because we have discussed image making and impression giving separately, it must not be judged that they necessarily occur separately. They are in fact always united. No image, however clear, can fail to make some impression, and no description, however strong the impression it gives, fails to create some image. It is rather the placing of the emphasis that counts. Some descriptions have for their purpose the giving of an image, and the impression is of little moment. Other descriptions aim at producing impressions, and the images are of less importance. In the description of the Battery (page 254) the images are clear enough, but they are subordinate to the impression. This subordination may even go farther. Often the impression is made prominent and we are led by suggestion to form images which fit it, while in reality few definite images have been set. Notice in the following selection that the impression of desolation is given without attempting to picture exactly what was seen:-- The country at the foot of Vesuvius is the most fertile and best cultivated of the kingdom, most favored by Heaven in all Europe. The celebrated _Lacrymæ Christi_ vine flourishes beside land totally devastated by lava, as if nature here made a last effort, and resolved to perish in her richest array. As you ascend, you turn to gaze on Naples, and on the fair laud around it--the sea sparkles in the sun as if strewn with jewels; but all the splendors of creation are extinguished by degrees, as you enter the region of ashes and smoke, that announces your approach to the volcano. The iron waves of other years have traced their large black furrows in the soil. At a certain height birds are no longer seen; further on, plants become very scarce; then even insects find no nourishment. At last all life disappears. You enter the realm of death and the slain earth's dust alone sleeps beneath your unassured feet. --Madame De Staël: _Corinne: Italy_. EXERCISES Discuss the following selections with reference to the impression given by each:-- The third of the flower vines is Wood-Magic. It bears neither flowers nor fruit. Its leaves are hardly to be distinguished from the leaves of the other vines. Perhaps they are a little rounder than the Snowberry's, a little more pointed than the Partridge-berry's; sometimes you might mistake them for the one, sometimes for the other. No marks of warning have been written upon them. If you find them, it is your fortune; if you taste them, it is your fate. For as you browse your way through the forest, nipping here and there a rosy leaf of young wintergreen, a fragrant emerald tip of balsam fir, a twig of spicy birch, if by chance you pluck the leaves of Wood-Magic and eat them, you will not know what you have done, but the enchantment of the treeland will enter your heart and the charm of the wildwood will flow through your veins. You will never get away from it. The sighing of the wind through the pine trees and the laughter of the stream in its rapids will sound through all your dreams. On beds of silken softness you will long for the sleep-song of whispering leaves above your head, and the smell of a couch of balsam boughs. At tables spread with dainty fare you will be hungry for the joy of the hunt, and for the angler's sylvan feast. In proud cities you will weary for the sight of a mountain trail; in great cathedrals you will think of the long, arching aisles of the woodland: and in the noisy solitude of crowded streets you will hone after the friendly forest. --Henry Van Dyke: _The Blue Flower_. (Copyright, 1902, Charles Scribner's Sons.) Running your eye across the map of the State, you see two slowly converging lines of railroad writhing out between the hills to the sea-coast. Three other lines come down from north to south by the river valleys and the jagged shore. Along these, huddled in the corners of the hills and the sea line, lie the cities and the larger towns. A great majority of mankind, swarming in these little spots, or scuttling to and fro along the valleys on those slender lines, fondly dream they are acquainted with the land in which they live. But beyond and around all this rises the wide, bare face of the country, which they will never know-- the great patches of second-growth woods, the mountain pastures sown thick with stones, the barren acres of the hillside farmer--a desolate land, latticed with gray New England roads, dotted with commonplace or neglected houses, and pitted with the staring cellars of the abandoned homes of disheartened and defeated men. Out here in this semi-obscurity, where the regulating forces of society grow tardy and weak, strange and dangerous beings move to and fro, avoiding the apprehension of the law. Occasionally we hear of them--of some shrewd and desperate city fugitives brought to bay in a corner of the woods, or some brutal farmhouse murderer still lurking uncaptured among the hills. Often they pass through the country and out beyond, where they are never seen again. In the extreme southwestern corner of the State the railroads do not come; the vacant spaces grow between the country roads, and the cities dwindle down to half-deserted crossroads hamlets. Here the surface of the map is covered up with the tortuous wrinkles of the hills. It is a beautiful but useless place. As far as you can see, low, unformed lumps of mountains lie jumbled aimlessly together between the ragged sky lines, or little silent cups of valleys stare up between them at their solitary patch of sky. It seems a sort of waste yard of creation, flung full of the remnants of the making of the earth. --George Kibbe Turner: _Across the State_ ("McClure's"). When once the shrinking dizzy spell was gone, I saw below me, like a jeweled cup, The valley hollowed to its heaven-kissed lip-- The serrate green against the serrate blue-- Brimming with beauty's essence; palpitant With a divine elixir--lucent floods Poured from the golden chalice of the sun, At which my spirit drank with conscious growth, And drank again with still expanding scope Of comprehension and of faculty. I felt the bud of being in me burst With full, unfolding petals to a rose, And fragrant breath that flooded all the scene. By sudden insight of myself I knew That I was greater than the scene,--that deep Within my nature was a wondrous world, Broader than that I gazed on, and informed With a diviner beauty,--that the things I saw were but the types of those I held, And that above them both, High Priest and King, I stood supreme, to choose and to combine, And build from that within me and without New forms of life, with meaning of my own, And then alone upon the mountain top, Kneeling beside the lamb, I bowed my head Beneath the chrismal light and felt my soul Baptized and set apart for poetry. --Holland: _Katrina_. +Theme LXIX.+--_Write a description the purpose of which is to give an impression that you have experienced._ SUMMARY 1. Description is that form of discourse which has for its purpose the creation of an image. 2. The essential characteristics of a description are:-- _a._ A point of view, (1) It may be fixed or changing. (2) It may be expressed or implied. (3) Only those details should be included that can be seen from the point of view chosen. _b._ A correct fundamental image. _c._ A few characteristic and essential details (1) Close observation on the part of the writer is necessary in order to select the essential details. _d._ A proper selection and subordination of minor details. _e._ A suitable arrangement of details with reference to their natural position in space. _f._ That additional effectiveness which comes from (1) Proper choice of words. (2) Suitable comparisons and figures. (3) Variety of sentence structures. 3. The foregoing principles of description apply in the describing of many classes of objects. A description of a person usually gives some indication of his character and so becomes to some extent a character sketch. 4. A description may also have for its purpose the giving of an impression. _a._ The writer must select details which will aid in conveying the impression he desires his readers to receive. _b._ The writer must observe his own impressions accurately, because he cannot convey to others that which he has not himself experienced. _c._ The impression received is affected by the mood of the person. _d._ Impression and image are never entirely separated. IX. NARRATION +141. Kinds of Narration.+--Narration consists of an account of happenings, and, for this reason, it is, without doubt, the most interesting of all forms of discourse. It is natural for us all to be interested in life, movement, action; hence we enjoy reading and talking about them. To be convinced that there is everywhere a great interest in narration we need only to listen to conversations, notice what constitutes the subject-matter of letters of friendship, read newspapers and magazines, and observe what classes of books are most frequently drawn from our libraries. Narration assumes a variety of forms. Since it relates happenings, it must include anecdotes, incidents, short stories, letters, novels, dramas, histories, biographies, and stories of travel and exploration. It also includes many newspaper articles such as those that give accounts of accidents and games and reports of various kinds of meetings. Evidently the field of narration is a broad one, for wherever life or action may be found or imagined, a subject for a narrative exists. EXERCISES 1. Name four different events that have actually taken place in your school in which you think your classmates are interested. 2. Name three events that have taken place in other schools that may be of interest to members of your school. 3. Name four events of general interest that have occurred in your city during the last two or three years. 4. From a daily paper, pick out a narrative that is interesting to you. 5. Select one that you think ought to interest the most of your classmates. 6. Name three national events of recent occurrence. 7. Name three or four strange or mysterious events of which you have heard. 8. Name an actual occurrence that interested you because you wanted to see how it turned out. 9. Would an ordinary account of a bicycle or automobile trip be interesting? If not, why not? +Theme LXX.+--._Write a letter to a pupil in a neighboring high school, telling about something interesting that has happened in your own school_. (Review forms of letter writing. Consider your use of paragraphs.) +142. Plot.+--By plot we mean the outline of the story told in a few words. All narratives consist of accounts of connected happenings, in which action on the part of the characters is naturally implied. The principal action briefly told constitutes the plot. The simple plot of Tennyson's _Princess_ is as follows:-- A prince of the North, after being affianced as a child to a princess of the South, has fallen in love with her portrait and a lock of her hair. When, however, the embassy appears to fetch home the bride, she sends back the message that she is not disposed to be married. Upon receipt of this word the Prince and two friends, Florian and Cyril, steal away to seek the Princess, and learn on reaching her father's court that she has established a Woman's College on a distant estate. Having got letters authorizing them to visit the Princess, they ride into her domain, where they determine to go dressed like girls and apply for admission as students in the College. They arrive in disguise, and are admitted. On the first day the young men enroll themselves as students of Lady Psyche, who recognizes Florian as her brother and agrees not to expose them, since--by a law of the College inscribed above the gates, which darkness has kept them from seeing--the penalty of their discovery would be death. Melissa, a student, overhears them, and is bound over to keep the secret. Lady Blanche, mother of Melissa and rival to Lady Psyche, also learns of the alarming invasion, and remains silent for sinister reasons of her own. On the second day the principal personages picnic in a wood. At dinner Cyril sings a song that is better fit for the smoking room than for the ears of ladies; the Prince, in his anger, betrays his sex by a too masculine reproof; and dire confusion is the result. The Princess in her flight falls into the river, from which she is rescued by the Prince. Cyril and Lady Psyche escape together, but the Prince and Florian are brought before the Princess. At this important moment despatches are brought from her father saying that the Prince's father has surrounded her palace with soldiers, taken him prisoner, and holds him as a hostage. The Prince, after pleading to deaf ears, is sent away at dawn with Florian, and goes with him to the camp. Meantime during the night, the Princess's three brothers have come to her aid with an army. An agreement is reached to decide the case and end the war by a tournament between the brothers, with fifty men, on one side; the Prince and his two friends, with fifty men, on the other. This happens on the third day. The Prince and his men are vanquished, and he himself is badly wounded. But the Princess is now gradually to discover that she has "overthrown more than her enemy,"--that she has defeated yet saved herself. She has said of Lady Psyche's little child:-- "I took it for an hour in mine own bed This morning: there the tender orphan hands Felt at my heart, and seem'd to charm from thence The wrath I nursed against the world." When Cyril pleads with her to give the child back to its mother, she kisses it and feels that "her heart is barren." When she passes near the wounded Prince, and is shown by his father--his beard wet with his son's blood--her hair and picture on her lover's heart, Her iron will was broken in her mind, Her noble heart was broken in her breast. From the Princess's cry then, "Grant me your son to nurse," it is but a natural result that she should bring the Prince's wounded men with him into the College, now a hospital. Through ministering to her lover, she comes to love him; and theories yield to "the lord of all." --Copeland-Rideout: _Introduction to Tennyson's Princess_. +Theme LXXI.+--_Write the plot of one of the following_:-- 1. _Lochinvar_, Scott. 2. _Rip Van Winkle_, Irving. 3. One story from _A Tale of Two Cities_, Dickens. 4. _Silas Marner_, George Eliot. 5. The last magazine story you have read. 6. Some story assigned by the teacher. +Theme LXXII.+--_Write three brief plots. Have the class choose the one that will make the most interesting story._ +Theme LXXIII.+--_Write a story, using the plot selected by the class in the preceding theme._ (Are the events related in your story probable or improbable?) +143. The Introduction.+--Our pleasure in a story depends upon our clear understanding of the various situations, and this understanding may often be best given by an introduction that states something of the time, place, characters, and circumstances as shown in Section 6. The purpose of the introduction is to make the story more effective, and what it shall contain is determined by the needs of the story itself. The last half of a well-written story will not be interesting to one who has not read the first half, because the first half will contain much that is essential to the complete understanding of the main point of the story. A story begun with conversation at once arouses interest, but care must be taken to see that the reader gets sufficient descriptive and explanatory matter to enable him to understand the story as the plot develops, or the interest will begin to lag. +Theme LXXIV.+--_Write a narrative._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The Christmas surprise. 2. How the mortgage was paid. 3. The race between the steam roller and the traction engine. 4. The new girl in the boarding school. 5. The Boss, and how he won his title. (Be sure that your introduction is such that the entire situation is understood. Name different points in the story that led you to say what you have in the introduction. Have you mentioned any unnecessary points?) +144. The Incentive Moment.+--The chief business of a story-teller is to arouse the interest of his readers, and the sooner he succeeds, the better. Usually he tries to arouse interest from the very beginning of his story. He therefore places in the introduction or near it a statement designed to stimulate the curiosity of his readers. The point at which interest begins has been termed the incentive moment. In the following selection notice that the first sentence tells who, when, and where. (Section 6.) The second sentence causes us to ask, what was it? and by the time that is answered we are curious to know what happened and how the adventure ended. On a mellow moonlight evening a cyclist was riding along a lonely road in the northern part of Mashonaland. As he rode, enjoying the somber beauty of the African evening, he suddenly became conscious of a soft, stealthy, heavy tread on the road behind him. It seemed like the jog trot of some heavy, cushion-footed animal following him. Turning round, he was scared very badly to find himself looking into the glaring eyes of a large lion. The puzzled animal acted very strangely, now raising his head, now lowering it, and all the time sniffling the air in a most perplexed manner. Here was a surprise for the lion. He could not make out what kind of animal it was that could roll, walk, and sit still all at the same time; an animal with a red eye on each side, and a brighter one in front. He hesitated to pounce upon such an outlandish being--a being whose blood smelled so oily. I believe no cyclist ever "scorched" with more honesty and single-mindedness of purpose. But although he pedaled and pedaled, although he perspired and panted, his effort to get away did not seem to place any more space between him and the lion; the animal kept up his annoyingly calm jog trot, and never seemed to tire. The poor rider was finally so exhausted from terror and exertion that he decided to have the matter settled right away. Suddenly slowing down, he jumped from his wheel, and, facing abruptly about, thrust the brilliant headlight full into the face of the lion. This was too much for the beast. The sudden glare destroyed the lion's nerve, for at this fresh evidence of mystery on the part of the strange rider-animal, who broke himself into halves and then cast his big eye in any direction he pleased, the monarch of the forest turned tail, and with a wild rush retreated in a very hyena-like manner into the jungle, evidently thanking his stars for his miraculous escape from that awful being. Thereupon the bicyclist, with new strength returning and devoutly blessing his acetylene lamp, pedaled his way back to civilization. --P.L. Wessels. +Theme LXXV.+--_Write a short imaginative story._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. A bicycle race with an unfriendly dog. 2. An unpleasant experience. 3. A story told by the school clock. 4. Disturbing a hornet's nest. 5. The fate of an Easter bonnet. 6. Chased by a wolf. (Where is the incentive moment? Is it introduced naturally?) +145. Climax.+--You have already noticed in your reading that usually somewhere near the close of the story, there is a turning point. That turning point is called the climax. At this point, the suspense of mind is greatest, for the fate of the principal character is being decided. If the story is well written as regards the plot, our interest will continually increase from the incentive moment to the climax. In the novel and the drama, both of which may have a complicated plot, several minor climaxes or crises may be found. There may be a crisis to each single event or episode, yet they should all be a part of and lead up to the principal or final climax. Instead of detracting from, they add to the interest of a carefully woven plot. For example, in the _Merchant of Venice_, we have a crisis in both the casket story and the Lorenzo and Jessica episode; but so skillfully are the stories interwoven that the minor climaxes do not lessen our interest in the principal one. In short stories, the turning point should come near the close. There should be but little said after that point is reached. In novels, and especially in dramas, we find that the climax is not right at the close, and considerable action sometimes takes place after the climax has been reached. EXERCISES _A._ Point out the climax in each of five stories that you have read. _B._ Where is the climax in the following selection? We spoke, and Sohrab kindled at his taunts, And he too drew his sword; at once they rushed Together, as two eagles on one prey Come rushing down together from the clouds, One from the east, one from the west; their shields Dashed with a clang together, and a din Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters Make often in the forest's heart at morn, Of hewing axes, crashing trees--such blows Rustum and Sohrab on each other hailed. And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud Grew suddenly in heaven, and darked the sun Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain, And in a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair. In gloom they twain were wrapped, and they alone; For both the onlooking hosts on either hand Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And laboring breath; first Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out; the steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now denied, sank to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head; but then the gloom Grew blacker, thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry;-- No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pained desert lion, who all day Hath trailed the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand. The two hosts heard that cry, and quaked for fear, And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream. But Sohrab heard, and quailed not, but rushed on, And struck again; and again Rustum bowed His head; but this time all the blade, like glass, Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm, And in the hand the hilt remained alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted: "Rustum!"--Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amazed: back he recoiled one step, And scanned with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewildered; and he dropped His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. He reeled, and, staggering back, sank to the ground, And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair-- Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet, And Sohrab wounded, on the bloody sand. --Matthew Arnold: _Sohrab and Rustum_. +Theme LXXVI.+--_Write a story and give special attention to the climax._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The immigrant's error. 2. A critical moment. 3. An intelligent dog. 4. The lost key. 5. Catching a burglar. 6. A hard test. 7. Won by the last hit. 8. A story suggested by a picture you have seen. (Name the incidents leading up to the climax. Is the mind held in suspense until the climax is reached? Are any unnecessary details introduced?) +146. Conversation in Narration.+--When introduced into narration, a conversation is briefer than when actually spoken. It is necessary to have the conversation move quickly, for we read with less patience than we listen. The sentences must be for the most part short, and the changes from one speaker to another frequent, or the dialogue will have a "made to order" effect. Notice the conversation in as many different stories as possible. Observe how variation is secured in indicating the speaker. How many substitutes for "He said" can you name? In relating conversation orally, we are less likely to secure such variety. Notice in your own speech and that of others how often "I said" and "He said" occur. EXERCISES _A_. Notice the indentation and sentence length in the following selection:-- Louden looked up calmly at the big figure towering above him. "It won't do, Judge," he said; that was all, but there was a significance in his manner and a certainty in his voice which caused the uplifted hand to drop limply. "Have you any business to set foot upon my property?" he demanded. "Yes," answered Joe. "That's why I came. "What business have you got with me?" "Enough to satisfy you, I think. But there's one thing I don't want to do"--Joe glanced at the open door--"and that is to talk about it here--for your own sake and because I think Miss Tabor should be present. I called to ask you to come to her house at eight o'clock to-night." "You did!" Martin Pike spoke angrily, but not in the bull bass of yore. "My accounts with her estate are closed," he said harshly. "If she wants anything let her come here." Joe shook his head. "No. You must be there at eight o'clock." --Booth Tarkington: _The Conquest of Canaan_ ("Harper's"). _B_. Notice the conversation in the following narrative. Consider also the incentive moment and the climax. Suggest improvements. When Widow Perkins saw Widower Parsons coming down the road she looked as mad as a hornet and stepped to the back door. "William Henry," she called to the lank youth chopping wood, "you've worked hard enough for one day. Come in and rest." "Guess that's the first time you ever thought I needed a rest since I was born. I'll keep right on chopping till you get through acceptin' old Hull," he replied, whereupon the widow slammed the door and looked twice as mad as before. "Mornin', widdy," remarked the widower, stalking into the room, taking a chair without an invitation, and hanging his hat on his knee. "Cold day," he added cheerfully. The widow nodded shortly, at the same time inwardly prophesying a still colder day for him before he struck the weather again. "Been buyin' a new cow," resumed the caller, impressively. "Have, eh?" returned the widow, with a jerk, bringing out the ironing board and slamming it down on the table. "An' two hogs," went on the widower, wishing the widow would glance at him just once and see how affectionate he looked. "They'll make pork enough for all next winter and spring." "Will, eh?" responded the widow, with a bang of the iron that nearly wrecked the table. "An' a--a--lot o' odd things 'round the house; an' the fact is, widdy, you see--that is, you know--was going to say if you'll agree"--the widower lost his words, and in his desperation hung his hat on the other knee and hitched a trifle nearer the ironing board. "No, Hull Parsons, I don't see a single mite, nor I don't know a particle, an' I ain't agreein' the least bit," snapped the widow, pounding the creases out of the tablecloth. "But say, widdy, don't get riled so soon," again ventured Parsons. "I was jest goin' to tell you that I've been proposing to Carpenter Brown to build a new--" By this time the widow was glancing at him in a way he wished she wouldn't. "Is that all the proposin' you've done in the last five mouths, Hull Parsons?" she demanded stormily. "You ain't asked every old maid for miles around to marry you, have you, Hull Parsons? An' you didn't tell the last one you proposed to that if she didn't take you there would be only one more chance left--that old pepper-box of a Widow Perkins? You didn't say that, now, did you, Hull Parsons?" and the widow's eyes and voice snapped fire all at once. The caller turned several different shades of red and realized that he had struck the biggest snag he'd ever struck in any courting career, past or present. He laughed violently for a second or two, tried to hang his hat on both knees at the same time, and finally sank his voice to a confidential undertone:-- "Now, widdy, that's the woman's way o' puttin' it. They've been jealous o' you all 'long, fur they knew where my mind was sot. I wouldn't married one o' them women for nothing," added the widower, with another hitch toward the ironing board. "Huh!" responded the widow, losing a trifle of her warlike cast of countenance. "S'pose all them women hadn't refused you, Hull Parsons, what then?" "They didn't refuse me, widdy," returned the widower, trying to look sheepish, and dropping his voice an octave lower. "S'pose I hadn't oughter tell on 'em, but--er--can you keep a secret, widdy?" "I ain't like the woman who can't," remarked the widow, shortly. "Well, then, I was the one who did the refusin'--the hull gang went fer me right heavy, guess 'cause 'twas leap year, or they was tryin' on some o' them new women's ways, or somethin' like that. But my mind was sot all along, d'ye see, widdy?" And the Widow Perkins invited Widower Parsons to stay to dinner, because she thought she saw. +Theme LXXVII.+--_Complete the story on pages 79-80, or one of the following:_-- THE AUDACIOUS REPORTER Soon after Fenimore Dayton became a reporter his city editor sent him to interview James Mountain. That famous financier was then approaching the zenith of his power over Wall Street and Lombard Street. It had just been announced that he had "absorbed" the Great Eastern and Western Railway System--of course, by the methods which have made some men and some newspapers habitually speak of him as "the Royal Bandit." The city editor had two reasons for sending Dayton--first because he did not like him; second, because any other man on the staff would walk about for an hour and come back with the report that Mountain had refused to receive him, while Dayton would make an honest effort. Seeing Dayton saunter down Nassau Street--tall, slender, calm, and cheerful--you would never have thought that he was on his way to interview one of the worst-tempered men in New York, for a newspaper which that man peculiarly detested, and on a subject which he did not care to discuss with the public. Dayton turned in at the Equitable Building and went up to the floor occupied by Mountain, Ranger, & Blakehill. He nodded to the attendant at the door of Mountain's own suite of offices, strolled tranquilly down the aisle between the several rows of desks at which sat Mountain's personal clerks, and knocked at the glass door on which was printed "Mr. Mountain" in small gilt letters. "Come!" It was an angry voice--Mountain's at its worst. Dayton opened the door. Mountain glanced up from a mass of papers before him. His red forehead became a network of wrinkles and his scant white eyebrows bristled. "And who are you?" he snarled. "My name is Dayton--Fenimore Dayton," replied the reporter, with a gracefully polite bow. "Mr. Mountain, I believe?" It was impossible for Mr. Mountain altogether to resist the impulse to bow in return. Dayton's manner was compelling. "And what the dev--what can I do for you?" "I'm a reporter from the ----" "What!" roared Mountain, leaping to his feet in a purple, swollen veined fury.... --David Graham Philips ("McClure's"). CAUGHT MASQUERADING When I took my aunt and sister to the Pequot hotel, the night before the Yale-Harvard boat race, I found a gang of Harvard boys there. They celebrated a good deal that night, in the usual Harvard way. Some of the Harvard men had a room next to mine. About three a.m. things quieted down. When I woke up next morning, it was broad daylight, and I was utterly alone. The race was to be at eleven o'clock. I jumped out of bed and looked at my watch--it was nearly ten! I looked for my clothes. My valise was gone! I rang the bell, but in the excitement downstairs, I suppose, no one answered it. What was I to do? Those Harvard friends of mine thought it a good joke on me to steal my clothes and take themselves off to the race without waking me up. I don't know what I should have done in my anguish, when, thank goodness, I heard a tap at my door, and went to it. "Well, do hurry!" (It was my sister's voice.) "Aunt won't go to the race; we'll have to go without her." "They've stolen my clothes, Mollie--those Harvard fellows." "Haven't you anything?" she asked through the keyhole. "Not a thing, dear." "Oh, well! it's a just punishment to you after last night! That ---- noise was dreadful!" "Perhaps it is," I said, "but don't preach now, sister dear--get me something to put on. I want to see the race." "I haven't anything except some dresses and one of aunt's." "Get me Aunt Sarah's black silk," I cried. "I will wear anything rather than not see the race, and it's half-past ten nearly now." (Correct your theme with reference to the points mentioned in Section 146.) +147. Number and Choice of Details--Unity.+--In relating experiences the choice of details will be determined by the purpose of the narrative and by the person or persons for whom we are writing. A brief account of an accident for a newspaper will need to include only a clear and concise statement of a few important facts. A traveling experience may be made interesting and vivid if we select several facts and treat each quite fully. This is especially true if the experience took place in a country or part of a country not familiar to our readers. If we are writing for those with whom we are acquainted, we can easily decide what will interest them. If we write to different persons an account of the same event, we find that these accounts differ from one another. We know what each person will enjoy, and we try to adapt our writing to each individual taste. Our narrative will be improved by adapting it to an imaginary audience in case we do not know exactly who our readers will be. In your high school work you know your readers and can select your facts accordingly. To summarize: a narration should possess unity, that is, it should say all that should be said about the subject and not more than needs to be said. The length of the theme, the character of the audience to which it is addressed, and the purpose for which it is written, determine what facts are necessary and how many to choose in order to give unity. (See Section 81.) +148. Arrangement of Details--Coherence.+--We should use an arrangement of our facts that will give coherence to our theme. In a coherent theme each sentence or paragraph is naturally suggested by the preceding one. It has been pointed out in Sections 82-85 that in narration we gain coherence by relating our facts in the order of their occurrence. When a single series of events is set forth, we can follow the real time-order, omitting such details as are not essential to the unity of the story. If, however, more than one series of events are given, we cannot follow the exact time-order, for, though two events occur at the same time, one must be told before the other. Here, the actual time relations must be carefully indicated by the use of expressions; as, _at the same time, meanwhile, already_, etc. (See Section 12.) Two or more series of events belong in the same story only if they finally come together at some time, usually at the point of the story. They should be carried along together so that the reader shall have in mind all that is necessary for the understanding of the point when it is reached. In short stories the changes from one series to another are close together. In a long book one or more chapters may give one series of incidents, while the following chapters may be concerned with a parallel series of incidents. Notice the introductory paragraph of each chapter in Scott's _Ivanhoe_ or Cooper's _The Last of the Mohicans_. Many of these indicate that a new series of events is to be related. It will be of advantage in writing a narrative to construct an outline as indicated in Section 84. Such an outline will assist us in making our narrative clear by giving it unity, coherence, and emphasis. EXERCISES 1. Name events that have occurred in your school or city which could be related in their exact time-order. Relate one of them orally. 2. Name two accidents that could not be related in their exact time-order. Relate one of them orally. 3. Name subjects for real narratives that would need to be written in the first person; in the third person. 4. In telling about a runaway accident, what points would you mention if you were writing a short account for a newspaper? 5. What points would you add if you were writing to some one who was acquainted with the persons in the accident? 6. Consider the choice and arrangement of details in the next magazine story that you read. +Theme LXXVIII.+--_Write a personal narrative in which the time-order can be carefully followed._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The irate conductor. 2. A personal adventure with a window. 3. An interrupted nap. 4. Lost in the woods. 5. In a runaway. 6. An amusing adventure. 7. A day at grandfather's. (Consider the unity and coherence of the theme.) +Theme LXXIX.+--_Write in the third person a true narrative in which different events are going on at the same time._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. A skating accident. 2. The hunters hunted. 3. Capsized on the river. 4. How he won the race. 5. An experience with a balky horse. 6. The search for a lost child. 7. How they missed each other. 8. A strange adventure. 9. A tip over in a bobsleigh. (How many series of events have you in your narrative? Are they well connected? What words have you used to show the time-order of the different events?) +149. Interrelation of Plot and Character.+--Though in narration the interest centers primarily in the action, yet in the higher types of narration interest in character is closely interwoven with interest in plot. In reading, our attention is held by the plot; we follow its development, noticing the addition of incidents, their relation to one another and to the larger elements of action in the story, and their union in the final disentanglement of the plot; but our complete appreciation of the story runs far beyond the plot and depends to a large extent upon our interpretation of the character of the individuals concerned. The mere story may be exciting and interesting, but its effect will be of little permanent value if it does not stir within us some appreciation of character, which we shall find reflected in our own lives or in the lives of those about us. We may read the _Merchant of Venice_ for its story, but a deeper study of the play sets forth and reënforces the character of Portia, Shylock, and the others. With many of the celebrated characters of literature this interest has grown quite apart from interest in the plot, and they stand to-day as the embodiment of phases of human nature. Thus by means of action does the skillful author portray his conception of human life and human character. On the other hand, when we write we shall need to distinguish action that indicates character from that which is merely incidental to the plot. In order to develop a story to its climax we may need to have the persons concerned perform certain actions. If by skillful wording we can show not only what was done but also to some extent the way in which it was done, we may give our readers some notion of the character of the individuals in our story. (See Section 10.) This portrayal of character may be aided by the use of description. (See Section 134.) Notice that the purpose of the following selection is to indicate the character of Pitkin rather than to relate the incident. If the author were to relate other doings of Pitkin, he would need to make the actions of Pitkin in each case consistent with the character indicated by this sketch. It was the day of our great football game with Harvard, and when I heard my friend Pitkin returning to the room we shared in common, I knew that he was mad. And when I say mad I mean it,--not angry, nor exasperated, nor aggravated, nor provoked, but mad: not mad according to the dictionary, that is, crazy, but mad as we common folk use the term. So I say my friend Pitkin was mad. I thought so when I heard the angry click-clack of his heels on the cement walk, and I carefully put all the chairs against the wall; I was sure of it when the door slammed, and I set the coal scuttle in the corner behind the stove. There was no doubt of it when he mounted the stairs three steps at a time, and I hastily cleared his side of the desk. You may wonder why I did all these things, but you have never seen Pitkin mad. Why was Pitkin mad? I did not then know. I had not seen him yet, for I was so busy--so very, very busy--that I did not look up when he slammed his books on the desk with a resounding whack which caused the ink bottle to tremble and the lampshade to clatter as though chattering its teeth with fear, while the pens and pencils, tumbling from the holder, scurried away to hide themselves under the desk. I was still busily engaged with my books while he threw his wet overcoat and dripping hat on the white bedspread and kicked his rubbers under the stove, the smell of which soon warned me to rescue them before they melted. Pitkin must be very mad this time. He was taking off his collar and even his shoes. Pitkin always took off his collar when very mad, and if especially so, put on his slippers, even if he had to change them again in fifteen minutes. "What are you doing? Why don't you say something? You are a pretty fellow not to speak or even look up." Such was Pitkin's first remark. Sometimes he was talkative and would insist on giving his opinion of things in general. At other times he preferred to be left alone to bury himself and his wrath in his books. Since he had failed to poke the fire, though the room was very warm, I had decided that he would dive into his books and be heard no more until a half hour past his suppertime, but I had made a mistake. Today he was in a talkative mood, and knowing that work was impossible, I devoted the next half hour to listening to a dissertation on the general perverseness of human nature, and to an elaborate description of my friend Pitkin's scheme for endowing a rival institution with a hundred million, and making things so cheap and attractive that our university would have to go out of business. When Pitkin reached this point, I knew that I could safely ask the special reason of his anger and that, having answered, he would settle down to his regular work. I gently insinuated that I was still ignorant of the matter, and received the reply quite in keeping with Pitkin's nature, "I bet on Harvard and won." EXERCISES 1. Read one of Dickens's books and bring to class selections that will show how Dickens portrays character by use of action. 2. What kind of man is Silas Marner? What leads you to think as you do? 3. Select three persons from _Ivanhoe_ and state your opinion of their character. 4. Notice the relative importance of plot and character in three magazine stories. 5. Select some person from a magazine story. Tell the class what makes you form the estimate of his character that you do. To what extent does the descriptive matter help you determine his character? +Theme LXXX.+--_Write a character sketch or a story which shows character by means of action._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The girl from Texas. 2. The Chinese cook. 3. Taking care of the baby. 4. Nathan's temptation. 5. The small boy's triumph. 6. A village character. 7. The meanest man I ever knew. (Consider the development of the plot. To what extent have you shown character by action? Can you make the impression of character stronger by adding some description?) +150. History and Biography.+--Historical and biographical narratives may be highly entertaining and at the same time furnish us with much valuable information. Such writings often contain much that is not pure narration. A historian may set forth merely the program of events, but most histories contain besides a large amount of description and explanation. Frequently, too, all of this is but the basis of either a direct or an implied argument. Likewise a biographer may be chiefly concerned with the acts of a man, but he usually finds that the introduction of description and explanation aids him in making clear the life purpose of the man about whom he writes. In shorter histories and biographies, the expository and descriptive matter often displaces the narrative matter to such an extent that the story ceases to be interesting. The actual time-order of events need not be followed. It will often make our account clearer to discuss the literary works of a man at one time, his education at another, and his practical achievements at a third. Certain portions of his life may need to be emphasized while others are neglected. What we include in a biography and what we emphasize will be determined by the purpose for which it is written. For pure information, a short account is desirable, but a long account is of greater interest. If a man is really great, the most insignificant events in his life will be read with interest, but a good biographer will select such events with good taste and then will present them so that they will have a bearing upon the more important phases of the man's life and character. Hundreds of the stories told about Lincoln would be trivial but for the fact that they help us better to understand the real character of the man. EXERCISE 1. Select some topic briefly mentioned in the history text you study. Look up a more extended account of it and come to the class prepared to recite the topic orally. Make your report clear, concise, and interesting. Decide beforehand just what facts you will relate and in what order. (See Sections 39, 52, 53.) +Theme LXXXI.+--_Come to class prepared to write upon some topic assigned by the teacher, or upon one of the following_:-- 1. Pontiac's conspiracy. 2. The battle of Marathon. 3. The Boston tea party. 4. The battle of Bannockburn. 5. Sherman's march to the sea. 6. Passage of the Alps by Napoleon. (Is your narrative told in an interesting way? Are any facts necessary to the clear understanding of it omitted?) EXERCISES 1. Name an English orator, an English statesman, and an English writer about each of whom an interesting biography might be written. 2. With the same purpose in view name two American orators, two American writers, and two American statesmen. +Theme LXXXII.+--_Write a short biography of some prominent person. Include only well-known and important facts, but do not give his name. Read the biography before the class and have them tell whose biography it is._ +151. Description in Narration.+--The descriptive elements, of narration should always have for their purpose something more than the mere creating of images. If a house is described, the description should enable us to bring to mind more vividly the events that take place within or around it. If the description aids us in understanding how or why the events occur, it is helpful; but if it fails to do this, it has no place in the narrative. Description when thus used serves as a background for the actions told in the story, and has for its purpose the explanation of how or why they occur. Sometimes the descriptions are given before the incident and sometimes the two are intermixed. In the following incident from the _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, notice how the description prepares the mind for the action that follows. We are told that the brook which Ichabod must cross runs into a marshy and thickly wooded glen; that the oaks and chestnuts matted with grapevines throw a gloom over the place, and already we feel that it is a dreadful spot after dark. The fact that André was captured here adds to the feeling. We are prepared to have some exciting action take place, and had Ichabod ridden quietly across the bridge, we should have been disappointed. About two hundred yards from the tree a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley's swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the woods, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grapevines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate André was captured, and under covert of those vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark. As he approached the stream his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot. It was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp, by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen, black, and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler. --Irving: _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_. The most important use of description in connection with narration is that of portraying character. Though it is by their actions that the character of persons is most strongly brought out, yet the descriptive matter may do much to strengthen the impression of character which we form. (Section 134.) Much of the description found in literature is of this nature. Stripped of its context such a description may fail to satisfy our ideals as judged by the principles of description discussed in Chapter VIII. Nevertheless, in its place it may be perfectly adapted to its purpose and give just the impression the author wished to give. Such descriptions must be judged in their settings, and the sole standard of judgment is not their beauty or completeness as descriptions, but how well they give the desired impressions. +Theme LXXXIII.+--_Write a short personal narrative containing some description which explains how or why events occur._ (Is there anything in the descriptive part that does not bear on the narration?) +Theme LXXXIV.+--_Write a narrative containing description that aids in giving an impression of character._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Holding the fort. 2. A steamer trip. 3. How I played truant. 4. Kidnapped. 5. The misfortunes of our circus. 6. Account for the situation shown in a picture that you have seen. (Will the reader form the impression of character which you wish him to form? Consider your theme with reference to its introduction, incentive moment, selection and arrangement of details, and climax.) SUMMARY 1. Narration assumes a variety of forms,--incidents, anecdotes, stories, letters, novels, histories, biographies, etc.,--all concerned with the relation of events. 2. The essential characteristics of a narration are,-- _a._ An introduction which tells the characters, the time, the place, and enough of the attendant circumstances to make clear the point of the narrative. _b._ The early introduction of an incentive moment. _c._ A climax presented in such a way as to maintain the interest of the reader. _d._ The selection of details essential to the climax in accordance with the principle of unity. _e._ The arrangement of these details in a coherent order. _f._ The skillful introduction of minor details which will assist in the appreciation of the point. _g._ The introduction of all necessary description and explanation. _h._ That additional effectiveness which comes from (1) Proper choice of words. (2) Suitable comparisons and figures. (3) Variety of sentence structure. _i._ A brief conclusion. X. EXPOSITION +152. Purpose of Exposition.+--It is the purpose of exposition to make clear to others that which we ourselves understand. Its primary object is to give information. Herein lies one of the chief differences between the two forms of discourse just studied and the one that we are about to study. The primary object of most description and narration is to please, while that of exposition is to inform. Exposition answers such questions as how? why? what does it mean? what is it used for? and by these answers attempts to satisfy demands for knowledge. In the following selections notice that the first tells us _how_ to burnish a photograph; the second, _how_ to split a sheet of paper:-- 1. When the prints are almost dry they can be burnished. The burnishing iron should be heated and kept hot during the burnishing, about the same heat as a flatiron in ironing clothes. Care must be taken to keep the polished surface of the burnisher bright and clean. When the iron is hot enough the prints should be rubbed with a glacé polish, which is sold for this purpose, and is applied with a small wad of flannel. Then the prints should be passed through the burnisher two or three times, the burnisher being so adjusted that the pressure on the prints is rather light; the degree of pressure will be quickly learned by experience, more pressure being required if the prints have been allowed to become dry before being polished. White castile soap will do very well as a lubricator for the prints before burnishing, and is applied in the same manner as above. --_The Amateur Photographer's Handbook_. 2. Paper can be split into two or even three parts, however thin the sheet. It may be convenient to know how to do this sometimes; as, for instance, when one wishes to paste in a scrapbook an article printed on both sides of the paper. Get a piece of plate glass and place it on a sheet of paper. Then let the paper be thoroughly soaked. With care and a little skill the sheet can be split by the top surface being removed. The best plan, however, is to paste a piece of cloth or strong paper to each side of the sheet to be split. When dry, quickly, and without hesitation, pull the two pieces asunder, when one part of the sheet will be found to have adhered to one, and part to the other. Soften the paste in water, and the two pieces can easily be removed from the cloth. EXERCISES A. Explain orally any two of the following:-- 1. How to fly a kite. 2. How a robin builds her nest. 3. How oats are harvested. 4. How tacks are made. 5. How to make a popgun. 6. How fishes breathe. 7. How to swim. 8. How to hemstitch a handkerchief. 9. How to play golf. 10. How salt is obtained. B. Name several subjects with the explanation of which you are unfamiliar. +Theme LXXXV.+--_Select for a subject something that you know how to do. Write a theme on the subject chosen._ (Have you made use of either general description or general narration? See Sections 67 and 68.) Very frequently explanations of _how_ and _why_ anything is done are combined, as in the following:-- In cases of sunstroke, place the person attacked in a cool, airy place. Do not allow a crowd to collect closely about him. Remove his clothing, and lay him flat upon his back. Dash him all over with cold water--ice-water, if it can be obtained--and rub the entire body with pieces of ice. This treatment is used to reduce the heat of the body, for in all cases of sunstroke the temperature of the body is greatly increased. When the body has become cooler, wipe it dry and remove the person to a dry locality. If respiration ceases, or becomes exceedingly slow, practice artificial respiration. After the patient has apparently recovered, he should be kept quiet in bed for some time. --Baldwin: _Essential Lessons in Human Physiology and Hygiene_. Notice that the following selection answers neither the question _how_? nor _why_? but explains what journalism is:-- JOURNALISM What is a journal? What is a journalist? What is journalism? Is it a trade, a commercial business, or a profession? Our word _journal_ comes from the French. It has different forms in the several Romantic languages, and all go back to the Latin _diurnalis_, daily, from _dies_, a day. Diurnal and diary are derived from the same source. The first journals were in fact diaries, daily records of happenings, compiled often for the pleasure and use of the compiler alone, sometimes for monarchs or statesmen or friends; later to be circulated for the information of a circle of readers, or distributed in copies to subscribers among the public at large. These were the first newspapers. While we still in a specific sense speak of daily newspapers as journals, the term is often enlarged to comprise nearly all publications that are issued periodically and distributed to subscribers. A journalist is one whose business is publishing a journal (or more than one), or editing a journal, or writing for journals, especially a person who is regularly employed in some responsible directing or creative work on a journal, as a publisher, editor, writer, reporter, critic, etc. This use of the word is comparatively modern, and it is commonly restricted to persons connected with daily or weekly newspapers. Many older newspaper men scout it, preferring to be known as publishers, editors, writers, or contributors. Journalism, however, is a word that is needed for its comprehensiveness. It includes the theory, the business, and the art of producing newspapers in all departments of the work. Hence, any school of professional journalism must be presumed to comprise in its scope and detail of instruction the knowledge that is essential to the making and conduct of newspapers. It must have for its aim the ideal newspaper which is ideally perfect in every department. Journalism, so far as it is more than mere reporting and mere money making, so far as it undertakes to frame and guide opinion, to educate the thought and instruct the conscience of the community, by editorial comment, interpretation and homily, based on the news, is under obligation to the community to be truthful, sincere, and uncorrupted; to enlighten the understanding, not to darken counsel; to uphold justice and honor with unfailing resolution, to champion morality and the public welfare with intelligent zeal, to expose wrong and antagonize it with unflinching courage. If journalism has any mission in the world besides and beyond the dissemination of news, it is a mission of maintaining a high standard of thought and life in the community it serves, strengthening all its forces that make for righteousness and beauty and fair growth. This is not solely, nor peculiarly, the office of what is called the editorial page. To be most influential, it must be a consistent expression in all departments, giving the newspaper a totality of power in such aim. This is the right ideal of journalism whenever it is considered as more than a form of commercialism. No newspaper attains its ideal in completeness. If it steadfastly works toward attainment, it gives proof of its right to be. The advancing newspaper, going on from good to better in the substance of its character and the ability of its endeavor, is the type of journalism which affords hope for the future. And one strong encouragement to fidelity in a high motive is public appreciation. --_The Boston Herald._ EXERCISES Give as complete an answer as possible to any two of the following questions:-- 1. Why do fish bite better on a cloudy day than on a bright one? 2. Why should we study history? 3. Why does a baseball curve? 4. Why did the American colonies revolt against England? 5. Why did the early settlers of New England persecute the Quakers? 6. Why should trees be planted either in early spring or late autumn? 7. Why do we lose a day in going from America to China? 8. In laying a railroad track, why is there a space left between the ends of the rails? +Theme LXXXVI.+--_Choose one of the above or a similar question as a subject for a theme. Write out as complete and exact an explanation as possible._ EXERCISE Write out a list of subjects the explanation of which would not answer the questions _why_? or _how_? How many of them can you explain? +Theme LXXXVII.+--_Write out the explanation of one of the subjects in the above list._ (Read what you have written and consider it with reference to clearness, unity, and coherence.) +153. Importance of Exposition.+--This form of discourse is important because it deals so extensively with important subjects, such as questions of government, facts in science, points in history, methods in education, and processes of manufacture. It enters vitally into our lives, no matter what our occupation may be. Business men make constant use of this kind of discourse. In fact, it would be impossible for business to be transacted with any degree of success without explanations. Loans of money would not be made if men did not understand how they could have security for the sums loaned. A manufacturer cannot expect to have good articles produced if he is unable to give needful explanations concerning their manufacture. In order that a merchant be successful he must be able to explain the relative merits of his goods to his customers. Very much of the work done in our schools is of an expository nature. The text-books used are expositions. When they of themselves are not sufficient for the clear understanding of the subject, it is necessary to consult reference books. Then, if the subject is still lacking in clearness, the teacher is called upon for additional explanation. On the other hand, the greater part of the pupil's recitations consists simply in explaining the subjects under discussion. Much of the class-room work in our schools consists of either receiving or giving explanations. EXERCISES 1. Name anything outside of school work that you have been called upon to explain during the last week or two. 2. Name anything outside of school work that you have recently learned through explanation. 3. Name three topics in each of your studies for to-day that call for explanation. 4. Name some topic in which the text-book did not seem to make the explanation clear. +Theme LXXXVIII.+--_Write out one of the topics mentioned in number three of the preceding exercise._ (Have you included everything that is necessary to make your explanation clear? Can anything be omitted without affecting the clearness?) +154. Clear Understanding.+--The first requisite of a good explanation is a clear understanding on the part of the one who is giving the explanation. It is evident that if we do not understand a subject ourselves we cannot make our explanations clear to others. If the ideas in our mind are in a confused state, our explanation will be equally confused. If you do not understand a problem in algebra, your attempt to explain it to others will prove a failure. If you attempt to explain how a canal boat is taken through a lock without thoroughly understanding the process yourself, you will give your listeners only a confused idea of how it is done. The principal reason why pupils fail in their recitations and examinations is that in preparing their lessons, they do not make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the topics that they are studying. They often go over the lessons hurriedly and carelessly and come to class with confused ideas. Consequently when the pupils attempt to recite, there is, if anything, an additional confusion of ideas, and the recitation proves a failure. Carelessness in the preparation of daily recitations, negligence in asking for additional explanations, and inattention to the explanations that are given, inevitably cause failure when tests or examinations are called for. EXERCISES 1. Name five subjects about which you know so little that it would be useless to attempt an explanation. 2. Name five about which you know something, but not enough to give clear explanations of them. 3. Name four about which you know but little, but concerning which you feel sure that you can obtain information. 4. Name six that you think you clearly understand. Report orally on one of them. +Theme LXXXIV.+--_Write out an explanation of one of the subjects named in number four of the preceding exercise._ (Read your theme and criticise it as to clearness. In listening to the themes read by other members of the class consider them as to clearness. Call for further explanation of any part not perfectly clear to you.) +155. Selection of Facts--Unity.+--After we have been given a subject for explanation or have chosen one for ourselves, we must decide concerning the facts to be presented. In some kinds of exposition this selection is rather difficult. Since the purpose is to make our meaning clear to the person addressed, we secure unity by including all that is necessary to that purpose and by omitting all that is not necessary. It is evident that selection of facts to secure unity depends to some extent upon the audience. If a child asks us to explain what a trust is, our explanation will differ very much from that which we would give if we were addressing a body of men who were familiar with the term _trusts_, but do not understand the advantages and disadvantages arising from their existence. Examine the following as to selection of facts. For what class of people do you think it was written? What seems to be the purpose of it? THE FEUDAL SYSTEM This connection of king as sovereign, with his princes and great men as vassals, must be attended to and understood, in order that you may comprehend the history which follows. A great king, or sovereign prince, gave large provinces, or grants of land, to his dukes, earls, and noblemen; and each of these possessed nearly as much power, within his own district, as the king did in the rest of his dominions. But then the vassal, whether duke, earl, or lord, or whatever he was, was obliged to come with a certain number of men to assist the sovereign, when he was engaged in war; and in time of peace, he was bound to attend on his court when summoned, and do homage to him, that is, acknowledge that he was his master and liege lord. In like manner, the vassals of the crown, as they were called, divided the lands which the king had given them into estates, which they bestowed on knights, and gentlemen, whom they thought fitted to follow them in war, and to attend them in peace; for they, too, held courts, and administered justice, each in his own province. Then the knights and gentlemen, who had these estates from the great nobles, distributed the property among an inferior class of proprietors, some of whom cultivated the land themselves, and others by means of husbandmen and peasants, who were treated as a sort of slaves, being bought and sold like brute beasts, along with the farms which they labored. Thus, when a great king, like that of France or England, went to war, he summoned all his crown vassals to attend him, with the number of armed men corresponding to his fief, as it was called, that is, territory which had been granted to each of them. The prince, duke, or earl, in order to obey the summons, called upon all the gentlemen to whom he had given estates, to attend his standard with their followers in arms. The gentlemen, in their turn, called on the franklins, a lower order of gentry, and upon the peasants; and thus the whole force of the kingdom was assembled in one array. This system of holding lands for military service, that is, for fighting for the sovereign when called upon, was called the _feudal system_. It was general throughout all Europe for a great many ages. --Scott: _Tales of a Grandfather_. +Theme LXXXV.+--_Write a theme on one of the following:_-- 1. Tell your younger brother how to make a whistle. 2. Explain some game to a friend of your own age. 3. Give an explanation of the heating system of your school to a member of the school board of an adjoining city. 4. Explain to a city girl how butter is made. 5. Explain to a city boy how hay is cured. 6. Explain to a friend how to run an automobile. (Consider the selection of facts as determined by the person addressed.) +156. Arrangement--Coherence.+--Some expositions are of such a nature that there is but little question concerning the proper arrangement of the topics composing them. In order to be coherent, all we do is to follow the natural order of occurrence in time and place. This is especially true of general narrations and of some general descriptions. In explaining the circulation of the blood, for instance, it is most natural for us to follow the course which the blood takes in circulating through the body. In explaining the manufacture of articles we naturally begin with the material as it comes to the factory, and trace the process of manufacture in order through its successive stages. In other kinds of exposition a coherent arrangement is somewhat difficult. We should not, however, fail to pay attention to it. A clear understanding of the subject, on the part of the listener, depends largely upon the proper arrangement of topics. As you study examples of expositions of some length, you will notice that there are topics which naturally belong together. These topics form groups, and the groups are treated separately. If the expositions are good ones, the related facts will not only be united into groups, but the groups will also be so arranged and the transition from one group to another be so naturally made that it will cause no confusion. In brief explanations of but one paragraph there should be but one group of facts. Even these facts need to be so arranged as to make the whole idea clear. The writer may have a clear understanding of the whole idea, but in order to give the reader the same clear understanding, certain facts must be presented before others are. In order to make an explanation clear, the facts must be so arranged that those which are necessary to the understanding of others shall come first. Examine the following expositions as to the grouping of related facts and the arrangement of those groups:-- Fresh, pure air at all times is essential to bodily comfort and good health. Air may become impure from many causes. Poisonous gases may be mixed with it; sewer gas is especially to be guarded against; coal gas which is used for illuminating purposes is very poisonous and dangerous if inhaled; the air arising from decaying substances, foul cellars, or stagnant pools, is impure and unhealthy, and breeds diseases; the foul and poisonous air which has been expelled from the lungs, if breathed again, will cause many distressing symptoms. Ventilation has for its object the removal of impure air and the supplying of fresh, wholesome air in its place. Proper ventilation should be secured in all rooms and buildings, and its importance cannot be overestimated. In the summer time and in climates which permit of it with comfort, ventilation may be secured by having the doors and windows open, thus allowing the fresh air to circulate freely through the house. In stormy and cold weather, however, some other means of ventilation must be supplied. If open fires or grates are used for heating purposes, good ventilation exists, for under such circumstances, the foul and impure air is drawn out of the rooms through the chimneys, and the fresh air enters through the cracks of the doors and windows. Where open fireplaces are not used, several plans of ventilation may be used, as they all operate on the same principle. Two openings should be in the room, one of them near the floor, through which the fresh air may enter, the other higher up, and connected with a shaft or chimney, which producing a draft, may serve to free the room from impure air. The size of these openings may be regulated according to the size of the room. --Baldwin: _Essential Lessons in Human Physiology_. THE QUEEN BEE It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, not born. If the entire population of Spain or Great Britain were the offspring of one mother, it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary one, or else give up the fashion of royalty. All the bees in the hive have a common parentage, and the queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in the chick; the patent of royalty is in the cell and in the food; the cell being much larger, and the food a peculiar stimulating kind of jelly. In certain contingencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs in the royal cells, the workers take the larva of an ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by taking in the two adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and coddle it, till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen. But ordinarily, in the natural course of events, the young queen is kept a prisoner in her cell till the old queen has left with the swarm. Not only kept, but guarded against the mother queen, who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal scion in the hive. Both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each other at this time, a shrill, fine, trumpetlike note that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two, by the abdication of the old queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her turn, abdicates in favor of the next younger. When the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases have been known where two queens issued at the same time, when a mortal combat ensued, encouraged by the workers, who formed a ring about them, but showed no preference, and recognized the victor as the lawful sovereign. For these and many other curious facts we are indebted to the blind Huber. It is worthy of note that the position of the queen cells is always vertical, while that of the drones and workers is horizontal; majesty stands on its head, which fact may be a part of the secret. The notion has always very generally prevailed that the queen of the bees is an absolute ruler, and issues her royal orders to willing subjects. Hence Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the imperial mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country of the Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of its king. But the fact is, a swarm of bees is an absolute democracy, and kings and despots can find no warrant in their example. The power and authority are entirely vested in the great mass, the workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of the colony, and administer its affairs. Their word is law, and both king and queen must obey. They regulate the swarming, and give the signal for the swarm to issue from the hive; they select and make ready the tree in the woods and conduct the queen to it. The peculiar office and sacredness of the queen consists in the fact that she is the mother of the swarm, and the bees love and cherish her as a mother and not as a sovereign. She is the sole female bee in the hive, and the swarm clings to her because she is their life. Deprived of their queen, and of all brood from which to rear one, the swarm loses all heart and soon dies, though there be an abundance of honey. The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen,--if she is to be disposed of they starve her to death; and the queen herself will sting nothing but royalty--nothing but a rival queen. --John Burroughs: _Birds and Bees_. +Theme LXXXVI.+--_Write an expository theme._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. Duties of the sheriff. 2. How a motor works. 3. How wheat is harvested. 4. Why the tide exists. 5. How our schoolhouse is ventilated. 6. What is meant by the theory of evolution. 7. The manufacture of ----. 8. How to make a ----. (Consider the arrangement of your statements.) +157. Use of an Outline.+--Before beginning to write an explanation we need to consider what we know about the subject and what our purpose is; we need to select facts that will make our explanations clear to our readers; and we need to decide what arrangement of these facts will best show their relation to each other. We shall find it of advantage, especially in lengthy explanations, to express our thoughts in the form of an outline. An outline helps us to see clearly whether our facts are well chosen, and it also helps us to see whether the arrangement is orderly or not. Clearness is above all the essential of exposition, and outlines aid clearness by giving unity and coherence. EXERCISES Select three of the following subjects and make lists of facts that you know about them. From these select those which would be necessary in making a clear explanation of each. After making out these lists of facts, arrange them in what seems to you the best possible order for making the explanation clear to your classmates. 1. The value of a school library. 2. Sponges. 3. The manufacture of clocks. 4. Drawing. 5. Athletics in the high school. 6. Examinations. 7. Debating societies. +Theme LXXXVII.+--_Following the outline, write an exposition on one of the subjects chosen._ (Notice the transition from one paragraph to another. See Section 87.) +158. Exposition of Terms--Definition.+--Explanation of the meaning of general terms is one form of exposition (Section 63). The first step in the exposition of a term is the giving of a definition. This may be accomplished by the use of a synonym (Section 64). We make a term intelligible to the reader by the use of a synonym with which he is familiar; and though such a definition is inexact, it gives a rough idea of the meaning of the term in question, and so serves a useful purpose. If, however, we wish exactness, we shall need to make use of the logical definition. +159. The Logical Definition.+--The logical definition sets exact limits to the meaning of a term. An exact definition must include all the members of a class indicated by the term defined, and it must exclude everything that does not belong to that class. A logical definition is composed of two parts. It first names the class to which the term to be defined belongs, and then it names the characteristic that distinguishes that term from all other members of the same class. The class is termed the _genus_, and the distinguishing characteristics of the different members of the class are termed the _differentia_. Notice the following division into genus and differentia. TERM TO BE | CLASS | DISTINGUISHING DEFINED | _(Genus)_ | CHARACTERISTIC | | _(Differentia)_ | | A parallelogram | is a quadrilateral | whose opposite sides | | are parallel | | Exposition | is that form of | which seeks to explain | discourse | the meaning of a term. | | Each definition includes three elements: the term to be defined, the genus, and the differentia; but these are not necessarily arranged in the order named. EXERCISE Select the three elements (the term to be defined, the genus, and the differentia) in each of the following:-- 1. A polygon of three sides is called a triangle. 2. A square is an equilateral rectangle. 3. A rectangle whose sides are equal is a square. 4. Description is that form of discourse which aims to present a picture. 5. The characters composing written words are called letters. 6. The olfactory nerves are the first pair of cranial nerves. 7. Person is that modification of a noun or pronoun which denotes the speaker, the person spoken to, or the person or things spoken of. 8. The diptera, or true flies, are readily distinguishable from other insects by their having a single pair of wings instead of two pairs, the hind wings being transformed into small knob-headed pedicles called balancers or halters. +160. Difficulty of Framing Exact Definitions.+--In order to frame a logical definition, exactness of thought is essential. Even when the thought is exact, it will be found difficult and often impossible to frame a satisfactory definition. Usually there is little difficulty in selecting the genus, still care should be taken to select one that includes the term to be defined. We might begin the definition of iron by saying, "Iron is a metal," since all iron is metal, but it would be incorrect to begin the definition of rodent by saying, "A rodent is a beaver," because the term beaver does not include all rodents. We must also take care to choose for the genus some term familiar to the reader, because the object of the definition is to make the meaning clear to him. The chief difficulty of framing logical definitions arises in the selection of differentia. In many cases it is not easy to decide just what characteristics distinguish one member of a class from all other members of that class. We all know that iron is a metal, but most of us would find it difficult to add to the definition just those things which distinguish iron from other metals. We may say, "A flute is a musical instrument"; so much of the definition is easily given. The difficulty lies in distinguishing it from all other musical instruments. EXERCISES _A._ Select proper differentia for the following:-- | TERM TO BE DEFINED | CLASS (Genus) | DISTINGUISHING | | CHARACTERISTIC | | _(Differentia)_ | | 1. Narration | is that form of discourse | ? | | 2. A circle | is a portion of a plane | ? | | 3. A dog | is an animal | ? | | 4. A hawk | is a bird | ? | | 5. Physiography | is the science | ? | | 6. A sneak | is a person | ? | | 7. A quadrilateral | is a plane figure | ? | | 8. A barn | is a building | ? | | 9. A bicycle | is a machine | ? | | 10. A lady | is a woman | ? _B._ Give logical definitions for at least four words in the list below. 1. Telephone. 2. Square. 3. Hammer. 4. Novel 5. Curiosity. 6. Door. 7. Camera. 8. Brick. 9. Microscope. +161. Inexact Definitions.+--If the distinguishing characteristics are not properly selected, the definition though logical in form may be inexact, because the differentia do not exclude all but the term to be defined. If we say, "Exposition is that form of discourse which gives information," the definition is inexact because there are other forms of discourse that give information. Many definitions given in text-books are inexact. Care should be taken to distinguish them from those which are logically exact. EXERCISE Which of the following are exact? 1. A sheep is a gregarious animal that produces wool. 2. A squash is a garden plant much liked by striped bugs. 3. A pronoun is a word used for a noun. 4. The diaphragm is a sheet of muscle and tendon, convex on its upper side, and attached by bands of striped muscle to the lower ribs at the side, to the sternum, and to the cartilage of the ribs which join it in front, and at the back by very strong bands to the lumbar vertebrae. 5. A man is a two-legged animal without feathers. 6. Argument is that form of discourse which has for its object the proof of the truth or falsity of a proposition. 7. The base of an isosceles triangle is that side which is equal to no other. 8. Zinc is a metal used under stoves. 9. The epidermis of a leaf is a delicate, transparent skin which covers the whole leaf. +Theme LXXXVIII.+--_Write an expository paragraph about one of the following:_-- Suggested subjects:-- 1. Household science and arts. 2. Architecture. 3. Aesthetics. 4. Poetry. 5. Fiction. 6. Half tones. 7. Steam fitting. 8. Swimming. (Consider the definitions you have used.) +162. Division.+--The second step in the exposition of a term is division. Definition establishes the limits of the term. Division separates into its parts that which is included by the term. By definition we distinguish triangles from squares, circles, and other plane figures. By division we may separate them into scalene, isosceles, and equilateral, or if we divide them according to a different principle into right and oblique triangles. In either case the division is complete and exact. By completeness is meant that every object denoted by the term explained is included in the division given, thus making the sum of these divisions equal to the whole. By exactness is meant that but a single principle has been used, and so no object denoted by the term explained will be included in more than one of the divisions made. There are no triangles which are neither right nor oblique, so the division is complete; and no triangle can be both right and oblique, so the division is exact. Such a complete and exact division is called _classification_. Nearly every term may be divided according to more than one principle. We may divide the term _books_ into ancient and modern, or into religious and secular, or in any one of a dozen other ways. Which principle of division we shall choose will depend upon our purpose. If we wish to discuss _sponges_ with reference to their shapes, our division will be different from what it would be if we were to discuss them with reference to their uses. When a principle of division has once been chosen it is essential that it be followed throughout. The use of two principles causes an overlapping of divisions, thus producing what is called cross division. Using the principle of use, a tailor may sort his bolts of cloth into cloth for overcoats, cloth for suits, and cloth for trousers; using the principle of weight, into heavy weight and light weight; or he may sort them with reference to color or price. In any case but a single principle is used. It would not do to divide them into cloth for suits, light weight goods, and brown cloth. Such a division would be neither complete nor exact; for some of the cloth would belong to none of the classes while other pieces might properly be placed in all three. In the exact sciences complete exposition is the aim, and classification is necessary; but in other writing the purpose in hand is often better accomplished by omitting minor divisions. A writer of history might consider the political growth, the wars, and the religion of a nation and omit its domestic life and educational progress, especially if these did not greatly influence the result that he wishes to make plain. If we wished to explain the plan of the organization of a high school, it would be satisfactory to divide the pupils into freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, even though, in any particular school, there might be a few special and irregular pupils who belonged to none of these classes. An exposition of the use of hammers would omit many occasional and unimportant uses. Such a classification though exact is incomplete and is called _partition_. EXERCISES _A._ Can you tell which of the following are classifications? Which are partitions? Which are defective? 1. The inhabitants of the United States are Americans, Indians, and negroes. 2. Lines are straight, curved, and crooked. 3. Literature is composed of prose, poetry, and fiction. 4. The political parties in the last campaign were Republican and Democrat. 5. The United States Government has control of states and territories 6. Plants are divided into two groups: (1) the phanerogams, or flowering plants, and (2) cryptogams, or flowerless plants. 7. All phanerogamous plants consist of (1) root and (2) shoot; the shoot consisting of (_a_) stem and (_b_) leaf. It is true that some exceptional plants, in maturity, lack leaves, or lack root. These exceptions are few. 8. We may divide the activities of the government into: keeping order, making law, protecting individual rights, providing public schools, providing and mending roads, caring for the destitute, carrying the mail, managing foreign relations, making war, and collecting taxes. _B_. Notice the following paragraphs, State briefly the divisions made. +1. Plan of the Book.+--What is government? Who is the government? We shall begin by considering the American answers to these questions. What does The Government do? That will be our next inquiry. And with regard to the ordinary practical work of government, we shall see that government in the United States is not very different from government in the other civilized countries of the world. Then we shall inquire how government officials are chosen in the United States, and how the work of government is parceled out among them. This part of the book will show what is meant by self-government and local self-government, and will show that our system differs from European systems chiefly in these very matters of self-government and local self-government. Coming then to the details of our subject, we shall consider the names and duties of the principal officials in the United States; first, those of the township, county, and city, then those of the state, and then those of the federal government. Finally, we shall examine certain operations in the American system, such as a trial in court, and nominations for office, and conclude with an outline of international relations, and a summary of the commonest laws of business and property. --Clark: _The Government_. 2. +Zoölogy and its Divisions.+--What things we do know about the dog, however, and about its relatives, and what things others know can be classified into several groups; namely, things or facts about what a dog does or its behavior, things about the make-up of its body, things about its growth and development, things about the kind of dog it is and the kinds of relatives it has, and things about its relations to the outer world and its special fitness for life. All that is known of these different kinds of facts about the dog constitutes our knowledge of the dog and its life. All that is known by scientific men and others of these different kinds of facts about all the 500,000 or more kinds of living animals, constitutes our knowledge of animals and is the science _zoölogy_. Names have been given to these different groups of facts about animals. The facts about the bodily make-up or structure of animals constitute that part of zoölogy called animal _anatomy_ or _morphology;_ the facts about the things animals do, or the functions of animals, compose animal _physiology;_ the facts about the development of animals from young to adult condition are the facts of animal _development;_ the knowledge of the different kinds of animals and their relationships to each other is called _systematic_ zoölogy or animal _classification;_ and finally the knowledge of the relations of animals to their external surroundings, including the inorganic world, plants and other animals, is called animal _ecology_. Any study of animals and their life, that is, of zoölogy, may include all or any of these parts of zoölogy. --Kellogg: _Elementary Zoölogy_. 3. Are not these outlines of American destiny in the near-by future rational? In these papers an attempt has been made:-- First, to picture the physical situation and equipment of the American in the modern world. Second, to outline the large and fundamental elements of American character, which are:-- (_a_) Conservatism--moderation, thoughtfulness, and poise. (_b_) Thoroughness--conscientious performance, to the minutest detail, of any work which we as individuals or people may have in hand. (_c_) Justice--that spirit which weighs with the scales of righteousness our conduct toward each other and our conduct as a nation toward the world. (_d_) Religion--the sense of dependence upon and responsibility to the Higher Power; the profound American belief that our destiny is in His hands. (_e_) The minor elements of American character--such as the tendency to organize, the element of humor, impatience with frauds, and the movement in American life toward the simple and sincere. --Beveridge: _Americans of To-day and To-morrow_. _C._ Consult the table of contents or opening chapters of any text-book and notice the main divisions. _D._ Find in text-books five examples of classification or division. _E._ Make one or more divisions of each of the following:-- 1. The pupils in your school. 2. Your neighbors. 3. The books in the school library. 4. The buildings you see on the way to school. 5. The games you know how to play. 6. Dogs. 7. Results of competition. +Theme LXXXIX.+--_Write an introductory paragraph showing what divisions you, would make if called upon, to write about one of the following topics:_-- 1. Mathematics. 2. The school system of our city. 3. The churches of our town. 4. Methods of transportation. 5. Our manufacturing interests. 6. Games that girls like. 7. The inhabitants of the United States. (Have you mentioned all important divisions of your subject? Have you included any minor and unimportant divisions? Consider other possible principles of division of your subject. Have you chosen the one best suited to your purpose?) +163. Exposition of a Proposition.+--Two terms united into a sentence so that one is affirmed of the other become a proposition. Propositions, like terms, may be either specific or general. "Napoleon was ambitious" is a specific proposition; "Politicians are ambitious" is a general one. When a proposition is presented to the mind, its meaning may not at once be clear. The obscurity may arise from the fact that some of the terms in the proposition are unfamiliar, or are obscure, or misleading. In this case the first step, and often the only step necessary, is the explanation of the terms in the proposition. The following selection taken from Dewey's _Psychology_ illustrates the exposition of a proposition by explaining its terms:-- The habitual act thus occurs automatically and mechanically. When we say that it occurs automatically, we mean that it takes place, as it were, of itself, spontaneously, without the intervention of the will. By saying that it is mechanical, we mean that there exists no consciousness of the process involved, nor of the relation of the means, the various muscular adjustments, to the end, locomotion. It is possible for our listeners or readers to understand each term in a proposition and yet not be able to understand the meaning of the proposition as a whole. When this is the case, we shall find it necessary to make use of methods of exposition discussed later. EXERCISES Explain orally the following propositions by explaining any of the terms likely to be unfamiliar or misunderstood: 1. The purpose of muscular contraction is the production of motion. 2. Ping-pong is lawn tennis in miniature, with a few modifications. 3. An inevitable dualism bisects nature. 4. Never inflict corporal chastisement for intellectual faults. 5. Children should be led to make their own investigations and to draw their own inferences. 6. The black willow is an excellent tonic as well as a powerful antiseptic. 7. Give the Anglo-Saxon equivalent for "nocturnal." 8. A negative exponent signifies the reciprocal of what the expression would be if the exponent were positive. +Theme XC.+--_Write an explanation of one of the following:_ 1. Birds of a feather flock together. 2. Truths and roses have thorns about them. 3. Where there's a will, there's a way. 4. Who keeps company with a wolf will learn to howl. 5. He gives nothing but worthless gold, who gives from a sense of duty. 6. All things that are, Are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. 7. Be not simply good--be good for something. 8. He that hath light within his own clear breast, May sit i' the center, and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun; Himself is his own dungeon. (Select the sentence that seems most difficult to you, determine what it means, and then attempt to make an explanation that will show that you thoroughly understand its meaning.) +164. Exposition by Repetition.+--In discussing paragraph development (Section 50) we have already learned that the meaning of a proposition may be made clearer by the repetition of the topic statement. This repetition may be used to supplement the definition of terms, or it may by itself make clear both the meaning of the terms and of the proposition. Each repetition of the proposition presents it to the reader in a new light or in a stronger light. Each time the idea is presented it seems more definite, more familiar, more clear. Such statements of a proposition take advantage of the fact that the reader is thinking, and we merely attempt to direct his thought in such a way that he will turn the proposition over and over in his mind until it is understood. Notice how the following propositions are explained largely by means of repetitions, each of which adds a little to the original statement. How to live?--that is the essential question for us. Not how to live in the mere material sense only, but in the widest sense. The general problem, which comprehends every special problem, is the right ruling of conduct in all directions under all circumstances. In what way to treat the body; in what way to treat the mind; in what way to manage our affairs; in what way to bring up a family; in what way to behave as a citizen; in what way to utilize all those sources of happiness which nature supplies--how to use all our faculties to the greatest advantage of ourselves and others--how to live completely? And this being the great thing needful for us to learn, is, by consequence, the great thing which education has to teach. To prepare us for complete living is the function which education has to discharge: and the only radical mode of judging of any educational course, is, to judge in what degree it discharges such functions. --Herbert Spencer: _Education_. The gray squirrel is remarkably graceful in all his movements. It seems as though some subtle curve was always produced by the line of the back and tail at every light bound of the athletic little creature. He never moves abruptly or jerks himself impatiently, as the red squirrel is continually doing. On the contrary, all his movements are measured and deliberate, but swift and sure. He never makes a bungling leap, and his course is marked by a number of sinuous curves almost equal to those of a snake. He is here one minute, and the next he has slipped away almost beyond the ability of our eyes to follow. --F. Schuyler Matthews: _American Nut Gatherers_. +Theme XCI.+--_Write a paragraph explaining one of the propositions below by means of repetition._ 1. Physical training should be made compulsory in the high school. 2. Some people who seem to be selfish are not really so. 3. The dangers of athletic contests are overestimated. 4. The Monroe Doctrine is a warning to European powers to keep their hands off territory in North and South America. 5. By the "treadmill of life" we mean the daily routine of duties. 6. The thirst for novelty is one of the most powerful incentives that take a man to distant countries. 7. There are unquestionably increasing opportunities for an honorable and useful career in the civil service of the United States. (Have you used any method besides that of repetition? Does your paragraph really explain the proposition?) +165. Exposition by Use of Examples.+--Exposition treats of general subjects, and the topic statement of a paragraph is, therefore, a general statement. In order to understand what such a general statement means, the reader may need to think of a concrete case. The writer may develop his paragraph by furnishing concrete cases. (See Section 44.) In many cases no further explanation is necessary. The following paragraph illustrates this method of explanation:-- The lower portions of stream valleys which have sunk below sea level are called _drowned valleys_. The lower St. Lawrence is perhaps the greatest example of a drowned valley in the world, but many other rivers are in the same condition. The old channel of the Hudson River may be traced upon the sea bottom about 125 miles beyond its present mouth, and its valley is drowned as far up as Troy, 150 miles. The sea extends up the Delaware River to Trenton, and Chesapeake Bay with its many arms is the drowned valleys of the Susquehanna and its former tributaries. Many of the most famous harbors in the world, as San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, the estuaries of the Thames and the Mersey, and the Scottish firths, are drowned valleys. --Dryer: _Lessons in Physical Geography_. +Theme XCII.+--_Develop one of the following topic statements into an expository paragraph by use of examples:_-- 1. Weather depends to a great extent upon winds. 2. Progress in civilization has been materially aided by the use of nails. 3. Habit is formed by the repetition of the same act. 4. Men become criminals by a gradual process. 5. Men's lives are affected by small things. 6. Defeat often proves to be real success. (Have you made your meaning clear? Does your example really illustrate the topic statement? Can you think of other illustrations?) +166. Exposition by Comparison or Contrast.+--We can frequently make our explanations clear by comparing the subject under discussion with something that is already familiar to the reader. In such a case we shall need to show in what respect the subject we are explaining is similar to or differs from that with which it is compared. (Section 48.) Though customary it is not necessary to compare the term under discussion with some well-known term. In the example below the term _socialism_ is probably no more familiar than the term _anarchism_. Both are explained in the selection, and the explanations are made clearer by contrasting the one with the other. Socialism, which is curiously confounded by the indiscriminating with Anarchism, is its exact opposite. Anarchy is the doctrine that there should be no government control; Socialism--that is, State Socialism--is the doctrine that government should control everything. State Socialism affirms that the state--that is, the government--should own all the tools and implements of industry, should direct all occupations, and should give to every man according to his need and require from every man according to his ability. State Socialism points to the evils of overproduction in some fields and insufficient production in others, under our competitive system, and proposes to remedy these evils by assigning to government the duty of determining what shall be produced and what each worker shall produce. If there are too many preachers and too few shoemakers, the preacher will be taken from the pulpit and assigned to the bench; if there are too many shoemakers and too few preachers, the shoemaker will be taken from the bench and assigned to the pulpit. Anarchy says, no government; Socialism says, all government; Anarchy leaves the will of the individual absolutely unfettered, Socialism leaves nothing to the individual will; Anarchism would have no social organism which is not dependent on the entirely voluntary assent of each individual member of the organism at every instant of its history; Socialism would have every individual of the social organism wholly subordinate in all his lifework to the authority of the whole body expressed through its properly constituted officers. It is true that there are some writers who endeavor to unite these two antagonistic doctrines by teaching that society should be organized wholly for industry, not at all for government. But how a coöperative industry can be carried on without a government which controls as well as counsels, no writer, so far as I have been able to discover, has ever even suggested. --Lyman Abbott: _Anarchism: Its Cause and Cure_. +Theme XCIII.+--_Write an exposition that makes use of comparison:_-- Suggested subjects:-- 1. A bad habit is a tyrant. 2. Typewritten letters. 3. The muskrat's house. 4. Compare Shylock with Barabas in Marlowe's _Jew of Malta_. 5. Methods of reading. 6. All the world's a stage. 7. Compare life to a flower. (Can you suggest any other comparisons which you might have used? Have you been careful in your selection of facts and arrangement?) +167. Exposition by Obverse Statements.+--In explaining an idea it is necessary to distinguish it from any related or similar idea with which it may be confused in the minds of our readers. Clearness is added by the statement that one is _not_ the other. To say that socialism is not anarchy is a good preparation for the explanation of what socialism really is. In the following selection Burke excludes different kinds of peace and by this exclusion emphasizes the kind of peace which he has in mind. The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts.--It is peace sought in the spirit of peace; and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the _former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the Mother Country_, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest which reconciles them to British government. +168. Exposition by Giving Particulars or Details.+--One of the most natural methods of explaining is to give particulars or details. After a general statement has been made, our minds naturally look for details to make the meaning of that statement clearer. (See Sections 45-47.) This method is used very largely in generalized descriptions and narrations. Notice the use of particulars or details in the following examples:-- Happy the boy who knows the secret of making a willow whistle! He must know the best kind of willow for the purpose, and the exact time of year when the bark will slip. The country boy seems to know these things by instinct. When the day for whistles arrives he puts away marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd of spectators, some admiring, some skeptical, the boy selects his branch. There is an air of mystery about the proceeding. With a patient indulgent smile he rejects all offers of assistance. He does not attempt to explain why this or that branch will not do. When finally he raises his shining knife and cuts the branch on which his choice has fallen, all crowd round and watch. From the large end between two twigs he takes a section about six inches long. Its bark is light green and smooth. He trims one end neatly and passes his thumb thoughtfully over it to be sure it is finished to his taste. He then cuts the other end of the stick at an angle of about 45°, making a clean single cut. The sharp edge of this is now cut off to make a mouthpiece. This is a delicate operation, for the bark is apt to crush or split if the knife is dull, or the hand is unskillful. The boy holds it up, inspecting his own work critically. Sometimes he is dissatisfied and cuts again. If he makes a third cut and is still unsuccessful he tosses the spoiled piece away. It is too short now. A half dozen eager hands reach for the discarded stick, and the one who gets it fondles it lovingly. I once had such a treasure and cherished it until I learned the secret of the whistle-maker's art. He next places the knife edge about half an inch back from the end of the mouthpiece and cuts straight towards the center of the branch about one-fourth the way through. A three-cornered piece is now cut out, and the chip falls to the ground unheeded. When this is finished the boy's eye runs along the stick with a calculating squint. The knife edge is placed at the middle, then moved a short distance towards the mouthpiece. With skillful hand he cuts through the bark in a perfect circle round the stick. While we watch in fascinated silence, he takes the knife by the blade and resting the unfinished whistle on his knees he strikes firmly but gently the part of the stick between the ring and the mouthpiece. Only the wooden part of the handle touches the bark. He goes over and over it until every spot on its surface has felt his light blow. Now he lays the knife aside, and grasping the stick with a firm hand below the ring in the bark, with the right hand he holds the pounded end. He tries it with a careful twist. It sticks. Back to his knees it goes and the tap, tap, begins again. When he twists it again it slips, and the bark comes off smoothly in one piece, while we breathe a sigh of relief. How white the stick is under the bark! It shines and looks slippery. Now the boy takes his knife again. He cuts towards the straight jog where the chip was taken out, paring the wood away, sloping up to within an inch of the end of the bark. Now he cuts a thin slice of the wood between the edge of the vertical cut and the mouthpiece. The whistle is nearly finished. We have all seen him make them before and know what comes next. Our tongues seek over moist lips sympathetically, for we know the taste of peeled willow. He puts the end of the stick into his mouth and draws it in and out until it is thoroughly wet. Then he lifts the carefully guarded section of bark and slips it back into place, fitting the parts nicely together. The willow whistle is finished. There remains but to try it. Will it go? Does he dare blow into it and risk our jeers if it is dumb? With all the fine certainty of the Pied Piper the boy lifts the humble instrument to his lips. His eyes have a far-off look, his face changes; while we strain eyes and ears, he takes his own time. The silence is broken by a note, so soft, so tender, yet so weird and unlike other sounds! Our hands quiver, our hearts beat faster. It is as if the spirit of the willow tree had joined with the spirit of childhood in the natural song of earth. It goes! --Mary Rogers Miller: _The Brook Book_. (Copyright, 1902, Doubleday, Page and Co.) +Theme XCIV.+--_Write an exposition on one of the following subjects, making use of particulars or details:_-- 1. How ice cream is made. 2. The cultivation of rice. 3. Greek architecture. 4. How paper is made. 5. A tornado. 6. Description of a steam engine. 7. The circulatory system of a frog. 8. A western ranch. 9. Street furniture. 10. A street fair. (Have you used particulars sufficient to make your meaning clear? Have you used any unnecessary particulars? Why is the arrangement of your topics easy in this theme?) +169. Exposition by Cause and Effect.+--When our general statement is in the form of a cause or causes, the question naturally arises in our mind as to the effects resulting from those causes. In like manner, when the general statement takes the form of an effect, we want to know what the causes are that produce such an effect. From the very nature of exposition we may expect to find much of this kind of discourse relating to causes and effects. (See Section 49.) Notice the following example:-- The effect of the polar whirls may be seen in the rapid rotation of water in a pan or bowl. The centrifugal force throws the water away from the center, where the surface becomes depressed, and piles it up around the sides, where the surface becomes elevated. The water being deeper at the sides than at the center, its pressure upon the bottom is proportionately greater. A similar effect is produced by the whirl of the air around the polar regions. It is thrown away from the polar regions and piled up around the circumference of the whirl. There is less air above the polar regions than above latitude 30°-40°, and the atmospheric pressure is correspondingly low at one place and high at the other. Thus the centrifugal force of the polar whirl makes the pressure low in spite of the low temperature. The position of the tropical belts of high pressure is a resultant of the high temperature of the equatorial regions on one side and the polar whirls on the other. --Dryer: _Lessons in Physical Geography_. +Theme XCV.+--_Write an expository theme using cause or effect._ Suggested subjects:-- 1. The causes of the French Revolution. 2. How ravines are formed. 3. Irrigation. 4. Effects of smoking. 5. Lack of exercise. 6. Volcanic eruptions. (Did you find it necessary to make use of any other method of explanation? Did you make use of description in any place?) SUMMARY 1. Exposition is that form of discourse the purpose of which is to explain. 2. The essential characteristics of an exposition are-- _a._ That it possess unity because it contains only those facts essential to its purpose. _b._ That the facts used be arranged in a coherent order. 3. Exposition is concerned with (_a_) general terms or (_b_) general propositions. 4. The steps in the exposition of a term are-- _a._ Definition. This may be-- (1) By synonym (inexact). (2) By use of the logical definition (exact). _b._ Division. This may be-- (1) Complete (classification). (2) Incomplete (partition). The same principle of division should be followed throughout. 5. Exposition of a proposition may use any one of the following methods-- _a._ By repetition. _b._ By giving examples. _c._ By stating comparisons and contrasts. _d._ By making obverse statements. _e._ By relating particulars or details. _f._ By stating cause or effect. _g._ By any suitable combination of these methods. XI. ARGUMENT +170. Difference between Argument and Exposition.+--Argument differs from exposition in its purpose. By exposition we endeavor to make clear the meaning of a proposition; by argument we attempt to prove its truth. If a person does not understand what we mean, we explain; if, after he does understand, he does not believe, we argue. Often a simple explanation is sufficient to convince. As soon as the reader understands the real meaning of a proposition, he accepts our view of the case. A heated discussion may end with the statement, "Oh, if that is what you mean, I agree with you." In Section 70, we have learned that the first step in argument is explanation, by which we make clear the meaning of the proposition the truth of which we wish to establish. This explanation may include both the expounding of the terms in the proposition and the explanation of the proposition as a whole. There is another difference between exposition and argument. We cannot argue about single terms, though we may explain them. We may explain what is meant by the term _elective studies_, or _civil service;_ but an argument requires a proposition such as, Pupils should be allowed to choose their own studies, or, Civil Service should be established. Even with such a topic as Expansion or Restricted Immigration, which seems to be a subject of argument, there is really an implied proposition under discussion; as, The United States should acquire control of territory outside of its present boundaries; or, It should be the policy of our government to restrict immigration. We may explain the meaning of single terms or of propositions, but in order to argue, we must have a proposition either expressed or implied. +171. Proposition of Fact and Proposition of Theory.+--Some propositions state facts and some propositions state theories. Every argument therefore aims either to prove the occurrence of a fact or the truth of a theory. The first would attempt to show the actual or probable truth of a specific proposition; for example:-- Nero was guilty of burning Rome. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. Barbara Frietchie actually existed. Sheridan never made the ride from Winchester. Homer was born at Chios. The second would try to establish the probable truth of a general theory; for example:-- A college education is a profitable investment. Light is caused by a wave motion of ether. +172. Statement of the Proposition.+--The subject about which we argue may be stated in any one of the three forms discussed in Section 74; that is, as a declarative sentence, a resolution, or a question. The statement does not necessarily appear first in the argument, but it must be clearly formulated in the mind of the writer before he attempts to argue. Before trying to convince others he must know exactly what he himself believes, and the attempt to state his belief in the form of a proposition will assist in making his own thought clear and definite. If we are going to argue concerning elective studies, we should first of all be sure that we understand the meaning of the term ourselves. Then we must consider carefully what we believe about it, and state our proposition so that it shall express exactly this belief. On first thought we may believe the proposition that pupils should be allowed to choose their own studies. But is this proposition true of pupils in the grades as well as in the high schools? Or is it true only of the upper classes in the high school or only of college students? Can you state this proposition so that it will express your own belief on the subject? EXERCISES _A_. Use the following terms in expressed propositions:-- 1. Immigration. 2. Elevated railways. 3. American history. 4. Military training. 5. Single session. 6. Athletics. _B_. Explain the following propositions:-- 1. The United States should adopt a free-trade policy. 2. Is vivisection justifiable? 3. The author has greater influence than the orator. 4. The civil service system should be abolished. 5. The best is always cheapest. _C_. Can you restate the following propositions so that the meaning of each will be made more definite? 1. Athletics should be abolished. (Should _all_ athletic exercises be abolished?) 2. Latin is better than algebra. (_Better_ for what purpose? _Better_ for whom?) 3. Training in domestic arts and sciences should be provided for high school pupils. (Define domestic arts and sciences. Should they be taught to _all_ high school pupils?) 4. Punctuality is more important than efficiency. 5. The commercial course is better than the classical course. 6. A city should control the transportation facilities within its limits. +Theme XCVI.+--_Write out an argument favoring one of the propositions as restated in Exercise C above._ (Before writing, make a brief as indicated in Section 77. Consider the arrangement of your argument.) +173. Clear Thinking Essential to Argument.+--Having clearly in mind the proposition which we wish to prove, we next proceed to give arguments in its support. The very fact that we argue at all assumes that there are two sides to the question. If we hope to have another accept our view we must present good reasons. We cannot convince another that a proposition is true unless we can tell him why it is true; and certainly we cannot tell him why until we know definitely our own reasons for believing the statement. In order to present a good argument we must be clear logical thinkers ourselves; that is, we must be able to state definite reasons for our beliefs and to draw the correct conclusions. +174. Inductive Reasoning.+--One of the best preparations for trying to convince others is for us to consider carefully our own reasons for believing as we do. Minds act in a similar manner, and what leads you and me to believe certain truths will be likely to cause others to believe them also. A brief consideration of how our belief in the truth of a proposition has been established will indicate the way in which we should present our material in order to cause others to believe the same proposition. If you ask yourself the question, What leads me to believe as I do? the answer will undoubtedly be effective in convincing others. Are the following propositions true or false? Why do you believe or refuse to believe each? 1. Maple trees shed their leaves in winter. 2. Dogs bark. 3. Kettles are made of iron. 4. Grasshoppers jump. 5. Giraffes have long necks. 6. Raccoons sleep in the daytime. 7. The sun will rise to-morrow. 8. Examinations are not fair tests of a pupil's knowledge. 9. Honest people are respected. 10. Water freezes at 32° Fahrenheit. 11. Boys get higher standings in mathematics than girls do. It is at once evident that we believe a proposition such as one of these, because we have known of many examples. If we reject any of the propositions it is because we know of exceptions (we have seen kettles not made of iron), or because we do not know of instances (we may never have seen a raccoon, and so not know what he does in the daytime). The greater the number of cases which have occurred without presenting an exception, the stronger our belief in the truth of the proposition (we expect the sun to rise because it has never failed). The process by which, from many individual cases, we establish the truth of a proposition is called +inductive reasoning+. +175. Establishing a General Theory.+--A general theory is established by showing that for all known particular cases it will offer an acceptable explanation. By investigation or experiment we note that a certain fact is true in one particular instance, and, after a large number of individual cases have been noted, and the same fact found to be true in each, we assume that such is true of all like cases, and a general law is established. This is the natural scientific method and is constantly being made use of in pursuing scientific studies. By experiment, it was found that one particular kind of acid turned blue litmus red. This, of course, was not sufficient proof to establish a general law, but when, upon further investigation, it was found to be true of all known acids, scientists felt justified in stating the general law that acids turn blue litmus red. In establishing a new theory in science it is necessary to bring forward many facts which seem to establish it, and the argument will consist in pointing out these facts. Frequently the general principle is assumed to be true, and the argument then consists in showing that it will apply to and account for all the facts of a given kind. Theories which have been for a time believed have, as the world progressed in learning, been found unable to account for all of a given class of conditions. They have been replaced, therefore, by other theories, just as the Copernican theory of astronomy has displaced the Ptolemaic theory. Our belief may be based upon the absence of facts proving the contrary as well as upon the presence of facts proving the proposition. If A has never told an untruth, that fact is an argument in favor of his truthfulness on the present occasion. A man who has never been dishonest may point to this as an argument in favor of placing him in a position of trust. Often the strongest evidence that we can offer in favor of a proposition is the absence of any fact that would support the negative conclusion. The point of the whole matter is that from the observation of a large number of cases, we may establish the _probable_ truth of a proposition, but emphasis needs to be laid upon the probability. We cannot be sure. Not all crows are black, though you may never have seen a white one. The sun may not rise to-morrow, though it has never failed up to this time. Still it is by this observation of many individual cases that the truth of the propositions that men do believe has been established. We realize that our inductions are often imperfect, but the general truths so established will be found to underlie every process of reasoning, and will be either directly or indirectly the basis upon which we build up all argument. We may then redefine inductive reasoning as the process by which from many individual cases we establish the _probable_ truth of a general proposition. EXERCISES Notice in the following selections that the truth of the conclusion is shown by giving particular examples:-- 1. It is curious enough that _we always remember people by their worst points_, and still more curious that _we always suppose that we ourselves are remembered by our best_. I once knew a hunchback who had a well-shaped hand, and was continually showing it. He never believed that anybody noticed his hump, but lived and died in the conviction that the whole town spoke of him no otherwise than as the man with the beautiful hand, whereas, in fact, they only looked at his hump, and never so much as noticed whether he had a hand at all. This young lady, so pretty and so clever, is simply the girl who had that awkward history with So-and-so; that man, who has some of the very greatest qualities, is nothing more than the one who behaved so badly on such an occasion. It is a terrible thing to think that we are all always at watch one upon the other, to catch the false step in order that we may have the grateful satisfaction of holding our neighbor for one who cannot walk straight. No regard is paid to the better qualities and acts, however numerous; all the attention is fixed upon the worst, however slight. If St. Peter were alive he would be known as the man who denied his Master; St. Paul would be the man who stoned Stephen; and St. Thomas would never be mentioned in any decent society without allusions to that unfortunate request for further evidence. Probably this may be the reason why we all have so much greater a contempt for and distrust of each other than would be warranted by a correct balance between the good and the evil that are in each. --Thomas Gibson Bowles: _Flotsam and Jetsam_. 2. In the first place, 227 withered leaves of various kinds, mostly of English plants, were pulled out of worm burrows in several places. Of these, 181 had been drawn into the burrows by or near their tips, so that the footstalk projected nearly upright from the mouth of the burrow; 20 had been drawn in by their bases, and in this case the tips projected from the burrows; and 26 had been seized near the middle, so that these had been drawn in transversely and were much crumpled. Therefore 80 per cent (always using the nearest whole number) had been drawn in by the tip, 9 per cent by the base or footstalk, and 11 per cent transversely or by the middle. This alone is almost sufficient to show that _chance does not determine the manner in which leaves are dragged into the burrows_. --Darwin: _Vegetable Mold and Earthworms_. 3. _The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is none_. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him. Of Othello, I need not trace the tale; nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:-- "Oh, murderous coxcomb! what should such a fool Do with so good a wife?" In _Romeo and Juliet_, the wise and brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband. In _The Winter's Tale_, and in _Cymbeline_, the happiness and existence of two princely households, lost through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In _Measure for Measure_, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In _Coriolanus_, the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, granted, saves him--not, indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer of his country. --Ruskin: _Sesame and Lilies_. 4. _Bas. _So may the outward shows be least themselves; _The world is still deceived with ornament_. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts: How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars, Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk; And these assume but valor's excrement To render them redoubted! Look on beauty, And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulcher. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest. Therefore, thou gaudy gold, Hard food for Midas, I will none of thee; Nor none of thee, thou pale and common drudge 'Tween man and man: but thou, though meager lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence; And here choose I: joy be the consequence! --Shakespeare: _The Merchant of Venice_. +Theme XCVII.+--_Write a paragraph proving the truth of one of the following statements:_-- 1. It is a distinct advantage to a large town to be connected with the smaller towns by electric car lines. 2. Vertical penmanship should be taught in all elementary schools. 3. Examinations develop dishonesty. 4. Novel reading is a waste of time. 5. Tramps ought not to be fed. (Make a brief. Consider the arrangement of your arguments. Read Section 72.) +176. Errors of Induction.+--A common error is that of too hasty generalization. We conclude that something is always so because it happened to be so in the few cases that have come under our observation. A broader experience frequently shows that the hastily made generalization will not hold. Some people are led to lose faith in all humanity because one or two of their acquaintances have shown themselves unworthy of their trust. Others are ready to pronounce a merchant dishonest because some article purchased at his store has not proved to be so good as it was expected to be. There are those who are superstitious concerning the wearing of opals, claiming that these jewels bring the wearer ill luck, because they have heard of some instances where misfortune seemed to follow the wearing of that particular stone. What may seem to be causes and effects at first may, upon further investigation or inquiry, prove to be merely chance coincidences. In your work in argument, whether for the class room or outside, be careful about this point. Remember that your induction will be weak or even worthless if you draw conclusions from too few examples. Often one example seems sufficient to cause belief. We might believe that all giraffes have long necks, even though we had seen but one; but such a belief would exist because, by many examples of other animals, we have learned that a single specimen will fairly represent all other specimens of the same class. On the other hand, if this one giraffe should possess one brown eye and one white eye, we should not expect all other giraffes to have such eyes, for our observation of many hundreds of animals teaches us that the eyes of an animal are usually alike in color. In order to establish a true generalization, the _essential_ characteristics must be selected, and these cannot be determined by rule, but rather by common sense. +177. Deductive Reasoning.+--When once a general principle has been established, we may demonstrate the truth of a specific proposition by showing that the general principle applies to it. We see a gold ring and say, "This ring is valuable," because we believe the general proposition, "All articles made of gold are valuable." Expressed in full, the process of reasoning would be-- _A._ All articles made of gold are valuable. _B._ This ring is made of gold. _C._ Therefore this ring is valuable. A series of statements such as the above is called a syllogism. It consists of a major premise (_A_), a minor premise (_B_), and a conclusion (_C_). Of course we shall not be called upon to prove so simple a proposition as the one given, but with more difficult ones the method of reasoning is the same. The process which applies a general proposition (_A_) to a specific instance (_C_), is called deductive reasoning. +178. Relation between Inductive and Deductive Reasoning.+--Deductive reasoning is shorter and seems more convincing than inductive reasoning, for if the premises are true and the statement is made in correct form, the conclusions are irresistible. Each conclusion carries with it, however, the weakness of the premises on which it is based, and as these premises are general principles that have been themselves established by inductive reasoning, the conclusions of deductive reasoning can be no more _sure_ than those of inductive reasoning. Each may prove only that the proposition is probably true rather than that it is surely true, though in many cases this probability becomes almost a certainty. +179. The Enthymeme.+--We seldom need to state our argument in the syllogistic form. One of the premises is usually omitted, and we pass directly from one premise to the conclusion. If we say, "Henry will not succeed as an engineer," and when asked why he will not, we reply, "Because he is not good in mathematics," we have omitted the premise, "A knowledge of mathematics is necessary for success in engineering." A shortened syllogism, that is, a syllogism with one premise omitted, is called an enthymeme. Thus in ordinary matters our thought turns at once to the conclusion in connection with but one premise. We make a thousand statements which a moment's thought will show that we believe because we believe some unexpressed general principle. If I should say of my dog, "Fido will die sometime," no sensible person would doubt the truth of the statement. If asked to prove it, I would say, "Because he is a dog, and all dogs die sometime." Thus I apply to a specific proposition, Fido will die, the general one, All dogs die, a proposition about which there is no doubt. Frequently the suppressed premise is not so well established as in this case, and the belief or nonbelief of the proposition will be determined by the individuals addressed, each in accordance with his experience. Suppose that in reading we find the statement, "A boy of fourteen ought not to be allowed to choose his own subjects of study, because he will choose all the easy ones and avoid the more difficult though more valuable ones." The omitted premise that all boys will choose easy studies, needs to be established by induction. If a high school principal had noticed that out of five hundred boys, four hundred elected the easy studies, he would admit the truth of the omitted premise, and so of the conclusion. But if only one hundred had chosen the easy subjects, he would reject the major premise and likewise the conclusion. It is evident that in order to be sure of the truth of a proposition we must determine the truth of the premises upon which it is based. An argument therefore is frequently given over wholly to establishing the premises. If their truth can be demonstrated, the conclusion inevitably follows. EXERCISES _A._ Supply the missing premise for the following:-- 1. John will succeed because he has a college education. 2. Henry is happy because he has plenty of money. 3. Candy is nutritious because it is made of sugar. 4. These biscuits will make me ill because they are heavy. 5. This dog must be angry because he is growling. 6. This fish can swim. 7. The plural of the German noun _der Garten_ is _die Gärten_. 8. It will hurt to have this tooth filled. _B._ Supply the reasons and complete the syllogism for each of the following:-- 1. This book should not be read. 2. This hammer is useful. 3. That dog will bite. 4. This greyhound can run rapidly. 5. The leaves have fallen from the trees. 6. That boy ought to be punished. 7. It is too early to go nutting. 8. This boy should not study. 9. You ought not to vote for this man for mayor. +Theme XCVIII.+--_Write a paragraph proving the truth of one of the following propositions:_-- 1. Labor-saving machinery is of permanent advantage to mankind. 2. New Orleans will some day be a greater shipping port than New York. 3. Poetry has a greater influence on the morals of a nation than prose writing. 4. Boycotting injures innocent persons and should never be employed. 5. Ireland should have Home Rule. 6. The President of the United States should be elected by the direct vote of the people. (Consider your argument with reference to the suppressed premises.) +180. Errors of Deduction.+--The deductive method of reasoning, if properly used, is effective, but much care needs to be taken to avoid false conclusions. A complete exposition of the variations of the syllogism is not necessary here, but it will be of value to consider briefly three chief errors. If the terms are not used with the same meaning throughout, the conclusion is valueless. A person might agree with you that domestic arts should be taught to girls in school, but if you continued by saying that scrubbing the floor is a form of domestic art, therefore the girls should be taught to scrub the floor, he would reject your conclusion because the meaning of the term _domestic art_ as he understood it in the first statement, is not that used in the second. It will be noticed that each syllogism includes three terms. For example, the syllogism,-- All hawks eat flesh; This bird is a hawk; Therefore this bird eats flesh,-- contains the three terms, _hawk, eats flesh, this bird_; of these but two appear in the conclusion. The one which does not (in this case _hawk_) is called the middle term. If the major premise does not make a statement about every member of the class denoted by the middle term, the conclusion may not be valid even though the premises are true. For example:-- All hawks are birds; This chicken is a bird; Therefore this chicken is a hawk. In this case the middle term is _birds_, and the major premise, _All hawks are birds_, does not make a statement which applies to all birds. The conclusion is therefore untrue. Such an argument is a fallacy. The validity of the conclusion is impaired if either premise is false. In the enthymeme, "Henry is a coward; he dare not run away from school," the suppressed premise, "All persons who will not run away from school, are cowards," is not true, and so invalidates the conclusion. It is well to test the validity of your own argument and that of your opponent by seeking for the suppressed premise and stating it, for this may reveal a fatal weakness in the thought. EXERCISES Which of the following are incorrect? 1. The government should pay for the education of its people; Travel is a form of education; Therefore the government should pay the traveling expenses of the people. 2. All horses are useful; This animal is useful; Therefore this animal is a horse. 3. I ought not to study algebra because it is a very difficult subject. 4. Pupils ought not to write notes because note writing interferes with the rights of others. 5. All fish can swim; Charles can swim; Therefore Charles is a fish. 6. Henry is a fool because he wears a white necktie. 7. All dogs bark; This animal barks; Therefore this animal is a dog. +Theme XCIX.+--_Write a paragraph proving the truth of one of the following propositions:_-- 1. The government should establish a parcels post. 2. The laws of mind determine the forms of composition. 3. Training for citizenship should be given greater attention in the public schools. 4. The members of the school board should be appointed by the mayor of the city. 5. In the estimation of future ages ---- will be considered the greatest President since Lincoln. (State your premises. Have you shown that they are true?) +181. Evidence.+--We may reach belief in the truth of a specific statement by means of deductive reasoning. Commonly, however, when dealing with an actual state or occurrence, we present other facts or circumstances that show its existence. The facts presented may be those of experience, the testimony of witnesses, the opinion of those considered as experts in the subject, or a combination of circumstances known to have existed. To be of any value as arguments, they must be true, and they must be related to the fact that we are trying to prove. These true and pertinent facts we term _evidence_. Evidence may be direct or indirect. If a man sees a boy steal a bag of apples from the orchard across the way, his evidence is direct. If instead, he only sees him with an empty bag and later with a full one, the evidence will be indirect. If you testify that early in the evening you saw a tramp enter a barn which later in the evening caught fire, your testimony as regards the cause of the fire would be indirect evidence against the tramp. If you can testify that you saw sparks fall from his lighted pipe and ignite a pile of hay in the barn, the evidence which you give will be direct. Direct evidence has more weight than indirect, but often the latter is nearly equal to the former and is sufficient to convince us. Even the direct testimony of eye-witnesses must be carefully considered. Several persons may see the same thing and yet make very different reports, even though they may all desire to tell the truth. The weight that we shall give to a person's testimony will depend upon his ability to observe and to report accurately what he has experienced, and upon his desire to tell the truth. Notice in the following selection what facts, specific instances, and circumstances are advanced in support of the proposition. Assuming that they are true, are they pertinent to the proposition? Certain species of these army ants which inhabit tropical America, Mr. Belt considered to be the most intelligent of all the insects of that part of the world. On one occasion he noticed a wide column of them trying to pass along a nearly perpendicular slope of crumbling earth, on which they found great difficulty in obtaining a foothold. A number succeeded in retaining their positions, and further strengthened them by laying hold of their neighbors. They then remained in this position, and allowed the column to march securely and easily over their bodies. On another occasion a column was crossing a stream of water by a very narrow branch of a tree, which only permitted them to go in single file. The ants widened the bridge by a number clinging to the sides and to each other, and this allowed the column to pass over three or four deep. These ants, having no permanent nests, carry their larvae and pupae with them when marching. The prey they capture is cut up and carried to the rear of the army to be distributed as food. --Robert Brown: _Science for All_. +Theme C.+--_Present all the evidence you can either to prove or disprove one of the following propositions:_-- Select some question of local interest as:-- 1. The last fire in our town was of incendiary origin. 2. The football team from ---- indulged in "slugging" at the last game. 3. Our heating system is inadequate. 4. It rained last night. If you prefer, choose one of the following subjects:-- 1. The Stuart kings were arbitrary rulers. 2. The climate of our country is changing. 3. Gutenberg did not invent the printing press. 4. The American Indians have been unjustly treated by the whites. 5. Nations have their periods of rise and decay. (Are the facts you use true? Are they pertinent? Do you know of facts that would tend to show that your proposition is not true?) +182. Number and Value of Reasons.+--Although a statement may be true and pertinent it is seldom sufficient for proof. We need, as a rule, several such statements. If you are trying to convince a friend that one kind of automobile is superior to another, and can give only one reason for its superiority, you no doubt will fail in your attempt. If, however, you can give several reasons, you may succeed in convincing him. Suppose you go to your principal and ask permission to take an extra study. You may give as a reason the fact that your parents wish you to take it. He may not think that is a sufficient reason for your doing so, but when he finds that with your present studies you do not need to study evenings, that one of them is a review, and that you have been standing well in all your studies, he may be led to think that it will be wise for you to take the desired extra study. While we must guard against insufficiency of reasons, we must not forget that numbers alone do not convince. One good reason is more convincing than several weak ones. Two or three good reasons, clearly and definitely stated, will have much more weight than a large number of less important ones. EXERCISES _A._ Give a reason or two in addition to the reasons already given in each of the following:-- 1. It is better to attend a large college than a small one, because the teachers are as a rule greater experts in their lines of work. 2. The school board ought to give us a field for athletics as the school ground is not large enough for practice. 3. Gymnasium work ought to be made compulsory. Otherwise many who need physical training will neglect it. 4. The game of basket ball is an injury to a school, since it detracts from interest in studies. 5. Rudolph Horton will make a good class president because he has had experience. _B._ Be able to answer orally any two of the following: 1. Prove to a timid person that there is no more danger in riding in an automobile than there is in riding in a carriage drawn by horses. Use but one argument, but make it as strong as possible. 2. Give two good reasons why the superstition concerning Friday is absurd. 3. What, in your mind, is the strongest reason why you wish to graduate from a high school? For your wishing to go into business after leaving the high school? For your wishing to attend college? 4. What are two or three of the strong arguments in favor of woman suffrage? Name two or three arguments in opposition to woman suffrage. _C._ Name all the points that you can in favor of the following. Select the one that you consider the most important. 1. Try to convince a friend that he ought to give up the practice of cigarette smoking. 2. Show that athletics in a high school ought to be under the management of the faculty. 3. Show that athletics should be under the management of the pupils themselves. 4. Macbeth's ambition and not his wife was the cause of his ruin. 5. Macbeth's wife was the cause of his ruin. +Theme CI.+--_Select one of the subjects in the exercise above, and write out two or three of the strongest arguments in its favor._ (Consider the premises, especially those which are not expressed. Is your argument deductive or inductive?) +183. The Basis of Belief.+--If you ask yourself, Why do I believe this? the answer will in many cases show that your belief in the particular case under consideration arises because you believe some general principle or theory which applies to it. One person may believe that political economy should be taught in high schools because he believes that it is the function of the high school to train its pupils for citizenship, and that the study of political economy will furnish this training. Another person may oppose the teaching of political economy because he believes that pupils of high school age are not sufficiently mature in judgment to discuss intelligently the principles of political economy, and that the study of these principles at that age does not furnish desirable training for citizenship. It is evident that an argument between these two concerning the teaching of political economy in any particular school would consist in a discussion of the conflicting general theories which each believed to be true. We have shown in Section 179 that one high school principal might believe that boys should be allowed to choose their own studies because he believed that they would not generally select the easy ones; while another principal would oppose free electives because he believes that boys would choose the less difficult studies. The proposition that "The United States should retain its hold on the Philippines" involves conflicting theories of the function of this government. So it will be found with many of our beliefs that either consciously or unconsciously they are based on general theories. It is important in argument to know what these theories are, and especially to consider what may be the general theories of those whom we wish to convince. +184. Appeals to General Theory, Authority, and Maxims.+--A successful argument in deductive form must be based upon principles and theories that the audience believes. A minister in preaching to the members of his church may with success proceed by deductive methods, because the members believe the general principles upon which he bases his arguments. But in addressing a mixed audience, many of whom are not church members, such an argument might not be convincing, because his hearers might deny the validity of the premises from which his conclusions were drawn. In such a case he must either keep to general theories which his auditors do believe, or by inductive methods seek to prove the truth of the general principles themselves. If in support of our view we quote the opinion of some one whom we believe competent to speak with weight and authority upon the question, we must remember that it will have weight with our audience only if they too look upon the person as an authority. It proves nothing to a body of teachers to say that some educational expert believes as you do unless they have confidence in him as a man of sound judgment. On the other hand, it may count against a proposition to show that it has not been endorsed by any one of importance or prominence. In a similar way a maxim or proverb may be quoted in support of a proposition. If a boy associates with bad company, we may offer the maxim, "Birds of a feather flock together," in proof that he is probably bad too. Such maxims or proverbs are brief statements of principles generally believed, and the use of them in an argument is in effect the presentation of a general theory in a form which appeals to the mind of the hearer and causes him to believe our proposition. +185. Argument by Inference.+--The statement of a fact may be introduced into an argument, not because the fact itself applies directly to the proposition we wish to prove, but because it by inference suggests a general theory which does so apply. Though the reader may not be conscious of it, the presence of this general theory may influence his decision even more than the explicit statement of the general theory would. An argument implies that there are two sides to a question. Which you shall take depends on the way you look on it, that is, on what may be called your mental point of view. Therefore any fact, allusion, maxim, comparison, or other statement which may cause you to look at the question in a different light or from a different point of view may be used as an argument. In effect, it calls up a general theory whose presence affects your decision. Notice how brief the argument is in the following selection from Macaulay:-- Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever. --Macaulay: _Milton_. +186. Summary.+--To summarize the preceding paragraphs, the authority we quote, the maxims we state, the facts we adduce become valuable because they appeal to general theories already believed by the reader. Success in argument demands, therefore, that we consider carefully what theories may probably be in the mind of our audience, and that we present our argument in such a way as to appeal to those theories. +Theme CII.+--_Write a short argument, using one of the following:_-- 1. A young boy is urging his father to permit him to attend an entertainment. Give his reasons as he would give them to his father. 2. Suppose the father refuses the request. Write out his reasons. 3. Try to convince a companion just entering high school to take the college preparatory course instead of the commercial course. (Are your reasons true and pertinent? To what general theories have you appealed? Consider the coherence of each paragraph.) +187. Arrangement of Arguments.+--We have learned that in arguing we need to consider how those whom we address arrive at the belief they hold, and that it will assist us to this knowledge of others if we consider our own beliefs and the manner of their establishing. We must present our material in the order that convinces. Each case may differ so from every other that no general rule can be followed, but the consideration of some general principles of arrangement will be of assistance. It is the purpose of the following paragraphs to point out in so far as possible the most effective order of arrangement. +188. Possibility, Probability, and Actuality.+--It has been stated, in Section 175, that reasoning leads to probable truth, and that this probability may become so strong as to be accepted as certainty. In common speech this difference is borne in mind, and we distinguish a fact or event that is only possible from one that is probable; and likewise one that is only probable from one in which the probability approaches so near to certainty as to convince us that it actually did exist or occur. Our arguments may therefore be directed to proving possibility, probability, or actuality. If we believe that an event actually occurred, the belief implies both possibility and probability. Therefore, if we wish a person to believe in the actual occurrence of an event, we must first be sure that he does not question the possibility of its existence, and then we must show him that it probably did take place. Only when we have shown that an event is extremely probable have we the right to say that we have shown its actual occurrence. A mother finding some damage done to one of the pictures on the wall could not justly accuse her young son unless by the presence of a chair or stepladder it had been possible for him to reach the picture. This possibility, reënforced by a knowledge of his tendency to mischief, and by the fact that he was in the house at the time the damage was done, would lead to the belief that he probably was guilty. Proof that he was actually responsible for the damage would still be lacking, and it might later be discovered that the injury had been done accidentally by one of the servants. Possibility, probability, and actuality merge into one another so gradually that no sharply defined distinctions can be observed. It is impossible to say that a certain argument establishes possibility, another probability, and a third the actuality of an event. One statement may do all three, but any proof of actuality must include arguments showing both possibility and probability. A person accused of murder attempts to demonstrate his innocence by proving an _alibi;_ that is, he attempts to show that he was at some other place at the time the murder was committed and so cannot possibly be guilty. Such an alibi, established by reliable witnesses, is positive proof of innocence, no matter how strong the evidence pointing to probable guilt may be. +189. Argument from Cause.+--We have learned, in Section 49, that the relation of cause and effect is one which is ingrained in our nature. We accept a proposition as plausible if a cause which we consider adequate has been assigned. Our belief in a proposition often depends upon our belief in some other proposition which may be accepted as a cause. Thus, in the following statements, the truth of one proposition leads to the belief that the other is also true:-- _a._ Henry has studied hard this year; therefore he will pass his college entrance examinations. _b._ The man has severed an artery; therefore he will probably bleed to death before the physician arrives. _c._ It will soon grow warmer, because the sun has risen. _An argument from cause_ may be of itself conclusive evidence of the fact. But, for the most part, such arguments merely establish the possibility or probability of the proposition and so render it ready for proof. In our arrangement of material, we therefore place such arguments _first_. +190. Argument from Sign.+--Cause and effect are so closely united that when an effect is observed we assume that there has been a cause, and we direct our argument to proving what it is. An effect is so associated with its cause that the existence of an effect is a sign of the existence of a cause, and such an argument is called an _argument from sign_. Reasoning from sign is very common in our daily life. The wild geese flying south indicate the approach of cold weather. The baby's toys show that the baby has been in the room. A man's hat found beside a rifled safe will convict the man of the crime. A dog's track in the garden is proof that a dog has been there. If the effect observed is always associated with the same cause, the argument is conclusive. If I observe as an effect that the river has frozen over during the night, I have no doubt that it has been caused by a lowering of the temperature. If two or three possible causes exist, our argument becomes conclusive only by considering them all and by showing that all but one did not produce the observed effect. If the principal of a school knows that one of three boys broke a window light, he may be able to prove which one did it by finding out the two who did not. If a man is found shot to death, the coroner's jury may prove that he was murdered by showing that he did not commit suicide. If there are many possible causes, the method of elimination becomes too tedious and must be abandoned. If you find that your horse is lame, it would be difficult to prove which of the many possible causes actually operated to produce the lameness, though the attendant circumstances might point to some one cause and so lead you to assume that it was the one. Under _arguments from sign_ should be included also those cases when we pass directly from one effect to another that arises from the same cause; as, "I hear the windmill turning, it will be a good day to sail;" or, "These beans are thrifty, therefore if I plant potatoes here I shall get a good crop." In these sentences the wind and the fertile soil are not mentioned, but we pass directly from one effect to another. As used by rhetoricians, arguments from sign include also arguments from attendant circumstances. If we have observed that two events have happened near together in time, we accept the occurrence of one as a sign that the other will follow. When we hear the factory whistle blow, we conclude that in a few minutes the workmen will pass our window on their way home. Such a conclusion is based upon a belief established by an inductive process. The degree of probability that it gives depends upon the number of times that it has been observed to act without failure. If we have seen two boys frequently together, the presence of one is a sign of the probable presence of the other. A camp fire would point to the recent presence of some one who kindled it. In using an argument from sign care must be taken not to confuse the relation of cause and effect with that of contiguity in time or place. Do not allege that which happened at the same time or near the same place as a cause. If you do use an attendant circumstance, be sure that it adds something to the probability. +191. Argument from Example.+--It has been pointed out in the study of inductive reasoning (Section 176) that a single example may suffice to establish a general notion of a class. In dealing with objects of the physical world, if essential and invariable qualities of the object are considered, they may be asserted to be qualities of each member of the class, and such an argument from an individual to all the members of the class is convincing. They thus rank with arguments from sign as effective in proving the certainty of a proposition. In dealing with human actions, on the other hand, examples are seldom proofs of fact. We cannot say that all men will act in a certain way under given circumstances because one man has so acted. Nevertheless, arguments by examples are frequently used and are especially powerful when we wish not only to convince a man, but also to persuade him to action. This persuasion to action must be based on conviction, and in such a case the argument from sign that convinces the man of the truth of a proposition should precede the example that urges him to action. After convincing a friend that there are advantages to be derived from joining a society, we may persuade him to join by naming those who have joined. +192. Argument from Analogy.+--Analogy is very much relied upon in practical life. Reasoning from analogy depends upon the recognition of similarity in regard to some particulars followed by the inference that the similarity extends to other particulars. As soon as it was known that the atmospheric conditions of the planet Mars are similar to those of the earth, it was argued by analogy that Mars must also, be inhabited. An analogy is seldom conclusive and, though it is often effective in argument, it must not be taken as proof of fact. The mind very readily observes likenesses, and when directed toward the establishing of a proposition easily overlooks the differences. In order to determine the strength of an argument from analogy, attention should be given to the differences existing between the two propositions considered. False analogies are very common. We must guard against using them, and especially against allowing ourselves to be convinced by them. Even when the resemblance is so slight as to render analogy impossible, it may serve to produce a metaphor that often has the effect of argument. It is much easier to captivate the fancy with a pretty or striking figure than to move the judgment with sound reason.... His (the speaker's) picture appeals to the mind's visible sense, hence his power over us, though his analogies are more apt to be false than true.... The use of metaphor, comparison, analogy, is twofold--to enliven and to convince; to illustrate and enforce an accepted truth, and to press home and clinch one in dispute. An apt figure may put a new face upon an old and much worn truism, and a vital analogy may reach and move the reason. Thus when Renan, referring to the decay of the old religious beliefs, says that the people are no poorer for being robbed of false bank notes and bogus shares, his comparison has a logical validity.... The accidental analogies or likenesses are limitless, and are the great stock in trade of most writers and speakers. An ingenious mind finds types everywhere, but real analogies are not so common. The likeness of one thing to another may be valid and real, but the likeness of a thought with a thing is often merely fanciful.... I recently have met with the same fallacy in a leading article in one of the magazines. "The fact revealed by the spectroscope," says the writer, "that the physical elements of the earth exist also in the stars, supports the faith that a moral nature like our own inhabits the universe." A tremendous leap--a leap from the physical to the moral. We know that these earth elements are found in the stars by actual observation and experience; but a moral nature like our own--this is assumed, and is not supported by the analogy. John Burroughs: _Analogy, True and False_. Notice the use of analogy in the argument below. There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate colors, or recognize faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become blind in the house of bondage. But, let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinions subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend and begin to coalesce, and at length a system of justice and order is educed out of the chaos. --Macaulay: _Milton_. +193. Summary of Arrangement.+--The necessity of argument arises because some one does not believe the truth of a proposition. To establish in his mind a belief, we must present our arguments in an orderly and convincing way. The order will usually be to show him first the possibility and then the probability, and finally to lead him as near to certainty as we can. We may say, therefore, that we should use arguments from cause, arguments from sign, and arguments from example in the order named. Another principle of arrangement is that inductive argument will usually precede deductive argument. We naturally proceed by induction to establish general truths which, when established, we may apply. If our audience already believe the general theories, the inductive part may be omitted. Both of these principles of arrangement should be considered with reference to that of a third, namely, climax. Climax means nothing more than the orderly progression of our argument to the point where it convinces our hearer. We call that argument which finally convinces him the strongest, and naturally this should be the end of the argument. Of several proofs of equal grade, one that will attract the attention of the hearer should come first, while the most convincing one should come last. In arranging arguments attention needs also to be given to coherence. One proof may be so related to another that the presentation of one naturally suggests the other. Sometimes, for the sake of climax, the coherent order must be abandoned. More often the climax is made more effective by following the order which gives the greatest coherence. +Theme CII.+--_Prove one of the following propositions:_ 1. The Presidential term should be extended. 2. Bookkeeping is of greater practical value than any other high school study. 3. In cities all buildings should be restricted to three stories in height. 4. Sumptuary laws are never desirable. 5. No pupil should carry more than four studies. 6. This school should have a debating society. (Have you proved possibility, probability, or actuality? Have you used arguments from cause, sign, or example? Consider the arrangement of your arguments. Consider the analogies you have used, if any. Can you shorten your theme without weakening it?) +194. The Brief.+--Arrangement is of very great importance in argument. In fact, it is so important that much more care and attention needs to be given to the outline in argument, and the outline itself may be more definitely known to the hearer than in the other forms of discourse. In description and narration especially, it detracts from the value of the impressions if the reader becomes aware of the plan of composition. In exposition a view of the framework may not hinder clear understanding, but in argument it may be of distinct advantage to have the orderly arrangements of our arguments definitely known to him whom we seek to convince. The brief not only assists us in making our own thought orderly and exact, but enables us to exclude that which is trivial or untrue. An explanation may fail to make every point clear and yet retain some valuable elements, but an argument fails of its purpose if it does not establish a belief. A single false argument or even a trivial one may so appeal to a mind prejudiced against the proposition that all the valid proofs fail to convince. This single weakness is at once used by our opponent to show that our other arguments are false because this one is. A committee once endeavored to persuade the governor of a state not to sign a certain bill, but they defeated themselves because their opponents pointed out to the governor that two of the ten reasons which they presented were false and that the committee presenting them knew they were false. This cast a doubt upon the honesty of the committee and the validity of their whole argument, and the governor signed the bill. The brief differs from the ordinary outline in that it is composed of complete sentences rather than of topics. Notice the following example. +Term examinations should be abolished.+ AFFIRMATIVE I. There is no necessity for such examinations. 1. The teacher knows the pupil's standing from his daily recitations. 2. Monthly reviews or tests may be substituted if desirable. II. The evils arising from examinations more than offset any advantages that may be derived from them. 1. The best pupils are likely to work hardest, and to overtax their strength. 2. Pupils often aim to pass rather than to know their subject. 3. A temptation to cheat is placed before them. III. Examinations are not a fair test of a pupil's ability. 1. A pupil may know his subject as a whole and yet not be able to answer one or two of the questions given him. 2. A pupil who has done poor work during the term may cram for an examination and pass very creditably. 3. Pupils are likely to be tired out at the end of the term and often are not able to do themselves justice. NEGATIVE If the writer should choose to defend the negative of the above proposition, the brief might be as follows:-- I. Examinations are indispensable to school work. 1. In no other way can teachers find out so well what their pupils know about their subjects, especially in large classes. 2. They are essential as an incentive to pupils who are inclined to let their work lag. II. As a rule they are fair tests of a pupil's ability. 1. Pupils who prepare the daily recitations well are almost sure to pass a good examination. 2. Pupils who cram are likely to write a hurried, faulty examination. 3. It seldom happens that many in a class are too worn out to take a term examination. III. They prepare the pupils for later examinations. (1) For college entrance examinations. (2) For examinations at college. (3) For civil service examinations. (4) For examinations for teachers' certificates. EXERCISES _A._ Write out subordinate propositions proving the main subdivisions. Also change the arrangement when you think it desirable to do so. 1. Two sessions are preferable to one in a high school. (1) One long session is too fatiguing to both teachers and pupils. (2) Boys and girls as a rule study better at school than they do at home. (3) The time after school is long enough for recreation. 2. The pupils of this high school should be granted a holiday during the street (county or state) fair. (1) They will all go at least one day. (2) It will cause less interruption in the school work if they all go the same day. 3. Women should be allowed to vote. (1) They are now taxed without representation. (2) Whenever they have been allowed to take part in the affairs of the government, it has been an advantage to that government. (3) Many of them are much more intelligent than some men who vote. _B._ Write out briefs for the following propositions (affirmative or negative):-- 1. High school studies should be made elective in the last two years of the course. 2. The government should own and control the railroads of our country. 3. The old building on the corner of ---- Street ought to be removed. 4. Latin should not be made a compulsory study. 5. Reading newspapers is unprofitable. 6. Laws should be made to prohibit all adulteration of foods. 7. We are all selfish. 8. A system of self-government should be introduced into our school. +Theme CIV.+--_Write out the argument for one of the preceding propositions._ (Examine the brief carefully before beginning to write. Can you improve it? ) +Theme CV.+--_Write a theme proving one of the following propositions:_-- 1. Immigration is detrimental to the United States. 2. The descriptions in _Ivanhoe_ are better than those in the _House of the Seven Gables_. 3. Argument is of greater practical value than exposition. 4. The Mexican Indians were a civilized race when America was discovered. 5. The standing army of the United States should be increased. 6. All police officers should be controlled by the state and not by the city. (Have you used arguments from cause, sign, or example? Are they arranged with reference to the principles of arrangement? (Section 192.) Consider each paragraph and the whole theme with reference to unity.) +Theme CVI.+--_Write a debate on some question assigned by the teacher._ (To what points should you give attention in correcting your theme? Read Section 79.) +195. Difference between Persuasion and Argument.+--Up to this point we have considered argument as having for its aim the proof of the truth of a proposition. If we consider the things about which we argue most frequently, we shall find that in many cases we attempt to do more than merely to convince the hearer. We wish to convince him in order to cause him to act. We argue with him in order to persuade him to do something. Such an argument tries to establish the wisdom of a course of action and is termed _persuasion_. Persuasion differs from argument in its aim. In argument by an appeal principally to the reason, we endeavor to convince; in persuasion by an appeal mainly to the feelings, we endeavor to move to action. +196. Importance of Persuasion.+--Persuasion deals with the practical affairs of life, and for that reason the part that it performs is a large and important one. All questions of advantage, privilege, and duty are included in the sphere of persuasion. Since such questions are so directly related to our business interests, to our happiness, and to our mode of conduct and action, we are constantly making use of persuasion and quite as constantly are being influenced by it. Our own welfare and happiness depends to so great an extent upon the actions of others that our success in life is often measured by our ability to persuade others to act in accordance with our desires. +197. Necessity of Persuasion.+--It is frequently not enough to convince our hearer of the truth of a proposition. Often a person believes a proposition, yet does not act. If we wish action, persuasion must be added to argument. If we always acted at the time we were convinced, and in accordance with our convictions, there would be no need of persuasion. Strange as it seems, we often believe one thing and do just the opposite, or we are indifferent and do nothing at all. We all know that disobedience to the laws of health brings its punishment--yet how many of us act as if we did not believe it at all! The indifferent pupil is positive that he will fail if he does not study. He knows that he ought to apply himself diligently to his work. There is no excuse for doing otherwise, yet he neglects to act and failure is the result. +198. Motive in Persuasion.+--The motive of persuasion depends upon the nature of the question. The motives that we have in mind may be selfish, or, on the other hand, they may be supremely unselfish. We may urge others to act in order to bring about our own pleasure or profit; we may urge them to act for their own self-interest or for the interest of others. We may appeal to private or public interest, to social or religious duty. When a boy urges his father to buy him a bicycle, he has his own pleasure in mind. When we urge people to take care of their health, we have their interest in view; and when we urge city improvements or reforms in politics, we are thinking of the welfare of people in general. +199. The Material of Persuasion.+--Persuasion aims to produce action and may make use of any of the forms of discourse that will fit that purpose. We may describe the beauty of the Adirondacks or narrate our experiences there in order to persuade a friend to accompany us on a camping trip. We may explain the workings of a new invention in order to persuade a capitalist to invest money in its manufacture. Or we may by argument demonstrate that there is a great opportunity for young men in New Orleans, hoping to persuade an acquaintance to move there. When thus used, description, narration, exposition, and argument may become persuasion; but their effectiveness depends upon their appeal to some fundamental belief or feeling in the person addressed. Our description and narration would not bring to the Adirondacks a man who cared nothing for scenery and who disliked camp life. The explanation of our invention would not interest a capitalist unless he was seeking a profitable investment. Our argument would not induce a man to move to New Orleans if his prejudice against the South was greater than his desire for profit and position. In each case there has been an appeal to some belief or sentiment or desire of the person whom we seek to persuade. +200. Appeal to the Feelings.+--Persuasion, therefore, in order to produce action must appeal largely to the feelings. But all persons are not affected in the same way. In order to bring about the same result we may need to make a different appeal to different individuals. One person may be led to act by an appeal made to his sense of justice, another by an appeal made to his patriotism, while still another, unmoved by either of these appeals, may be led to act by an appeal made to his pride or to his love of power. If we would be successful in persuading others, we ought to be able to understand what to appeal to in individual cases. Children may be enticed by candy, and older persons may be quite as readily influenced if we but choose the proper incentive. It is our duty to see that we are persuaded only by the presentation of worthy motives, and that in our own efforts to persuade others we do not appeal to envy, jealousy, religious prejudices, race hatred, or lower motives. EXERCISES Show how an appeal to the feelings could be made in the following. To what particular feeling or feelings would you appeal in each case? 1. Try to gain your parents' permission to attend college. 2. Urge a friend to give up card playing. 3. Try to persuade your teachers not to give so long lessons. 4. Persuade others to aid an unfortunate family living in our community. 5. Induce the school board to give you a good gymnasium. 6. Persuade a tramp to give up his mode of life. 7. Try to get some one to buy your old bicycle. 8. Urge your country to act in behalf of some oppressed people. 9. Urge a resident of your town to give something for a public park. +Theme CVII.+--_Write out one of the preceding._ (Consider what you have written with reference to coherence and climax.) +201. Argument with Persuasion.+--In some cases we are sure that our hearers are already convinced as to the truth of a proposition. Then there is no need of argument and persuasion is used alone, but more frequently both are used. Argument naturally precedes persuasion, but with few exceptions the two are intermixed and even so blended as to be scarcely distinguishable, the one from the other. A good example of the use of both forms is found in the speech of Antony over the dead body of Caesar in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_. Read the speech and note the argument and persuasion given in it. What three arguments does Antony advance to prove that Caesar was not ambitious? Does he draw conclusions or leave that for his listeners to do? Where is there an appeal to their pity? To their curiosity? To their gratitude? What is the result in each case of the various appeals? In the following examples note the argument and persuasion. Remember that persuasion commences when we begin to urge to action. Notice what feelings are appealed to in the persuasive parts of the speeches. They tell us, Sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But, when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, Sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, Sir, let it come!--It is vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace, peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here, idle? Is life so dear, is peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death. --Patrick Henry. The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never before saw, and please God, I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matanzas. I can never forget to my dying day the hopeless anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them.... Men, women, and children stand silent, famishing with hunger. Their only appeal comes from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls. The Government of Spain has not appropriated and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended and nursed and administered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle! We are feeding the citizens of Spain; we are nursing their sick; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off. I say that the time has come when muskets ought to go with the food.... The time for action has, then, come. No greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one power can intervene--the United States of America. Ours is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the peoples and the affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. Mr. President, there is only one action possible, if any is taken--that is, intervention for the independence of the island. But we cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love, "Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at the expense of liberty and humanity. Not good will toward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ, I believe in the doctrine of peace; but, Mr. President, men must have liberty before there can come abiding peace. Intervention means force. Force means war. War means blood. But it will be God's force. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force? What barricade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has ever been carried except by force? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation; force beat with naked hands upon the iron gateway of the Bastile and made reprisal in one awful hour for centuries of kingly crime; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet; force held the broken line at Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout heights; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the valley of Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox; force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made "niggers" men. Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for further diplomatic negotiations, which means delay; but for me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to answer to my conscience, my country, and my God. --John Mellen Thurston: _Speech in United States Senate_, March, 1898. EXERCISES 1. A young boy is trying to gain his father's permission to attend an evening entertainment with some other boys. Make a list of his appeals to his father's reason; to his father's feelings. Make a list of his father's objections. Is there any appeal to his son's feelings? 2. Suppose you are about to address the voters of your city on the question of granting saloon licenses. Make a list of appeals to their reason; to their intellect. Remember that appeals to the feelings are made more forcible by descriptive and narrative examples than by direct general appeals. 3. Urge your classmates to vote for some member of your class for president. What qualifications should a good class president have? +Theme CVIII.+--_Select one of the subjects, concerning which you have written an argument; either add persuasion to the argument or intermix them._ (What part of your theme is argument and what part persuasion? Does the introduction of persuasion affect the order of arrangement?) +Theme CIX.+--_Select one of the subjects given on page 361 of which you have not yet made use. Write a theme appealing to both feeling and intellect._ (Are your facts true and pertinent? Consider the arrangement.) +Theme CX.+--_Write a letter to a friend who went to work instead of entering the high school. Urge him to come to the high school._ (What arguments have you made? To what feelings have you appealed?) +Theme CXI.+--_Use one of the following as a subject for a persuasive theme:_-- 1. Induce your friends not to play ball on Memorial Day. 2. Ask permission to be excused from writing your next essay. 3. Persuade one of your friends to play golf. 4. Induce your friends not to wear birds on their hats. 5. Write an address to young children, trying to persuade them not to be cruel to the lower animals. +202. Questions of Right and Questions of Expediency.+--Arguments that aim to convince us of the wisdom of an action are very common. In our home life and in our social and religious life these questions are always arising. They may be classified into two kinds: (1) those which answer the question, Is it right? and (2) those which answer the question, Is it expedient? The moral element enters into questions of right. It is always wise for us to do that which is morally right, but sometimes we are in doubt as to what course of action is morally right. Opinions differ concerning what is right, and for that reason we spend much time in defending our opinions or in trying to make others believe as we do. In answering such a question honestly, we must lose sight of all advantage or disadvantage to ourselves. When asked to do something we should at once ask ourselves, Is it right? and when once that is determined one line of action should be clear. An argument which aims to answer the question, Is it expedient? presupposes that there are at least two lines of action each of which is right. It aims to prove that one course of action will bring greater advantages than any other. Taking all classes of people into consideration we shall find that they are arguing more questions of expediency than of any other kind. Every one is looking for advantages either to himself or to those in whom he is interested. A question of expediency should never be separated from the question of right. In determining either our own course of action or that which we attempt to persuade another to follow, we should never forget the presupposition of a question of expediency that either course is right. EXERCISES 1. Name five questions the right or wrong of which you have been called upon to decide. 2. Name five similar questions that are likely to arise in every one's experience. 3. Name five questions of right concerning which opinions very often differ. 4. Is an action that is right for one person ever wrong for another? +Theme CXII.+--_Write out the reasons for or against one of the following:_-- 1. Should two pupils ever study together? 2. Is a lie ever justifiable? 3. Was Shylock's punishment too severe? 4. Woman's suffrage should be established. 5. The regular party nominee should not always be supported. EXERCISES Give reasons for or against the following:-- 1. We should abolish class-day exercises. 2. The study of science is more beneficial than the study of language. 3. Foreign skilled laborers should be excluded from the United States. 4. Hypnotic entertainments should not be allowed. 5. The study of algebra should not be made compulsory in a high school. 6. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ should be excluded from school libraries. 7. Physical training should be compulsory in public schools. 8. High school secret societies should not be allowed. +Theme CXIII.+--_Write an argument of expediency using one of the subjects named in the preceding exercise._ (What advantages have you made most prominent? To what feelings have you appealed?) +Theme CXIV.+--_Write a narration in which the hero is called upon to decide whether some course of action is right or wrong_. (Consider the theme as a narration. Does it fulfill the requirements of Chapter IX? (See Summary.) Consider just the arguments used. Are the arguments sufficient to bring conviction to the reader that the hero decided rightly?) +203. Refutation.+--No question is worth argument unless there are two sides to it--unless there is a chance for some doubt in the mind of the hearer as to which side seems most reasonable. Many questions are of such a nature that in trying to convince our hearers of some truth, we often find it necessary to show them, not only the truth of a proposition or the expediency of a course of action, but also the falsity of some opposing proposition or the inexpediency of the opposite course of action. This tearing to pieces another's argument, is called refutation, or destructive argument. A successful debater shows nearly if not equal skill in tearing down his opponent's arguments as in building up his own. Even in arguments in which no one takes the opposite side at the given time, we must not forget that there are points on the opposite side which are likely to arise in the minds of our hearers. Just as the skillful teacher must know the difficulties that will arise in the minds of the pupils even though they are not expressed, so must the skillful debater consider the objections that his hearer will mentally set up against his argument. It is well, however, for the debater to avoid overemphasizing objections. Sometimes his discussion gives the objections a weight that they would not otherwise have. It is not wise to set up "a man of straw" for the purpose of knocking him down. Notice the refutation in the following argument:-- In no respect is the difference of opinion as to the methods of fishing so pronounced and disturbing among anglers as the diverse ones of fishing "up" and "down" stream. "Fishing up stream" has many advocates who assert that as trout always lie with their heads up current, they are less likely to see the fisherman or the glint of his rod when the casts are made; that the discomfort and fatigue accompanying wading against strong rapids is amply repaid by the increased scores secured; that the flies deftly thrown a foot or two above the head of a feeding trout float more life-like down the current than those drawn against it by the line, when they are apt to exhibit a muscular power which in the live insect would be exaggerated and unnatural. On the other hand, the "down stream" fisherman is equally assertive as to the value of his method. He feels the charm of gurgling waters around his limbs, a down current that aids rather than retards or fatigues him in each successive step of enjoyment in his pastime; as he casts his fifty or more feet of line adown the stream, he is assured that he is beyond the ken of the most keen-sighted and wary trout; that his artificial bugs, under the tension of the current seaming it from right to left, reaches every square inch of the "swim," as English rodsters term a likely water, and coming naturally down stream, just the direction from whence a hungry trout is awaiting it, are much more likely to be taken, than those thrown against the current, with, doubtless, a foot or more of the leader drooping and bagging before the nose of a trout, with a dead bug, soaked and bedraggled, following slowly behind. By wading "down stream" its advocates do not mean splashing and lifting the feet above the surface, sending the water hither and yon on to the banks, into the pools, with the soil of silt or mud or fine gravel from the bottom, polluting the stream many yards ahead, and causing every fish to scurry to the shelter of a hole in the bank or under a shelving rock. They intend that the rodster shall enter the water quietly, and, after a few preliminary casts to get the water gear in good working order to proceed down stream by sliding rather than lifting his feet from the bottom, noiselessly and cautiously approaching the most likely pools or eddies behind the roots in mid stream, or still stretches close to the banks, where the quiet reaches broaden down stream, where nine chances in ten, on a good trout water, one or more fish will be seen lazily rising and feeding. Again, the down-stream angler contends that when a fish is fastened on a hook, taking the lure in a current, that he is more likely to be well hooked, hence more certain of capture when the line is tense, than when rising to a floating bug at the end of a looping line and leader. Certainly it is very difficult when casting against the current to keep the line sufficiently taut to strike quickly and effectively a rising trout, which as a rule ejects the artificial lure the instant he feels the gritty impact of the steel. In fishing down stream, the advocate of the principle that the greater the surface commotion made by the flies used, the surer the rise and catch, has an advantage over his brother who always fishes "fine" and with flies that do not make a ripple. Drawing the artificial bugs across and slightly up stream over the mirrored bosom of a pool is apt to leave a wake behind them which may not inaptly be compared with the one created by a small stern-wheel steamer; an unnatural condition of things, but of such is a trout's make-up. --W.C. HARRIS: _Fishing Up or Down Stream_. +Theme CXV.+--_Persuade a friend, to choose some sport from one of the following pairs:_-- 1. Canoeing or sailing. 2. Bicycling or automobiling. 3. Golf or polo. 4. Basket ball or tennis. 5. Football or baseball. +Theme CXVI.+--_Choose one side of a proposition. Name the probable points on the other side and write out a refutation of them_. +Theme CXVII.+--_State a proposition and write the direct argument._ +Theme CXVIII.+--_Exchange theme CXVII for one written by a classmate and write the refutation of the arguments in the theme you receive._ (Theme CXVII and the corresponding Theme CXVIII should be read before the class.) SUMMARY 1. Argument is that form of discourse which attempts to prove the truth of a proposition. 2. Inductive reasoning is that process by which from many individual cases we establish the probable truth of a general proposition. 3. The establishing of a general truth by induction requires-- _a._ That there be a large number of facts, circumstances, or specific instances supporting it. _b._ That these facts be true. _c._ That they be pertinent. _d._ That there be no facts proving the truth of the contrary proposition. 4. Deductive reasoning is that process which attempts to prove the truth of a specific proposition by showing that a general theory applies to it. 5. The establishing of the truth of a specific proposition by deductive reasoning requires-- _a._ A major premise that makes an affirmation about _all_ the members of a class. _b._ A minor premise that states that the individual under consideration belongs to the class named. _c._ A conclusion that states that the affirmation made about the class applies to the individual. These three statements constitute a syllogism. 6. An enthymeme is a syllogism with but one premise expressed. 7. Errors of deduction arise-- _a._ If terms are not used throughout with the same meaning. _b._ If the major premise does not make a statement about every member of the class denoted by the middle term. _c._ If either premise is false. 8. Belief in a specific proposition may arise-- _a._ Because of the presentation of evidence which is true and pertinent. _b._ Because of a belief in some general principle or theory which applies to it. In arguing therefore we-- _a._ Present true and pertinent facts, or evidence; or _b._ Appeal directly to general theories, or by means of facts, maxims, allusions, inferences, or the quoting of authorities, seek to call up such theories. 9. Classes of arguments:-- _a._ Arguments from cause. _b._ Arguments from sign and attendant circumstances. _c._ Arguments from example and analogy. 10. Arrangement. _a._ Arguments from cause should precede arguments from sign, and arguments from sign should precede arguments from example. _b._ Inductive arguments usually precede deductive arguments. _c._ Arguments should be arranged with reference to climax. _d._ Arguments should be arranged, when possible, in a coherent order. 11. In making a brief the above principles of arrangement should be observed. Attention should be given to unity so that the trivial and false may be excluded. 12. Persuasion is argument that aims to establish the wisdom of a course of action. 13. Persuasion appeals largely to the feelings. _a._ Those feelings of satisfaction resulting from approval, commendation, or praise, or the desire to avoid blame, disaster, or loss of self-esteem. _b._ Those feelings resulting from the proper and legitimate use of one's powers. _c._ Those feelings which arise from possession, either actual or anticipated. 14. Persuasion is concerned with-- _a._ Questions of right. _b._ Questions of expediency. APPENDIX I. ELEMENTS OF FORM +1. Importance of Form.+--The suggestions which have been made for the correction of the Themes have laid emphasis upon the thought. Though the thought side is the more important, yet careful attention must also be given to the form in which it is stated. If we wish to express our thoughts so that they will be understood by others, we shall be surer to succeed if we use the forms to which our hearers are accustomed. The great purpose of composition is the clear expression of thought, and this is aided by the use of the forms which are conventional and customary. Wrong habits of speech indicate looseness and carelessness of thought, and if not corrected show a lack of training. In speaking, our language goes directly to the listener without revision. It is, therefore, essential that we pay much attention to the form of the expression so that it may be correct when we use it. Our aim should be to avoid an error rather than to correct it. Similarly in writing, your effort should be given to avoiding errors rather than to correcting those already made. A misspelled word or an incorrect grammatical form in the letter that you send to a business man may show you to be so careless and inaccurate that he will not wish to have you in his employ. In such a case it is only the avoidance of the error that is of value. You must determine for yourself that the letter is correct before you send it. This same condition should prevail with reference to your school themes. The teacher may return these for correction, but you must not forget that the purpose of this correction is merely to emphasize the correct form so that you will use it in your next theme. It will be helpful to have some one point out your individual mistakes, but it is only by attention to them on your own part and by a definite and long-continued effort to avoid them that you will really accomplish much toward the establishing of correct language habits. In this, as in other things, the most rapid progress will be made by doing but one thing at a time. Many matters of form are already familiar to you. A brief statement of these is made in order to serve as a review and to secure uniformity in class work. 1. _Neatness._--All papers should be free from blots and finger marks. Corrections should be neatly done. Care in correcting or interlining will often render copying unnecessary. 2. _Legibility._--Excellence of thought is not dependent upon penmanship, and the best composition may be the most difficult to read. A poorly written composition is, however, more likely to be considered bad than one that is well written. A plain, legible, and rapid handwriting is so valuable an accomplishment that it is well worth acquiring. 3. _Paper._--White, unruled paper, about 8-1/2 by 11 inches, is best for composition purposes. The ability to write straight across the page without the aid of lines can be acquired by practice. It is customary to write on only one side of the paper. 4. _Margins._--Leave a margin of about one inch at the left of the sheet. Except in formal notes and special forms there will be no margin at the right. Care should be taken to begin the lines at the left exactly under each other, but the varying length of words makes it impossible to end the lines at the right at exactly the same place. A word should not be crowded into a space too small for it, nor should part of it be put on the next line, as is customary in printing, unless it is a compound one, such as steam-boat. Spaces of too great length at the end of a line may be avoided by slightly lengthening the preceding words or the spaces between them. 5. _Spacing._--Each theme should have a title. It should be placed in the center of the line above the composition, and should have all important words capitalized. Titles too long for a single line may be written as follows:-- MY TRIP TO CHICAGO ON A BICYCLE With unruled paper some care must be taken to keep the lines the same distance apart. The spaces between sentences should be somewhat greater than those between words. Paragraphs are indicated by indentations. 6. _Corrections._--These are best made by using a sharp knife or an ink eraser. Sometimes, if neatly done, a line may be drawn through an incorrect word and the correct one written above it. Omitted words may be written between the lines and the place where they belong indicated by a caret. If a page contains many corrections, it should be copied. 7. _Inscription and Folding._--The teacher will give directions as to inscription and folding. He will indicate what information he wishes, such as name, class, date, etc., and where it is to be written. Each page should be numbered. If the paper is folded, it should be done with neatness and precision. +2. Capitals.+--The use of capitals will serve to illustrate the value of using conventional forms. We are so accustomed to seeing a proper name, such as Mr. Brown, written with capitals that we should be puzzled if we should find it written without capitals. The sentence, Ben-Hur was written by Lew Wallace, would look unfamiliar if written without capitals. We are so used to our present forms that beginning sentences with small letters would hinder the ready comprehension of the thought. Everybody agrees that capitals should be used to begin sentences, direct questions, names of deity, days of the week, the months, each line of poetry, the pronoun I, the interjection O, etc., and no good writer will fail to use them. Usage varies somewhat in regard to capitals in some other places. Such expressions as Ohio river, Lincoln school, Jackson county, state of Illinois, once had both names capitalized. The present tendency is to write them as above. Even titles of honor are not capitalized unless they are used with a proper name; for example, He introduced General Grant The general then spoke. +3. Rules of Capitalization.+--1. Every sentence and every line of poetry begin with capitals. 2. Every direct quotation, except brief phrases and subordinate parts of sentences, begins with a capital. 3. Proper nouns and adjectives derived from proper nouns begin with capitals. Some adjectives, though derived from proper nouns, are no longer capitalized; _e.g._ voltaic. 4. Titles of honor when used with the name of a person begin with capitals. 5. The first word and every important word in the titles of books, etc., begin with capitals. 6. The pronoun I and the interjection O are always capitalized. 7. Names applied to the Deity are capitalized and pronouns referring thereto, especially if personal, are usually capitalized. 8. Important words are often capitalized for emphasis, especially words in text-books indicating topics. +4. Punctuation.+--The meaning of a sentence depends largely on the grouping of words that are related in sense to each other. When we are reading aloud we make the sense clear by bringing out to the hearer this grouping. This is accomplished by the use of pauses and by emphasis and inflection. In writing we must do for the eye what inflection and pauses do for the ear. We therefore use punctuation marks to indicate inflection and emphasis, and especially to show word grouping. Punctuation marks are important because their purpose is to assist in making the sense clear. There are many special rules more or less familiar to you, but they may all be included under the one general statement: Use such marks and only such marks as will assist the reader in getting the sense. What marks we shall use and how we shall use them will be determined by custom. In order to benefit a reader, marks must be used in ways with which he is familiar. Punctuation changes from time to time. The present tendency is to omit all marks not absolutely necessary to the clear understanding of the sentence. There are some very definite rules, but there are others that cannot be made so definite, and the application of them requires care and judgment on the part of the writer. Improvement will come only by practice. Sentences should not be written for the purpose of illustrating punctuation. The meaning of what you are writing ought to be clear to you, and the punctuation marks should be put in _as you write_, not inserted afterward. +5. Rules for the Use of the Comma.+--1. The comma is used to separate words or phrases having the same construction, used in a series. Judges, senators, and representatives were imprisoned. The country is a good place to be born in, a good place to die in, a good place to live in at least part of the year. If any conjunctions are used to connect the last two members, the comma may or may not be used in connection with the conjunction. The cabbage palmetto affords shade, kindling, bed, and food. 2. Words or expressions in apposition should be separated by a comma. The native Indian dress is an evolution, a survival from long years of wild life. 3. Commas are used to separate words in direct address from the rest of the sentence. Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release. O, Sohrab, an unquiet heart is thine! 4. Introductory and parenthetical words or expressions are set off by commas. However, the current is narrow and very shallow here. This, in a general way, describes the scope of the small parks or playgrounds. If the parenthetical expression is long and not very closely related to the rest of the sentence, dashes or marks of parenthesis are frequently used. Some writers use them even when the connection is somewhat close. 5. The comma is frequently used to separate the parts of a long compound predicate. Pine torches have no glass to break, and are within the reach of any man who can wield an ax. 6. A comma is often used to separate a subject with several modifiers, or with a long modifier, from the predicate verb. One of the mistakes often made in beginning the study of birds with small children, is in placing stress upon learning by sight and name as many species of birds as possible. 7. Participial and adjective phrases and adverb phrases out of their natural order should be separated from the rest of the sentence by commas. A knight, clad in armor, was the most conspicuous figure of all. To the mind of the writer, this explanation has much to commend it. 8. When negative expressions are used in order to show a contrast, they are set off by commas. They believed in men, not in mere workers in the great human workshop. 9. Commas are used in complex sentences to separate the dependent clause from the rest of the sentence. The great majority of people would be better off, if they had more money and spent it. While the flour is being made, samples are sent every hour to the testing department. If the connection is close, the comma is usually omitted, especially when the dependent clause comes last. I will be there when the train arrives. 10. When a relative clause furnishes an additional thought, it should be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma. Hiram Watts, who has been living in New York for six years, has just returned to England. If the relative clause is restrictive, that is, if it restricts or limits the meaning of the antecedent, the comma is unnecessary. This is the best article that he ever wrote. 11. Commas are used to separate the members of a compound sentence when they are short or closely connected. Ireland is rich in minerals, yet there is but little mining done there. Breathe it, exult in it, All the day long, Glide in it, leap in it, Thrill it with song. 12. Short quotations should be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma. "There must be a beaver dam here," he called. 13. The omissions of important words in a sentence should be indicated by commas. If you can, come to-morrow; if not, come next week. +6. Rules for the Use of the Semicolon.+--1. When the members of a compound sentence are long or are not closely connected, semicolons should be used to separate them. Webster could address a bench of judges; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a senate, and Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand; but no one of these men could do more than this one thing. --Wendell Phillips. We might as well decide the question now; for we shall surely be obliged to soon. 2. When the members of a compound sentence themselves contain commas, they should be separated from one another by semicolons. As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. --Shakespeare. 3. The semicolon should be used to precede _as, namely, i.e., e.g., viz_. Some adjectives are compared irregularly; as, good, bad, and little. 4. When a series of distinct statements all have a common dependence on what precedes or follows them, they may be separated from each other by semicolons. When subject to the influence of cold we eat more; we choose more heat-producing foods, as fatty foodstuffs; we take more vigorous exercise; we put on more clothing, especially of the non-conducting kinds--woolens. +7. Rules for the Use of the Colon.+--1. The colon is used before long or formal quotations, before enumerations, and before the conclusion of a previous statement. Old Sir Thomas Browne shrewdly observes: "Every man is not only himself. There have been many Diogeneses and many Timons though but few of the name. Men are lived over again. The world is now as it was in ages past. There were none then, but there has been one since, that parallels him, and is, as it were, revived self." --George Dana Boardman. Adjectives are divided into two general classes: descriptive and definitive adjectives. The following members sent in their resignations: Mrs. William M. Murphy, Mrs. Ralph B. Wiltsie, and Mrs. John C. Clark. 2. The colon is used to separate the different members of a compound sentence, when they themselves are divided by semicolons. It is too warm to-day; the sunshine is too bright; the shade, too pleasant: we will wait until to-morrow or we will have some one else do it when the busy time is over. +8. Rules for the Use of the Period.+--1. The period is used at the close of imperative and declarative sentences. 2. All abbreviations should be followed by a period. +9. Rule for the Use of the Interrogation Mark.+--The interrogation mark should be used after all direct questions. +10. Rule for the Use of the Exclamation Mark.+--Interjections and exclamatory words and expressions should be followed by the exclamation mark. Sometimes the exclamatory word is only a part of the whole exclamation. In this case, the exclamatory word should be followed by a comma, and the entire exclamation by an exclamation mark. See, how the lightning flashes! +11. Rules for the Use of the Dash.+--1. The dash is used to show sudden changes in thought or breaks in speech. I can speak of this better when temptation comes my way--if it ever does. 2. The dash is often used in the place of commas or marks of parenthesis to set off parenthetical expressions. In the mountains of New York State this most valuable tree--the spruce-- abounds. 3. The dash, either alone or in connection with the comma, is used to point out that part of a sentence on which special stress is to be placed. I saw unpruned fruit trees, broken fences, and farm implements, rusting in the rain--all evidences of wasted time. 4. The dash is sometimes used with the colon before long quotations, before an enumeration of things, or before a formally introduced statement. +12. Rules for the Use of Quotation Marks.+--1. Quotation marks are used to inclose direct quotations. "In all the great affairs of life one must run some risk," she remarked. 2. A quotation within a quotation is usually indicated by single quotation marks. "Can you tell me where I can find 'Rienzi's Address'?" asked a young lady of a clerk in Brooklyn. 3. When a quotation is interrupted by parenthetical expressions, the different parts of the quotation should be inclosed in quotation marks. "Bring forth," cried the monarch, "the vessels of gold." 4. When the quotation consists of several paragraphs, the quotation marks are placed at the beginning of each paragraph and at the close of the last one. +13. Rule for the Use of the Apostrophe.+--The apostrophe is used to denote the possessive case, to indicate the omission of letters, and to form the plural of signs, figures, and letters. In the teacher's copy book you will find several fancy A's and 3's which can't be distinguished from engravings. II. REVIEW OF GRAMMAR THE SENTENCE +14. English grammar+ is the study of the forms of English words and their relationship to one another as they appear in sentences. A _sentence_ is a group of words that expresses a complete thought. +15. Elements of a Sentence.+--The elements of a sentence, as regards the office that they perform, are the _subject_ and the _predicate_. The _subject_ is that about which something is asserted, and the _predicate_ is that which asserts something about the subject. Some predicates may consist of a single word or word-group, able in itself to complete a sentence: [The thrush _sings_. The thrush _has been singing_]. Some require a following word or words: [William struck _John_ (object complement, or object). Edward became _king_ (attribute complement). The people made Edward _king_ (objective complement)]. The necessary parts of a sentence are: some name for the object of thought (to which the general term _substantive_ may be given); some word or group of words to make assertion concerning the substantive (general term, _assertive_); and, in case of an incomplete assertive, one of the above given completions of its meaning (object complement, attribute complement, objective complement). In addition to these necessary elements of the sentence, words or groups of words may be added to make the meaning of any one of the elements more exact. Such additions are known as _modifiers_. The word-groups which are used as modifiers are the _phrase_ and the _clause_. [The thrush, sings _in the pine woods_ (phrase). The wayfarer _who hears the thrush_ is indeed fortunate (clause).] Both the subject and the predicate may be unmodified: [Bees buzz]; both may be modified: [The honey bees buzz in the clover]; one may be modified and the other unmodified: [Bees buzz in the clover]. The unmodified subject may be called the _simple subject_, or, merely, the _subject_. If modified, it becomes the _complete subject_. The assertive element, together with the attribute complement, if one is present, may be called the _simple predicate_. If modified, it becomes the _complete predicate_. Some grammarians call the assertive element, alone, the _simple predicate_; modified or completed, the _complete predicate_. +16. Classification of Sentences as to Purpose.+--Sentences are classified according to purpose into three classes: _declarative_, _interrogative_, and _imperative_ sentences. A _declarative_ sentence is one that makes a statement or declares something: [Columbus crossed the Atlantic]. An _interrogative_ sentence is one that asks a question: [Who wrote _Mother Goose_?]. An _imperative_ sentence is one that expresses a command or entreaty: ["Fling away ambition"]. Each kind of sentence may be of an exclamatory nature, and then the sentence is said to be an _exclamatory_ sentence: [How happy all the children are! (exclamatory declarative). "Who so base as be a slave?" (exclamatory interrogative). "Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard!" (exclamatory imperative)]. Notice that the exclamation point follows the declarative and imperative forms, but the interrogative form is followed by the question mark. WORDS AND THEIR OFFICES +17. The Individual Elements+ of which every sentence is composed are _words_. Every word is the sign of some idea. Each of the words _horse, he, blue, speaks, merrily, at_, and _because_, has a certain naming value, more or less definite, for the mind of the reader. Of these, _horse, blue, he, merrily_, have a fairly vivid descriptive power. In the case of _at_ and _because_, the main office is, evidently, to express a relation between other ideas: ["I am _at_ my post"], ["I go _because_ I must"]. The word _speaks_ is less clearly a relational word; at first thought it would seem to have only the office of picturing an activity. That it also fills the office of a connective will be evident if we compare the following sentences: He _speaks_ in public. He _is_ a public _speaker_. It is evident that _speaks_ contains in itself the _naming_ value represented in the word _speaker_, but also has the _connecting_ office fulfilled in the second sentence by _is_. All words have, therefore, a naming office, and some have in addition a connecting or relational office. PARTS OF SPEECH +18. Parts of Speech.+--When we examine the different words in sentences we find that, in spite of these fundamentally similar qualities, the words are serving different purposes. This difference in purpose or use serves as the basis for dividing words into eight classes, called Parts of Speech. Use alone determines to which class a word in any given sentence shall belong. Not only are single words so classified, but any part of speech may be represented by a group of words. Such a group is either a _phrase_ or a _clause_. A _phrase_ is a group of words, containing neither subject nor predicate, that is used as a single part of speech. A _clause_ is a group of words, containing both subject and predicate, that is used as part of a sentence. If used as a single part of speech, it is called a _subordinate_, or _dependent_, clause. Some grammarians use the word _clause_ for a subordinate statement only. +19. Classification.+--The eight parts of speech may be classified as follows:-- I. Substantives: nouns, pronouns. II. Assertives: verbs. III. Modifiers: adjectives, adverbs. IV. Connectives: prepositions, conjunctions. V. Interjections. +20. Definitions.+--The parts of speech may be defined as follows:-- (1) A _noun_ is a word used as a name. (2) A _pronoun_ is a word used in place of a noun, designating a person, place, or thing without naming it. (3) An _adjective_ is a word that modifies a substantive. (4) A _verb_ is a word that asserts something--action, state, or being--- concerning a substantive. (5) An _adverb_ is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb. (6) A _preposition_ is a word that shows the relation of the substantive that follows it to some other word or words in the sentence. (7) A _conjunction_ is a word that connects words or groups of words used in the same way. (8) An _interjection_ is a cry expressing emotion, but not forming part of the sentence. NOUNS +21. Classes of Nouns.+--Nouns are divided into two general classes: _proper_ nouns [Esther] and _common_ nouns [girl]. Common nouns include _abstract_ nouns [happiness] and _collective_ nouns [army]. Any word mentioned merely _as a word_ is a noun: [_And_ is a conjunction]. +22. Inflection.+--A change in the form of a word to denote a change in its meaning is termed _inflection_. +23. Number.+--The most common inflection of the noun is that which shows us whether the name denotes one or more than one. The power of the noun to denote one or more than one is termed _number_. A noun that denotes but one object is _singular_ in number. A noun that denotes more than one object is _plural_ in number. The plural number of nouns is regularly formed by adding _s_ and _es_ to the singular [bank, banks; box, boxes]. Other points to be noted concerning the plural of nouns are as follows:-- 1. The irregular plural in _en_ [child, children]. 2. Formation of the plural by internal change [goose, geese]. 3. Fourteen nouns ending in _f_ or _fe_ change the _f_ or _fe_ into _yes_ [leaf, leaves]. 4. Nouns ending in _y_, preceded by a consonant, change the _y_ to _i_ and add _es_ [enemy, enemies]. 5. Letters, figures, signs, etc., form their plural by adding '_s_:[You have used too many _i_'s]. 6. Nouns taken from other languages usually form their plurals according to the laws of those languages [phenomenon, phenomena]. 7. A few nouns in our language do not change their form to denote number. (_a_) Some nouns have the same form, for both the singular and the plural [sheep, deer]. (_b_) Some nouns are used only in the plural [scissors, thanks]. (_c_) Some nouns have no plurals [pride, flesh]. (_d_) Some nouns, plural in form, have a singular meaning [measles, news, politics]. 8. Compound nouns usually form their plural by pluralizing the noun part of the compound [sister-in-law, sisters-in-law]. If the words of the compound are both nouns, and are of equal importance, both are given a plural ending [manservant, menservants]. When the compound is thought of as a whole, the last part only is made plural [spoonful, spoonfuls]. 9. Proper names usually form their plurals regularly. If they are preceded by titles, they form their plurals either by pluralizing the title or by pluralizing the name [The Misses Hunter or the Miss Hunters. The Messrs. Keene or the two Mr. Keenes. The Masters Burke. The Mrs. Harrisons.] 10. A few nouns have two plurals differing in meaning or use [cloth, cloths, clothes; penny, pennies, pence]. +24. Case.+--Case is the relation that a noun or pronoun bears to some other word in the sentence. Inflection of nouns or pronouns for the purpose of denoting case is termed _declension_. There are three cases in the English language: the _nominative_, the _possessive_, and the _objective_; but nouns show only two forms for each number, as the nominative and objective cases have the same form. +25. Formation of the Possessive.+--Nouns in the singular, and those in the plural not already ending in _s_, form the possessive regularly by adding '_s_ to the nominative [finger, finger's; geese, geese's]. In case the plural already ends in _s_, the possessive case adds only the apostrophe [girls']. A few singular nouns add only the apostrophe, when the addition of the '_s_ would make an unpleasant sound [Moses']. Compound nouns form the possessive case by adding '_s_ to the last word. This is also the rule when two names denoting joint ownership are used: [Bradbury and Emery's Algebra]. Notice that in the following expression the '_s_ is affixed to the second noun only: [My sister Martha's book]. Names of inanimate objects usually substitute prepositional phrases to denote possession: [The hardness _of the rock_, not The rock's hardness]. +26. Gender.+--Gender is the power of nouns and pronouns to denote sex. Nouns or pronouns denoting males are of the _masculine_ gender; those denoting females are of the _feminine_ gender; and those denoting things without animal life are of the _neuter_ gender. +27. Person.+--Person is the power of one class of pronouns to show whether the speaker, the person spoken to, or the person or thing spoken of is designated. According to the person denoted, the pronoun is said to be in the _first, second_, or _third_ person. Nouns and many pronouns are not inflected for person, but most grammarians attribute person to them because the context of the sentence in which they are used shows what persons they represent. +28. Constructions of Nouns.+--The following are the usual constructions of nouns:-- (_a_) The _possessive_ case of the noun denotes possession. (_b_) Nouns in the _nominative_ case are used as follows:-- 1. As the subject of a verb: [The western _sky_ is all aflame] 2. As an attribute complement: [Autumn is the most gorgeous _season_ of the year]. 3. In an exclamation: [Alas, poor _soul_, it could not be!]. 4. In direct address: [O hush thee, my _baby_!]. 5. Absolutely: [The _rain_ being over, the grass twinkled in the sunshine]. 6. As a noun in apposition with a nominative: [Columbus; a _native_ of Genoa, discovered America]. (_c_) Nouns in the _objective_ case are used as follows:-- 1. As the direct object of a verb, termed either the direct object or the object complement: [I saw a _host_ of golden daffodils]. 2. As the objective complement: [They crowned him _king_]. 3. As the indirect object of a verb: [We gave _Ethel_ a ring]. 4. As the object of a preposition: [John Smith explored the coast of _New England_]. 5. As the subject of an infinitive: [He commanded _the man_ (_him_)to go without delay]. 6. As the attribute of an expressed subject of the infinitive _to be_: [I thought it to be _John_ (_him_)]. 7. As an adverbial noun: [He came last _week_]. 8. As a noun in apposition with an object: [Stanley found Livingstone, the great _explorer_]. +29. Equivalents for Nouns.+ 1. Pronoun: [John gave _his_ father a book for Christmas]. 2. Adjective: [The _good_ alone are truly great]. 3. Adverb: [I do not understand the _whys_ and _wherefores_ of the process]. 4. A gerund, or infinitive in _ing_: [_Seeing_ is _believing_]. 5. An infinitive or infinitive phrase: [With him, _to think_ is _to act_]. 6. Clause: [It is hard for me to believe _that she took the money_]. Noun clauses may be used as subject, object, attribute complement, and appositive. 7. A prepositional phrase: [_Over the fence_ is out]. PRONOUNS +30. Antecedent.+--The most common equivalent for a noun is the pronoun. The substantive for which the pronoun is an equivalent is called the _antecedent_, and with this antecedent the pronoun must agree in _person, number_, and _gender_, but not necessarily in _case_. +31. Classes of Pronouns.+--Pronouns are commonly divided into five classes, and sometimes a sixth class is added: (1) personal pronouns, (2) relative pronouns, (3) interrogative pronouns, (4) demonstrative pronouns, (5) adjective pronouns,(6) indefinite pronouns (not always added). +32. Personal Pronouns.+--Personal pronouns are so called because they show by their form whether they refer to the first, the second, or the third person. There are five personal pronouns in common use: _I, you, he, she_, and _it_. +33. Constructions of Personal Pronouns.+--The personal pronouns are used in the same ways in which nouns are used. Besides the regular uses that the personal pronoun has, there are some special uses that should be understood. 1. The word _it_ is often used in an indefinite way at the beginning of a sentence: [It snows]. When so used, it has no antecedent, and we say it is used _impersonally_. 2. The pronoun _it_ is often used as the _grammatical_ subject of a sentence in which the _logical_ subject is found after the predicate verb: [_It_ is impossible for us to go]. When so used the pronoun _it_ is called an _expletive. There_ is used in the same way. +34. Cautions and Suggestions.+ 1. Be careful not to use the apostrophe in the possessive forms _its, yours, ours_, and _theirs_. 2. Be careful to use the nominative form of a pronoun used as an attribute complement: [It is _I_; it is _they_]. 3. Be sure that the pronoun agrees in number with its antecedent. One of the most common violations of this rule is in using _their_ in such sentences as the following:--Every boy and girl must arrange _his_ desk. Who has lost _his_ book? The use of _every_ and the form _has_ obliges us to make the possessive pronouns singular. _His_ may be regarded as applying to females as well as males, where it is convenient not to use the expression _his or her_. 4. The so-called subject of an infinitive is always in the objective case: [I asked _him_ to go]. 5. The attribute complement will agree in case with the subject of the verb. Hence the attribute complement of an infinitive is in the objective case: [I knew it (obj.) to be _him_]; but the attribute complement of the subject of a finite verb is in the nominative case: [I knew it (nom.) was _he_]. 6. Words should be so arranged in a sentence that there will be no doubt in the mind concerning the antecedent of the pronoun. 7. Do not use the personal pronoun form _them_ for the adjective _those_: [_Those_ books are mine]. +35. Compound Personal Pronouns.+--To the personal pronouns _my, our, your, him, her, it_, and _them_, the syllables _self_ (singular) and _selves_ (plural) may be added, thus forming what are termed _compound personal_ pronouns. These pronouns have only two uses:-- 1. They are used for emphasis: [He _himself_ is an authority on the subject]. 2. They are also used reflexively: [The boy injured _himself_]. +36. The Relative or Conjunctive Pronouns.+--The pronouns _who, which, what_ (= that which), _that_, and _as_ (after _such_) are more than equivalents for nouns, inasmuch as they serve as connectives. They are often named _relative pronouns_ because they relate to some antecedent either expressed or implied; they are equally well named _conjunctive pronouns_ because they are used as connectives. They introduce subordinate clauses only; these clauses are called _relative clauses_, and since they modify substantives, are also called _adjective clauses_. +37. Uses of Relative Pronouns.+--_Who_ is used to represent persons, and objects or ideas personified; _which_ is used to represent things; _that_ and _as_ are used to represent both persons and things. When a clause is used _for the purpose_ of pointing out some particular person, object, or idea, it is usually introduced by _that_; but when the clause supplies an additional thought, _who_ or _which_ is more frequently used. The former is called a _restrictive clause_, and the latter, a _non-restrictive clause_. [The boy that broke his leg has fully recovered (restrictive).] Note the omission of the comma before _that_. [My eldest brother, who is now in England, will return by June (non-restrictive).] Note the inclosure of the clause in commas. See Appendix 5, rule 10. In the first sentence it is evident that the intent of the writer is to separate, in thought, _the boy that broke his leg_ from all other boys. Although the clause does indeed describe the boy's condition, it does so _for the purpose_ of _limiting_ or _restricting_ thought to one especial boy among many. In the second sentence the especial person meant is indicated by the word _eldest_. The clause, _who is now in England_, is put in for the sake of giving an additional bit of information. +38. Constructions of Relative Pronouns.+--Relative pronouns may be used as subject, object, object of a preposition, subject of an infinitive, and possessive modifier. The relative pronoun is regarded as agreeing in person with its antecedent. Its verb, therefore, takes the person of the antecedent: [_I_, who _am_ your friend, will assist you]. The case of the relative is determined by its construction in the clause in which it is found: [He _whom_ the president appointed was fitted for the position]. +39. Compound Relative Pronouns.+--The compound relative pronouns are formed by adding _ever_ and _soever_ to the relative pronouns _who, which_, and _what_. These have the constructions of the simple relatives, and the same rules hold about person and case: [Give it to _whoever_ wishes it. Give it to _whomever_ you see]. +40. Interrogative Pronouns.+--The pronouns _who, which_, and _what_ are used to ask questions, and when so used, are called _interrogative_ pronouns. _Who_ refers to persons; _what_, to things; and _which_, to persons or things. Like the relatives _who_ has three case forms; _which_ and _what_ are uninflected. The implied question in the sentence, I know whom you saw, is, Whom did you see? The introductory _whom_ is an interrogative pronoun, and the clause itself is called an _indirect question_. The words _which, what_, and _whose_ may also be used as modifiers of substantives, and when so used they are called _interrogative adjectives_: ["_What_ manner of man is this?" _Whose_ child is this? _Which_ book did you choose?]. +41. Demonstrative Pronouns.+--_This_ and _that_, with their plurals _these_ and _those_, are called _demonstrative pronouns_, because they point out individual persons or things. +42. Indefinite Pronouns.+--Some pronouns, as _each, either, some, any, many, such_, etc., are indefinite in character. Many indefinites may be used either as pronouns or adjectives. Of the indefinites only two, _one_ and _other_, are inflected. SINGULAR PLURAL SINGULAR PLURAL NOM. AND OBJ. one ones other others POSS. one's ones' other's others' +43. Adjective Pronouns or Pronominal Adjectives.+--Many words, as has been noted already, are either pronouns or adjectives according to the office that they perform. If the noun is expressed, the word in question is called a _pronominal adjective_; but if the noun is omitted so that the word in question takes its place, it is called an _adjective pronoun_. [_That_ house is white (adjective). _That_ is the same house (pronoun).] ADJECTIVES +44. Classes of Adjectives.+--There are two general classes of adjectives: the _descriptive_ [blue, high, etc.], so called because they describe, and the _limiting_ or _definitive_ adjectives [yonder, three, that, etc.], so called because they limit or define. It is, of course, true that any adjective which describes a noun limits its meaning; but the adjective is named from its descriptive power, not from its limiting power. A very large per cent of all adjectives belong to the first class,--_descriptive_ adjectives. Proper adjectives and _participial_ adjectives form a small part of this large class: [_European_ countries. A _running_ brook]. +45. Limiting or Definitive Adjectives.+--The _limiting_ adjectives include the various classes of _pronominal adjectives_ (all of which have been mentioned under pronouns), the _articles_ (_a_, _an_, and _the_), and adjectives denoting _place_ and _number_. +46. Comparison of Adjectives.+--With the exception of the words _this_ and _that_, adjectives are not inflected for number, and none are inflected for case. Many of them, however, change their form to express a difference in degree. This change of form is called _comparison_. There are three degrees of comparison: the _positive_, the _comparative_, and the _superlative_. Adjectives are regularly compared by adding the syllables _er_ and _est_ to the positive to form the comparative and superlative degrees. In some cases, especially in the case of adjectives of more than one syllable, the adverbs _more_ and _most_ are placed before the positive degree in order to form the other two degrees [long, longer, longest; beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful]. +47. Irregular Comparison of Adjectives.+--A few adjectives are compared irregularly. These adjectives are in common use and we should be familiar with the correct forms. POSITIVE COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE bad } evil } worse worst ill } far farther farthest good } better best well } fore former { foremost { first late { later { latest { latter { last little less least many } more most much } near nearer { nearest { next old { older { oldest { elder { eldest The following words are used as adverbs or prepositions in the positive degree, and as _adjectives_ in the other two degrees:-- (forth) further furthest (in) inner { innermost { inmost (out) { outer { outermost { utter { utmost { uttermost (up) upper { upmost { uppermost +48. Cautions concerning the Use of Adjectives.+ 1. When two or more adjectives modify the same noun, the article is placed only before the first, unless emphasis is desired: [He is an industrious, faithful pupil]. 2. If the adjectives refer to different things, the article should be repeated before each adjective: [She has a white and a blue dress]. 3. When two or more nouns are in apposition, the article is placed only before the first: [I received a telegram from Mr. Richards, _the_ broker and real estate agent]. 4. _This, these, that_, and _those_ must agree in number with the noun they modify: [_This kind_ of flowers; _those sorts_ of seeds]. 5. When but two things are compared, the comparative degree is used: [This is the more complete of the two]. 6. When _than_ is used after a comparative, whatever is compared should be excluded from the class with which it is compared: [I like this house better than any other house; not, I like this house better than any house]. 7. Do not use _a_ after _kind of, sort of_, etc.: [What kind of man is he? (not, What kind of _a_ man)]. _One_ man does not constitute a class consisting of many kinds. +49. Constructions of Adjectives.+--Adjectives that merely describe or limit are said to be _attributive_ in construction. When the adjective limits or describes, and, at the same time, adds to the predicate, it is called a _predicate adjective_.Predicate adjectives may be used either as attribute or objective complements: [The sea is _rough_ to-day (attribute complement), He painted the boat _green_ (objective complement)]. +50. Equivalents for Adjectives.+--The following are used as equivalents for the typical adjective:-- 1. A noun used in apposition: [Barrie's story of his mother, "_Margaret Ogilvy_," is very beautiful]. 2. A noun used as an adjective: [A _campaign_ song]. 3. A prepositional phrase: [His little, nameless, unremember'd acts _of kindness_ and _of love_]. 4. Participles or participial phrases: [We saw a brook _running_ between the alders. Soldiers _hired to serve a foreign country_ are called mercenaries]. 5. Relative clauses: [This is the house _that Jack built_]. 6. An adverb (sometimes called the _locative_ adjective): [The book _here_ is the one I want]. VERBS +51. Uses of Verbs.+--A _verb_ is the word or word-group that makes an assertion or statement, and it is therefore the most important part of the whole sentence. It has been already shown that such a verb as _speaks_ serves the double purpose of suggesting an activity and showing relation. The most purely _relational_ verb is the verb _to be_, which is called the _copula_ or _linking verb_, for the very reason that it joins predicate words to the subject: [The lake _is_ beautiful]. _To be_, however, is not always a pure _copula_. In such a sentence as, "He that cometh to God must believe that He _is_," the word _is_ means _exists_.Verbs that are like the copula, such as, _appear, become, seem_, etc., are called _copulative_ verbs. Verbs that not only are relational but have descriptive power, such as _sings, plays, runs_, etc., are called _attributive_ verbs. They attribute some quality or characteristic to the subject. +52. Classes of Verbs.+--According to their uses in a sentence verbs are divided into two classes: _transitive_ and _intransitive_. A _transitive_ verb is one that takes a following substantive, expressed or implied, called the _object_, to designate the receiver or the product of the action: [They seized the _city_. They built a _city_]. The transitive verb may sometimes be used _absolutely_:[The horse eats]. Here the object is implied. An _intransitive_ verb is one that does not take an object to complete its meaning; or, in other words, an intransitive verb is one that denotes an action, state, or feeling that involves the subject only: [He ran away. They were standing at the water's edge]. A few verbs in our language are always transitive, and a few others are always intransitive. The verbs _lie_ and _lay, rise_ and _raise, sit_ and _set_, are so frequently misused that attention is here called to them. The verbs _lie, rise_, and _sit_ (usually) are intransitive in meaning, while the verbs _lay, raise_, and _set_ are transitive. The word _sit_ may sometimes take a reflexive object: [They sat _themselves_ down to rest]. The majority of verbs in our language are either transitive or intransitive, according to the sense in which they are used. [The fire _burns_ merrily (intransitive). The fire _burned_ the building (transitive). The bird _flew_ swiftly (intransitive). The boy _flew_ his kite (transitive).] Some intransitive verbs take what is known as a _cognate object_: [He died a noble _death_.] Here the object repeats the meaning of the verb. +53. Complete and Incomplete Verbs.+--Some intransitive verbs make a complete assertion or statement without the aid of any other words. Such verbs are said to be of _complete predication_: [The snow melts]. All transitive verbs and some intransitive verbs require one or more words to complete the meaning of the predicate. Such verbs are said to be incomplete. Whatever is added to complete the meaning of the predicate is termed a _complement_. The complement of a transitive verb is called the _object complement_, or simply the _object_: [She found the _book_]. Some transitive verbs, from the nature of their meaning, take also an _indirect_ object: [I gave _her_ the book]. When a word belonging to the subject is added to an intransitive verb in order to complete the predicate, it is termed an _attribute complement_. This complement may be either a noun or an adjective: [He is our _treasurer_ (noun). This rose is _fragrant_ (adjective)]. Among the incomplete intransitive verbs the most conspicuous are the copula and the copulative verbs. +54. Auxiliary Verbs.+--English verbs have so few changes of form to express differences in meaning that it is often necessary to use the so-called _auxiliary_ verbs. The most common are: _do, be, have, may, must, might, can, shall, will, should, would, could_, and _ought_. Some of these may be used as principal verbs. A few notes and cautions are added. _Can_ is used to denote the ability of the subject. _May_ is used to denote permission, possibility, purpose, or desire. Thus the request for permission should be, "May I?" not "Can I?" _Must_ indicates necessity. _Ought_ expresses obligation. _Had_ should never be used with _ought_. To express a moral obligation in past time, combine _ought_ with the perfect infinitive: [I ought _to have done_ it]. _Should_ sometimes expresses duty: [You should not go]. _Would_ sometimes denotes a custom: [He would sit there for hours]. Sometimes it expresses a wish: [Would he were here!]. For other uses of _should_ and _would_, see Appendix 60. +55. Principal Parts.+--The main forms of the verb--so important as to be called the _principal parts_ because the other parts are formed from them-- are the _root infinitive_, the _preterite_ (_past_) _indicative_, and the _past participle_ [move, moved, moved; sing, sang, sung; be, was, been]. The _present_ participle is sometimes given with the principal parts. +56. Inflection.+--As is evident from the preceding paragraph, verbs have certain changes of form to indicate change of meaning. Such a change or _inflection_, in the case of the noun, is called _declension;_ in the case of the verb it is called _conjugation_. Nouns are _declined_; verbs are _conjugated_. +57. Person and Number.+--In Latin, or any other highly inflected language, there are many terminations to indicate differences in person and number, but in English there is but one in common use, _s_ in the third person singular: [_He runs_], _St_ or _est_ is used after _thou_ in the second person singular: [_Thou lovest_]. +58. Agreement.+--Verbs must agree with their subjects in person and number. The following suggestions concerning agreement may be helpful:-- 1. A compound subject that expresses a single idea takes a singular verb: [Bread and milk _is_ wholesome food]. 2. When the members of a compound subject, connected by _neither ... nor_, differ as regards person and number, the verb should agree with the nearer of the two: [Neither they nor I _am_ to blame]. 3. When the subject consists of singular nouns or pronouns connected by _or, either ... or, neither ... nor_, the verb is singular: [Either this book or that _is_ mine]. 4. Words joined to the subject by _with, together with, as well as_, etc., do not affect the number of the verb. The same is true of any modifier of the subject: [John, as well as the girls, _is_ playing house. One of my books _is_ lying on the table. Neither of us _is_ to blame]. 5. When the article _the_ precedes the word _number_, used as a subject, the verb should be in the singular; otherwise the verb is plural: [_The_ number of pupils in our schools _is_ on the increase. _A_ number of children _have_ been playing in the sand pile]. 6. The pronoun _you_ always takes a plural verb, even if its meaning is singular: [You _were_ here yesterday]. 7. A collective noun takes a singular or plural verb, according as the collection is thought of as a whole or as composed of individuals. +59. Tense.+--The power of the verb to show differences of time is called _tense_. Tense shows also the completeness or incompleteness of an act or condition at the time of speaking. There are three _primary_ tenses: _present, preterite_ (_past_), and _future_; and three _secondary_ tenses for completed action:_present perfect, past perfect_ (_pluperfect_), and _future perfect_. English has only two simple tenses, the present and the preterite: _I love, I loved_. All other tenses are formed by the use of the auxiliary verbs. By combining the present and past tenses of _will, shall, have, be_, or _do_ with those parts of the verb known as infinitives and participles, the various tenses of the complete conjugation of the verb are built up. The formation of the _preterite_ tense, and the consequent division of verbs into _strong_ and _weak_, will be discussed later. +60. The Future Tense.+--The future tense is formed by combining _shall_ or _will_ with the root infinitive, without _to_. The correct form of the _future tense_ in assertions is here given:-- SINGULAR PLURAL 1. I shall fall 1. We shall fall 2. Thou wilt fall 2. You will fall 3. He will fall 3. They will fall _Will_, in the _first_ person, denotes not simple futurity, but determination: [I will (= am determined to) go]. _Shall_, in the _second_ and _third_ persons, is not simply the sign of the future tense in declarative sentences. It is used to denote the determination of the speaker with reference to others. Notice:-- 1. In clauses introduced by _that_, expressed or understood, if the noun clause and the principal clause have _different_ subjects, the same auxiliary is used that would be used were the subordinate clause used independently: [I fear we _shall_ be late. My friend is determined that her son _shall_ not be left alone]. 2. In all other subordinate clauses, _shall_, for all persons, denotes simple futurity; _will_, an expression of willingness or determination: [He thinks that he _shall_ be there. He promises that he _will_ be there]. 3. In questions, _shall_ is always used in the first person; in the second and third persons the same auxiliary is used which is expected in the answer. (NOTE.--_Should_ and _would_ follow the rules for _shall_ and _will_.) +61. Tenses for the Completed Action.+ 1. To represent an action as completed at the _present_ time, the past participle is used with _have_ (_hast, has_). This forms the _present perfect_ tense: [I _have finished_]. 2. To represent an action as completed in _past_ time, the past participle is combined with _had_ (_hadst_). This forms the _past perfect_, or _pluperfect_, tense: [I _had finished_]. 3. To represent action that will be completed _in future_ time, _shall have_ or _will have_ is combined with the past participle. This forms the _future perfect_ tense: [I _shall have finished_]. +62. Sequence of Tenses.+--It is, in general, true that the tense of a subordinate clause changes when the tense of the main verb changes. This is known as the Law of the Sequence (or _following_) of Tenses: [I know he means well. I knew he meant well]. The verb in the main clause and the verb in the subordinate clause are not necessarily in the same tense. [I think he _is_ there. I thought he was there. I think he _was_ there. I thought he had been there. I think he _will be_ there. I thought he would be there.] In general, the principle may be laid down that in a complex sentence the tense for both principal and subordinate clauses is that which the sense requires. General truths and present facts should be expressed in the present tense, whatever the tense of the principal verb: [He believed that truth _is_ unchangeable. Who did you say _is_ president of your society?]. The _perfect infinitive_ is used to denote action completed at the time of the main verb: [I am sorry _to have wounded_ you]. +63. Mode.+--A statement may be regarded as the expression of a fact, of a doubt or supposition, or of a command. The power of the verb to show how an action should be regarded is called _mode (mood_). In our language there is but a slight change of form for this purpose. The distinction of mode which we must make is a distinction that has regard to the thought or attitude of mind of the speaker rather than to the form of the verb. The _indicative_ mode is used to state a fact or to ask questions of fact: [I shall write a letter. Shall I write a letter?]. The _subjunctive_ mode indicates uncertainty, unreality, and some forms of condition: [If she were here, I should be glad]. The _imperative_ mode expresses a command or entreaty: [Come here]. +64. The Subjunctive Mode.+--The subjunctive is disappearing from colloquial speech, and the indicative form is used almost entirely. The verb _to be_ has the following indicative and subjunctive forms in the present and preterite:-- IND. SUBJ. IND. SUBJ. { I am I be { I was I were { Thou art Thou be { Thou wast Thou were PRESENT { He is He be PRETERITE { He was He were { We are We be { We were We were { You are You be { You were You were { They are They be { They were They were In other verbs the indicative and subjunctive forms are the same, except that the second and third persons singular subjunctive have no personal endings. INDICATIVE Thou learnest He learns SUBJUNCTIVE Thou learn He learn The subjunctive idea is sometimes expressed by verb phrases, containing the auxiliary verbs _may (might), would_, or _should_. _May, would_, and _should_ are not, however, always subjunctive. In "I _may_ go" (may = am allowed to), _may_ is indicative. In "you _should_ go" (= ought to), _should_ is indicative. The subjunctive mode is used most frequently to express:-- 1. A wish: [The Lord be with you]. 2. A condition regarded as doubtful: [If it be true, what shall we think?], or a condition regarded as untrue: [If I were you, I should go]. When condition is expressed by the subjunctive without _if_, the verb precedes the subject: [Were my brother here, he could go with me]. 3. A purpose: [He studies that he may learn]. 4. Exhortations: [Sing we the song of freedom]. 5. A concession,--supposed, not given as a fact: [Though he be my enemy, I shall pity him]. 6. A possibility: [We fear lest he be too late]. The tenses of the subjunctive require especial notice. In conditional clauses, the _present_ refers either to present or future time: [Though the earth be removed, we shall not fear]. The _preterite_ refers to present time. It implies that the supposed case is not a fact: [If he were here, I should be much pleased]. The _pluperfect_ subjunctive expresses a false supposition in past time: [If you had been here, this would not have happened]. The phrases with _may, might, can, must, could, would_, and _should_ are sometimes called the _potential mode_, but the constructions all fall within either the indicative or the subjunctive uses, and a fourth mode is only an incumbrance. +65. The Imperative Mode.+--The imperative is the mode of command and entreaty. It has but one form for both singular and plural, and but one tense,--the present. It has but one person,--the second. The subject is usually omitted. The case of direct address, frequently used with the imperative, should not be confused with the subject. In, "John, hold my books," the subject is _you_, understood. Were _John_ the subject, the verb must be _holds_. _John_ is, here, a compellative, or vocative. +66. Voice.+--Verbs are said to be in the _active_ voice when they represent the subject as acting, and in the _passive_ voice when they represent the subject as being acted upon. Intransitive verbs, from their very nature, have no passive voice. Transitive verbs may have both voices, for they may represent the subject either as acting or as being acted upon. The direct object in the active voice generally becomes the subject in the passive; if the subject of the active appears in the passive, it is the object of the preposition _by_: [My dog loves me (active). I am loved by my dog (passive)]. Verbs of calling, naming, making, and thinking may take two objects referring to the same person or thing. The first of these is the direct object and the second is called the objective complement: [John called him _a coward_]. The objective complement becomes an attribute complement when the verb is changed from the active to the passive voice: [He was called _a coward_ by John]. Certain verbs take both a direct and an indirect object in the active: [John paid him nine _dollars_]. If the indirect object becomes the subject in the passive voice, the direct object is known as the _retained object:_ [He was paid nine _dollars_ by John]. +67. Infinitives.+--The infinitive form of the verb is often called a verbal noun, because it partakes of the nature both of the verb and of the noun. It is distinguished from the _finite_, or true, verb because it does not make an assertion, and yet it assumes one. While it has the modifiers and complements of a verb, it at the same time has the uses of a noun. There are two infinitives: the _root infinitive_ (commonly preceded by _to_, the so-called _sign_ of the infinitive), and the _gerund_, or _infinitive in -ing_. 1. Root infinitive: [_To write_ a theme requires practice]. 2. Gerund: [_Riding_ rapidly is dangerous]. In each of these sentences the infinitive, in its capacity as noun, stands as the subject of the sentence. In 1, _to write_ shows its verb nature by governing the object _theme;_ in 2, _riding_ shows its verb nature by taking as a modifier the adverb _rapidly_. Each form of the infinitive is found as the subject of a verb, as its object, as an attribute complement, and as the object of a preposition. The root infinitive, together with its subject in the objective case, is used as the object of verbs of knowing, telling, etc.: [I know _him to be a good boy_]. See also Appendix 85 for adjective and adverbial uses. The infinitive has two tenses: the _present_ and the _perfect_. The _present_ tense denotes action which is not completed at the time of the principal verb: [He tries _to write_. He tried _to write_. He will try _to write_]. The _perfect_ infinitive denotes action complete with reference to the time of the principal verb: [I am glad _to have known_ her]. +68. Participles.+--Participles are verbal adjectives: [The girl _playing_ the piano is my cousin]. _Playing_, as an _adjective_, modifies the noun _girl_; it shows its _verbal_ nature by taking the object _piano_. The _present participle_ ends in _-ing_. When the _past participle_ has an ending, it is either _-d, -ed, -t_, or _-en_. The _perfect participle_ is formed by combining _having_ with a past participle; as, _having gone_. There is danger of confusing the present participle with the gerund, or infinitive in _-ing_, unless the adjective character of the one and the noun character of the other are clearly distinguished: [The boy, _driving_ the cows to pasture, was performing his daily task (participle). _Driving_ the cows to pasture was his daily task (gerund)]. Participles are used to form verb-phrases. The present participle is used for the formation of the progressive conjugation; the past participle, for the formation of the compound or perfect tenses. Participles are also used in all the adjective constructions. One especial construction requires notice,--the _absolute_ construction, or the _nominative absolute_, as it is called: [_The ceremony having been finished_, the people dispersed]. The construction here is equivalent to a clause denoting _time_ or _cause_ or some _circumstance_ attendant on the main action of the sentence. The participle is sometimes omitted, but the substantive must not be, lest the participle be left apparently belonging to the nearest substantive; as, Walking home, the rain began to fall. As the sentence stands, _walking_ modifies _rain_. +69. Conjugation.+--The complete and orderly arrangement of the various forms of a verb is termed its conjugation. Complete conjugations will be found in any text-book on English grammar. The passive voice must not be confused with such a form as the progressive conjugation of the verb. The passive consists of a form of _to be_ and a _past participle_: [I am instructed]. The progressive tenses combine some form of _to be_ with a _present_ participle: [I am instructing]. It may be well to distinguish here between the passive voice and a past participle used as an attribute complement of the verb _be_. Both have the same form, but there is a difference of meaning. The passive voice always shows action received by the subject, while the participle is used only as an adjective denoting condition: [James _was tired_ by his day's work (passive voice). James was _tired_ (attribute complement)]. +70. Weak and Strong Conjugations.+--Verbs are divided into two classes as regards their conjugations. It has been the custom to call all verbs which form the preterite and past participle by adding _-d_ or _-ed_ to the present, _regular_ verbs [love, loved, loved], and to call all others _irregular_. A better classification, based on more careful study of the history of the English verb, divides verbs into those of the _weak_ and those of the _strong_ conjugations. The _weak verbs_ are those which form the preterite by adding _-ed, -d_, or _-t_ to the present: _love, loved_. There is also infrequently a change of vowel: _sell, sold_; _teach, taught_. All verbs which form the preterite without the addition of an ending are _strong verbs_. There is usually a change of vowel. The termination of the past participle in _-n_ or _-en_ is a sure indication that a verb is _strong_. Some verbs show forms of both conjugations. A complete list of _strong_ verbs cannot be given here, but a few of the most common will be given, together with a few _weak_ verbs, in the use of which mistakes occur. PRESENT PRETERITE PAST PARTICIPLE am was been arise rose arisen bear bore borne, born[1] begin began begun bid (command) bade bidden bite bit bitten blow blew blown break broke broken bring brought brought burst burst burst catch caught caught choose chose chosen climb climbed climbed come came come do did done drink drank drunk[2] drive drove driven drown drowned drowned eat ate eaten fall fell fallen fly flew flown freeze froze frozen get got got give gave given go went gone grow grew grown have had had hide hid hidden hurt hurt hurt know knew known lay laid laid lie (recline) lay lain lead led led read read read ride rode ridden ring rang rung run ran run see saw seen shake shook shaken show showed shown sing sang sung sink sank sunk sit sat sat slay slew slain speak spoke spoken spring sprang sprung steal stole stolen swell swell { swelled { swollen swim swam swum take took taken tear tore torn throw threw thrown wear wore worn wish wished wished write wrote written [Footnote 1: Used only in the passive sense of "born into the world."] [Footnote 2: _Drunken_ is an adjective.] CAUTION.--Do not confuse the preterite with the past participle. Always use the past participle form in the compound tenses. ADVERBS +71. Classes of Adverbs.+--Adverbs vary much as to their use and meaning. It is therefore impossible to make a very accurate classification, but we may divide them, according to use, into _limiting, interrogative_, and _conjunctive_ adverbs. _Limiting_ adverbs modify the meaning of verbs, etc.: [He rows _well_]. _Interrogative_ adverbs are used to ask questions: [_When_ shall you come? He asked _where_ we were going (indirect question)]. _Conjunctive_ adverbs introduce clauses: [We went to the seashore, _where_ we stayed a month]. Here _where_ is used as a connective and also as a modifier of _stayed_. Conjunctive adverbs introduce the following kinds of clauses: 1. Adverbial clauses: [Go _where_ duty calls]. 2. Adjective clauses: [This is the very spot _where_ I put them]. 3. Noun clause: [I do not know _how_ he will succeed]. Adverbs may also be classified, according to meaning, into adverbs of _manner, time, place_, and _degree_. The classification is not, however, a rigid one. Adverbs of _manner_ answer the question How? Most of these terminate in _-ly_. A few, however, are identical in form with adjectives of like meaning: [She sang very loud]. Adverbs of _time_ answer the question When? Adverbs of _place_ answer the question Where? This class, together with the preceding two classes, usually modify verbs. _Adverbs of degree_ answer the question To what extent? These adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. +72. Phrasal Adverbs.+--Certain phrases, adverbial in character, cannot easily be separated into parts. They have been called _phrased adverbs;_ as, arm-in-arm, now-a-days, etc. +73. Inflection.+--Some adverbs, like adjectives, are compared for the purpose of showing different degrees of quality or quantity. The comparative and superlative degrees may be formed by adding the syllables _er_ and _est_ to the positive degree. The great majority of adverbs, however, make use of the words _more_ and _most_ or _less_ and _least_ to show a difference in degree: [Fast, faster, fastest; skillfully, more skillfully, most skillfully; carefully, less carefully, least carefully]. Some adverbs are compared irregularly:-- badly } worse worst ill (evil)} far } { farther { farthest forth } { further { furthest late later { latest { last little less least much more most nigh nigher { nigher { next well better best +74. Suggestions and Cautions concerning the Use of Adverbs.+ 1. Some words, as _fast, little, much, more_, and others, have the same form for both adjective and adverb, and use alone can determine what part of speech each is. (Adjective) He is a fast driver. She looks well (in good health). (Adverb) How fast he walks! I learned my lesson well. 2. Corresponding adjectives and adverbs usually have different forms which should not be confused. (Adjective) She is a good student. (Adverb) He works well. 3. The adjective, and not the adverbial, form should be used after a copulative verb, since adverbs cannot modify substantives: [I feel bad; not, I feel badly]. 4. Two negatives imply an affirmative. Hence only one should be used to denote negation: [I have nothing to say. I have no patience with him]. +75. Equivalents for Adverbs.+ 1. A phrase: [The child ran away _with great glee_]. 2. A clause: [I will go canoeing _when the lake is calm_]. 3. A noun: [Please come _home_. I will stay five _minutes_]. PREPOSITIONS +76. Classes of Prepositions.+--The _simple_ prepositions are: _at, after, against, but, by, down, for, from, in, of, off, over, on, since, through, till, to, under, up_, and _with_. Other prepositions are either derived or compound: such as, _underneath, across, between, concerning_, and _notwithstanding_. +77. Suggestions concerning the Use of Prepositions.+--Mistakes are frequently made in the use of the preposition. This use cannot be fully discussed here, but a partial list of words with the required preposition will be given. afraid _of_. agree _with_ a person. agree _to_ a proposal. bestow _upon_. compare _to_ (to show similarity). compare _with_ (to show similarity or difference). comply _with_. conform _to_. convenient _for_ or _to_. correspond _to_ or _with_ (a thing). correspond _with_ (a person). dependent _on_. differ _from_ (a person or thing). differ _from_ or _with_ (an opinion). different _from_. disappointed _in_. frightened _at_ or _by_. glad _of_. need _of_. profit _by_. scared _by_. taste _of_ (food). taste _for_ (art). thirst _for_ or _after_. _Like_, originally an adjective or adverb, is often, in some of its uses, called a preposition. It governs the objective case, and should not be used as a conjunction: [She looks like _me;_ not, She looks like I do]. The appropriate _conjunction_ here would be _as_: [She speaks _as_ I do]. The prepositions _in_ and _at_ denote rest or motion _in_ a place; _into_ denotes motion _toward_ a place: [He is _in_ the garden. He went _into_ the garden]. +78. Prepositional Phrases.+--The preposition, with its object, forms what is termed a prepositional phrase. This phrase is _adjective_ in force when it modifies a substantive; and _adverbial_, when it modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb: [In the cottage _by the sea_ (adjective). He sat _on the bench_ (adverb)]. Some prepositions were originally adverbs; such as, _in, on, off, up_, and _to_. Many of them are still used adverbially or as adverbial suffixes: [The ship lay to. A storm came on]. CONJUNCTIONS +79. Classes of Conjunctions.+--Conjunctions are divided according to their use into two general classes: the _coördinate_ and the _subordinate_ conjunctions. _Coördinate_ conjunctions are used to connect words, phrases, and clauses of equal rank; _subordinate_ conjunctions connect clauses of unequal rank. The principal coördinate conjunctions are _and, but, or, nor_, and _for_. _And_ is said to be _copulative_ because it merely adds something to what has just been said. Other conjunctions having a copulative use are _also, besides, likewise, moreover_, and _too_; and the correlative conjunctions, _both ... and, not only ... but also_, etc. These are termed _correlative_ because they occur together. _But_ is termed the _adversative_ coördinate conjunction because it usually introduces something adverse to what has already been said. Other words of an adversative nature are _yet, however, nevertheless, only, notwithstanding_, and _still_. _Or_ is alternative in its force. This conjunction implies that there is a choice to be made. Other similar conjunctions are _either ... or, neither ... nor, or, else_. _Either ... or_ and _neither ... nor_ are termed _correlative_ conjunctions, and they introduce alternatives. _For, because, such_, and as are _coördinate_ conjunctions only in such a case as the following: [She has been running, for she is out of breath]. Some of the most common conjunctions of the _subordinate_ type are those of place and time, cause, condition, purpose, comparison, concession, and result. _That_ introducing a subordinate clause may be called a _substantive_ conjunction: [I knew _that_ I ought to go]. There are a number of subordinate conjunctions used in pairs which are called _correlatives_. The principal pairs are _as ... so, as ... as, so ... as, if ... then, though ... yet_. +80. Simple and Compound Sentences.+--In the first section of this review the parts of a sentence were named as the _subject_ and _predicate_. The _subject_ may itself consist of two parts joined by one of the coördinating conjunctions: [Alice _and_ her cousin are here]. The predicate may be formed in a similar fashion: [John played _and_ made merry all day long]. Both subject and predicate may be so compounded: [John _and_ Richard climbed the ladder _and_ jumped on the hay]. In all these cases the sentence, consisting as it does of but one subject and one predicate, is said to be _simple_. When two clauses--that is, two groups of words containing each a subject and predicate--are united by a coördinate conjunction, the sentence is said to be _compound_: [John wished to play Indian, _but_ Richard preferred to play railroad]. The coördinating conjunction need not actually appear in the sentence. Its omission is then indicated by the punctuation: [John wished to play Indian; Richard preferred another game]. +81. Subordinate Conjunctions and Complex Sentences.+--A _subordinate_ conjunction is used to join a subordinate clause to a principal clause, thus forming a _complex_ sentence. The test to be applied to a clause in order to ascertain whether it is a subordinate clause, is this: if any group of words in a sentence, containing a subject and predicate, fulfills the office of some single part of speech, it is a _subordinate_ clause. In the sentence, "I went because I knew that I must," the clause, "because I knew that I must" states the reason for the action named in the main clause. It, therefore, stands in _adverbial_ relation to the verb "went." "That I must" is the object of "knew." It, therefore, stands in a _substantive_ relation to the verb. Subordinate clauses are often introduced by subordinate conjunctions (sometimes by relative pronouns or adverbs); but, whenever such a clause appears in a sentence, otherwise simple, the sentence is _complex_. If it appears in a sentence otherwise compound, the sentence is _compound-complex_. The different types of subordinate clauses will be discussed later. SENTENCE STRUCTURE +82. Phrases.+--Phrases are classified both as to structure and use. From the standpoint of structure, a phrase is classified from its introductory word or words, as:-- 1. _Prepositional_: [They were _in the temple_]. 2. _Infinitive_: [He tried _to make us hear_]. 3. _Participial_: [_Having finished my letter_]. Classified as to use, a phrase may be-- 1. A _noun_: [_To be good is to be truly great_]. 2. An _adjective_: [The horse is an animal _of much intelligence_]. 3. An _adverb_: [He lives _in the city_]. +83. Clauses.+--It has been already shown that clauses may be either principal or subordinate. A principal clause is sometimes defined as "one that can stand alone," and is therefore independent of the rest of the sentence. This statement is misleading, for, although true in most cases, it does not hold in cases like the following:-- 1. As the tree falls, so it must lie. 2. That sunshine is cheering, cannot be denied. The genuine test for the subordinate clause is the one already given in connection with the study of the subordinate conjunction. It must serve the purpose of some single part of speech. All other clauses are principal clauses. +84. Classification of Subordinate Clauses.+--_A._ Subordinate clauses may be classified into _substantive_ and _modifying_ clauses. _Substantive clauses_ show the various substantive constructions. Thus:-- 1. Subject: ["_Thou shalt not covet_," is the tenth commandment]. 2. Object: [I know _what you wish_]. 3. Appositive: [The truth _that the earth is spherical_ is generally believed]. 4. Attribute complement: [The truth is _that she is not well_]. _Modifying clauses_ show adjective and adverbial constructions. Thus:-- 1. Adjective: [The house _which you see_ is mine]. 2. Adverb: [I will go _when_ it is possible]. _B._ Subordinate clauses may also be classified according to the introductory word. (_a_) Clauses introduced by _relative_ or _interrogative pronouns_: _who, which, what, that_ (= who or which), _as_ (after such), and the compound relatives, _whoever, whichever, whatever_ (the first three are both relative and interrogative): [The school _that stands on the hillside_ is painted white. I know _whom you_ mean]. (_b_) Clauses introduced by a relative or interrogative adjective: [The man _whose library is well furnished_ is rich. I see _which way I ought to take_]. (_c_) Clauses introduced by a relative or interrogative adverb, such as _when, whenever, since_ (referring to time), _until, before, after, where, whence, whither, wherever, why, as, how_: [I know the house _where lie lives_]. (_d_) Clauses introduced by a subordinate conjunction, such as _because, since_ (= because), _though, although, if, unless, that_ (= in order that), _as, as if, as though, then_: [I will go _since you wish it_]. _C._ Subordinate clauses may also be classified according to the nature of the thought expressed. (_a_) General description: [The house, _which stands on the hill_, has a fine view]. (_b_) Place: [The house _where he was born_ is torn down]. (_c_) Time: [He works _whenever he_ can]. (_d_) Cause: [_Since you wish it_, I will go]. (_e_) Concession: [_Although he is my friend_, I can see his faults]. (_f_) Purpose: [Run, _that you may obtain the prize_]. (_g_) Result: [She was so tired _that she stumbled_]. (_h_) Condition: [_If it rains_, we shall not go]. (_i_) Comparison: [You look as _if you were tired_]. Note that the subordinate clauses in the above examples are modifying clauses. (_j_) Direct quotation: [She said, "_I will go_"]. (_k_) Indirect statement: [She said _that she would go_]. (_l_) Indirect question: [I knew _where his house_ was]. Note that the subordinate clauses in the above examples are substantive clauses. +85. The Framework of a Sentence+ has been already described as consisting of the _subject_, the _verb_, and, if the verb be incomplete, of some completing element, _object_ or _attribute complement_. Occasionally an _objective complement_ must be added. Besides these elementary parts, both subject and predicate may have modifiers. The usual modifiers of the subject are:-- 1. Adjective: [The _golden_ bowl is broken]. 2. Adjective phrase: [The house _on the hill_ is beautiful]. 3. Adjective clause: [The house _which stands on the hill_ is beautiful]. 4. Noun or pronoun in possessive case: [_Helen's_ paint box is lost]. 5. Noun in apposition: [Mr. Merrill, the _president_ of the club, will open the debate]. 6. Adverb used as an adjective: [My _sometime_ friend]. 7. Infinitive used adjectively: [Work _to do_ is a blessing]. 8. Participle: [The child, _lagging_ behind, lost her way]. The modifiers of the predicate are:-- 1. Adverb: [The snow melted very _quickly_]. 2. Noun used adverbially: [I walked a _mile_]. 3. Infinitive used adverbially: [We were called together _to decide_ an important question]. 4. Adverbial phrase: [She ran _along the road_]. 5. Adverbial clause: [Go _when you can_]. 6. Nominative absolute: [The _speeches being over_, the audience dispersed]. Occasionally, adverbs and phrases of adverbial character modify the entire thought in a sentence, rather than some single word: [_To speak plainly,_ I cannot go. _Perhaps_ I may help you]. LIST OF SPECIAL WORDS +86. Special Words.+--A list is here given of words which appear as various parts of speech:--- +a+ (1) Adjective: _A_ book. (2) Preposition: I go a-fishing. +about+ (1) Preposition: Walk _about_ the house. (2) Adverb: We walked _about_ for an hour. _By, over, up_, etc., are used in the same way. +above+ (1) Preposition: The sun is _above_ the horizon. (2) Adverb: Go _above_. (3) Noun: Every good gift is from _above_. (4) Adjective: The _above_ remarks are discredited. _Below_ has the same uses. +after+ (1) Preposition: _After_ our sail. (2) Conjunctive adverb: He came _after_ she went away. +all+ (1) Pronoun: _All_ went merry as a marriage bell. (2) Noun: I gave my _all_. (3) Adjective: _All_ hands to the rescue. (4) Adverb: The work is _all_ right. +as+ (1) Conjunctive pronoun: I give such _as_ I have. (2) Conjunctive adverb: I am not so old _as_ she. (3) Adverb: What other grief is _as_ hard to bear? (4) Conjunction: _As_ it was hot, we did not go. (5) Preposition: I warned her _as_ a friend. (6) Compound Conjunction: He looks _as_ if he were not well. +before+ (1) Preposition: He stood _before_ the door. (2) Conjunctive Adverb: I will do it _before_ I go. (3) Adverb: She has never been here _before_. +both+ (1) Adjective: _Both_ white and red pines are beautiful. (2) Pronoun: _Both_ are yours. (3) Conjunction: She is _both_ good and beautiful. +but+ (1) Conjunction: John reads _but_ Richard plays. (2) Preposition: All _but_ him are at home. (3) Adverb: We can _but_ fail. +either+ (1) Adjective: _Either_ dress is becoming. (2) Conjunction: _Either_ this dress or the other is becoming. (3) Pronoun: _Either_ is right. +fast+ (1) Noun: A long _fast_. (2) Verb: They _fast_ often. (3) Adverb: The rain fell _fast_. (4) Adjective: He is a _fast_ walker. +for+ (1) Subordinate Conjunction: I must go, _for_ I promised. (2) Coördinate Conjunction: She stayed at home, _for_ I saw her. (3) Preposition: I have nothing _for_ you. +hard+ (1) Adjective: _Hard_ labor. (2) Adverb: He works _hard_. +like+ (1) Noun: We may never see her _like_ again. (2) Adjective: This process gives _like_ results. (3) Adverb: _Like_ as a father pitieth his children. (4) Preposition: She looks _like_ me. (By some grammarians _like_ in this case is considered a _adjective_ with the preposition _to_ omitted.) (5) Verb: You _like_ your work. +little+ (1) Adjective: A _little_ bread. (2) Noun: I wish a _little_. (3) Adverb: He laughs _little_. _Much_ has the same uses. +many a+ (1) Adjective: _Many a_ tree. +notwithstanding+ (1) Preposition: _Notwithstanding_ the rain, we were content. (2) Conjunction or Preposition: She is happy, _notwithstanding_ (the fact that) she is an invalid. +only+ (1) Adjective: This is the _only_ way. (2) Adverb: _Only_ experienced persons need apply. (3) Conjunction: I should go, _only_ it is stormy. +since+ (1) Preposition: _Since_ that day I have not seen her. (2) Conjunction: _Since_ you lost it, you must replace it. (3) Adverb: I have not seen her _since_. (4) Conjunctive Adverb: You have been here _since_ I have. +still+ (1) Adjective: The lake is _still_. (2) Adverb: The tree is _still_ lying where it fell. (3) Conjunction: He is entertaining; _still_ he talks too much. (4) Verb: Oil is said to _still_ the waves. (5) Noun: In the _still_ of noonday the song of the locust was loud. +than+ (1) Conjunction: I am older _than_ she. (2) Preposition: _Than_ whom there is none wiser. +that+ (1) Demonstrative Pronoun: _That_ is right. (2) Conjunctive Pronoun: He _that_ lives nobly is happy. (3) Adjective: _That_ book is mine. (4) Conjunction: I say this _that_ you may understand my position. (5) Substantive Conjunction: _That_ this is true is evident. +the+ (1) Adjective (article): _The_ lake. (2) Adverb: _The_ more ... _the_ merrier. +then+ (1) Adverb: I shall know _then_. (2) Conjunction: If you so decide, _then_ we may go. +there+ (1) Adverb: The stream runs _there_. (2) Expletive: _There_ are many points to be considered. (3) Interjection: _There! there!_ it makes no difference! +what+ (1) Conjunctive Interrogative Pronoun: I heard _what_ you said. Pronoun: _What_ shall I do? (3) Interrogative Adjective: _What_ game do you prefer? (4) Conjunctive Adjective: I know _what_ books he enjoys. (5) Adverb: _What_ with this and _what_ with that, he finally got his wish. (6) Interjection: _What! what!_ +while+ (1) Noun: A long _while_. (2) Verb: To _while_ away the time. (3) Conjunctive Adverb: I stay in _while_ it snows. III. FIGURES OF SPEECH +87. Figures of Speech.+--A figure of speech is a change from the usual form of expression for the purpose of producing a greater effect. These changes may be effective either because they are more pleasing to us or because they are more forcible, or for both reasons. While figurative language is a change from the usual mode of expression, we are not to think of it as being unnatural. It is, in fact, as natural as plain language, and nearly every one, from the illiterate to the most learned, makes use of it, more or less, in his ordinary conversation. This arises from, the fact that we all enjoy comparisons and substitutions. When we say that we have been pegging away all day at our work, or that the wind howls, or that the man has a heart of steel, we are making use of figures of speech. Figurative language ranges from these very simple expressions to the beautiful figures of speech found in so much of our poetry. Written prose contains many beautiful and forcible examples, but it is in poetry that we find most of them. +88. Simile.+--A simile is an expressed comparison between objects belonging to different classes. We must remember, however, that all resemblances do not constitute similes. If we compare two trees, or two beehives, or two rivers, our comparison is not a simile. If we compare a tree to a person, a beehive to a schoolroom, or time to a river, we may form a good simile, since the things compared do not belong to the same class. The best similes are those in which the ideas compared have one strong point of resemblance, and are unlike in all other respects. 1. How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. --Shakespeare. 2. For very young he seemed, tenderly reared; Like some young cypress, tall, and dark, and straight. --Matthew Arnold. 3. In the primrose-tinted sky The wan little moon Hangs like a jewel dainty and rare. --Francis C. Rankin. +89. Metaphor.+--A metaphor differs from a simile in that the comparison is implied rather than expressed. They are essentially the same as far as the comparison is concerned, and usually the one kind may be easily changed to the other. In a simile we say that one object _is like_ another, in a metaphor we say that one object _is_ another. EXERCISES Select the metaphors in the following and change them to similes:-- 1. In arms the Austrian phalanx stood, A living wall, a human wood. --James Montgomery. 2. The familiar lines Are footpaths for the thoughts of Italy. --Longfellow. 3. Life is a leaf of paper white, Whereon each one of us may write His word or two, and then comes night. --Lowell. +90. Personification.+--Personification is a special form of the metaphor in which life is attributed to inanimate objects or the characteristics of persons are attributed to objects, animals, or even to abstract ideas. EXERCISES Explain why the following quotations are examples of personifications:-- 1. The day is done; and slowly from the scene The stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts And puts them back into his golden quiver. --Longfellow. 2. Time is a cunning workman and no man can detect his joints. --Charles Pierce Burton. 3. The sun is couched, the seafowl gone to rest, And the wild storm hath somewhere found a nest. --Wordsworth. 4. See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother. --Shelley. +91. Apostrophe.+--Apostrophe is like personification, but has an additional characteristic. When we directly address inanimate objects or the absent as if they were present, we call the figure of speech thus formed apostrophe. The following are examples of apostrophe:-- 1. Break, break, break, At the foot of thy crags, O Sea! --Tennyson. 2. Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for to-night! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore. --Elizabeth Akers Allen. +92. Metonymy.+--Metonymy consists in substituting one object for another, the two being so closely associated that the mention of one suggests the other. 1. The pupils are reading George Eliot. 2. Each hamlet heard the call. 3. Strike for your altars and your fires. 4. Gray hairs should be respected. +93. Synecdoche.+--Synecdoche consists in substituting a part of anything for the whole or a whole for the part. 1. A babe, two summers old. 2. Give us this day our daily bread. 3. Ring out the thousand years of woe, Ring in the thousand years of peace. 4. Fifty mast are on the ocean. +94. Other Figures of Speech.+--Sometimes, especially in older rhetorics, the following so-called figures of speech are added to the list already given: irony, hyperbole, antithesis, climax, and interrogation. The two former pertain rather to style, in fact, are qualities of style, while the last two might properly be placed along with kinds of sentences or paragraph development. Since these so-called figures are not all mentioned elsewhere in this text, a brief explanation and example of each will be given here. 1. _Irony_ consists in saying just the opposite of the intended meaning, but in such a way that it emphasizes that meaning. What has the gray-haired prisoner done? Has murder stained his hands with gore? Not so; his crime is a fouler one-- God made the old man poor. --Whittier. 2. _Hyperbole_ is an exaggerated expression used to increase the effectiveness of a statement. He was a man of boundless knowledge. 3. _Antithesis_ consists merely of contrasted statements. This contrast may be found in a single sentence or it may be extended through an entire paragraph. Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it. --Shakespeare. 4. _Climax_ consists of an ascendant arrangement of words or ideas. I came, I saw, I conquered. 5. When a question is asked, not for the purpose of obtaining information but in order to make speech more effective, it is called the figure of _interrogation_. An affirmative question denies and a negative question affirms. 1. Am I my brother's keeper? 2. Am I not free? IV. THE RHETORICAL FEATURES OF THE SENTENCE +95. Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis in Sentences.+--On pages 153-155 we have considered the principles of unity, coherence, and emphasis as applied to the whole composition. In much the same way these principles are applicable to the sentence. A sentence possesses unity if all that it contains makes one complete statement, and no more; and if all minor ideas are made subordinate to one main idea. The effect must be single. A sentence exhibits coherence when the relation of all of its parts is perfectly clear. We secure emphasis in the sentence by placing ideas that deserve distinction in conspicuous positions; by arranging the members of a series in the order of climax; by using specific rather than general terms; by expressing thoughts with directness and simplicity; and by employing the devices of balance and contrast. We must remember that, in the sentence as well as in the whole composition and the paragraph, if coherence and unity are secured, emphasis is quite likely to follow naturally. On the other hand, a violation of coherence or unity often results in a lack of emphasis. +96. Unity in the sentence is affected unfavorably by+-- 1. _The presence of more than one main thought_. (Stonewall Jackson was a general in the Confederate Army, and he is said to have been a very religious man.) In this sentence two distinct thoughts are embodied, and in such a way that their relation to each other is altogether illogical. The effect is not that of a single thought. To possess unity the two or more thoughts of a compound sentence should sustain some particular relation, like cause and effect, contrast, series, details of a picture. We can unite the two thoughts in a perfectly logical sentence, thus: (Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is said to have been a very religious man.) 2. _The addition of too many dependent clauses_. (The boy was startled when he awoke, for he heard the plan of his captors, who were preparing to seize the boat, which had been left by his friends who had so mysteriously deserted him at a time when he needed them most.) Here, the numerous dependent clauses tacked on obscure the main thought. The sentence should be broken up and, where possible, clauses should be reduced to phrases and words. (The boy was startled when he awoke, for he heard the plan of his captors. They were preparing to seize the boat left by his friends, who had deserted him in the hour of greatest need.) 3. _The presence of incongruous ideas_. (With his hair combed and his shoes blacked, he gave the impression of being a very strong man.) The ideas of this sentence have no logical relation to each other. There is little likelihood, too, of making them more congruous by any change in the sentence. Blacking one's shoes and combing one's hair do not make one look strong. The remedy for such a sentence is to separate the incongruous ideas. 4. _A needless change of construction_. (Silas was kindly received by the men in the tavern; and when they had listened to his story and his answers to their questions had been noted, they began to think of catching the thief.) Confusion arises from such sudden and needless changes of the subject. By keeping the same subject throughout, we secure unity of impression. (The men in the tavern received Silas kindly; and when they had listened to his story and had noted his answers to their questions, they began to think of catching the thief.) 5. _Making the sentence too short and fragmentary to serve as a logical unit of the paragraph_. (I went to the park yesterday. It was a pleasant day. I saw many animals. I had a good time, etc.) Each of these sentences, when considered in its relation to the others, and to the development of the thought, is altogether too incomplete and unimportant in ideas expressed to stand alone. Unity of impression and dignity of thought are gained by combining the sentences. (Yesterday was a pleasant day; so I went to the park, where I saw many animals, and had a good time.) +97. Coherence in the sentence is affected unfavorably by+-- 1. _The wrong placing of modifiers_. (The victorious general was returning to his native city after many hard-fought campaigns with his staff officers.) It is not likely that the campaigns here referred to were waged against the staff officers. By changing the position of phrases we express the thought that the writer had in mind. (After many hard-fought campaigns, the victorious general, with his staff officers, was approaching his native city.) Especial care should be taken in placing the correlatives _either, or; neither, nor; not only, but also;_ and the word _only_. Incoherence frequently arises through the wrong placing of these words. 2. _The careless use of pronouns_. (Argument plays a very little part in that work, and those that do occur are not interesting.) (He repeated to his father what he had told him the night before when he was in his room.) In both sentences, the relation between pronouns and antecedents is not clear, and incoherence results. With the ambiguity in the use of the pronouns remedied, the sentences are entirely coherent. (Argument plays a very little part in that work, and whatever argumentative material is found is not interesting.) (He repeated to his father what he had told this parent the night before in his room.) 3. _Careless participial and infinitive relations_. (After carefully preparing my lessons, a friend came in.) (Standing on Brooklyn Bridge, a great many ferryboats can be seen.) The relation of the parts is manifestly illogical and absurd. The sentences should read: (After I had carefully prepared my lessons, a friend came in.) (While standing on Brooklyn Bridge, one can see a great many ferryboats.) 4. _The use of wrong connectives_. (It rained yesterday, and I went to school.) We assume that the pupil wishes to convey the thought that he went to school yesterday in spite of the rain. But by his use of the coordinating conjunction, "and," he has failed to establish a logical relation between the two clauses. In this case unity is violated as well as coherence. Use different connectives and note the result, (Although it rained yesterday, I went to school) or, (It rained yesterday, but I went to school). 5. _Failure to observe parallelism in form_. (The stranger seemed courteous in his conduct and to have a solicitude for my welfare.) Although this sentence is grammatically correct, the shift in structure from the adjective and its phrase to the infinitive phrase leads to confusion in thought. How much clearer and smoother this rendering: (The stranger seemed courteous in his conduct and solicitous for my welfare.) +98. Emphasis in the sentence is affected unfavorably by+-- 1. _Weak beginnings and endings_. (A fire in the city is an exciting event to the average boy.) (It seemed that the unprincipled fellow had forged his father's name.) In the first sentence, the important words are "exciting event," and they should occupy the most conspicuous position,-- at the end of the sentence. The effectiveness is much improved by this order: (To the average boy, a fire in the city is an exciting event.) In the second sentence the weak place is the beginning. The subject and its modifiers are striking enough to demand their rightful position,--as the introductory words; in "forged his father's name" we have ideas startling enough for a place at the end of the sentence. "It seemed that" can be reduced to one word, "apparently," and this can be made parenthetical. (The unprincipled fellow, apparently, had forged his father's name.) This sentence, it will be observed, illustrates the periodic or suspended structure, a type particularly effective to employ for sustaining interest as well as for securing emphasis. 2. _Failure to observe the order of climax_. (Dazed, broken-hearted, hungry, the poor mother resumed her daily tasks.) Clearly, the strongest idea is suggested by "broken-hearted." A better order would be: (Hungry, dazed, broken-hearted, the poor mother resumed her daily tasks.) 3. _The use of superfluous words_. (I rushed hurriedly into the burning house and hastily snatched my few possessions.) In this sentence, "rushed" and "snatched" lose rather than gain force by adding "hurriedly" and "hastily." Look up definitions of "rush" and "snatch." When we wish to express strong emotion or to describe action resulting from excitement, we only weaken the impression by using unnecessary words. Simple, direct sentences are most forceful. In aiming to secure sentence emphasis, then, we should avoid circumlocution, redundancy, tautology, and verbosity. (Look up these terms in the Century Dictionary.) 4. _The use of general rather than specific terms_. (He approached the brook cautiously, and concealing himself in the bushes, began fishing.) A consideration of the choice of words in the sentence belongs strictly to the study of diction; however, force in the sentence is dependent in a large measure on the words employed. Observe how forceful the following sentence is as contrasted with the first example: (He crept noiselessly to the fishing hole, and hiding in the willows, threw his hook into the stream.) 5. _Failure to employ balance and contrast_. (Worth makes the man; but the fellow is made by the want of it.) (His life was spent in repenting of past misdeeds; in doing what was wrong, while he inculcated principles of righteousness.) Compare these with: (Worth makes the man; the want of it, the fellow.) (His life was spent in sinning and repenting; in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong.) Here the regularity of form gives pleasure to the taste, while the position of balanced and parallel parts adds clearness, coherence, and emphasis to the thoughts expressed. This method of sentence structure, if employed too frequently, however, will lead to a mannerism difficult to overcome. The caution to be heeded in the case of this type of sentence as well as in the case of every other is, "Nothing too much." Observe the law of variety. EXERCISES Point out the specific faults and correct:-- 1. He neither gave satisfaction as butler nor as coachman. 2. Elaine deserves our sympathy from the beginning to the end of the novel. 3. John only played once and won; and then, after watching the other players for a time, he got up and left the room. 4. The boy had an unconquerable fear of reptiles which no reasoning could overcome. 5 The Vicar's son Moses was a good student of the classics, but he made a bad bargain in his purchase of the green spectacles. 6. In all of his behavior toward Lynette, Gareth was patient and courteous, which reflected much credit on his knightly character. 7. Johnson was a man with a heroic soul, a wonderful intellect, and a kind heart. 8. After they had all assembled and come together, Odysseus addressed them. 9. He had reached the age of seventy, and his death was due to a nervous disorder. 10. The boys were only injured a little. 11. George Eliot's writings are filled with the philosophy of life, if we are wise enough to discover it. 12. Addison was sincere and kindly in his attitude toward men, and Pope was hypocritical and spiteful. 13. With reputation, character, and wealth gone, the poor man had little to live for. 14. Lancelot loved Queen Guinevere dearly, and he was Arthur's most valorous knight. 15. We are at peace with all the world and the rest of mankind. 16. Cedric lived with two great ends in view,--the union of Athelstane and Rowena and to see a restored Saxon monarchy. 17. James was walking backward and forward on the mountain side, which at this place was very precipitous and from which a little silvery stream issued to begin its rapid descent to the quiet hamlet that lay far below. 18. In our efforts to succeed in life we work hard that we may make names for ourselves and to acquire property. 19. He is a good hunter, but his wife is a Methodist. 20. Going up the street I saw the strangest-looking man. 21. James speaks German fluently, and he did not begin to study it until last year. 22. On returning to the deck, the sea assumed a very different aspect. V. LIST OF SYNONYMS Abandon, cast off, desert, forswear, quit, renounce, withdraw from. Abate, decrease, diminish, mitigate, moderate. Abhor, abominate, detest, dislike, loathe. Abiding, enduring, lasting, permanent, perpetual. Ability, capability, capacity, competency, efficacy, power. Abolish, annul, eradicate, exterminate, obliterate, root out, wipe out. Abomination, curse, evil, iniquity, nuisance, shame. Absent, absent-minded, absorbed, abstracted, oblivious, preoccupied. Absolve, acquit, clear. Abstemiousness, abstinence, frugality, moderation, sobriety, temperance. Absurd, ill-advised, ill-considered, ludicrous, monstrous, paradoxical, preposterous, unreasonable, wild. Abundant, adequate, ample, enough, generous, lavish, plentiful. Accomplice, ally, colleague, helper, partner. Active, agile, alert, brisk, bustling, energetic, lively, supple. Actual, authentic, genuine, real. Address, adroitness, courtesy, readiness, tact. Adept, adroit, deft, dexterous, handy, skillful. Adequate, adjoining, bordering, near, neighboring. Admire, adore, respect, revere, venerate. Admit, allow, concede, grant, suffer, tolerate. Admixture, alloy. Adverse, disinclined, indisposed, loath, reluctant, slow, unwilling. Aerial, airy, animated, ethereal, frolicsome. Affectation, cant, hypocrisy, pretense, sham. Affirm, assert, avow, declare, maintain, state. Aged, ancient, antiquated, antique, immemorial, old, venerable. Air, bearing, carriage, demeanor. Akin, alike, identical. Alert, on the alert, sleepless, wary, watchful. Allay, appease, calm, pacify. Alliance, coalition, compact, federation, union, fusion. Allude, hint, imply, insinuate, intimate, suggest. Allure, attract, cajole, coax, inveigle, lure. Amateur, connoisseur, novice, tyro. Amend, better, mend, reform, repair. Amplify, develop, expand, extend, unfold, widen. Amusement, diversion, entertainment, pastime. Anger, exasperation, petulance, rage, resentment. Animal, beast, brute, living creature, living organism. Answer, rejoinder, repartee, reply, response, retort. Anticipate, forestall, preclude, prevent. Apiece, individually, severally, separately. Apparent, clear, evident, obvious, tangible, unmistakable. Apprehend, comprehend, conceive, perceive, understand. Arraign, charge, cite, impeach, indict, prosecute, summon. Arrogance, haughtiness, presumption, pride, self-complacency, superciliousness, vanity. Artist, artificer, artisan, mechanic, operative, workman. Artless, boorish, clownish, hoidenish, rude, uncouth, unsophisticated. Assent, agree, comply. Assurance, effrontery, hardihood, impertinence, impudence, incivility, insolence, officiousness, rudeness. Atom, grain, scrap, particle, shred, whit. Atrociousness, barbaric, barbarous, brutal, merciless. Attack, assault, infringement, intrusion, onslaught. Attain, accomplish, achieve, arrive at, compass, reach, secure. Attempt, endeavor, essay, strive, try, undertake. Attitude, pose, position, posture. Attribute, ascribe, assign, charge, impute. Axiom, truism. Baffle, balk, bar, check, embarrass, foil, frustrate, hamper, hinder, impede, retard, thwart. Banter, burlesque, drollery, humor, jest, raillery, wit, witticism. Beg, plead, press, urge. Beguile, divert, enliven, entertain, occupy. Bewilderment, confusion, distraction, embarrassment, perplexity. Bind, fetter, oblige, restrain, restrict. Blaze, flame, flare, flash, flicker, glare, gleam, gleaming, glimmer, glitter, light, luster, shimmer, sparkle. Blessed, hallowed, holy, sacred, saintly. Boasting, display, ostentation, pomp, pompousness, show. Brave, adventurous, bold, courageous, daring, dauntless, fearless, gallant, heroic, undismayed. Bravery, coolness, courage, gallantry, heroism. Brief, concise, pithy, sententious, terse. Bring over, convince, induce, influence, persuade, prevail upon, win over. Calamity, disaster, misadventure, mischance, misfortune, mishap. Candid, impartial, open, straightforward, transparent, unbiased, unprejudiced, unreserved. Candor, frankness, truth, veracity. Caprice, humor, vagary, whim. Caricature, burlesque, parody, travesty. Catch, capture, clasp, clutch, grip, secure. Cause, consideration, design, end, ground, motive, object, reason, purpose. Caution, discretion, prudence. Censure, criticism, rebuke, reproof, reprimand, reproach. Character, constitution, disposition, reputation, temper, temperament. Characteristic, peculiarity, property, singularity, trait. Chattering, garrulous, loquacious, talkative. Cheer, comfort, delight, ecstasy, gayety, gladness, gratification, happiness, jollity, satisfaction. Churlish, crusty, gloomy, gruff, ill-natured, morose, sour, sullen, surly. Class, circle, clique, coterie. Cloak, cover, gloss over, mitigate, palliate, screen. Cloy, sate, satiate, satisfy, surfeit. Commit, confide, consign, intrust, relegate. Compassion, forbearance, lenience, mercy. Compassionate, gracious, humane. Complete, consummate, faultless, flawless, perfect. Confirm, corroborate. Conflicting, discordant, discrepant, incongruous, mismated. Confused, discordant, miscellaneous, various. Conjecture, guess, suppose, surmise. Conscious, aware, certain. Consequence, issue, outcome, outgrowth, result, sequel, upshot. Continual, continuous, incessant, unbroken, uninterrupted. Credible, conceivable, likely, presumable, probable, reasonable. Customary, habitual, normal, prevailing, usual, wonted. Damage, detriment, disadvantage, harm, hurt, injury, prejudice. Dangerous, formidable, terrible. Defame, deprecate, disparage, slander, vilify. Defile, infect, soil, stain, sully, taint, tarnish. Deleterious, detrimental, hurtful, harmful, mischievous, pernicious, ruinous. Delicate, fine, minute, refined, slender. Delightful, grateful, gratifying, refreshing, satisfying. Difficult, hard, laborious, toilsome, trying. Digress, diverge, stray, swerve, wander. Disown, disclaim, disavow, recall, renounce, repudiate, retract. Dispose, draw, incline, induce, influence, move, prompt, stir. Earlier, foregoing, previous, preliminary. Effeminate, feminine, womanish, womanly. Emergency, extremity, necessity. Empty, fruitless, futile, idle, trifling, unavailing, useless, vain, visionary. Erudition, knowledge, profundity, sagacity, sense, wisdom. Eternal, imperishable, interminable, perennial, perpetual, unfailing. Excuse, pretense, pretext, subterfuge. Exemption, immunity, liberty, license, privilege. Explicit, express. Faint, faint-hearted, faltering, half-hearted, irresolute, languid, listless, purposeless. Faithful, loyal, stanch, trustworthy, trusty. Fanciful, fantastic, grotesque, imaginative, visionary. Fling, gibe, jeer, mock, scoff, sneer, taunt. Flock, bevy, brood, covey, drove, herd, litter, pack. Fluctuate, hesitate, oscillate, vacillate, waver. Folly, imbecility, senselessness, stupidity. Grief, melancholy, regret, sadness, sorrow. Hale, healthful, healthy, salutary, sound, vigorous. Ignorant, illiterate, uninformed, uninstructed, unlettered, untaught. Impulsive, involuntary, spontaneous, unbidden, voluntary, willing. Indispensable, inevitable, necessary, requisite, unavoidable. Inquisitive, inquiring, intrusive, meddlesome, peeping, prying. Intractable, perverse, petulant, ungovernable, wayward, willful. Irritation, offense, pique, resentment. Probably, presumably. Reliable, trustworthy, trusty. Remnant, trace, token, vestige. Requite, repay, retaliate, satisfy. VI. LIST OF WORDS FOR EXERCISES IN WORD USAGE Ability, capacity. Accept, except. Acceptance, acceptation. Access, accession. Accredit, credit. Act, action. Admire, like. Admittance, admission. Advance, advancement, progress, progression. Affect, effect. After, afterward. Aggravating, irritating, provoking, exasperating. Allege, maintain Allow, guess, think. Allusion, illusion, delusion. Almost, most, mostly. Alone, only. Alternate, choice. Among, between. Amount, number, quantity. Angry, mad. Apparently, evidently. Apt, likely, liable. Arise, rise. At, in. Avocation, vocation. Awfully, very. Balance, rest, remainder. Begin, commence. Beside, besides. Both, each, every. Bring, fetch. By, with. Calculate, intend. Carry, bring, fetch. Casuality, casualty. Character, reputation. Claim, assert. Clever, pleasant. College, university, school. Completeness, completion. Compliment, complement. Confess, admit. Construe, construct. Contemptible, contemptuous. Continual, continuous. Convince, convict. Council, counsel. Couple, pair. Credible, creditable, credulous. Custom, habit. Deadly, deathly. Decided, decisive. Decimate, destroy. Declare, assert. Degrade, demean. Depot, station, R.R. Discover, invent. Drive, ride. Each other, any other, one another. Emigration, immigration, migration. Enormity, enormousness. Estimate, esteem. Exceptional, exceptionable. Expect, suppose. Falseness, falsity. Fly, flee. Funny, odd. Grant, give. Habit, practice. Haply, happily. Healthy, healthful, wholesome. Human, humane. Lady, woman. Last, latest, preceding. Learn, teach. Lease, hire. Less, fewer. Lie, lay. Loan, lend. Love, like. Mad, angry. Majority, plurality. Manly, mannish. May, can. Mutual, common. Necessities, necessaries. Nice, pleasant, attractive. Noted, notorious. Observation, observance. Official, officious. Oral, verbal. Part, portion. Partly, partially. Persecute, prosecute. Person, party. Practicable, practical. Prescribe, proscribe. Prominent, predominant. Purpose, propose. Quite, very, rather. Relation, relative. Repair, mend. Requirement, requisite. Rise, raise. Scholar, pupil, student. Sensible of, sensitive to. Series, succession. Settle, locate. Sewage, sewerage. Shall, will. Should, would. Sit, set. Splendid, elegant. Statement, assertion. Statue, statute, stature. Stay, stop. Team, carriages. Transpire, happen. Verdict, testimony. Without, unless. Womanly, womanish. INDEX Abbott. Action: observation of. Actuality: in argument. Adams. Adjectives. Advantages: of expressing ideas gained from experience; of imaginative theme writing. Adverbs. Agreement. Allen, Elizabeth A. Allen, James Lane. Ambiguity. Analogy: argument from. Antithesis. Apostrophe: rule for; as figure of speech. Argument: purpose of; use of explanation in; by stating advantages and disadvantages; by use of specific instances; refutation or indirect; differs from exposition; clear thinking essential; by inference; from cause; from sign; from example; from analogy; differs from persuasion; with persuasion. Argumentative themes. Arnold. Arrangement: _see_ coherence; in argument; summary of. Attendant circumstances: argument from. Authority: appeals to in argument. Auxiliary verbs. Ayton. Bagley. Baldwin. Ballad. Bancroft. Belief: necessity in debate; establishing a general theory; basis of. Beveridge. Biography. Blank verse. Boardman. Bourdillon. Bowles. Bradley. Brief. Brown. Browning. Bryant. Budgell. Burke. Burns. Burroughs. Byron. Cable. Camp. Capitals. Cary. Case. Cause and effect: development of paragraph by use of; development of composition by use of; use in exposition; use in argument. Cautions and suggestions: use of figures of speech; in debating; use of pronouns; use of adjectives; use of verbs; use of adverbs; prepositions. Character sketch. Choice of words: adapted to reader; as to meaning; simple. Clark. Classification. Clauses: restrictive and non-restrictive. Clearness. Climax: in narration; in argument; as figure of speech. Coherence: definition; in outline; in composition; arrangement of details; arrangement of facts in exposition; aided by outline; in argument; in sentences. Coleridge. Colon: rules for. Colton. Comma: rules for. Comparison: as an aid to formation of images; development of a paragraph by; definitions supplemented by; as a method of developing a composition; as an aid in establishing fundamental image; as an aid to effectiveness in description; use in exposition; analogy; of adjectives; of adverbs. Complete and incomplete verbs. Composition: kinds of; general principles of. Conclusion. Conjugation. Conjunctions. Connolly. Connor. Constructions: of nouns; of personal pronouns; of relative pronouns; of adjectives. Contrast: development of a paragraph by; development of a composition by; use in exposition. Conversation. Cooper. Copeland-Rideout. Correction of themes. Darwin. Dash: rules for. Debate: value of; statement of question; necessity of belief; order of presentation; cautions. Deductive reasoning: errors of. Definition: by synonym; by use of simpler words; definitions to be supplemented; first step in exposition; logical; difficulty in framing; inexact. Description: Chapter VIII (_see also_ descriptive themes); defined; effectiveness in; classes of objects frequently described: buildings; natural features; sounds; color; animals; plants; persons; impression of; impression as purpose of; in narration; general description. Descriptive themes. Details: selection of; paragraph developed by; related in time-order; related with reference to position in space; used in general description; in general narration; composition developed by giving details in time-order; by giving details with reference to position in space; selection of, affected by point of view; selection of essential; selection and subordination of minor; arrangement of; in narration; arrangement; selection of facts in exposition; exposition by use of. Dewey. Diction. Discourse: forms of presupposes an audience. Division. Dixey. Dramatic poetry. Dryer. Dunbar, Mary Louise. Ease. Effectiveness in description comparison and figures of speech, as aids to. Elegance. Elegy. Eliot, George. Emphasis in sentences. Enthymeme. Epic. Equivalents: for nouns for adjectives. for adverbs Essentials of expression. Euphony. Evidence. Examples: use in exposition argument from _(see also_ specific instances). Exclamation mark: rule for. Expediency: questions of. Experience: ideas gained from, Chapter I; relation to imagination impressions limited to. Exposition: Chapter X (see _also_ expository themes); purpose of importance of clear understanding necessary of terms of propositions by repetition by examples by comparison and contrast by obverse statements by details by cause and effect by general description by general narration by use of specific instances. Expository themes. Expression: essentials of. Fallacy. Feelings: appeal to, in persuasion. Feet. Fields. Figures of speech use of as an aid to effectiveness in description. Ford. Form: importance of directions as to. Forms of discourse. Fundamental image. Gender. General theory: how established, basis of appeals to. George, Marian M. Gilman. Grammar review. Gray. Hare. Harland. Harris. Hawthorne. Henry. Higginson and Channing. Hinman. History: writing of. Hoar. Holland. Holmes. Howells. Hyperbole. Ideas: from experience, Chapter I; from imagination, Chapter II; from language, Chapter III. pleasure in expressing sources of advantages of expressing ideas gained from experience from imagination ideas from pictures acquired through language. Images: making of complete and incomplete reproduction of other requirements to determine meaning fundamental union with impression. Imagination, Chapter II. Impression: of description, as purpose of description, necessity of observing impressions, limited to experience, affected by mood, union with image. Improbability. Incentive moment. Indentation. Inductive reasoning: errors of. Inference: use in argument. Infinitives. Interrogation. Interrogation mark: rule for. Introduction. Invitations. Irony. Irving. Jackson, Helen Hunt. Jordan and Kellogg. Kellogg. Kingsley. Kipling. Language: as a medium through which ideas are acquired, adapted to reader, Letter writing: Chapter VI; importance of, paper, beginning, body, conclusion, envelope, rule of, business letters, letters of friendship, adaptation to reader, notes. Lodge. Longfellow. Lovelace. Lowell. Lyric poetry. Macaulay. Macy-Norris. Madame de Stael. Matthews. Maxims: appeals to in argument. McCarthy, Justin. Meaning of words. Memory. Metaphor: mixed. Methods of developing a composition: with reference to time-order, with reference to position in space, by use of comparison or contrast, by use of generalization and facts, by stating cause and effect, by a combination of methods. Metonymy. Metrical romance. Metrical tale. Mill. Mill, J. S. Miller, Mary Rogers. Milton. Mode. Montgomery. Morris, Clara. Motive, in persuasion. Narration: Chapter IX _(see also_ narrative themes below); kinds of, use of description in, general narration, narrative poetry. Narrative themes. Newcomer. Notes: formal, informal. Nouns. Number. Observation: of actions, order of, accuracy in, observation of impression. Obverse statements. Ode. Ollivaut. Oral compositions. Order of events. Outline: of a paragraph. the brief. making of. use of in exposition. Palmer. Paragraph: defined, topic statement, importance of, length, indentation, reasons for studying, methods of development-- by specific instances, by giving details, in time-order, as determined by position in space, by comparison, by cause and effect, by repetition, by a combination of methods. Paraphrasing. Participles. Partition. Parts of speech. Period: rules for. Person. Personification. Persuasion: differs from argument, importance and necessity of, motive in, material of, appeal to feelings, with argument. Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Philips, David Graham. Phillips, Wendell. Phrases. Plot: interrelation with character. Poe. Poetry: Chapter VII; aim of, kinds of. Point: of a story, _see also_ climax. Point of view: selection of details effected by, implied, changing, place in paragraph. Possibility: in argument. Post. Prepositions. Preston and Dodge. Principal parts of verbs. Probability: in narration, in argument. Procter, Adelaide. Pronouns. Pronunciation. Proportion of parts: for emphasis. Propositions: specific, general, exposition of, necessary to argument, of fact and of theory, statement of. Proverbs: use in argument. Punctuation. Quotation marks: rules for. Rankin. Read. Reasoning: inductive, errors of induction, deductive, relation between inductive and deductive, errors of deduction. Reasons: number and value of. Recitations: preparation for, topical. Refutation. Reid, Captain Mayne. Repetition: developing a paragraph by, exposition by use of. Reproduction: of a story, of the thought of a paragraph. Restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. Rhyme. Rhythm: variation in. Richards, Laura E. Right: questions of. Robertson. Roosevelt. Ruskin. Scansion. Scott. Semicolon: rules for. Sentences: length, in conversation, relations, rhetorical features. Sewell, Anna. Shakespeare. Shelley. Sign: argument from. Simile. Slang. Smith. Song. Sonnet. Sources of ideas. Specific instances: development of a paragraph by use of, use in argument and exposition, development of a composition by use of, use in exposition. Spelling. Spencer. Stanza. Stevenson. Stoddard. Strong verbs. Subject: selection of, adapted to reader, sources, should be definite, narrowing. Suggestions, _see_ cautions. Summaries, at the end of the chapters. Summarizing paragraph. Syllogism. Symons. Synecdoche. Synonyms. Tarkington. Taylor. Tennyson. Tense. Terms: specific, general, explanation of, exposition of, use in argument and exposition. Themes: _see_ descriptive, narrative, expository, argumentative, and reproduction themes. Thoreau. Thurston. Time-order. Title: selecting of. Topic statement. Transition from one paragraph to another. Transition paragraph. Trowbridge. Turner. Unity: aided by time relations, aided by position in space, definition, in life; in outline, in composition, in sentences, selection of details giving, selection of facts in exposition, aided by outline. Van Dyke. Van Rensselaer (Mrs.). Variety. Verbs. Verse: names of. Vocabulary: how to increase, words applicable to classes of objects. Voice. Wallace. Warner. Wessels. Whittier. Wilcox, Ella Wheeler. Woode. Words: choice of, spelling, pronunciation, meaning, use, relations of, adapted to reader, selection, use of simpler words, selection, applicable to classes of objects, offices of, special list of. Wordsworth. 
6409	----	HOW TO SPEAK AND WRITE CORRECTLY By JOSEPH DEVLIN, M.A. Edited by THEODORE WATERS THE CHRISTIAN HERALD BIBLE HOUSE NEW YORK Copyright, 1910, by THE CHRISTIAN HERALD NEW YORK CONTENTS CHAPTER I REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH Vocabulary. Parts of speech. Requisites. CHAPTER II ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR Divisions of grammar. Definitions. Etymology. CHAPTER III THE SENTENCE Different kinds. Arrangement of words. Paragraph. CHAPTER IV FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Figures of speech. Definitions and examples. Use of figures. CHAPTER V PUNCTUATION Principal points. Illustrations. Capital letters. CHAPTER VI LETTER WRITING Principles of letter writing. Forms. Notes. CHAPTER VII ERRORS Mistakes. Slips of authors. Examples and corrections. Errors of redundancy. CHAPTER VIII PITFALLS TO AVOID Common stumbling blocks. Peculiar constructions. Misused forms. CHAPTER IX STYLE Diction. Purity. Propriety. Precision. CHAPTER X SUGGESTIONS How to write. What to write. Correct speaking and speakers. CHAPTER XI SLANG Origin. American slang. Foreign slang. CHAPTER XII WRITING FOR NEWSPAPERS Qualification. Appropriate subjects. Directions. CHAPTER XIII CHOICE OF WORDS Small words. Their importance. The Anglo-Saxon element. CHAPTER XIV ENGLISH LANGUAGE Beginning. Different Sources. The present. CHAPTER XV MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES OF LITERATURE Great authors. Classification. The world's best books. INTRODUCTION In the preparation of this little work the writer has kept one end in view, viz.: To make it serviceable for those for whom it is intended, that is, for those who have neither the time nor the opportunity, the learning nor the inclination, to peruse elaborate and abstruse treatises on Rhetoric, Grammar, and Composition. To them such works are as gold enclosed in chests of steel and locked beyond power of opening. This book has no pretension about it whatever,--it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner. Some broad rules are laid down, the observance of which will enable the reader to keep within the pale of propriety in oral and written language. Many idiomatic words and expressions, peculiar to the language, have been given, besides which a number of the common mistakes and pitfalls have been placed before the reader so that he may know and avoid them. The writer has to acknowledge his indebtedness to no one in _particular_, but to all in _general_ who have ever written on the subject. The little book goes forth--a finger-post on the road of language pointing in the right direction. It is hoped that they who go according to its index will arrive at the goal of correct speaking and writing. CHAPTER I REQUIREMENTS OF SPEECH Vocabulary--Parts of Speech--Requisites It is very easy to learn how to speak and write correctly, as for all purposes of ordinary conversation and communication, only about 2,000 different words are required. The mastery of just twenty hundred words, the knowing where to place them, will make us not masters of the English language, but masters of correct speaking and writing. Small number, you will say, compared with what is in the dictionary! But nobody ever uses all the words in the dictionary or could use them did he live to be the age of Methuselah, and there is no necessity for using them. There are upwards of 200,000 words in the recent editions of the large dictionaries, but the one-hundredth part of this number will suffice for all your wants. Of course you may think not, and you may not be content to call things by their common names; you may be ambitious to show superiority over others and display your learning or, rather, your pedantry and lack of learning. For instance, you may not want to call a spade a spade. You may prefer to call it a spatulous device for abrading the surface of the soil. Better, however, to stick to the old familiar, simple name that your grandfather called it. It has stood the test of time, and old friends are always good friends. To use a big word or a foreign word when a small one and a familiar one will answer the same purpose, is a sign of ignorance. Great scholars and writers and polite speakers use simple words. To go back to the number necessary for all purposes of conversation correspondence and writing, 2,000, we find that a great many people who pass in society as being polished, refined and educated use less, for they know less. The greatest scholar alive hasn't more than four thousand different words at his command, and he never has occasion to use half the number. In the works of Shakespeare, the most wonderful genius the world has ever known, there is the enormous number of 15,000 different words, but almost 10,000 of them are obsolete or meaningless today. Every person of intelligence should be able to use his mother tongue correctly. It only requires a little pains, a little care, a little study to enable one to do so, and the recompense is great. Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make his very presence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company. The proper grammatical formation of the English language, so that one may acquit himself as a correct conversationalist in the best society or be able to write and express his thoughts and ideas upon paper in the right manner, may be acquired in a few lessons. It is the purpose of this book, as briefly and concisely as possible, to direct the reader along a straight course, pointing out the mistakes he must avoid and giving him such assistance as will enable him to reach the goal of a correct knowledge of the English language. It is not a Grammar in any sense, but a guide, a silent signal-post pointing the way in the right direction. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN A NUTSHELL All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are two kinds of Nouns, Proper and Common. Common Nouns are names which belong in common to a race or class, as _man_, _city_. Proper Nouns distinguish individual members of a race or class as _John_, _Philadelphia_. In the former case _man_ is a name which belongs in common to the whole race of mankind, and _city_ is also a name which is common to all large centres of population, but _John_ signifies a particular individual of the race, while _Philadelphia_ denotes a particular one from among the cities of the world. Nouns are varied by Person, Number, Gender, and Case. Person is that relation existing between the speaker, those addressed and the subject under consideration, whether by discourse or correspondence. The Persons are _First_, _Second_ and _Third_ and they represent respectively the speaker, the person addressed and the person or thing mentioned or under consideration. _Number_ is the distinction of one from more than one. There are two numbers, singular and plural; the singular denotes one, the plural two or more. The plural is generally formed from the singular by the addition of _s_ or _es_. _Gender_ has the same relation to nouns that sex has to individuals, but while there are only two sexes, there are four genders, viz., masculine, feminine, neuter and common. The masculine gender denotes all those of the male kind, the feminine gender all those of the female kind, the neuter gender denotes inanimate things or whatever is without life, and common gender is applied to animate beings, the sex of which for the time being is indeterminable, such as fish, mouse, bird, etc. Sometimes things which are without life as we conceive it and which, properly speaking, belong to the neuter gender, are, by a figure of speech called Personification, changed into either the masculine or feminine gender, as, for instance, we say of the sun, _He_ is rising; of the moon, _She_ is setting. _Case_ is the relation one noun bears to another or to a verb or to a preposition. There are three cases, the _Nominative_, the _Possessive_ and the _Objective_. The nominative is the subject of which we are speaking or the agent which directs the action of the verb; the possessive case denotes possession, while the objective indicates the person or thing which is affected by the action of the verb. An _Article_ is a word placed before a noun to show whether the latter is used in a particular or general sense. There are but two articles, _a_ or _an_ and _the_. An _Adjective_ is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, which shows some distinguishing mark or characteristic belonging to the noun. DEFINITIONS A _Pronoun_ is a word used for or instead of a noun to keep us from repeating the same noun too often. Pronouns, like nouns, have case, number, gender and person. There are three kinds of pronouns, _personal_, _relative_ and _adjective_. A _verb_ is a word which signifies action or the doing of something. A verb is inflected by tense and mood and by number and person, though the latter two belong strictly to the subject of the verb. An _adverb_ is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective and sometimes another adverb. A _preposition_ serves to connect words and to show the relation between the objects which the words express. A _conjunction_ is a word which joins words, phrases, clauses and sentences together. An _interjection_ is a word which expresses surprise or some sudden emotion of the mind. THREE ESSENTIALS The three essentials of the English language are: _Purity_, _Perspicuity_ and _Precision_. By _Purity_ is signified the use of good English. It precludes the use of all slang words, vulgar phrases, obsolete terms, foreign idioms, ambiguous expressions or any ungrammatical language whatsoever. Neither does it sanction the use of any newly coined word until such word is adopted by the best writers and speakers. _Perspicuity_ demands the clearest expression of thought conveyed in unequivocal language, so that there may be no misunderstanding whatever of the thought or idea the speaker or writer wishes to convey. All ambiguous words, words of double meaning and words that might possibly be construed in a sense different from that intended, are strictly forbidden. Perspicuity requires a style at once clear and comprehensive and entirely free from pomp and pedantry and affectation or any straining after effect. _Precision_ requires concise and exact expression, free from redundancy and tautology, a style terse and clear and simple enough to enable the hearer or reader to comprehend immediately the meaning of the speaker or writer. It forbids, on the one hand, all long and involved sentences, and, on the other, those that are too short and abrupt. Its object is to strike the golden mean in such a way as to rivet the attention of the hearer or reader on the words uttered or written. CHAPTER II ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR Divisions of Grammar--Definitions--Etymology. In order to speak and write the English language correctly, it is imperative that the fundamental principles of the Grammar be mastered, for no matter how much we may read of the best authors, no matter how much we may associate with and imitate the best speakers, if we do not know the underlying principles of the correct formation of sentences and the relation of words to one another, we will be to a great extent like the parrot, that merely repeats what it hears without understanding the import of what is said. Of course the parrot, being a creature without reason, cannot comprehend; it can simply repeat what is said to it, and as it utters phrases and sentences of profanity with as much facility as those of virtue, so by like analogy, when we do not understand the grammar of the language, we may be making egregious blunders while thinking we are speaking with the utmost accuracy. DIVISIONS OF GRAMMAR There are four great divisions of Grammar, viz.: _Orthography_, _Etymology_, _Syntax_, and _Prosody_. _Orthography_ treats of letters and the mode of combining them into words. _Etymology_ treats of the various classes of words and the changes they undergo. _Syntax_ treats of the connection and arrangement of words in sentences. _Prosody_ treats of the manner of speaking and reading and the different kinds of verse. The three first mentioned concern us most. LETTERS A _letter_ is a mark or character used to represent an articulate sound. Letters are divided into _vowels_ and _consonants_. A vowel is a letter which makes a distinct sound by itself. Consonants cannot be sounded without the aid of vowels. The vowels are _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, and sometimes _w_ and _y_ when they do not begin a word or syllable. SYLLABLES AND WORDS A syllable is a distinct sound produced by a single effort of [Transcriber's note: 1-2 words illegible] shall, pig, dog. In every syllable there must be at least one vowel. A word consists of one syllable or a combination of syllables. Many rules are given for the dividing of words into syllables, but the best is to follow as closely as possible the divisions made by the organs of speech in properly pronouncing them. THE PARTS OF SPEECH ARTICLE An _Article_ is a word placed before a noun to show whether the noun is used in a particular or general sense. There are two articles, _a_ or _an_ and _the_. _A_ or _an_ is called the indefinite article because it does not point put any particular person or thing but indicates the noun in its widest sense; thus, _a_ man means any man whatsoever of the species or race. _The_ is called the definite article because it points out some particular person or thing; thus, _the_ man means some particular individual. NOUN A _noun_ is the name of any person, place or thing as _John_, _London_, _book_. Nouns are proper and common. _Proper_ nouns are names applied to _particular_ persons or places. _Common_ nouns are names applied to a whole kind or species. Nouns are inflected by _number_, _gender_ and _case_. _Number_ is that inflection of the noun by which we indicate whether it represents one or more than one. _Gender_ is that inflection by which we signify whether the noun is the name of a male, a female, of an inanimate object or something which has no distinction of sex. _Case_ is that inflection of the noun which denotes the state of the person, place or thing represented, as the subject of an affirmation or question, the owner or possessor of something mentioned, or the object of an action or of a relation. Thus in the example, "John tore the leaves of Sarah's book," the distinction between _book_ which represents only one object and _leaves_ which represent two or more objects of the same kind is called _Number_; the distinction of sex between _John_, a male, and _Sarah_, a female, and _book_ and _leaves_, things which are inanimate and neither male nor female, is called _Gender_; and the distinction of state between _John_, the person who tore the book, and the subject of the affirmation, _Mary_, the owner of the book, _leaves_ the objects torn, and _book_ the object related to leaves, as the whole of which they were a part, is called _Case_. ADJECTIVE An _adjective_ is a word which qualifies a noun, that is, shows or points out some distinguishing mark or feature of the noun; as, A _black_ dog. Adjectives have three forms called degrees of comparison, the _positive_, the _comparative_ and the _superlative_. The _positive_ is the simple form of the adjective without expressing increase or diminution of the original quality: _nice_. The _comparative_ is that form of the adjective which expresses increase or diminution of the quality: _nicer_. The _superlative_ is that form which expresses the greatest increase or diminution of the quality: _nicest_. _or_ An adjective is in the positive form when it does not express comparison; as, "A _rich_ man." An adjective is in the comparative form when it expresses comparison between two or between one and a number taken collectively, as, "John is _richer_ than James"; "he is _richer_ than all the men in Boston." An adjective is in the superlative form when it expresses a comparison between one and a number of individuals taken separately; as, "John is the _richest_ man in Boston." Adjectives expressive of properties or circumstances which cannot be increased have only the positive form; as, A _circular_ road; the _chief_ end; an _extreme_ measure. Adjectives are compared in two ways, either by adding _er_ to the positive to form the comparative and _est_ to the positive to form the superlative, or by prefixing _more_ to the positive for the comparative and _most_ to the positive for the superlative; as, _handsome_, _handsomer_, _handsomest_ or _handsome_, _more handsome_, _most handsome_. Adjectives of two or more syllables are generally compared by prefixing more and most. Many adjectives are irregular in comparison; as, Bad, worse, worst; Good, better, best. PRONOUN A _pronoun_ is a word used in place of a noun; as, "John gave his pen to James and _he_ lent it to Jane to write _her_ copy with _it_." Without the pronouns we would have to write this sentence,--"John gave John's pen to James and James lent the pen to Jane to write Jane's copy with the pen." There are three kinds of pronouns--Personal, Relative and Adjective Pronouns. _Personal_ Pronouns are so called because they are used instead of the names of persons, places and things. The Personal Pronouns are _I_, _Thou_, _He_, _She_, and _It_, with their plurals, _We_, _Ye_ or _You_ and _They_. _I_ is the pronoun of the first person because it represents the person speaking. _Thou_ is the pronoun of the second person because it represents the person spoken to. _He_, _She_, _It_ are the pronouns of the third person because they represent the persons or things of whom we are speaking. Like nouns, the Personal Pronouns have number, gender and case. The gender of the first and second person is obvious, as they represent the person or persons speaking and those who are addressed. The personal pronouns are thus declined: First Person. M. or F. Sing. Plural. N. I We P. Mine Ours O. Me Us Second Person. M. or F. Sing. Plural. N. Thou You P. Thine Yours O. Thee You Third Person. M. Sing. Plural. N. He They P. His Theirs O. Him Them Third Person. F. Sing. Plural. N. She They P. Hers Theirs O. Her Them Third Person. Neuter. Sing. Plural. N. It They P. Its Theirs O. It Them N. B.--In colloquial language and ordinary writing Thou, Thine and Thee are seldom used, except by the Society of Friends. The Plural form You is used for both the nominative and objective singular in the second person and Yours is generally used in the possessive in place of Thine. The _Relative_ Pronouns are so called because they relate to some word or phrase going before; as, "The boy _who_ told the truth;" "He has done well, _which_ gives me great pleasure." Here _who_ and _which_ are not only used in place of other words, but _who_ refers immediately to boy, and _which_ to the circumstance of his having done well. The word or clause to which a relative pronoun refers is called the _Antecedent_. The Relative Pronouns are _who_, _which_, _that_ and _what_. _Who_ is applied to persons only; as, "The man _who_ was here." _Which_ is applied to the lower animals and things without life; as, "The horse _which_ I sold." "The hat _which_ I bought." _That_ is applied to both persons and things; as, "The friend _that_ helps." "The bird _that_ sings." "The knife _that_ cuts." _What_ is a compound relative, including both the antecedent and the relative and is equivalent to _that which_; as, "I did what he desired," i. e. "I did _that which_ he desired." Relative pronouns have the singular and plural alike. _Who_ is either masculine or feminine; _which_ and _that_ are masculine, feminine or neuter; _what_ as a relative pronoun is always neuter. _That_ and _what_ are not inflected. _Who_ and _which_ are thus declined: Sing. and Plural Sing. and Plural N. Who N. Which P. Whose P. Whose O. Whom O. Which _Who_, _which_ and _what_ when used to ask questions are called _Interrogative Pronouns_. _Adjective_ Pronouns partake of the nature of adjectives and pronouns and are subdivided as follows: _Demonstrative Adjective Pronouns_ which directly point out the person or object. They are _this_, _that_ with their plurals _these_, _those_, and _yon_, _same_ and _selfsame_. _Distributive Adjective Pronouns_ used distributively. They are _each_, _every_, _either_, _neither_. _Indefinite Adjective Pronouns_ used more or less indefinitely. They are _any_, _all_, _few_, _some_, _several_, _one_, _other_, _another_, _none_. _Possessive Adjective Pronouns_ denoting possession. They are _my_, _thy_, _his_, _her_, _its_, _our_, _your_, _their_. N. B.--(The possessive adjective pronouns differ from the possessive case of the personal pronouns in that the latter can stand _alone_ while the former _cannot_. "Who owns that book?" "It is _mine_." You cannot say "it is _my_,"--the word book must be repeated.) THE VERB A _verb_ is a word which implies action or the doing of something, or it may be defined as a word which affirms, commands or asks a question. Thus, the words _John the table_, contain no assertion, but when the word _strikes_ is introduced, something is affirmed, hence the word _strikes_ is a verb and gives completeness and meaning to the group. The simple form of the verb without inflection is called the _root_ of the verb; _e. g. love_ is the root of the verb,--"To Love." Verbs are _regular_ or _irregular_, _transitive_ or _intransitive_. A verb is said to be _regular_ when it forms the past tense by adding _ed_ to the present or _d_ if the verb ends in _e_. When its past tense does not end in _ed_ it is said to be _irregular_. A _transitive_ verb is one the action of which passes over to or affects some object; as "I struck the table." Here the action of striking affected the object table, hence struck is a transitive verb. An _intransitive_ verb is one in which the action remains with the subject; as _"I walk,"_ _"I sit,"_ _"I run."_ Many intransitive verbs, however, can be used transitively; thus, "I _walk_ the horse;" _walk_ is here transitive. Verbs are inflected by _number_, _person_, _tense_ and _mood_. _Number_ and _person_ as applied to the verb really belong to the subject; they are used with the verb to denote whether the assertion is made regarding one or more than one and whether it is made in reference to the person speaking, the person spoken to or the person or thing spoken about. TENSE In their tenses verbs follow the divisions of time. They have _present tense_, _past tense_ and _future tense_ with their variations to express the exact time of action as to an event happening, having happened or yet to happen. MOOD There are four simple moods,--the _Infinitive_, the _Indicative_, the _Imperative_ and the _Subjunctive_. The Mood of a verb denotes the mode or manner in which it is used. Thus if it is used in its widest sense without reference to person or number, time or place, it is in the _Infinitive_ Mood; as "To run." Here we are not told who does the running, when it is done, where it is done or anything about it. When a verb is used to indicate or declare or ask a simple question or make any direct statement, it is in the _Indicative_ Mood. "The boy loves his book." Here a direct statement is made concerning the boy. "Have you a pin?" Here a simple question is asked which calls for an answer. When the verb is used to express a command or entreaty it is in the _Imperative_ Mood as, "Go away." "Give me a penny." When the verb is used to express doubt, supposition or uncertainty or when some future action depends upon a contingency, it is in the subjunctive mood; as, "If I come, he shall remain." Many grammarians include a fifth mood called the _potential_ to express _power_, _possibility_, _liberty_, _necessity_, _will_ or _duty_. It is formed by means of the auxiliaries _may_, _can_, _ought_ and _must_, but in all cases it can be resolved into the indicative or subjunctive. Thus, in "I may write if I choose," "may write" is by some classified as in the potential mood, but in reality the phrase _I may write_ is an indicative one while the second clause, _if I choose_, is the expression of a condition upon which, not my liberty to write, depends, but my actual writing. Verbs have two participles, the present or imperfect, sometimes called the _active_ ending in _ing_ and the past or perfect, often called the _passive_, ending in _ed_ or _d_. The _infinitive_ expresses the sense of the verb in a substantive form, the participles in an adjective form; as "To rise early is healthful." "An early rising man." "The newly risen sun." The participle in _ing_ is frequently used as a substantive and consequently is equivalent to an infinitive; thus, "To rise early is healthful" and "Rising early is healthful" are the same. The principal parts of a verb are the Present Indicative, Past Indicative and Past Participle; as: Love Loved Loved Sometimes one or more of these parts are wanting, and then the verb is said to be defective. Present Past Passive Participle Can Could (Wanting) May Might " Shall Should " Will Would " Ought Ought " Verbs may also be divided into _principal_ and _auxiliary_. A _principal_ verb is that without which a sentence or clause can contain no assertion or affirmation. An _auxiliary_ is a verb joined to the root or participles of a principal verb to express time and manner with greater precision than can be done by the tenses and moods in their simple form. Thus, the sentence, "I am writing an exercise; when I shall have finished it I shall read it to the class." has no meaning without the principal verbs _writing_, _finished read_; but the meaning is rendered more definite, especially with regard to time, by the auxiliary verbs _am_, _have_, _shall_. There are nine auxiliary or helping verbs, viz., _Be_, _have_, _do_, _shall_, _will_, _may_, _can_, _ought_, and _must_. They are called helping verbs, because it is by their aid the compound tenses are formed. TO BE The verb _To Be_ is the most important of the auxiliary verbs. It has eleven parts, viz., _am, art, is, are, was, wast, were, wert; be, being_ and _been_. VOICE The _active voice_ is that form of the verb which shows the Subject not being acted upon but acting; as, "The cat _catches_ mice." "Charity _covers_ a multitude of sins." The _passive voice_: When the action signified by a transitive verb is thrown back upon the agent, that is to say, when the subject of the verb denotes the recipient of the action, the verb is said to be in the passive voice. "John was loved by his neighbors." Here John the subject is also the object affected by the loving, the action of the verb is thrown back on him, hence the compound verb _was loved_ is said to be in the _passive voice_. The passive voice is formed by putting the perfect participle of any _transitive_ verb with any of the eleven parts of the verb _To Be_. CONJUGATION The _conjugation_ of a verb is its orderly arrangement in voices, moods, tenses, persons and numbers. Here is the complete conjugation of the verb "Love"--_Active Voice_. PRINCIPAL PARTS Present Past Past Participle Love Loved Loved Infinitive Mood To Love Indicative Mood PRESENT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I love We love 2nd person You love You love 3rd person He loves They love PAST TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I loved We loved 2nd person You loved You loved 3rd person He loved They loved FUTURE TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I shall love They will love 2nd person You will love You will love 3rd person He will love We shall love [Transcriber's note: 1st person plural and 3rd person plural reversed in original] PRESENT PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I have loved We have loved 2nd person You have loved You have loved 3rd person He has loved They have loved PAST PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I had loved We had loved 2nd person You had loved You had loved 3rd person He had loved They had loved FUTURE PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I shall have loved We shall have loved 2nd person You will have loved You will have loved 3rd person He will have loved They will have loved Imperative Mood (PRESENT TENSE ONLY) Sing. Plural 2nd person Love (you) Love (you) Subjunctive Mood PRESENT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I love If we love 2nd person If you love If you love 3rd person If he love If they love PAST TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I loved If we loved 2nd person If you loved If you loved 3rd person If he loved If they loved PRESENT PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I have loved If we have loved 2nd person If you have loved If you have loved 3rd person If he has loved If they have loved PAST PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I had loved If we had loved 2nd person If you had loved If you had loved 3rd person If he had loved If they had loved INFINITIVES Present Perfect To love To have loved PARTICIPLES Present Past Perfect Loving Loved Having loved CONJUGATION OF "To Love" Passive Voice Indicative Mood PRESENT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I am loved We are loved 2nd person You are loved You are loved 3rd person He is loved They are loved PAST TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I was loved We were loved 2nd person You were loved You were loved 3rd person He was loved They were loved FUTURE TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I shall be loved We shall be loved 2nd person You will be loved You will be loved 3rd person He will be loved They will be loved PRESENT PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I have been loved We have been loved 2nd person You have been loved You have been loved 3rd person He has been loved They have been loved PAST PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I had been loved We had been loved 2nd person You had been loved You had been loved 3rd person He had been loved They had been loved FUTURE PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person I shall have been loved We shall have been loved 2nd person You will have been loved You will have been loved 3rd person He will have been loved They will have been loved Imperative Mood (PRESENT TENSE ONLY) Sing. Plural 2nd person Be (you) loved Be (you) loved Subjunctive Mood PRESENT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I be loved If we be loved 2nd person If you be loved If you be loved 3rd person If he be loved If they be loved PAST TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I were loved If they were loved 2nd person If you were loved If you were loved 3rd person If he were loved If we were loved PRESENT PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I have been loved If we have been loved 2nd person If you have been loved If you have been loved 3rd person If he has been loved If they have been loved PAST PERFECT TENSE Sing. Plural 1st person If I had been loved If we had been loved 2nd person If you had been loved If you had been loved 3rd person If he had been loved If they had been loved INFINITIVES Present Perfect To be loved To have been loved PARTICIPLES Present Past Perfect Being loved Been loved Having been loved (N. B.--Note that the plural form of the personal pronoun, _you_, is used in the second person singular throughout. The old form _thou_, except in the conjugation of the verb "To Be," may be said to be obsolete. In the third person singular he is representative of the three personal pronouns of the third person, _He_, _She_ and _It_.) ADVERB An _adverb_ is a word which modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Thus, in the example--"He writes _well_," the adverb shows the manner in which the writing is performed; in the examples--"He is remarkably diligent" and "He works very faithfully," the adverbs modify the adjective _diligent_ and the other adverb _faithfully_ by expressing the degree of diligence and faithfulness. Adverbs are chiefly used to express in one word what would otherwise require two or more words; thus, _There_ signifies in that place; _whence_, from what place; _usefully_, in a useful manner. Adverbs, like adjectives, are sometimes varied in their terminations to express comparison and different degrees of quality. Some adverbs form the comparative and superlative by adding _er_ and _est_; as, _soon_, _sooner_, _soonest_. Adverbs which end in _ly_ are compared by prefixing _more_ and _most_; as, _nobly_, _more nobly_, _most nobly_. A few adverbs are irregular in the formation of the comparative and superlative; as, _well_, _better_, _best_. PREPOSITION A _preposition_ connects words, clauses, and sentences together and shows the relation between them. "My hand is on the table" shows relation between hand and table. Prepositions are so called because they are generally placed _before_ the words whose connection or relation with other words they point out. CONJUNCTION A _conjunction_ joins words, clauses and sentences; as "John _and_ James." "My father and mother have come, _but_ I have not seen them." The conjunctions in most general use are _and, also; either, or; neither, nor; though, yet; but, however; for, that; because, since; therefore, wherefore, then; if, unless, lest_. INTERJECTION An _interjection_ is a word used to express some sudden emotion of the mind. Thus in the examples,--"Ah! there he comes; alas! what shall I do?" _ah_, expresses surprise, and _alas_, distress. Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs become interjections when they are uttered as exclamations, as, _nonsense! strange! hail! away!_ etc. We have now enumerated the parts of speech and as briefly as possible stated the functions of each. As they all belong to the same family they are related to one another but some are in closer affinity than others. To point out the exact relationship and the dependency of one word on another is called _parsing_ and in order that every etymological connection may be distinctly understood a brief resume of the foregoing essentials is here given: The signification of the noun is _limited_ to _one_, but to any _one_ of the kind, by the _indefinite_ article, and to some _particular_ one, or some particular _number_, by the _definite_ article. _Nouns_, in one form, represent _one_ of a kind, and in another, _any number_ more than one; they are the _names of males_, or _females_, or of objects which are neither male nor female; and they represent the _subject_ of an affirmation, a command or a question,--the _owner_ or _possessor_ of a thing,--or the _object_ of an action, or of a relation expressed by a preposition. _Adjectives_ express the _qualities_ which distinguish one person or thing from another; in one form they express quality _without comparison_; in another, they express comparison _between two_, or between _one_ and a number taken collectively,--and in a third they express comparison between _one_ and a _number_ of others taken separately. _Pronouns_ are used in place of nouns; one class of them is used merely as the _substitutes_ of _names_; the pronouns of another class have a peculiar _reference_ to some _preceding words_ in the _sentence_, of which they are the substitutes,--and those of a third class refer adjectively to the persons or things they represent. Some pronouns are used for both the _name_ and the _substitute_; and several are frequently employed in _asking questions_. _Affirmations_ and _commands_ are expressed by the verb; and different inflections of the verb express _number_, _person_, _time_ and _manner_. With regard to _time_, an affirmation may be _present_ or _past_ or _future_; with regard to manner, an affirmation may be _positive_ or _conditional_, it being doubtful whether the condition is fulfilled or not, or it being implied that it is not fulfilled;--the verb may express _command_ or _entreaty_; or the sense of the verb may be expressed _without affirming_ or _commanding_. The verb also expresses that an action or state _is_ or _was_ going on, by a form which is also used sometimes as a noun, and sometimes to qualify nouns. _Affirmations_ are _modified_ by _adverbs_, some of which can be inflected to express different degrees of modification. Words are joined together by _conjunctions_; and the various _relations_ which one thing bears to another are expressed by _'prepositions. Sudden emotions_ of the mind, and _exclamations_ are expressed by _interjections_. Some words according to meaning belong sometimes to one part of speech, sometimes to another. Thus, in "After a storm comes a _calm_," _calm_ is a noun; in "It is a _calm_ evening," _calm_ is an adjective; and in "_Calm_ your fears," _calm_ is a verb. The following sentence containing all the parts of speech is parsed etymologically: _"I now see the old man coming, but, alas, he has walked with much difficulty."_ _I_, a personal pronoun, first person singular, masculine or feminine gender, nominative case, subject of the verb _see_. _now_, an adverb of time modifying the verb _see_. _see_, an irregular, transitive verb, indicative mood, present tense, first person singular to agree with its nominative or subject I. _the_, the definite article particularizing the noun man. _old_, an adjective, positive degree, qualifying the noun man. _man_, a common noun, 3rd person singular, masculine gender, objective case governed by the transitive verb _see_. _coming_, the present or imperfect participle of the verb "to come" referring to the noun man. _but_, a conjunction. _alas_, an interjection, expressing pity or sorrow. _he_, a personal pronoun, 3rd person singular, masculine gender, nominative case, subject of verb has walked. _has walked_, a regular, intransitive verb, indicative mood, perfect tense, 3rd person singular to agree with its nominative or subject _he_. _with_, a preposition, governing the noun difficulty. _much_, an adjective, positive degree, qualifying the noun difficulty. _difficulty_, a common noun, 3rd person singular, neuter gender, objective case governed by the preposition _with_. N.B.--_Much_ is generally an adverb. As an adjective it is thus compared: Positive Comparative Superlative much more most CHAPTER III THE SENTENCE Different Kinds--Arrangement of Words--Paragraph A sentence is an assemblage of words so arranged as to convey a determinate sense or meaning, in other words, to express a complete thought or idea. No matter how short, it must contain one finite verb and a subject or agent to direct the action of the verb. "Birds fly;" "Fish swim;" "Men walk;"--are sentences. A sentence always contains two parts, something spoken about and something said about it. The word or words indicating what is spoken about form what is called the _subject_ and the word or words indicating what is said about it form what is called the _predicate_. In the sentences given, _birds_, _fish_ and _men_ are the subjects, while _fly_, _swim_ and _walk_ are the predicates. There are three kinds of sentences, _simple_, _compound_ and _complex_. The _simple sentence_ expresses a single thought and consists of one subject and one predicate, as, "Man is mortal." A _compound sentence_ consists of two or more simple sentences of equal importance the parts of which are either expressed or understood, as, "The men work in the fields and the women work in the household," or "The men work in the fields and the women in the household" or "The men and women work in the fields and in the household." A _complex sentence_ consists of two or more simple sentences so combined that one depends on the other to complete its meaning; as; "When he returns, I shall go on my vacation." Here the words, "when he returns" are dependent on the rest of the sentence for their meaning. A _clause_ is a separate part of a complex sentence, as "when he returns" in the last example. A _phrase_ consists of two or more words without a finite verb. Without a finite verb we cannot affirm anything or convey an idea, therefore we can have no sentence. Infinitives and participles which are the infinite parts of the verb cannot be predicates. "I looking up the street" is not a sentence, for it is not a complete action expressed. When we hear such an expression as "A dog running along the street," we wait for something more to be added, something more affirmed about the dog, whether he bit or barked or fell dead or was run over. Thus in every sentence there must be a finite verb to limit the subject. When the verb is transitive, that is, when the action cannot happen without affecting something, the thing affected is called the _object_. Thus in "Cain killed Abel" the action of the killing affected Abel. In "The cat has caught a mouse," mouse is the object of the catching. ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS IN A SENTENCE Of course in simple sentences the natural order of arrangement is subject--verb--object. In many cases no other form is possible. Thus in the sentence "The cat has caught a mouse," we cannot reverse it and say "The mouse has caught a cat" without destroying the meaning, and in any other form of arrangement, such as "A mouse, the cat has caught," we feel that while it is intelligible, it is a poor way of expressing the fact and one which jars upon us more or less. In longer sentences, however, when there are more words than what are barely necessary for subject, verb and object, we have greater freedom of arrangement and can so place the words as to give the best effect. The proper placing of words depends upon perspicuity and precision. These two combined give _style_ to the structure. Most people are familiar with Gray's line in the immortal _Elegy_--"The ploughman homeward plods his weary way." This line can be paraphrased to read 18 different ways. Here are a few variations: Homeward the ploughman plods his weary way. The ploughman plods his weary way homeward. Plods homeward the ploughman his weary way. His weary way the ploughman homeward plods. Homeward his weary way plods the ploughman. Plods the ploughman his weary way homeward. His weary way the ploughman plods homeward. His weary way homeward the ploughman plods. The ploughman plods homeward his weary way. The ploughman his weary way plods homeward. and so on. It is doubtful if any of the other forms are superior to the one used by the poet. Of course his arrangement was made to comply with the rhythm and rhyme of the verse. Most of the variations depend upon the emphasis we wish to place upon the different words. In arranging the words in an ordinary sentence we should not lose sight of the fact that the beginning and end are the important places for catching the attention of the reader. Words in these places have greater emphasis than elsewhere. In Gray's line the general meaning conveyed is that a weary ploughman is plodding his way homeward, but according to the arrangement a very slight difference is effected in the idea. Some of the variations make us think more of the ploughman, others more of the plodding, and still others more of the weariness. As the beginning and end of a sentence are the most important places, it naturally follows that small or insignificant words should be kept from these positions. Of the two places the end one is the more important, therefore, it really calls for the most important word in the sentence. Never commence a sentence with _And_, _But_, _Since_, _Because_, and other similar weak words and never end it with prepositions, small, weak adverbs or pronouns. The parts of a sentence which are most closely connected with one another in meaning should be closely connected in order also. By ignoring this principle many sentences are made, if not nonsensical, really ridiculous and ludicrous. For instance: "Ten dollars reward is offered for information of any person injuring this property by order of the owner." "This monument was erected to the memory of John Jones, who was shot by his affectionate brother." In the construction of all sentences the grammatical rules must be inviolably observed. The laws of concord, that is, the agreement of certain words, must be obeyed. (1) The verb agrees with its subject in person and number. "I have," "Thou hast," (the pronoun _thou_ is here used to illustrate the verb form, though it is almost obsolete), "He has," show the variation of the verb to agree with the subject. A singular subject calls for a singular verb, a plural subject demands a verb in the plural; as, "The boy writes," "The boys write." The agreement of a verb and its subject is often destroyed by confusing (1) collective and common nouns; (2) foreign and English nouns; (3) compound and simple subjects; (4) real and apparent subjects. (1) A collective noun is a number of individuals or things regarded as a whole; as, _class regiment_. When the individuals or things are prominently brought forward, use a plural verb; as The class _were_ distinguished for ability. When the idea of the whole as a unit is under consideration employ a singular verb; as The regiment _was_ in camp. (2) It is sometimes hard for the ordinary individual to distinguish the plural from the singular in foreign nouns, therefore, he should be careful in the selection of the verb. He should look up the word and be guided accordingly. "He was an _alumnus_ of Harvard." "They were _alumni_ of Harvard." (3) When a sentence with one verb has two or more subjects denoting different things, connected by _and_, the verb should be plural; as, "Snow and rain _are_ disagreeable." When the subjects denote the same thing and are connected by _or_ the verb should be singular; as, "The man or the woman is to blame." (4) When the same verb has more than one subject of different persons or numbers, it agrees with the most prominent in thought; as, "He, and not you, _is_ wrong." "Whether he or I _am_ to be blamed." (2) Never use the past participle for the past tense nor _vice versa_. This mistake is a very common one. At every turn we hear "He done it" for "He did it." "The jar was broke" instead of broken. "He would have went" for "He would have gone," etc. (3) The use of the verbs _shall_ and _will_ is a rock upon which even the best speakers come to wreck. They are interchanged recklessly. Their significance changes according as they are used with the first, second or third person. With the first person _shall_ is used in direct statement to express a simple future action; as, "I shall go to the city to-morrow." With the second and third persons _shall_ is used to express a determination; as, "You _shall_ go to the city to-morrow," "He _shall_ go to the city to-morrow." With the first person _will_ is used in direct statement to express determination, as, "I will go to the city to-morrow." With the second and third persons _will_ is used to express simple future action; as, "You _will_ go to the city to-morrow," "He _will_ go to the city to-morrow." A very old rule regarding the uses of _shall_ and _will_ is thus expressed in rhyme: In the first person simply _shall_ foretells, In _will_ a threat or else a promise dwells. _Shall_ in the second and third does threat, _Will_ simply then foretells the future feat. (4) Take special care to distinguish between the nominative and objective case. The pronouns are the only words which retain the ancient distinctive case ending for the objective. Remember that the objective case follows transitive verbs and prepositions. Don't say "The boy who I sent to see you," but "The boy whom I sent to see you." _Whom_ is here the object of the transitive verb sent. Don't say "She bowed to him and I" but "She bowed to him and me" since me is the objective case following the preposition _to_ understood. "Between you and I" is a very common expression. It should be "Between you and me" since _between_ is a preposition calling for the objective case. (5) Be careful in the use of the relative pronouns _who_, _which_ and _that_. Who refers only to persons; which only to things; as, "The boy who was drowned," "The umbrella which I lost." The relative _that_ may refer to both persons and things; as, "The man _that_ I saw." "The hat _that_ I bought." (6) Don't use the superlative degree of the adjective for the comparative; as "He is the richest of the two" for "He is the richer of the two." Other mistakes often made in this connection are (1) Using the double comparative and superlative; as, "These apples are much _more_ preferable." "The most universal motive to business is gain." (2) Comparing objects which belong to dissimilar classes; as "There is no nicer _life_ than a _teacher_." (3) Including objects in class to which they do not belong; as, "The fairest of her daughters, Eve." (4) Excluding an object from a class to which it does belong; as, "Caesar was braver than any ancient warrior." (7) Don't use an adjective for an adverb or an adverb for an adjective. Don't say, "He acted nice towards me" but "He acted nicely toward me," and instead of saying "She looked _beautifully_" say "She looked _beautiful_." (8) Place the adverb as near as possible to the word it modifies. Instead of saying, "He walked to the door quickly," say "He walked quickly to the door." (9) Not alone be careful to distinguish between the nominative and objective cases of the pronouns, but try to avoid ambiguity in their use. The amusing effect of disregarding the reference of pronouns is well illustrated by Burton in the following story of Billy Williams, a comic actor who thus narrates his experience in riding a horse owned by Hamblin, the manager: "So down I goes to the stable with Tom Flynn, and told the man to put the saddle on him." "On Tom Flynn?" "No, on the horse. So after talking with Tom Flynn awhile I mounted him." "What! mounted Tom Flynn?" "No, the horse; and then I shook hands with him and rode off." "Shook hands with the horse, Billy?" "No, with Tom Flynn; and then I rode off up the Bowery, and who should I meet but Tom Hamblin; so I got off and told the boy to hold him by the head." "What! hold Hamblin by the head?" "No, the horse; and then we went and had a drink together." "What! you and the horse?" "No, _me_ and Hamblin; and after that I mounted him again and went out of town." "What! mounted Hamblin again?" "No, the horse; and when I got to Burnham, who should be there but Tom Flynn,--he'd taken another horse and rode out ahead of me; so I told the hostler to tie him up." "Tie Tom Flynn up?" "No, the horse; and we had a drink there." "What! you and the horse?" "No, me and Tom Flynn." Finding his auditors by this time in a _horse_ laugh, Billy wound up with: "Now, look here,--every time I say horse, you say Hamblin, and every time I say Hamblin you say horse: I'll be hanged if I tell you any more about it." SENTENCE CLASSIFICATION There are two great classes of sentences according to the general principles upon which they are founded. These are termed the _loose_ and the _periodic_. In the _loose_ sentence the main idea is put first, and then follow several facts in connection with it. Defoe is an author particularly noted for this kind of sentence. He starts out with a leading declaration to which he adds several attendant connections. For instance in the opening of the story of _Robinson Crusoe_ we read: "I was born in the year 1632 in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in the country and from I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay, we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always called me." In the periodic sentence the main idea comes last and is preceded by a series of relative introductions. This kind of sentence is often introduced by such words as _that_, _if_, _since_, _because_. The following is an example: "That through his own folly and lack of circumspection he should have been reduced to such circumstances as to be forced to become a beggar on the streets, soliciting alms from those who had formerly been the recipients of his bounty, was a sore humiliation." On account of its name many are liable to think the _loose_ sentence an undesirable form in good composition, but this should not be taken for granted. In many cases it is preferable to the periodic form. As a general rule in speaking, as opposed to writing, the _loose_ form is to be preferred, inasmuch as when the periodic is employed in discourse the listeners are apt to forget the introductory clauses before the final issue is reached. Both kinds are freely used in composition, but in speaking, the _loose_, which makes the direct statement at the beginning, should predominate. As to the length of sentences much depends on the nature of the composition. However the general rule may be laid down that short sentences are preferable to long ones. The tendency of the best writers of the present day is towards short, snappy, pithy sentences which rivet the attention of the reader. They adopt as their motto _multum in parvo_ (much in little) and endeavor to pack a great deal in small space. Of course the extreme of brevity is to be avoided. Sentences can be too short, too jerky, too brittle to withstand the test of criticism. The long sentence has its place and a very important one. It is indispensable in argument and often is very necessary to description and also in introducing general principles which require elaboration. In employing the long sentence the inexperienced writer should not strain after the heavy, ponderous type. Johnson and Carlyle used such a type, but remember, an ordinary mortal cannot wield the sledge hammer of a giant. Johnson and Carlyle were intellectual giants and few can hope to stand on the same literary pedestal. The tyro in composition should never seek after the heavy style. The best of all authors in the English language for style is Addison. Macaulay says: "If you wish a style learned, but not pedantic, elegant but not ostentatious, simple yet refined, you must give your days and nights to the volumes of Joseph Addison." The simplicity, apart from the beauty of Addison's writings causes us to reiterate the literary command--"Never use a big word when a little one will convey the same or a similar meaning." Macaulay himself is an elegant stylist to imitate. He is like a clear brook kissed by the noon-day sun in the shining bed of which you can see and count the beautiful white pebbles. Goldsmith is another writer whose simplicity of style charms. The beginner should study these writers, make their works his _vade mecum_, they have stood the test of time and there has been no improvement upon them yet, nor is there likely to be, for their writing is as perfect as it is possible to be in the English language. Apart from their grammatical construction there can be no fixed rules for the formation of sentences. The best plan is to follow the best authors and these masters of language will guide you safely along the way. THE PARAGRAPH The paragraph may be defined as a group of sentences that are closely related in thought and which serve one common purpose. Not only do they preserve the sequence of the different parts into which a composition is divided, but they give a certain spice to the matter like raisins in a plum pudding. A solid page of printed matter is distasteful to the reader; it taxes the eye and tends towards the weariness of monotony, but when it is broken up into sections it loses much of its heaviness and the consequent lightness gives it charm, as it were, to capture the reader. Paragraphs are like stepping-stones on the bed of a shallow river, which enable the foot passenger to skip with ease from one to the other until he gets across; but if the stones are placed too far apart in attempting to span the distance one is liable to miss the mark and fall in the water and flounder about until he is again able to get a foothold. 'Tis the same with written language, the reader by means of paragraphs can easily pass from one portion of connected thought to another and keep up his interest in the subject until he gets to the end. Throughout the paragraph there must be some connection in regard to the matter under consideration,--a sentence dependency. For instance, in the same paragraph we must not speak of a house on fire and a runaway horse unless there is some connection between the two. We must not write consecutively: "The fire raged with fierce intensity, consuming the greater part of the large building in a short time." "The horse took fright and wildly dashed down the street scattering pedestrians in all directions." These two sentences have no connection and therefore should occupy separate and distinct places. But when we say--"The fire raged with fierce intensity consuming the greater part of the large building in a short time and the horse taking fright at the flames dashed wildly down the street scattering pedestrians in all directions,"--there is a natural sequence, viz., the horse taking fright as a consequence of the flames and hence the two expressions are combined in one paragraph. As in the case of words in sentences, the most important places in a paragraph are the beginning and the end. Accordingly the first sentence and the last should by virtue of their structure and nervous force, compel the reader's attention. It is usually advisable to make the first sentence short; the last sentence may be long or short, but in either case should be forcible. The object of the first sentence is to state a point _clearly_; the last sentence should _enforce_ it. It is a custom of good writers to make the conclusion of the paragraph a restatement or counterpart or application of the opening. In most cases a paragraph may be regarded as the elaboration of the principal sentence. The leading thought or idea can be taken as a nucleus and around it constructed the different parts of the paragraph. Anyone can make a context for every simple sentence by asking himself questions in reference to the sentence. Thus--"The foreman gave the order"-- suggests at once several questions; "What was the order?" "to whom did he give it?" "why did he give it?" "what was the result?" etc. These questions when answered will depend upon the leading one and be an elaboration of it into a complete paragraph. If we examine any good paragraph we shall find it made up of a number of items, each of which helps to illustrate, confirm or enforce the general thought or purpose of the paragraph. Also the transition from each item to the next is easy, natural and obvious; the items seem to come of themselves. If, on the other hand, we detect in a paragraph one or more items which have no direct bearing, or if we are unable to proceed readily from item to item, especially if we are obliged to rearrange the items before we can perceive their full significance, then we are justified in pronouncing the paragraph construction faulty. No specific rules can be given as to the construction of paragraphs. The best advice is,--Study closely the paragraph structure of the best writers, for it is only through imitation, conscious or unconscious of the best models, that one can master the art. The best paragraphist in the English language for the essay is Macaulay, the best model to follow for the oratorical style is Edmund Burke and for description and narration probably the greatest master of paragraph is the American Goldsmith, Washington Irving. A paragraph is indicated in print by what is known as the indentation of the line, that is, by commencing it a space from the left margin. CHAPTER IV FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE Figures of Speech--Definitions and Examples--Use of Figures In _Figurative Language_ we employ words in such a way that they differ somewhat from their ordinary signification in commonplace speech and convey our meaning in a more vivid and impressive manner than when we use them in their every-day sense. Figures make speech more effective, they beautify and emphasize it and give to it a relish and piquancy as salt does to food; besides they add energy and force to expression so that it irresistibly compels attention and interest. There are four kinds of figures, viz.: (1) Figures of Orthography which change the spelling of a word; (2) Figures of Etymology which change the form of words; (3) Figures of Syntax which change the construction of sentences; (4) Figures of Rhetoric or the art of speaking and writing effectively which change the mode of thought. We shall only consider the last mentioned here as they are the most important, really giving to language the construction and style which make it a fitting medium for the intercommunication of ideas. Figures of Rhetoric have been variously classified, some authorities extending the list to a useless length. The fact is that any form of expression which conveys thought may be classified as a Figure. The principal figures as well as the most important and those oftenest used are, _Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Allegory, Synechdoche, Metonymy, Exclamation, Hyperbole, Apostrophe, Vision, Antithesis, Climax, Epigram, Interrogation_ and _Irony_. The first four are founded on _resemblance_, the second six on _contiguity_ and the third five, on _contrast_. A _Simile_ (from the Latin _similis_, like), is the likening of one thing to another, a statement of the resemblance of objects, acts, or relations; as "In his awful anger he was _like_ the storm-driven waves dashing against the rock." A simile makes the principal object plainer and impresses it more forcibly on the mind. "His memory is like wax to receive impressions and like marble to retain them." This brings out the leading idea as to the man's memory in a very forceful manner. Contrast it with the simple statement--"His memory is good." Sometimes _Simile_ is prostituted to a low and degrading use; as "His face was like a danger signal in a fog storm." "Her hair was like a furze-bush in bloom." "He was to his lady love as a poodle to its mistress." Such burlesque is never permissible. Mere _likeness_, it should be remembered, does not constitute a simile. For instance there is no simile when one city is compared to another. In order that there may be a rhetorical simile, the objects compared must be of different classes. Avoid the old _trite_ similes such as comparing a hero to a lion. Such were played out long ago. And don't hunt for farfetched similes. Don't say--"Her head was glowing as the glorious god of day when he sets in a flambeau of splendor behind the purple-tinted hills of the West." It is much better to do without such a simile and simply say--"She had fiery red hair." A _Metaphor_ (from the Greek _metapherein_, to carry over or transfer), is a word used to _imply_ a resemblance but instead of likening one object to another as in the _simile_ we directly substitute the action or operation of one for another. If, of a religious man we say,--"He is as a great pillar upholding the church," the expression is a _simile_, but if we say--"He is a great pillar upholding the church" it is a metaphor. The metaphor is a bolder and more lively figure than the simile. It is more like a picture and hence, the graphic use of metaphor is called "word-painting." It enables us to give to the most abstract ideas form, color and life. Our language is full of metaphors, and we very often use them quite unconsciously. For instance, when we speak of the _bed_ of a river, the _shoulder_ of a hill, the _foot_ of a mountain, the _hands_ of a clock, the _key_ of a situation, we are using metaphors. Don't use mixed metaphors, that is, different metaphors in relation to the same subject: "Since it was launched our project has met with much opposition, but while its flight has not reached the heights ambitioned, we are yet sanguine we shall drive it to success." Here our project begins as a _ship_, then becomes a _bird_ and finally winds up as a _horse_. _Personification_ (from the Latin _persona_, person, and _facere_, to make) is the treating of an inanimate object as if it were animate and is probably the most beautiful and effective of all the figures. "The mountains _sing_ together, the hills _rejoice_ and _clap_ their hands." "Earth _felt_ the wound; and Nature from her seat, _Sighing_, through all her works, gave signs of woe." Personification depends much on a vivid imagination and is adapted especially to poetical composition. It has two distinguishable forms: (1) when personality is ascribed to the inanimate as in the foregoing examples, and (2) when some quality of life is attributed to the inanimate; as, a _raging_ storm; an _angry_ sea; a _whistling_ wind, etc. An _Allegory_ (from the Greek _allos_, other, and _agoreuein_, to speak), is a form of expression in which the words are symbolical of something. It is very closely allied to the metaphor, in fact is a continued metaphor. _Allegory_, _metaphor_ and _simile_ have three points in common,--they are all founded on resemblance. "Ireland is like a thorn in the side of England;" this is simile. "Ireland _is_ a thorn in the side of England;" this is metaphor. "Once a great giant sprang up out of the sea and lived on an island all by himself. On looking around he discovered a little girl on another small island near by. He thought the little girl could be useful to him in many ways so he determined to make her subservient to his will. He commanded her, but she refused to obey, then he resorted to very harsh measures with the little girl, but she still remained obstinate and obdurate. He continued to oppress her until finally she rebelled and became as a thorn in his side to prick him for his evil attitude towards her;" this is an allegory in which the giant plainly represents England and the little girl, Ireland; the implication is manifest though no mention is made of either country. Strange to say the most perfect allegory in the English language was written by an almost illiterate and ignorant man, and written too, in a dungeon cell. In the "Pilgrim's Progress," Bunyan, the itinerant tinker, has given us by far the best allegory ever penned. Another good one is "The Faerie Queen" by Edmund Spenser. _Synecdoche_ (from the Greek, _sun_ with, and _ekdexesthai_, to receive), is a figure of speech which expresses either more or less than it literally denotes. By it we give to an object a name which literally expresses something more or something less than we intend. Thus: we speak of the world when we mean only a very limited number of the people who compose the world: as, "The world treated him badly." Here we use the whole for a part. But the most common form of this figure is that in which a part is used for the whole; as, "I have twenty head of cattle," "One of his _hands_ was assassinated," meaning one of his men. "Twenty _sail_ came into the harbor," meaning twenty ships. "This is a fine marble," meaning a marble statue. _Metonymy_ (from the Greek _meta_, change, and _onyma_, a name) is the designation of an object by one of its accompaniments, in other words, it is a figure by which the name of one object is put for another when the two are so related that the mention of one readily suggests the other. Thus when we say of a drunkard--"He loves the bottle" we do not mean that he loves the glass receptacle, but the liquor that it is supposed to contain. Metonymy, generally speaking, has, three subdivisions: (1) when an effect is put for cause or _vice versa_: as "_Gray hairs_ should be respected," meaning old age. "He writes a fine hand," that is, handwriting. (2) when the _sign_ is put for the _thing signified_; as, "The pen is mightier than the sword," meaning literary power is superior to military force. (3) When the _container_ is put for the thing contained; as "The _House_ was called to order," meaning the members in the House. _Exclamation_ (from the Latin _ex_, out, and _clamare_, to cry), is a figure by which the speaker instead of stating a fact, simply utters an expression of surprise or emotion. For instance when he hears some harrowing tale of woe or misfortune instead of saying,--"It is a sad story" he exclaims "What a sad story!" Exclamation may be defined as the vocal expression of feeling, though it is also applied to written forms which are intended to express emotion. Thus in describing a towering mountain we can write "Heavens, what a piece of Nature's handiwork! how majestic! how sublime! how awe-inspiring in its colossal impressiveness!" This figure rather belongs to poetry and animated oratory than to the cold prose of every-day conversation and writing. _Hyperbole_ (from the Greek _hyper_, beyond, and _ballein_, to throw), is an exaggerated form of statement and simply consists in representing things to be either greater or less, better or worse than they really are. Its object is to make the thought more effective by overstating it. Here are some examples:--"He was so tall his head touched the clouds." "He was as thin as a poker." "He was so light that a breath might have blown him away." Most people are liable to overwork this figure. We are all more or less given to exaggeration and some of us do not stop there, but proceed onward to falsehood and downright lying. There should be a limit to hyperbole, and in ordinary speech and writing it should be well qualified and kept within reasonable bounds. An _Apostrophe_ (from the Greek _apo_, from, and _strephein_, to turn), is a direct address to the absent as present, to the inanimate as living, or to the abstract as personal. Thus: "O, illustrious Washington! Father of our Country! Could you visit us now!" "My Country tis of thee-- Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing." "O! Grave, where is thy Victory, O! Death where is thy sting!" This figure is very closely allied to Personification. _Vision_ (from the Latin _videre_, to see) consists in treating the past, the future, or the remote as if present in time or place. It is appropriate to animated description, as it produces the effect of an ideal presence. "The old warrior looks down from the canvas and tells us to be men worthy of our sires." This figure is much exemplified in the Bible. The book of Revelation is a vision of the future. The author who uses the figure most is Carlyle. An _Antithesis_ (from the Greek _anti_, against, and _tithenai_, to set) is founded on contrast; it consists in putting two unlike things in such a position that each will appear more striking by the contrast. "Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring out the false, ring in the true." "Let us be _friends_ in peace, but _enemies_ in war." Here is a fine antithesis in the description of a steam engine--"It can engrave a seal and crush masses of obdurate metal before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as a gossamer; and lift up a ship of war like a bauble in the air; it can embroider muslin and forge anchors; cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of winds and waves." _Climax_ (from the Greek, _klimax_, a ladder), is an arrangement of thoughts and ideas in a series, each part of which gets stronger and more impressive until the last one, which emphasizes the force of all the preceding ones. "He risked truth, he risked honor, he risked fame, he risked all that men hold dear,--yea, he risked life itself, and for what?--for a creature who was not worthy to tie his shoe-latchets when he was his better self." _Epigram_ (from the Greek _epi_, upon, and _graphein_, to write), originally meant an inscription on a monument, hence it came to signify any pointed expression. It now means a statement or any brief saying in prose or poetry in which there is an apparent contradiction; as, "Conspicuous for his absence." "Beauty when unadorned is most adorned." "He was too foolish to commit folly." "He was so wealthy that he could not spare the money." _Interrogation_ (from the Latin _interrogatio_, a question), is a figure of speech in which an assertion is made by asking a question; as, "Does God not show justice to all?" "Is he not doing right in his course?" "What can a man do under the circumstances?" _Irony_ (from the Greek _eironcia_, dissimulation) is a form of expression in which the opposite is substituted for what is intended, with the end in view, that the falsity or absurdity may be apparent; as, "Benedict Arnold was an _honorable_ man." "A Judas Iscariot never _betrays_ a friend." "You can always _depend_ upon the word of a liar." Irony is cousin germain to _ridicule_, _derision_, _mockery_, _satire_ and _sarcasm_. _Ridicule_ implies laughter mingled with contempt; _derision_ is ridicule from a personal feeling of hostility; _mockery_ is insulting derision; _satire_ is witty mockery; _sarcasm_ is bitter satire and _irony_ is disguised satire. There are many other figures of speech which give piquancy to language and play upon words in such a way as to convey a meaning different from their ordinary signification in common every-day speech and writing. The golden rule for all is to _keep them in harmony with the character and purpose of speech and composition_. CHAPTER V PUNCTUATION Principal Points--Illustrations--Capital Letters. Lindley Murray and Goold Brown laid down cast-iron rules for punctuation, but most of them have been broken long since and thrown into the junk-heap of disuse. They were too rigid, too strict, went so much into _minutiae_, that they were more or less impractical to apply to ordinary composition. The manner of language, of style and of expression has considerably changed since then, the old abstruse complex sentence with its hidden meanings has been relegated to the shade, there is little of prolixity or long-drawn-out phrases, ambiguity of expression is avoided and the aim is toward terseness, brevity and clearness. Therefore, punctuation has been greatly simplified, to such an extent indeed, that it is now as much a matter of good taste and judgment as adherence to any fixed set of rules. Nevertheless there are laws governing it which cannot be abrogated, their principles must be rigidly and inviolably observed. The chief end of punctuation is to mark the grammatical connection and the dependence of the parts of a composition, but not the actual pauses made in speaking. Very often the points used to denote the delivery of a passage differ from those used when the passage is written. Nevertheless, several of the punctuation marks serve to bring out the rhetorical force of expression. The principal marks of punctuation are: 1. The Comma [,] 2. The Semicolon [;] 3. The Colon [:] 4. The Period [.] 5. The Interrogation [?] 6. The Exclamation [!] 7. The Dash [--] 8. The Parenthesis [()] 9. The Quotation [" "] There are several other points or marks to indicate various relations, but properly speaking such come under the heading of Printer's Marks, some of which are treated elsewhere. Of the above, the first four may be styled the grammatical points, and the remaining five, the rhetorical points. The _Comma_: The office of the Comma is to show the slightest separation which calls for punctuation at all. It should be omitted whenever possible. It is used to mark the least divisions of a sentence. (1) A series of words or phrases has its parts separated by commas:-- "Lying, trickery, chicanery, perjury, were natural to him." "The brave, daring, faithful soldier died facing the foe." If the series is in pairs, commas separate the pairs: "Rich and poor, learned and unlearned, black and white, Christian and Jew, Mohammedan and Buddhist must pass through the same gate." (2) A comma is used before a short quotation: "It was Patrick Henry who said, 'Give me liberty or give me death.'" (3) When the subject of the sentence is a clause or a long phrase, a comma is used after such subject: "That he has no reverence for the God I love, proves his insincerity." "Simulated piety, with a black coat and a sanctimonious look, does not proclaim a Christian." (4) An expression used parenthetically should be inclosed by commas: "The old man, as a general rule, takes a morning walk." (5) Words in apposition are set off by commas: "McKinley, the President, was assassinated." (6) Relative clauses, if not restrictive, require commas: "The book, which is the simplest, is often the most profound." (7) In continued sentences each should be followed by a comma: "Electricity lights our dwellings and streets, pulls cars, trains, drives the engines of our mills and factories." (8) When a verb is omitted a comma takes its place: "Lincoln was a great statesman; Grant, a great soldier." (9) The subject of address is followed by a comma: "John, you are a good man." (10) In numeration, commas are used to express periods of three figures: "Mountains 25,000 feet high; 1,000,000 dollars." The _Semicolon_ marks a slighter connection than the comma. It is generally confined to separating the parts of compound sentences. It is much used in contrasts: (1) "Gladstone was great as a statesman; he was sublime as a man." (2) The Semicolon is used between the parts of all compound sentences in which the grammatical subject of the second part is different from that of the first: "The power of England relies upon the wisdom of her statesmen; the power of America upon the strength of her army and navy." (4) The Semicolon is used before words and abbreviations which introduce particulars or specifications following after, such as, _namely, as, e.g., vid., i.e., etc._: "He had three defects; namely, carelessness, lack of concentration and obstinacy in his ideas." "An island is a portion of land entirely surrounded by water; as Cuba." "The names of cities should always commence with a capital letter; _e.g._, New York, Paris." "The boy was proficient in one branch; viz., Mathematics." "No man is perfect; i.e., free from all blemish." The _Colon_ except in conventional uses is practically obsolete. (1) It is generally put at the end of a sentence introducing a long quotation: "The cheers having subsided, Mr. Bryan spoke as follows:" (2) It is placed before an explanation or illustration of the subject under consideration: "This is the meaning of the term:" (3) A direct quotation formally introduced is generally preceded by a colon: "The great orator made this funny remark:" (4) The colon is often used in the title of books when the secondary or subtitle is in apposition to the leading one and when the conjunction _or_ is omitted: "Acoustics: the Science of Sound." (5) It is used after the salutation in the beginning of letters: "Sir: My dear Sir: Gentlemen: Dear Mr. Jones:" etc. In this connection a dash very often follows the colon. (6) It is sometimes used to introduce details of a group of things already referred to in the mass: "The boy's excuses for being late were: firstly, he did not know the time, secondly, he was sent on an errand, thirdly, he tripped on a rock and fell by the wayside." The _Period_ is the simplest punctuation mark. It is simply used to mark the end of a complete sentence that is neither interrogative nor exclamatory. (1) After every sentence conveying a complete meaning: "Birds fly." "Plants grow." "Man is mortal." (2) In abbreviations: after every abbreviated word: Rt. Rev. T. C. Alexander, D.D., L.L.D. (3) A period is used on the title pages of books after the name of the book, after the author's name, after the publisher's imprint: _American Trails_. By Theodore Roosevelt. New York. Scribner Company. The _Mark of Interrogation_ is used to ask or suggest a question. (1) Every question admitting of an answer, even when it is not expected, should be followed by the mark of interrogation: "Who has not heard of Napoleon?" (2) When several questions have a common dependence they should be followed by one mark of interrogation at the end of the series: "Where now are the playthings and friends of my boyhood; the laughing boys; the winsome girls; the fond neighbors whom I loved?" (3) The mark is often used parenthetically to suggest doubt: "In 1893 (?) Gladstone became converted to Home Rule for Ireland." The _Exclamation_ point should be sparingly used, particularly in prose. Its chief use is to denote emotion of some kind. (1) It is generally employed with interjections or clauses used as interjections: "Alas! I am forsaken." "What a lovely landscape!" (2) Expressions of strong emotion call for the exclamation: "Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" (3) When the emotion is very strong double exclamation points may be used: "Assist him!! I would rather assist Satan!!" The _Dash_ is generally confined to cases where there is a sudden break from the general run of the passage. Of all the punctuation marks it is the most misused. (1) It is employed to denote sudden change in the construction or sentiment: "The Heroes of the Civil War,--how we cherish them." "He was a fine fellow--in his own opinion." (2) When a word or expression is repeated for oratorical effect, a dash is used to introduce the repetition: "Shakespeare was the greatest of all poets--Shakespeare, the intellectual ocean whose waves washed the continents of all thought." (3) The Dash is used to indicate a conclusion without expressing it: "He is an excellent man but--" (4) It is used to indicate what is not expected or what is not the natural outcome of what has gone before: "He delved deep into the bowels of the earth and found instead of the hidden treasure--a button." (5) It is used to denote the omission of letters or figures: "J--n J--s" for John Jones; 1908-9 for 1908 and 1909; Matthew VII:5-8 for Matthew VII:5, 6, 7, and 8. (6) When an ellipsis of the words, _namely, that is, to wit_, etc., takes place, the dash is used to supply them: "He excelled in three branches-- arithmetic, algebra, and geometry." (7) A dash is used to denote the omission of part of a word when it is undesirable to write the full word: He is somewhat of a r----l (rascal). This is especially the case in profane words. (8) Between a citation and the authority for it there is generally a dash: "All the world's a stage."--_Shakespeare_. (9) When questions and answers are put in the same paragraph they should be separated by dashes: "Are you a good boy? Yes, Sir.--Do you love study? I do." _Marks of Parenthesis_ are used to separate expressions inserted in the body of a sentence, which are illustrative of the meaning, but have no essential connection with the sentence, and could be done without. They should be used as little as possible for they show that something is being brought into a sentence that does not belong to it. (1) When the unity of a sentence is broken the words causing the break should be enclosed in parenthesis: "We cannot believe a liar (and Jones is one), even when he speaks the truth." (2) In reports of speeches marks of parenthesis are used to denote interpolations of approval or disapproval by the audience: "The masses must not submit to the tyranny of the classes (hear, hear), we must show the trust magnates (groans), that they cannot ride rough-shod over our dearest rights (cheers);" "If the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), will not be our spokesman, we must select another. (A voice,--Get Robinson)." When a parenthesis is inserted in the sentence where no comma is required, no point should be used before either parenthesis. When inserted at a place requiring a comma, if the parenthetical matter relates to the whole sentence, a comma should be used before each parenthesis; if it relates to a single word, or short clause, no stop should come before it, but a comma should be put after the closing parenthesis. The _Quotation marks_ are used to show that the words enclosed by them are borrowed. (1) A direct quotation should be enclosed within the quotation marks: Abraham Lincoln said,--"I shall make this land too hot for the feet of slaves." (2) When a quotation is embraced within another, the contained quotation has only single marks: Franklin said, "Most men come to believe 'honesty is the best policy.'" (3) When a quotation consists of several paragraphs the quotation marks should precede each paragraph. (4) Titles of books, pictures and newspapers when formally given are quoted. (5) Often the names of ships are quoted though there is no occasion for it. The _Apostrophe_ should come under the comma rather than under the quotation marks or double comma. The word is Greek and signifies a turning away from. The letter elided or turned away is generally an _e_. In poetry and familiar dialogue the apostrophe marks the elision of a syllable, as "I've for I have"; "Thou'rt for thou art"; "you'll for you will," etc. Sometimes it is necessary to abbreviate a word by leaving out several letters. In such case the apostrophe takes the place of the omitted letters as "cont'd for continued." The apostrophe is used to denote the elision of the century in dates, where the century is understood or to save the repetition of a series of figures, as "The Spirit of '76"; "I served in the army during the years 1895, '96, '97, '98 and '99." The principal use of the apostrophe is to denote the possessive case. All nouns in the singular number whether proper names or not, and all nouns in the plural ending with any other letter than _s_, form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe and the letter _s_. The only exceptions to this rule are, that, by poetical license the additional _s_ may be elided in poetry for sake of the metre, and in the scriptural phrases "For goodness' sake." "For conscience' sake," "For Jesus' sake," etc. Custom has done away with the _s_ and these phrases are now idioms of the language. All plural nouns ending in _s_ form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe only as boys', horses'. The possessive case of the personal pronouns never take the apostrophe, as ours, yours, hers, theirs. CAPITAL LETTERS _Capital letters_ are used to give emphasis to or call attention to certain words to distinguish them from the context. In manuscripts they may be written small or large and are indicated by lines drawn underneath, two lines for SMALL CAPITALS and three lines for CAPITALS. Some authors, notably Carlyle, make such use of Capitals that it degenerates into an abuse. They should only be used in their proper places as given in the table below. (1) The first word of every sentence, in fact the first word in writing of any kind should begin with a capital; as, "Time flies." "My dear friend." (2) Every direct quotation should begin with a capital; "Dewey said,-- 'Fire, when you're ready, Gridley!'" (3) Every direct question commences with a capital; "Let me ask you; 'How old are you?'" (4) Every line of poetry begins with a capital; "Breathes there a man with soul so dead?" (5) Every numbered clause calls for a capital: "The witness asserts: (1) That he saw the man attacked; (2) That he saw him fall; (3) That he saw his assailant flee." (6) The headings of essays and chapters should be wholly in capitals; as, CHAPTER VIII--RULES FOR USE OF CAPITALS. (7) In the titles of books, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs should begin with a capital; as, "Johnson's Lives of the Poets." (8) In the Roman notation numbers are denoted by capitals; as, I II III V X L C D M--1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000. (9) Proper names begin with a capital; as, "Jones, Johnson, Caesar, Mark Antony, England, Pacific, Christmas." Such words as river, sea, mountain, etc., when used generally are common, not proper nouns, and require no capital. But when such are used with an adjective or adjunct to specify a particular object they become proper names, and therefore require a capital; as, "Mississippi River, North Sea, Alleghany Mountains," etc. In like manner the cardinal points north, south, east and west, when they are used to distinguish regions of a country are capitals; as, "The North fought against the South." When a proper name is compounded with another word, the part which is not a proper name begins with a capital if it precedes, but with a small letter if it follows, the hyphen; as "Post-homeric," "Sunday-school." (10) Words derived from proper names require a Capital; as, "American, Irish, Christian, Americanize, Christianize." In this connection the names of political parties, religious sects and schools of thought begin with capitals; as, "Republican, Democrat, Whig, Catholic, Presbyterian, Rationalists, Free Thinkers." (11) The titles of honorable, state and political offices begin with a capital; as, "President, Chairman, Governor, Alderman." (12) The abbreviations of learned titles and college degrees call for capitals; as, "LL.D., M.A., B.S.," etc. Also the seats of learning conferring such degrees as, "Harvard University, Manhattan College," etc. (13) When such relative words as father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, etc., precede a proper name, they are written and printed with capitals; as, Father Abraham, Mother Eddy, Brother John, Sister Jane, Uncle Jacob, Aunt Eliza. Father, when used to denote the early Christian writer, is begun with a capital; "Augustine was one of the learned Fathers of the Church." (14) The names applied to the Supreme Being begin with capitals: "God, Lord, Creator, Providence, Almighty, The Deity, Heavenly Father, Holy One." In this respect the names applied to the Saviour also require capitals: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Man of Galilee, The Crucified, The Anointed One." Also the designations of Biblical characters as "Lily of Israel, Rose of Sharon, Comfortress of the Afflicted, Help of Christians, Prince of the Apostles, Star of the Sea," etc. Pronouns referring to God and Christ take capitals; as, "His work, The work of Him, etc." (15) Expressions used to designate the Bible or any particular division of it begin with a capital; as, "Holy Writ, The Sacred Book, Holy Book, God's Word, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospel of St. Matthew, Seven Penitential Psalms." (16) Expressions based upon the Bible or in reference to Biblical characters begin with a capital: "Water of Life, Hope of Men, Help of Christians, Scourge of Nations." (17) The names applied to the Evil One require capitals: "Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness, Satan, King of Hell, Devil, Incarnate Fiend, Tempter of Men, Father of Lies, Hater of Good." (18) Words of very special importance, especially those which stand out as the names of leading events in history, have capitals; as, "The Revolution, The Civil War, The Middle Ages, The Age of Iron," etc. (19) Terms which refer to great events in the history of the race require capitals; "The Flood, Magna Charta, Declaration of Independence." (20) The names of the days of the week and the months of the year and the seasons are commenced with capitals: "Monday, March, Autumn." (21) The Pronoun _I_ and the interjection _O_ always require the use of capitals. In fact all the interjections when uttered as exclamations commence with capitals: "Alas! he is gone." "Ah! I pitied him." (22) All _noms-de-guerre_, assumed names, as well as names given for distinction, call for capitals, as, "The Wizard of the North," "Paul Pry," "The Northern Gael," "Sandy Sanderson," "Poor Robin," etc. (23) In personification, that is, when inanimate things are represented as endowed with life and action, the noun or object personified begins with a capital; as, "The starry Night shook the dews from her wings." "Mild-eyed Day appeared," "The Oak said to the Beech--'I am stronger than you.'" CHAPTER VI LETTER WRITING Principles of Letter-Writing--Forms--Notes Many people seem to regard letter-writing as a very simple and easily acquired branch, but on the contrary it is one of the most difficult forms of composition and requires much patience and labor to master its details. In fact there are very few perfect letter-writers in the language. It constitutes the direct form of speech and may be called conversation at a distance. Its forms are so varied by every conceivable topic written at all times by all kinds of persons in all kinds of moods and tempers and addressed to all kinds of persons of varying degrees in society and of different pursuits in life, that no fixed rules can be laid down to regulate its length, style or subject matter. Only general suggestions can be made in regard to scope and purpose, and the forms of indicting set forth which custom and precedent have sanctioned. The principles of letter-writing should be understood by everybody who has any knowledge of written language, for almost everybody at some time or other has necessity to address some friend or acquaintance at a distance, whereas comparatively few are called upon to direct their efforts towards any other kind of composition. Formerly the illiterate countryman, when he had occasion to communicate with friends or relations, called in the peripatetic schoolmaster as his amanuensis, but this had one draw-back,--secrets had to be poured into an ear other than that for which they were intended, and often the confidence was betrayed. Now, that education is abroad in the land, there is seldom any occasion for any person to call upon the service of another to compose and write a personal letter. Very few now-a-days are so grossly illiterate as not to be able to read and write. No matter how crude his effort may be it is better for any one to write his own letters than trust to another. Even if he should commence,--"deer fren, i lift up my pen to let ye no that i hove been sik for the past 3 weeks, hopping this will findye the same," his spelling and construction can be excused in view of the fact that his intention is good, and that he is doing his best to serve his own turn without depending upon others. The nature, substance and tone of any letter depend upon the occasion that calls it forth, upon the person writing it and upon the person for whom it is intended. Whether it should be easy or formal in style, plain or ornate, light or serious, gay or grave, sentimental or matter-of-fact depend upon these three circumstances. In letter writing the first and most important requisites are to be natural and simple; there should be no straining after effect, but simply a spontaneous out-pouring of thoughts and ideas as they naturally occur to the writer. We are repelled by a person who is stiff and labored in his conversation and in the same way the stiff and labored letter bores the reader. Whereas if it is light and in a conversational vein it immediately engages his attention. The letter which is written with the greatest facility is the best kind of letter because it naturally expresses what is in the writer, he has not to search for his words, they flow in a perfect unison with the ideas he desires to communicate. When you write to your friend John Browne to tell him how you spent Sunday you have not to look around for the words, or study set phrases with a view to please or impress Browne, you just tell him the same as if he were present before you, how you spent the day, where you were, with whom you associated and the chief incidents that occurred during the time. Thus, you write natural and it is such writing that is adapted to epistolary correspondence. There are different kinds of letters, each calling for a different style of address and composition, nevertheless the natural key should be maintained in all, that is to say, the writer should never attempt to convey an impression that he is other than what he is. It would be silly as well as vain for the common street laborer of a limited education to try to put on literary airs and emulate a college professor; he may have as good a brain, but it is not as well developed by education, and he lacks the polish which society confers. When writing a letter the street laborer should bear in mind that only the letter of a street-laborer is expected from him, no matter to whom his communication may be addressed and that neither the grammar nor the diction of a Chesterfield or Gladstone is looked for in his language. Still the writer should keep in mind the person to whom he is writing. If it is to an Archbishop or some other great dignitary of Church or state it certainly should be couched in terms different from those he uses to John Browne, his intimate friend. Just as he cannot say "Dear John" to an Archbishop, no more can he address him in the familiar words he uses to his friend of everyday acquaintance and companionship. Yet there is no great learning required to write to an Archbishop, no more than to an ordinary individual. All the laborer needs to know is the form of address and how to properly utilize his limited vocabulary to the best advantage. Here is the form for such a letter: 17 Second Avenue, New York City. January 1st, 1910. Most Rev. P. A. Jordan, Archbishop of New York. Most Rev. and dear Sir:-- While sweeping the crossing at Fifth Avenue and 50th street on last Wednesday morning, I found the enclosed Fifty Dollar Bill, which I am sending to you in the hope that it may be restored to the rightful owner. I beg you will acknowledge receipt and should the owner be found I trust you will notify me, so that I may claim some reward for my honesty. I am, Most Rev. and dear Sir, Very respectfully yours, Thomas Jones. Observe the brevity of the letter. Jones makes no suggestions to the Archbishop how to find the owner, for he knows the course the Archbishop will adopt, of having the finding of the bill announced from the Church pulpits. Could Jones himself find the owner there would be no occasion to apply to the Archbishop. This letter, it is true, is different from that which he would send to Browne. Nevertheless it is simple without being familiar, is just a plain statement, and is as much to the point for its purpose as if it were garnished with rhetoric and "words of learned length and thundering sound." Letters may be divided into those of friendship, acquaintanceship, those of business relations, those written in an official capacity by public servants, those designed to teach, and those which give accounts of the daily happenings on the stage of life, in other words, news letters. _Letters of friendship_ are the most common and their style and form depend upon the degree of relationship and intimacy existing between the writers and those addressed. Between relatives and intimate friends the beginning and end may be in the most familiar form of conversation, either affectionate or playful. They should, however, never overstep the boundaries of decency and propriety, for it is well to remember that, unlike conversation, which only is heard by the ears for which it is intended, written words may come under eyes other than those for whom they were designed. Therefore, it is well never to write anything which the world may not read without detriment to your character or your instincts. You can be joyful, playful, jocose, give vent to your feelings, but never stoop to low language and, above all, to language savoring in the slightest degree of moral impropriety. _Business letters_ are of the utmost importance on account of the interests involved. The business character of a man or of a firm is often judged by the correspondence. On many occasions letters instead of developing trade and business interests and gaining clientele, predispose people unfavorably towards those whom they are designed to benefit. Ambiguous, slip-shod language is a detriment to success. Business letters should be clear, concise, to the point and, above all, honest, giving no wrong impressions or holding out any inducements that cannot be fulfilled. In business letters, just as in business conduct, honesty is always the best policy. _Official letters_ are mostly always formal. They should possess clearness, brevity and dignity of tone to impress the receivers with the proper respect for the national laws and institutions. Letters designed to teach or _didactic letters_ are in a class all by themselves. They are simply literature in the form of letters and are employed by some of the best writers to give their thoughts and ideas a greater emphasis. The most conspicuous example of this kind of composition is the book on Etiquette by Lord Chesterfield, which took the form of a series of letters to his son. _News letters_ are accounts of world happenings and descriptions of ceremonies and events sent into the newspapers. Some of the best authors of our time are newspaper men who write in an easy flowing style which is most readable, full of humor and fancy and which carries one along with breathless interest from beginning to end. The principal parts of a letter are (1) the _heading_ or introduction; (2) the _body_ or substance of the letter; (3) the _subscription_ or closing expression and signature; (4) the _address_ or direction on the envelope. For the _body_ of a letter no forms or rules can be laid down as it altogether depends on the nature of the letter and the relationship between the writer and the person addressed. There are certain rules which govern the other three features and which custom has sanctioned. Every one should be acquainted with these rules. THE HEADING The _Heading_ has three parts, viz., the name of the place, the date of writing and the designation of the person or persons addressed; thus: 73 New Street, Newark, N. J., February 1st, 1910. Messr. Ginn and Co., New York Gentlemen: The name of the place should never be omitted; in cities, street and number should always be given, and except when the city is large and very conspicuous, so that there can be no question as to its identity with another of the same or similar name, the abbreviation of the State should be appended, as in the above, Newark, N. J. There is another Newark in the State of Ohio. Owing to failure to comply with this rule many letters go astray. The _date_ should be on every letter, especially business letters. The date should never be put at the bottom in a business letter, but in friendly letters this may be done. The _designation_ of the person or persons addressed differs according to the relations of the correspondents. Letters of friendship may begin in many ways according to the degrees of friendship or intimacy. Thus: My dear Wife: My dear Husband: My dear Friend: My darling Mother: My dearest Love: Dear Aunt: Dear Uncle: Dear George: etc. To mark a lesser degree of intimacy such formal designations as the following may be employed: Dear Sir: My dear Sir: Dear Mr. Smith: Dear Madam: etc. For clergymen who have the degree of Doctor of Divinity, the designation is as follows: Rev. Alban Johnson, D. D. My dear Sir: or Rev. and dear Sir: or more familiarly Dear Dr. Johnson: Bishops of the Roman and Anglican Communions are addressed as _Right Reverend_. The Rt. Rev., the Bishop of Long Island. or The Rt. Rev. Frederick Burgess, Bishop of Long Island. Rt. Rev. and dear Sir: Archbishops of the Roman Church are addressed as _Most Reverend_ and Cardinals as _Eminence_. Thus: The Most Rev. Archbishop Katzer. Most Rev. and dear Sir: His Eminence, James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore. May it please your Eminence: The title of the Governor of a State or territory and of the President of the United States is _Excellency_. However, _Honorable_ is more commonly applied to Governors:-- His Excellency, William Howard Taft, President of the United States. Sir:-- His Excellency, Charles Evans Hughes, Governor of the State of New York. Sir:-- Honorable Franklin Fort, Governor of New Jersey. Sir:-- The general salutation for Officers of the Army and Navy is _Sir_. The rank and station should be indicated in full at the head of the letter, thus: General Joseph Thompson, Commanding the Seventh Infantry. Sir: Rear Admiral Robert Atkinson, Commanding the Atlantic Squadron. Sir: The title of officers of the Civil Government is Honorable and they are addressed as _Sir_. Hon. Nelson Duncan, Senator from Ohio. Sir: Hon. Norman Wingfield, Secretary of the Treasury. Sir: Hon. Rupert Gresham, Mayor of New York. Sir: Presidents and Professors of Colleges and Universities are generally addressed as _Sir_ or _Dear Sir_. Professor Ferguson Jenks, President of .......... University. Sir: or Dear Sir: Presidents of Societies and Associations are treated as business men and addressed as _Sir_ or _Dear Sir_. Mr. Joseph Banks, President of the Night Owls. Dear Sir: or Sir: Doctors of Medicine are addressed as _Sir: My dear Sir: Dear Sir:_ and more familiarly My dear Dr: or Dear Dr: as Ryerson Pitkin, M. D. Sir: Dear Sir: My dear Dr: Ordinary people with no degrees or titles are addressed as Mr. and Mrs. and are designed Dear Sir: Dear Madam: and an unmarried woman of any age is addressed on the envelope as Miss So-and-so, but always designed in the letter as Dear Madam: The plural of Mr. as in addressing a firm is _Messrs_, and the corresponding salutation is _Dear Sirs: or Gentlemen:_ In England _Esq._ is used for _Mr._ as a mark of slight superiority and in this country it is sometimes used, but it is practically obsolete. Custom is against it and American sentiment as well. If it is used it should be only applied to lawyers and justices of the peace. SUBSCRIPTION The _Subscription_ or ending of a letter consists of the term of respect or affection and the signature. The term depends upon the relation of the person addressed. Letters of friendship can close with such expressions as: Yours lovingly, Yours affectionately, Devotedly yours, Ever yours, etc. as between husbands and wives or between lovers. Such gushing terminations as Your Own Darling, Your own Dovey and other pet and silly endings should be avoided, as they denote shallowness. Love can be strongly expressed without dipping into the nonsensical and the farcical. Formal expressions of Subscription are: Yours Sincerely, Yours truly, Respectfully yours, and the like, and these may be varied to denote the exact bearing or attitude the writer wishes to assume to the person addressed: as, Very sincerely yours, Very respectfully yours, With deep respect yours, Yours very truly, etc. Such elaborate endings as "In the meantime with the highest respect, I am yours to command," "I have the honor to be, Sir, Your humble Servant," "With great expression of esteem, I am Sincerely yours," "Believe me, my dear Sir, Ever faithfully yours," are condemned as savoring too much of affectation. It is better to finish formal letters without any such qualifying remarks. If you are writing to Mr. Ryan to tell him that you have a house for sale, after describing the house and stating the terms simply sign yourself Your obedient Servant Yours very truly, Yours with respect, James Wilson. Don't say you have the honor to be anything or ask him to believe anything, all you want to tell him is that you have a house for sale and that you are sincere, or hold him in respect as a prospective customer. Don't abbreviate the signature as: _Y'rs Resp'fly_ and always make your sex obvious. Write plainly Yours truly, _John Field_ and not _J. Field_, so that the person to whom you send it may not take you for _Jane Field_. It is always best to write the first name in full. Married women should prefix _Mrs._ to their names, as Very sincerely yours, _Mrs._ Theodore Watson. If you are sending a letter acknowledging a compliment or some kindness done you may say, _Yours gratefully,_ or _Yours very gratefully,_ in proportion to the act of kindness received. It is not customary to sign letters of degrees or titles after your name, except you are a lord, earl or duke and only known by the title, but as we have no such titles in America it is unnecessary to bring this matter into consideration. Don't sign yourself, Sincerely yours, Obadiah Jackson, M.A. or L.L. D. If you're an M. A. or an L.L. D. people generally know it without your sounding your own trumpet. Many people, and especially clergymen, are fond of flaunting after their names degrees they have received _honoris causa_, that is, degrees as a mark of honor, without examination. Such degrees should be kept in the background. Many a deadhead has these degrees which he could never have earned by brain work. Married women whose husbands are alive may sign the husband's name with the prefix _Mrs:_ thus, Yours sincerely, _Mrs._ William Southey. but when the husband is dead the signature should be-- Yours sincerely, _Mrs._ Sarah Southey. So when we receive a letter from a woman we are enabled to tell whether she has a husband living or is a widow. A woman separated from her husband but not a _divorcee_ should _not_ sign his name. ADDRESS The _address_ of a letter consists of the name, the title and the residence. Mr. Hugh Black, 112 Southgate Street, Altoona, Pa. Intimate friends have often familiar names for each other, such as pet names, nicknames, etc., which they use in the freedom of conversation, but such names should never, under any circumstances, appear on the envelope. The subscription on the envelope should be always written with propriety and correctness and as if penned by an entire stranger. The only difficulty in the envelope inscription is the title. Every man is entitled to _Mr._ and every lady to _Mrs._ and every unmarried lady to _Miss_. Even a boy is entitled to _Master_. When more than one is addressed the title is _Messrs._ _Mesdames_ is sometimes written of women. If the person addressed has a title it is courteous to use it, but titles never must be duplicated. Thus, we can write Robert Stitt, M. D., but never Dr. Robert Stitt, M. D, or Mr. Robert Stitt, M. D. In writing to a medical doctor it is well to indicate his profession by the letters M. D. so as to differentiate him from a D. D. It is better to write Robert Stitt, M. D., than Dr. Robert Stitt. In the case of clergymen the prefix Rev. is retained even when they have other titles; as Rev. Tracy Tooke, LL. D. When a person has more titles than one it is customary to only give him the leading one. Thus instead of writing Rev. Samuel MacComb, B. A., M. A., B. Sc., Ph. D., LL. D., D. D. the form employed is Rev. Samuel MacComb, LL. D. LL. D. is appended in preference to D. D. because in most cases the "Rev." implies a "D. D." while comparatively few with the prefix "Rev." are entitled to "LL. D." In the case of _Honorables_ such as Governors, Judges, Members of Congress, and others of the Civil Government the prefix "Hon." does away with _Mr._ and _Esq._ Thus we write Hon. Josiah Snifkins, not Hon. Mr. Josiah Snifkins or Hon. Josiah Snifkins, Esq. Though this prefix _Hon._ is also often applied to Governors they should be addressed as Excellency. For instance: His Excellency, Charles E. Hughes, Albany, N. Y. In writing to the President the superscription on the envelope should be To the President, Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C. Professional men such as doctors and lawyers as well as those having legitimately earned College Degrees may be addressed on the envelopes by their titles, as Jonathan Janeway, M. D. Hubert Houston, B. L. Matthew Marks, M. A., etc. The residence of the person addressed should be plainly written out in full. The street and numbers should be given and the city or town written very legibly. If the abbreviation of the State is liable to be confounded or confused with that of another then the full name of the State should be written. In writing the residence on the envelope, instead of putting it all in one line as is done at the head of a letter, each item of the residence forms a separate line. Thus, Liberty, Sullivan County, New York. 215 Minna St., San Francisco, California. There should be left a space for the postage stamp in the upper right hand corner. The name and title should occupy a line that is about central between the top of the envelope and the bottom. The name should neither be too much to right or left but located in the centre, the beginning and end at equal distances from either end. In writing to large business concerns which are well known or to public or city officials it is sometimes customary to leave out number and street. Thus, Messrs. Seigel, Cooper Co., New York City, Hon. William J. Gaynor, New York City. NOTES _Notes_ may be regarded as letters in miniature confined chiefly to invitations, acceptances, regrets and introductions, and modern etiquette tends towards informality in their composition. Card etiquette, in fact, has taken the place of ceremonious correspondence and informal notes are now the rule. Invitations to dinner and receptions are now mostly written on cards. "Regrets" are sent back on visiting cards with just the one word _"Regrets"_ plainly written thereon. Often on cards and notes of invitation we find the letters R. S. V. P. at the bottom. These letters stand for the French _repondez s'il vous plait_, which means "Reply, if you please," but there is no necessity to put this on an invitation card as every well-bred person knows that a reply is expected. In writing notes to young ladies of the same family it should be noted that the eldest daughter of the house is entitled to the designation _Miss_ without any Christian name, only the surname appended. Thus if there are three daughters in the Thompson family Martha, the eldest, Susan and Jemina, Martha is addressed as _Miss_ Thompson and the other two as _Miss_ Susan Thompson and _Miss_ Jemina Thompson respectively. Don't write the word _addressed_ on the envelope of a note. Don't _seal_ a note delivered by a friend. Don't write a note on a postal card. Here are a few common forms:-- FORMAL INVITATIONS Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wagstaff request the honor of Mr. McAdoo's presence on Friday evening, June 15th, at 8 o'clock to meet the Governor of the Fort. 19 Woodbine Terrace June 8th, 1910. This is an invitation to a formal reception calling for evening dress. Here is Mr. McAdoo's reply in the third person:-- Mr. McAdoo presents his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wagstaff and accepts with great pleasure their invitation to meet the Governor of the Fort on the evening of June fifteenth. 215 Beacon Street, June 10th, 1910. Here is how Mr. McAdoo might decline the invitation:-- Mr. McAdoo regrets that owing to a prior engagement he must forego the honor of paying his respects to Mr. and Mrs. Wagstaff and the Governor of the Fort on the evening of June fifteenth. 215 Beacon St., June 10th, 1910. Here is a note addressed, say to Mr. Jeremiah Reynolds. Mr. and Mrs. Oldham at home on Wednesday evening October ninth from seven to eleven. 21 Ashland Avenue, October 5th. Mr. Reynolds makes reply:-- Mr. Reynolds accepts with high appreciation the honor of Mr. and Mrs. Oldham's invitation for Wednesday evening October ninth. Windsor Hotel October 7th or Mr. Reynolds regrets that his duties render it impossible for him to accept Mr. and Mrs. Oldham's kind invitation for the evening of October ninth. Windsor Hotel, October 7th, Sometimes less informal invitations are sent on small specially designed note paper in which the first person takes the place of the third. Thus 360 Pine St., Dec. 11th, 1910. Dear Mr. Saintsbury: Mr. Johnson and I should be much pleased to have you dine with us and a few friends next Thursday, the fifteenth, at half past seven. Yours sincerely, Emma Burnside. Mr. Saintsbury's reply: 57 Carlyle Strand Dec. 13th, 1910. Dear Mrs. Burnside: Let me accept very appreciatively your invitation to dine with Mr. Burnside and you on next Thursday, the fifteenth, at half past seven. Yours sincerely, Henry Saintsbury. Mrs. Alexander Burnside. NOTES OF INTRODUCTION Notes of introduction should be very circumspect as the writers are in reality vouching for those whom they introduce. Here is a specimen of such a note. 603 Lexington Ave., New York City, June 15th, 1910. Rev. Cyrus C. Wiley, D. D., Newark, N. J. My dear Dr. Wiley: I take the liberty of presenting to you my friend, Stacy Redfern, M. D., a young practitioner, who is anxious to locate in Newark. I have known him many years and can vouch for his integrity and professional standing. Any courtesy and kindness which you may show him will be very much appreciated by me. Very sincerely yours, Franklin Jewett. CHAPTER VII ERRORS Mistakes--Slips of Authors--Examples and Corrections--Errors of Redundancy. In the following examples the word or words in parentheses are uncalled for and should be omitted: 1. Fill the glass (full). 2. They appeared to be talking (together) on private affairs. 3. I saw the boy and his sister (both) in the garden. 4. He went into the country last week and returned (back) yesterday. 5. The subject (matter) of his discourse was excellent. 6. You need not wonder that the (subject) matter of his discourse was excellent; it was taken from the Bible. 7. They followed (after) him, but could not overtake him. 8. The same sentiments may be found throughout (the whole of) the book. 9. I was very ill every day (of my life) last week. 10. That was the (sum and) substance of his discourse. 11. He took wine and water and mixed them (both) together. 12. He descended (down) the steps to the cellar. 13. He fell (down) from the top of the house. 14. I hope you will return (again) soon. 15. The things he took away he restored (again). 16. The thief who stole my watch was compelled to restore it (back again). 17. It is equally (the same) to me whether I have it today or tomorrow. 18. She said, (says she) the report is false; and he replied, (says he) if it be not correct I have been misinformed. 19. I took my place in the cars (for) to go to New York. 20. They need not (to) call upon him. 21. Nothing (else) but that would satisfy him. 22. Whenever I ride in the cars I (always) find it prejudicial to my health. 23. He was the first (of all) at the meeting. 24. He was the tallest of (all) the brothers. 25. You are the tallest of (all) your family. 26. Whenever I pass the house he is (always) at the door. 27. The rain has penetrated (through) the roof. 28. Besides my uncle and aunt there was (also) my grandfather at the church. 29. It should (ever) be your constant endeavor to please your family. 30. If it is true as you have heard (then) his situation is indeed pitiful. 31. Either this (here) man or that (there) woman has (got) it. 32. Where is the fire (at)? 33. Did you sleep in church? Not that I know (of). 34. I never before (in my life) met (with) such a stupid man. 35. (For) why did he postpone it? 36. Because (why) he could not attend. 37. What age is he? (Why) I don't know. 38. He called on me (for) to ask my opinion. 39. I don't know where I am (at). 40. I looked in (at) the window. 41. I passed (by) the house. 42. He (always) came every Sunday. 43. Moreover, (also) we wish to say he was in error. 44. It is not long (ago) since he was here. 45. Two men went into the wood (in order) to cut (down) trees. Further examples of redundancy might be multiplied. It is very common in newspaper writing where not alone single words but entire phrases are sometimes brought in, which are unnecessary to the sense or explanation of what is written. GRAMMATICAL ERRORS OF STANDARD AUTHORS Even the best speakers and writers are sometimes caught napping. Many of our standard authors to whom we have been accustomed to look up as infallible have sinned more or less against the fundamental principles of grammar by breaking the rules regarding one or more of the nine parts of speech. In fact some of them have recklessly trespassed against all nine, and still they sit on their pedestals of fame for the admiration of the crowd. Macaulay mistreated the article. He wrote,--"That _a_ historian should not record trifles is perfectly true." He should have used _an_. Dickens also used the article incorrectly. He refers to "Robinson Crusoe" as "_an_ universally popular book," instead of _a_ universally popular book. The relation between nouns and pronouns has always been a stumbling block to speakers and writers. Hallam in his _Literature of Europe_ writes, "No one as yet had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having only examined them in dogs." This means that Vesalius examined human kidneys in dogs. The sentence should have been, "No one had as yet exhibited the kidneys in human beings, Vesalius having examined such organs in dogs only." Sir Arthur Helps in writing of Dickens, states--"I knew a brother author of his who received such criticisms from him (Dickens) very lately and profited by _it_." Instead of _it_ the word should be _them_ to agree with criticisms. Here are a few other pronominal errors from leading authors: "Sir Thomas Moore in general so writes it, although not many others so late as _him_." Should be _he_.--Trench's _English Past and Present_. "What should we gain by it but that we should speedily become as poor as _them_." Should be _they_.--Alison's _Essay on Macaulay_. "If the king gives us leave you or I may as lawfully preach, as _them_ that do." Should be _they_ or _those_, the latter having persons understood.--Hobbes's _History of Civil Wars_. "The drift of all his sermons was, to prepare the Jews for the reception of a prophet, mightier than _him_, and whose shoes he was not worthy to bear." Should be than _he_.--Atterbury's _Sermons_. "Phalaris, who was so much older than _her_." Should be _she_.--Bentley's _Dissertation on Phalaris_. "King Charles, and more than _him_, the duke and the Popish faction were at liberty to form new schemes." Should be than _he_.--Bolingbroke's _Dissertations on Parties_. "We contributed a third more than the Dutch, who were obliged to the same proportion more than _us_." Should be than _we_.--Swift's _Conduct of the Allies_. In all the above examples the objective cases of the pronouns have been used while the construction calls for nominative cases. "Let _thou_ and _I_ the battle try"--_Anon_. Here _let_ is the governing verb and requires an objective case after it; therefore instead of _thou_ and _I_, the words should be _you_ (_sing_.) and _me_. "Forever in this humble cell, Let thee and I, my fair one, dwell" --_Prior_. Here _thee_ and _I_ should be the objectives _you_ and _me_. The use of the relative pronoun trips the greatest number of authors. Even in the Bible we find the relative wrongly translated: Whom do men say that I am?--_St. Matthew_. Whom think ye that I am?--_Acts of the Apostles_. _Who_ should be written in both cases because the word is not in the objective governed by say or think, but in the nominative dependent on the verb _am_. "_Who_ should I meet at the coffee house t'other night, but my old friend?"--_Steele_. "It is another pattern of this answerer's fair dealing, to give us hints that the author is dead, and yet lay the suspicion upon somebody, I know not _who_, in the country."--Swift's _Tale of a Tub_. "My son is going to be married to I don't know _who_."--Goldsmith's _Good-natured Man_. The nominative _who_ in the above examples should be the objective _whom_. The plural nominative _ye_ of the pronoun _thou_ is very often used for the objective _you_, as in the following: "His wrath which will one day destroy _ye both_."--_Milton_. "The more shame for _ye_; holy men I thought _ye_."--_Shakespeare_. "I feel the gales that from _ye_ blow."--_Gray_. "Tyrants dread _ye_, lest your just decree Transfer the power and set the people free."--_Prior_. Many of the great writers have played havoc with the adjective in the indiscriminate use of the degrees of comparison. "Of two forms of the same word, use the fittest."--_Morell_. The author here in _trying_ to give good advice sets a bad example. He should have used the comparative degree, "Fitter." Adjectives which have a comparative or superlative signification do not admit the addition of the words _more_, _most_, or the terminations, _er_, _est_, hence the following examples break this rule: "Money is the _most universal_ incitement of human misery."--Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_. "The _chiefest_ of which was known by the name of Archon among the Grecians."--Dryden's _Life of Plutarch_. "The _chiefest_ and largest are removed to certain magazines they call libraries."--Swift's _Battle of the Books_. The two _chiefest_ properties of air, its gravity and elastic force, have been discovered by mechanical experiments.--_Arbuthno_. "From these various causes, which in greater or _lesser_ degree, affected every individual in the colony, the indignation of the people became general."--Robertson's _History of America_. "The _extremest_ parts of the earth were meditating a submission." --Atterbury's _Sermons_. "The last are indeed _more preferable_ because they are founded on some new knowledge or improvement in the mind of man."--Addison, _Spectator_. "This was in reality the _easiest_ manner of the two."--Shaftesbury's _Advice to an Author_. "In every well formed mind this second desire seems to be the _strongest_ of the two."--Smith's _Theory of Moral Sentiments_. In these examples the superlative is wrongly used for the comparative. When only two objects are compared the comparative form must be used. Of impossibility there are no degrees of comparison, yet we find the following: "As it was impossible they should know the words, thoughts and secret actions of all men, so it was _more impossible_ they should pass judgment on them according to these things."--Whitby's _Necessity of the Christian Religion_. A great number of authors employ adjectives for adverbs. Thus we find: "I shall endeavor to live hereafter _suitable_ to a man in my station." --_Addison_. "I can never think so very _mean_ of him."--Bentley's _Dissertation on Phalaris_. "His expectations run high and the fund to supply them is _extreme_ scanty."--_Lancaster's Essay on Delicacy_. The commonest error in the use of the verb is the disregard of the concord between the verb and its subject. This occurs most frequently when the subject and the verb are widely separated, especially if some other noun of a different number immediately precedes the verb. False concords occur very often after _either_, _or_, _neither_, _nor_, and _much_, _more_, _many_, _everyone_, _each_. Here are a few authors' slips:-- "The terms in which the sale of a patent _were_ communicated to the public."--Junius's _Letters_. "The richness of her arms and apparel _were_ conspicuous."--Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_. "Everyone of this grotesque family _were_ the creatures of national genius."--D'Israeli. "He knows not what spleen, languor or listlessness _are_."--Blair's _Sermons_. "Each of these words _imply_, some pursuit or object relinquished." --_Ibid_. "Magnus, with four thousand of his supposed accomplices _were_ put to death."--_Gibbon_. "No nation gives greater encouragements to learning than we do; yet at the same time _none are_ so injudicious in the application." --_Goldsmith_. "_There's two_ or _three_ of us have seen strange sights."--_Shakespeare_. The past participle should not be used for the past tense, yet the learned Byron overlooked this fact. He thus writes in the _Lament of Tasso_:-- "And with my years my soul _begun to pant_ With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain." Here is another example from Savage's _Wanderer_ in which there is double sinning: "From liberty each nobler science _sprung_, A Bacon brighten'd and a Spenser _sung_." Other breaches in regard to the participles occur in the following:-- "Every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is _writ_"--Fielding's _Tom Jones_. "The Court of Augustus had not _wore_ off the manners of the republic" --Hume's _Essays_. "Moses tells us that the fountains of the earth were _broke_ open or clove asunder."--Burnet. "A free constitution when it has been _shook_ by the iniquity of former administrations."--_Bolingbroke_. "In this respect the seeds of future divisions were _sowed_ abundantly." --_Ibid_. In the following example the present participle is used for the infinitive mood: "It is easy _distinguishing_ the rude fragment of a rock from the splinter of a statue."--Gilfillan's _Literary Portraits_. _Distinguishing_ here should be replaced by _to distinguish_. The rules regarding _shall_ and _will_ are violated in the following: "If we look within the rough and awkward outside, we _will_ be richly rewarded by its perusal."--Gilfillan's _Literary Portraits_. "If I _should_ declare them and speak of them, they should be more than I am able to express."--_Prayer Book Revision of Psalms XI_. "If I _would_ declare them and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered."--_Ibid_. "Without having attended to this, we _will_ be at a loss, in understanding several passages in the classics."--Blair's _Lectures_. "We know to what cause our past reverses have been owing and _we_ will have ourselves to blame, if they are again incurred."--Alison's _History of Europe_. Adverbial mistakes often occur in the best writers. The adverb _rather_ is a word very frequently misplaced. Archbishop Trench in his "English Past and Present" writes, "It _rather_ modified the structure of our sentences than the elements of our vocabulary." This should have been written,--"It modified the structure of our sentences _rather than_ the elements of our vocabulary." "So far as his mode of teaching goes he is _rather_ a disciple of Socrates than of St. Paul or Wesley." Thus writes Leslie Stephens of Dr. Johnson. He should have written,--" So far as his mode of teaching goes he is a disciple of Socrates _rather_ than of St. Paul or Wesley." The preposition is a part of speech which is often wrongly used by some of the best writers. Certain nouns, adjectives and verbs require particular prepositions after them, for instance, the word _different_ always takes the preposition _from_ after it; _prevail_ takes _upon_; _averse_ takes _to_; _accord_ takes _with_, and so on. In the following examples the prepositions in parentheses are the ones that should have been used: "He found the greatest difficulty _of_ (in) writing."--Hume's _History of England_. "If policy can prevail _upon_ (over) force."--_Addison_. "He made the discovery and communicated _to_ (with) his friends." --Swift's _Tale of a Tub_. "Every office of command should be intrusted to persons _on_ (in) whom the parliament shall confide."--_Macaulay_. Several of the most celebrated writers infringe the canons of style by placing prepositions at the end of sentences. For instance Carlyle, in referring to the Study of Burns, writes:--"Our own contributions to it, we are aware, can be but scanty and feeble; but we offer them with good will, and trust they may meet with acceptance from those they are intended _for_." --"for whom they are intended," he should have written. "Most writers have some one vein which they peculiarly and obviously excel _in_."--_William Minto_. This sentence should read,--Most writers have some one vein in which they peculiarly and obviously excel. Many authors use redundant words which repeat the same thought and idea. This is called tautology. "Notwithstanding which (however) poor Polly embraced them all around." --_Dickens_. "I judged that they would (mutually) find each other."--_Crockett_. "....as having created a (joint) partnership between the two Powers in the Morocco question."--_The Times_. "The only sensible position (there seems to be) is to frankly acknowledge our ignorance of what lies beyond."--_Daily Telegraph_. "Lord Rosebery has not budged from his position--splendid, no doubt,--of (lonely) isolation."--_The Times_. "Miss Fox was (often) in the habit of assuring Mrs. Chick."--_Dickens_. "The deck (it) was their field of fame."--_Campbell_. "He had come up one morning, as was now (frequently) his wont," --_Trollope_. The counsellors of the Sultan (continue to) remain sceptical --_The Times_. Seriously, (and apart from jesting), this is no light matter.--_Bagehot_. To go back to your own country with (the consciousness that you go back with) the sense of duty well done.--_Lord Halsbury_. The _Peresviet_ lost both her fighting-tops and (in appearance) looked the most damaged of all the ships--_The Times_. Counsel admitted that, that was a fair suggestion to make, but he submitted that it was borne out by the (surrounding) circumstances. --_Ibid_. Another unnecessary use of words and phrases is that which is termed circumlocution, a going around the bush when there is no occasion for it,--save to fill space. It may be likened to a person walking the distance of two sides of a triangle to reach the objective point. For instance in the quotation: "Pope professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through the whole period of his existence with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, of a comparison he instituted between him and the man whose pupil he was" much of the verbiage may be eliminated and the sentence thus condensed: "Pope professed himself the pupil of Dryden, whom he lost no opportunity of praising; and his character may be illustrated by a comparison with his master." "His life was brought to a close in 1910 at an age not far from the one fixed by the sacred writer as the term of human existence." This in brevity can be put, "His life was brought to a close at the age of seventy;" or, better yet, "He died at the age of seventy." "The day was intensely cold, so cold in fact that the thermometer crept down to the zero mark," can be expressed: "The day was so cold the thermometer registered zero." Many authors resort to circumlocution for the purpose of "padding," that is, filling space, or when they strike a snag in writing upon subjects of which they know little or nothing. The young writer should steer clear of it and learn to express his thoughts and ideas as briefly as possible commensurate with lucidity of expression. Volumes of errors in fact, in grammar, diction and general style, could be selected from the works of the great writers, a fact which eloquently testifies that no one is infallible and that the very best is liable to err at times. However, most of the erring in the case of these writers arises from carelessness or hurry, not from a lack of knowledge. As a general rule it is in writing that the scholar is liable to slip; in oral speech he seldom makes a blunder. In fact, there are many people who are perfect masters of speech,--who never make a blunder in conversation, yet who are ignorant of the very principles of grammar and would not know how to write a sentence correctly on paper. Such persons have been accustomed from infancy to hear the language spoken correctly and so the use of the proper words and forms becomes a second nature to them. A child can learn what is right as easy as what is wrong and whatever impressions are made on the mind when it is plastic will remain there. Even a parrot can be taught the proper use of language. Repeat to a parrot.--"Two and two _make_ four" and it never will say "two and two _makes_ four." In writing, however, it is different. Without a knowledge of the fundamentals of grammar we may be able to speak correctly from association with good speakers, but without such a knowledge we cannot hope to write the language correctly. To write even a common letter we must know the principles of construction, the relationship of one word to another. Therefore, it is necessary for everybody to understand at least the essentials of the grammar of his own language. CHAPTER VIII PITFALLS TO AVOID Common Stumbling Blocks--Peculiar Constructions--Misused Forms. ATTRACTION Very often the verb is separated from its real nominative or subject by several intervening words and in such cases one is liable to make the verb agree with the subject nearest to it. Here are a few examples showing that the leading writers now and then take a tumble into this pitfall: (1) "The partition which the two ministers made of the powers of government _were_ singularly happy."--_Macaulay_. (Should be _was_ to agree with its subject, _partition_.) (2) "One at least of the qualities which fit it for training ordinary men _unfit_ it for _training_ an extraordinary man."--_Bagehot_. (Should be _unfits_ to agree with subject _one_.) (3) "The Tibetans have engaged to exclude from their country those dangerous influences whose appearance _were_ the chief cause of our action."--_The Times_. (Should be _was_ to agree with _appearance_.) (4) "An immense amount of confusion and indifference _prevail_ in these days."--_Telegraph_. (Should be _prevails_ to agree with amount.) ELLIPSIS Errors in ellipsis occur chiefly with prepositions. His objection and condoning of the boy's course, seemed to say the least, paradoxical. (The preposition _to_ should come after objection.) Many men of brilliant parts are crushed by force of circumstances and their genius forever lost to the world. (Some maintain that the missing verb after genius is _are_, but such is ungrammatical. In such cases the right verb should be always expressed: as--their genius _is_ forever lost to the world.) THE SPLIT INFINITIVE Even the best speakers and writers are in the habit of placing a modifying word or words between the _to_ and the remaining part of the infinitive. It is possible that such will come to be looked upon in time as the proper form but at present the splitting of the infinitive is decidedly wrong. "He was scarcely able _to_ even _talk_" "She commenced _to_ rapidly _walk_ around the room." "_To have_ really _loved_ is better than not _to have_ at all _loved_." In these constructions it is much better not to split the infinitive. In every-day speech the best speakers sin against this observance. In New York City there is a certain magistrate, a member of "the 400," who prides himself on his diction in language. He tells this story: A prisoner, a faded, battered specimen of mankind, on whose haggard face, deeply lined with the marks of dissipation, there still lingered faint reminders of better days long past, stood dejected before the judge. "Where are you from?" asked the magistrate. "From Boston," answered the accused. "Indeed," said the judge, "indeed, yours is a sad case, and yet you don't seem _to_ thoroughly _realise_ how low you have sunk." The man stared as if struck. "Your honor does me an injustice," he said bitterly. "The disgrace of arrest for drunkenness, the mortification of being thrust into a noisome dungeon, the publicity and humiliation of trial in a crowded and dingy courtroom I can bear, but to be sentenced by a Police Magistrate who _splits his infinitives_--that is indeed the last blow." ONE The indefinite adjective pronoun _one_ when put in place of a personal substantive is liable to raise confusion. When a sentence or expression is begun with the impersonal _one_ the word must be used throughout in all references to the subject. Thus, "One must mind one's own business if one wishes to succeed" may seem prolix and awkward, nevertheless it is the proper form. You must not say--"One must mind his business if he wishes to succeed," for the subject is impersonal and therefore cannot exclusively take the masculine pronoun. With _any one_ it is different. You may say--"If any one sins he should acknowledge it; let him not try to hide it by another sin." ONLY This is a word that is a pitfall to the most of us whether learned or unlearned. Probably it is the most indiscriminately used word in the language. From the different positions it is made to occupy in a sentence it can relatively change the meaning. For instance in the sentence--"I _only_ struck him that time," the meaning to be inferred is, that the only thing I did to him was to _strike_ him, not kick or otherwise abuse him. But if the _only_ is shifted, so as to make the sentence read-"I struck him _only_ that time" the meaning conveyed is, that only on that occasion and at no other time did I strike him. If another shift is made to-"I struck _only_ him that time," the meaning is again altered so that it signifies he was the only person I struck. In speaking we can by emphasis impress our meaning on our hearers, but in writing we have nothing to depend upon but the position of the word in the sentence. The best rule in regard to _only_ is to place it _immediately before_ the word or phrase it modifies or limits. ALONE is another word which creates ambiguity and alters meaning. If we substitute it for only in the preceding example the meaning of the sentence will depend upon the arrangement. Thus "I _alone_ struck him at that time" signifies that I and no other struck him. When the sentence reads "I struck him _alone_ at that time" it must be interpreted that he was the only person that received a blow. Again if it is made to read "I struck him at that time _alone_" the sense conveyed is that that was the only occasion on which I struck him. The rule which governs the correct use of _only_ is also applicable to _alone_. OTHER AND ANOTHER These are words which often give to expressions a meaning far from that intended. Thus, "I have _nothing_ to do with that _other_ rascal across the street," certainly means that I am a rascal myself. "I sent the despatch to my friend, but another villain intercepted it," clearly signifies that my friend is a villain. A good plan is to omit these words when they can be readily done without, as in the above examples, but when it is necessary to use them make your meaning clear. You can do this by making each sentence or phrase in which they occur independent of contextual aid. AND WITH THE RELATIVE Never use _and_ with the _relative_ in this manner: "That is the dog I meant _and which_ I know is of pure breed." This is an error quite common. The use of _and_ is permissible when there is a parallel relative in the preceding sentence or clause. Thus: "There is the dog which I meant and which I know is of pure breed" is quite correct. LOOSE PARTICIPLES A participle or participial phrase is naturally referred to the nearest nominative. If only one nominative is expressed it claims all the participles that are not by the construction of the sentence otherwise fixed. "John, working in the field all day and getting thirsty, drank from the running stream." Here the participles _working_ and _getting_ clearly refer to John. But in the sentence,--"Swept along by the mob I could not save him," the participle as it were is lying around loose and may be taken to refer to either the person speaking or to the person spoken about. It may mean that I was swept along by the mob or the individual whom I tried to save was swept along. "Going into the store the roof fell" can be taken that it was the roof which was going into the store when it fell. Of course the meaning intended is that some person or persons were going into the store just as the roof fell. In all sentence construction with participles there should be such clearness as to preclude all possibility of ambiguity. The participle should be so placed that there can be no doubt as to the noun to which it refers. Often it is advisable to supply such words as will make the meaning obvious. BROKEN CONSTRUCTION Sometimes the beginning of a sentence presents quite a different grammatical construction from its end. This arises from the fact probably, that the beginning is lost sight of before the end is reached. This occurs frequently in long sentences. Thus: "Honesty, integrity and square-dealing will bring anybody much better through life than the absence of either." Here the construction is broken at _than_. The use of _either_, only used in referring to one of two, shows that the fact is forgotten that three qualities and not two are under consideration. Any one of the three meanings might be intended in the sentence, viz., absence of any one quality, absence of any two of the qualities or absence of the whole three qualities. Either denotes one or the other of two and should never be applied to any one of more than two. When we fall into the error of constructing such sentences as above, we should take them apart and reconstruct them in a different grammatical form. Thus,--"Honesty, integrity and square-dealing will bring a man much better through life than a lack of these qualities which are almost essential to success." DOUBLE NEGATIVE It must be remembered that two negatives in the English language destroy each other and are equivalent to an affirmative. Thus "I _don't_ know _nothing_ about it" is intended to convey, that I am ignorant of the matter under consideration, but it defeats its own purpose, inasmuch as the use of nothing implies that I know something about it. The sentence should read--"I don't know anything about it." Often we hear such expressions as "He was _not_ asked to give _no_ opinion," expressing the very opposite of what is intended. This sentence implies that he was asked to give his opinion. The double negative, therefore, should be carefully avoided, for it is insidious and is liable to slip in and the writer remain unconscious of its presence until the eye of the critic detects it. FIRST PERSONAL PRONOUN The use of the first personal pronoun should be avoided as much as possible in composition. Don't introduce it by way of apology and never use such expressions as "In my opinion," "As far as I can see," "It appears to me," "I believe," etc. In what you write, the whole composition is expressive of your views, since you are the author, therefore, there is no necessity for you to accentuate or emphasize yourself at certain portions of it. Moreover, the big _I's_ savor of egotism! Steer clear of them as far as you can. The only place where the first person is permissible is in passages where you are stating a view that is not generally held and which is likely to meet with opposition. SEQUENCE OF TENSES When two verbs depend on each other their tenses must have a definite relation to each other. "I shall have much pleasure in accepting your kind invitation" is wrong, unless you really mean that just now you decline though by-and-by you intend to accept; or unless you mean that you do accept now, though you have no pleasure in doing so, but look forward to be more pleased by-and-by. In fact the sequence of the compound tenses puzzle experienced writers. The best plan is to go back in thought to the time in question and use the tense you would _then_ naturally use. Now in the sentence "I should have liked to have gone to see the circus" the way to find out the proper sequence is to ask yourself the question--what is it I "should have liked" to do? and the plain answer is "to go to see the circus." I cannot answer--"To have gone to see the circus" for that would imply that at a certain moment I would have liked to be in the position of having gone to the circus. But I do not mean this; I mean that at the moment at which I am speaking I wish I had gone to see the circus. The verbal phrase _I should have liked_ carries me back to the time when there was a chance of seeing the circus and once back at the time, the going to the circus is a thing of the present. This whole explanation resolves itself into the simple question,--what should I have liked _at that time_, and the answer is "to go to see the circus," therefore this is the proper sequence, and the expression should be "I should have liked to go to see the circus." If we wish to speak of something relating to a time _prior_ to that indicated in the past tense we must use the perfect tense of the infinitive; as, "He appeared to have seen better days." We should say "I expected to _meet him_," not "I expected _to have met him_." "We intended _to visit you_," not "_to have visited_ you." "I hoped they _would_ arrive," not "I hoped they _would have_ arrived." "I thought I should _catch_ the bird," not "I thought I should _have caught_ the bird." "I had intended _to go_ to the meeting," not "I had intended to _have gone_ to the meeting." BETWEEN--AMONG These prepositions are often carelessly interchanged. _Between_ has reference to two objects only, _among_ to more than two. "The money was equally divided between them" is right when there are only two, but if there are more than two it should be "the money was equally divided among them." LESS--FEWER _Less_ refers is quantity, _fewer_ to number. "No man has _less_ virtues" should be "No man has _fewer_ virtues." "The farmer had some oats and a _fewer_ quantity of wheat" should be "the farmer had some oats and a _less_ quantity of wheat." FURTHER--FARTHER _Further_ is commonly used to denote quantity, _farther_ to denote distance. "I have walked _farther_ than you," "I need no _further_ supply" are correct. EACH OTHER--ONE ANOTHER _Each other_ refers to two, _one another_ to more than two. "Jones and Smith quarreled; they struck each other" is correct. "Jones, Smith and Brown quarreled; they struck one another" is also correct. Don't say, "The two boys teach one another" nor "The three girls love each other." EACH, EVERY, EITHER, NEITHER These words are continually misapplied. _Each_ can be applied to two or any higher number of objects to signify _every one_ of the number _independently_. Every requires _more than two_ to be spoken of and denotes all the _persons_ or _things_ taken _separately_. _Either_ denotes _one or the other of two_, and should not be used to include both. _Neither_ is the negative of either, denoting not the other, and not the one, and relating to _two persons_ or _things_ considered separately. The following examples illustrate the correct usage of these words: _Each_ man of the crew received a reward. _Every_ man in the regiment displayed bravery. We can walk on _either_ side of the street. _Neither_ of the two is to blame. NEITHER-NOR When two singular subjects are connected by _neither_, _nor_ use a singular verb; as, "_Neither_ John _nor_ James _was there_," not _were_ there. NONE Custom Has sanctioned the use of this word both with a singular and plural; as--"None _is_ so blind as he who will not see" and "None _are_ so blind as they who will not see." However, as it is a contraction of _no one_ it is better to use the singular verb. RISE-RAISE These verbs are very often confounded. _Rise_ is to move or pass upward in any manner; as to "rise from bed;" to increase in value, to improve in position or rank, as "stocks rise;" "politicians rise;" "they have risen to honor." _Raise_ is to lift up, to exalt, to enhance, as "I raise the table;" "He raised his servant;" "The baker raised the price of _bread_." LAY-LIE The transitive verb _lay_, and _lay_, the past tense of the neuter verb _lie_, are often confounded, though quite different in meaning. The neuter verb _to lie_, meaning to lie down or rest, cannot take the objective after it except with a preposition. We can say "He _lies_ on the ground," but we cannot say "He _lies_ the ground," since the verb is neuter and intransitive and, as such, cannot have a direct object. With _lay_ it is different. _Lay_ is a transitive verb, therefore it takes a direct object after it; as "I _lay_ a wager," "I _laid_ the carpet," etc. Of a carpet or any inanimate subject we should say, "It lies on the floor," "A knife _lies_ on the table," not _lays_. But of a person we say--"He _lays_ the knife on the table," not "He _lies_----." _Lay_ being the past tense of the neuter to lie (down) we should say, "He _lay_ on the bed," and _lain_ being its past participle we must also say "He has _lain_ on the bed." We can say "I lay myself down." "He laid himself down" and such expressions. It is imperative to remember in using these verbs that to _lay_ means _to do_ something, and to lie means _to be in a state of rest_. SAYS I--I SAID _"Says I"_ is a vulgarism; don't use it. "I said" is correct form. IN--INTO Be careful to distinguish the meaning of these two little prepositions and don't interchange them. Don't say "He went _in_ the room" nor "My brother is _into_ the navy." _In_ denotes the place where a person or thing, whether at rest or in motion, is present; and _into_ denotes _entrance_. "He went _into_ the room;" "My brother is _in_ the navy" are correct. EAT--ATE Don't confound the two. _Eat_ is present, _ate_ is past. "I _eat_ the bread" means that I am continuing the eating; "I _ate_ the bread" means that the act of eating is past. _Eaten_ is the perfect participle, but often _eat_ is used instead, and as it has the same pronunciation (et) of _ate_, care should be taken to distinguish the past tense, I _ate_ from the perfect _I have eaten_ (_eat_). SEQUENCE OF PERSON Remember that the _first_ person takes precedence of the _second_ and the _second_ takes precedence of the _third_. When Cardinal Wolsey said _Ego et Rex_ (I and the King), he showed he was a good grammarian, but a bad courtier. AM COME--HAVE COME "_I am come_" points to my being here, while "I have come" intimates that I have just arrived. When the subject is not a person, the verb _to be_ should be used in preference to the verb _to have_; as, "The box is come" instead of "The box has come." PAST TENSE--PAST PARTICIPLE The interchange of these two parts of the irregular or so-called _strong_ verbs is, perhaps, the breach oftenest committed by careless speakers and writers. To avoid mistakes it is requisite to know the principal parts of these verbs, and this knowledge is very easy of acquirement, as there are not more than a couple of hundred of such verbs, and of this number but a small part is in daily use. Here are some of the most common blunders: "I seen" for "I saw;" "I done it" for "I did it;" "I drunk" for "I drank;" "I begun" for "I began;" "I rung" for "I rang;" "I run" for "I ran;" "I sung" for "I sang;" "I have chose" for "I have chosen;" "I have drove" for "I have driven;" "I have wore" for "I have worn;" "I have trod" for "I have trodden;" "I have shook" for "I have shaken;" "I have fell" for "I have fallen;" "I have drank" for "I have drunk;" "I have began" for "I have begun;" "I have rang" for "I have rung;" "I have rose" for "I have risen;" "I have spoke" for "I have spoken;" "I have broke" for "I have broken." "It has froze" for "It has frozen." "It has blowed" for "It has blown." "It has flowed" (of a bird) for "It has flown." N. B.--The past tense and past participle of _To Hang_ is _hanged_ or _hung_. When you are talking about a man meeting death on the gallows, say "He was hanged"; when you are talking about the carcass of an animal say, "It was hung," as "The beef was hung dry." Also say your coat "_was_ hung on a hook." PREPOSITIONS AND THE OBJECTIVE CASE Don't forget that prepositions always take the objective case. Don't say "Between you and _I_"; say "Between you and _me_" _Two_ prepositions should not govern _one objective_ unless there is an immediate connection between them. "He was refused admission to and forcibly ejected from the school" should be "He was refused admission to the school and forcibly ejected from it." SUMMON--SUMMONS Don't say "I shall summons him," but "I shall summon him." _Summon_ is a verb, _summons_, a noun. It is correct to say "I shall get a _summons_ for him," not a _summon_. UNDENIABLE--UNEXCEPTIONABLE "My brother has an undeniable character" is wrong if I wish to convey the idea that he has a good character. The expression should be in that case "My brother has an unexceptionable character." An _undeniable_ character is a character that cannot be denied, whether bad or good. An unexceptionable character is one to which no one can take exception. THE PRONOUNS Very many mistakes occur in the use of the pronouns. "Let you and I go" should be "Let you and _me_ go." "Let them and we go" should be "Let them and us go." The verb let is transitive and therefore takes the objective case. "Give me _them_ flowers" should be "Give me _those_ flowers"; "I mean _them_ three" should be "I mean those three." Them is the objective case of the personal pronoun and cannot be used adjectively like the demonstrative adjective pronoun. "I am as strong as _him_" should be "I am as strong as _he_"; "I am younger than _her_" should be "I am younger than _she_;" "He can write better than _me_" should be "He can write better than I," for in these examples the objective cases _him_, _her_ and _me_ are used wrongfully for the nominatives. After each of the misapplied pronouns a verb is understood of which each pronoun is the subject. Thus, "I am as strong as he (is)." "I am younger than she (is)." "He can write better than I (can)." Don't say "_It is me_;" say "_It is I_" The verb _To Be_ of which is is a part takes the same case after it that it has before it. This holds good in all situations as well as with pronouns. The verb _To Be_ also requires the pronouns joined to it to be in the same case as a pronoun asking a question; The nominative _I_ requires the nominative _who_ and the objectives _me_, _him_, _her_, _its_, _you_, _them_, require the objective _whom_. "_Whom_ do you think I am?" should be "_Who_ do you think I am?" and "_Who_ do they suppose me to be?" should be "_Whom_ do they suppose me to be?" The objective form of the Relative should be always used, in connection with a preposition. "Who do you take me for?" should be "_Whom_ do, etc." "Who did you give the apple to?" should be "Whom did you give the apple to," but as pointed out elsewhere the preposition should never end a sentence, therefore, it is better to say, "To whom did you give the apple?" After transitive verbs always use the objective cases of the pronouns. For "_He_ and _they_ we have seen," say "_Him_ and _them_ we have seen." THAT FOR SO "The hurt it was that painful it made him cry," say "so painful." THESE--THOSE Don't say, _These kind; those sort_. _Kind_ and _sort_ are each singular and require the singular pronouns _this_ and _that_. In connection with these demonstrative adjective pronouns remember that _this_ and _these_ refer to what is near at hand, _that_ and _those_ to what is more distant; as, _this book_ (near me), _that book_ (over there), _these_ boys (near), _those_ boys (at a distance). THIS MUCH--THUS MUCH "_This_ much is certain" should be "_Thus_ much or _so_ much is certain." FLEE--FLY These are two separate verbs and must not be interchanged. The principal parts of _flee_ are _flee_, _fled_, _fled_; those of _fly_ are _fly_, _flew_, _flown_. _To flee_ is generally used in the meaning of getting out of danger. _To fly_ means to soar as a bird. To say of a man "He _has flown_ from the place" is wrong; it should be "He _has fled_ from the place." We can say with propriety that "A bird has _flown_ from the place." THROUGH--THROUGHOUT Don't say "He is well known through the land," but "He is well known throughout the land." VOCATION AND AVOCATION Don't mistake these two words so nearly alike. Vocation is the employment, business or profession one follows for a living; avocation is some pursuit or occupation which diverts the person from such employment, business or profession. Thus "His vocation was the law, his avocation, farming." WAS--WERE In the subjunctive mood the plural form _were_ should be used with a singular subject; as, "If I _were_," not _was_. Remember the plural form of the personal pronoun _you_ always takes _were_, though it may denote but one. Thus, "_You were_," never "_you was_." "_If I was him_" is a very common expression. Note the two mistakes in it,--that of the verb implying a condition, and that of the objective case of the pronoun. It should read _If I were he_. This is another illustration of the rule regarding the verb _To Be_, taking the same case after it as before it; _were_ is part of the verb _To Be_, therefore as the nominative (I) goes before it, the nominative (he) should come after it. A OR AN _A_ becomes an before a vowel or before _h_ mute for the sake of euphony or agreeable sound to the ear. _An apple_, _an orange_, _an heir_, _an honor_, etc. CHAPTER IX STYLE Diction--Purity--Propriety--Precision. It is the object of every writer to put his thoughts into as effective form as possible so as to make a good impression on the reader. A person may have noble thoughts and ideas but be unable to express them in such a way as to appeal to others, consequently he cannot exert the full force of his intellectuality nor leave the imprint of his character upon his time, whereas many a man but indifferently gifted may wield such a facile pen as to attract attention and win for himself an envious place among his contemporaries. In everyday life one sees illustrations of men of excellent mentality being cast aside and ones of mediocre or in some cases, little, if any, ability chosen to fill important places. The former are unable to impress their personality; they have great thoughts, great ideas, but these thoughts and ideas are locked up in their brains and are like prisoners behind the bars struggling to get free. The key of language which would open the door is wanting, hence they have to remain locked up. Many a man has to pass through the world unheard of and of little benefit to it or himself, simply because he cannot bring out what is in him and make it subservient to his will. It is the duty of every one to develop his best, not only for the benefit of himself but for the good of his fellow men. It is not at all necessary to have great learning or acquirements, the laborer is as useful in his own place as the philosopher in his; nor is it necessary to have many talents. One talent rightly used is much better than ten wrongly used. Often a man can do more with one than his contemporary can do with ten, often a man can make one dollar go farther than twenty in the hands of his neighbor, often the poor man lives more comfortably than the millionaire. All depends upon the individual himself. If he make right use of what the Creator has given him and live according to the laws of God and nature he is fulfilling his allotted place in the universal scheme of creation, in other words, when he does his best, he is living up to the standard of a useful manhood. Now in order to do his best a man of ordinary intelligence and education should be able to express himself correctly both in speaking and writing, that is, he should be able to convey his thoughts in an intelligent manner which the simplest can understand. The manner in which a speaker or writer conveys his thoughts is known as his Style. In other words _Style_ may be defined as the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions through the medium of language. It depends upon the choice of words and their arrangement to convey a meaning. Scarcely any two writers have exactly the same style, that is to say, express their ideas after the same peculiar form, just as no two mortals are fashioned by nature in the same mould, so that one is an exact counterpart of the other. Just as men differ in the accent and tones of their voices, so do they differ in the construction of their language. Two reporters sent out on the same mission, say to report a fire, will verbally differ in their accounts though materially both descriptions will be the same as far as the leading facts are concerned. One will express himself in a style _different_ from the other. If you are asked to describe the dancing of a red-haired lady at the last charity ball you can either say--"The ruby Circe, with the Titian locks glowing like the oriflamme which surrounds the golden god of day as he sinks to rest amid the crimson glory of the burnished West, gave a divine exhibition of the Terpsichorean art which thrilled the souls of the multitude" or, you can simply say--"The red-haired lady danced very well and pleased the audience." The former is a specimen of the ultra florid or bombastic style which may be said to depend upon the pomposity of verbosity for its effect, the latter is a specimen of simple _natural_ Style. Needless to say it is to be preferred. The other should be avoided. It stamps the writer as a person of shallowness, ignorance and inexperience. It has been eliminated from the newspapers. Even the most flatulent of yellow sheets no longer tolerate it in their columns. Affectation and pedantry in style are now universally condemned. It is the duty of every speaker and writer to labor after a pleasing style. It gains him an entrance where he would otherwise be debarred. Often the interest of a subject depends as much on the way it is presented as on the subject itself. One writer will make it attractive, another repulsive. For instance take a passage in history. Treated by one historian it is like a desiccated mummy, dry, dull, disgusting, while under the spell of another it is, as it were, galvanized into a virile living thing which not only pleases but captivates the reader. DICTION The first requisite of style is _choice_ of _words_, and this comes under the head of _Diction_, the property of style which has reference to the words and phrases used in speaking and writing. The secret of literary skill from any standpoint consists in putting the right word in the right place. In order to do this it is imperative to know the meaning of the words we use, their exact literal meaning. Many synonymous words are seemingly interchangeable and appear as if the same meaning were applicable to three or four of them at the same time, but when all such words are reduced to a final analysis it is clearly seen that there is a marked difference in their meaning. For instance _grief_ and _sorrow_ seem to be identical, but they are not. _Grief_ is active, _sorrow_ is more or less passive; _grief_ is caused by troubles and misfortunes which come to us from the outside, while _sorrow_ is often the consequence of our own acts. _Grief_ is frequently loud and violent, _sorrow_ is always quiet and retiring. _Grief_ shouts, _Sorrow_ remains calm. If you are not sure of the exact meaning of a word look it up immediately in the dictionary. Sometimes some of our great scholars are puzzled over simple words in regard to meaning, spelling or pronunciation. Whenever you meet a strange word note it down until you discover its meaning and use. Read the best books you can get, books written by men and women who are acknowledged masters of language, and study how they use their words, where they place them in the sentences, and the meanings they convey to the readers. Mix in good society. Listen attentively to good talkers and try to imitate their manner of expression. If a word is used you do not understand, don't be ashamed to ask its meaning. True, a small vocabulary will carry you through, but it is an advantage to have a large one. When you live alone a little pot serves just as well as a large one to cook your victuals and it is handy and convenient, but when your friends or neighbors come to dine with you, you will need a much larger pot and it is better to have it in store, so that you will not be put to shame for your scantiness of furnishings. Get as many words as you possibly can--if you don't need them now, pack them away in the garrets of your brain so that you can call upon them if you require them. Keep a note book, jot down the words you don't understand or clearly understand and consult the dictionary when you get time. PURITY _Purity_ of style consists in using words which are reputable, national and present, which means that the words are in current use by the best authorities, that they are used throughout the nation and not confined to one particular part, and that they are words in constant use at the present time. There are two guiding principles in the choice of words,--_good use_ and _good taste_. _Good use_ tells us whether a word is right or wrong; _good taste_, whether it is adapted to our purpose or not. A word that is obsolete or too new to have gained a place in the language, or that is a provincialism, should not be used. Here are the Ten Commandments of English style: (1) Do not use foreign words. (2) Do not use a long word when a short one will serve your purpose. _Fire_ is much better than _conflagration_. (3) Do not use technical words, or those understood only by specialists in their respective lines, except when you are writing especially for such people. (4) Do not use slang. (5) Do not use provincialisms, as "I guess" for "I think"; "I reckon" for "I know," etc. (6) Do not in writing prose, use poetical or antiquated words: as "lore, e'er, morn, yea, nay, verily, peradventure." (7) Do not use trite and hackneyed words and expressions; as, "on the job," "up and in"; "down and out." (8) Do not use newspaper words which have not established a place in the language as "to bugle"; "to suicide," etc. (9) Do not use ungrammatical words and forms; as, "I ain't;" "he don't." (10) Do not use ambiguous words or phrases; as--"He showed me all about the house." Trite words, similes and metaphors which have become hackneyed and worn out should be allowed to rest in the oblivion of past usage. Such expressions and phrases as "Sweet sixteen" "the Almighty dollar," "Uncle Sam," "On the fence," "The Glorious Fourth," "Young America," "The lords of creation," "The rising generation," "The weaker sex," "The weaker vessel," "Sweetness long drawn out" and "chief cook and bottle washer," should be put on the shelf as they are utterly worn out from too much usage. Some of the old similes which have outlived their usefulness and should be pensioned off, are "Sweet as sugar," "Bold as a lion," "Strong as an ox," "Quick as a flash," "Cold as ice," "Stiff as a poker," "White as snow," "Busy as a bee," "Pale as a ghost," "Rich as Croesus," "Cross as a bear" and a great many more far too numerous to mention. Be as original as possible in the use of expression. Don't follow in the old rut but try and strike out for yourself. This does not mean that you should try to set the style, or do anything outlandish or out of the way, or be an innovator on the prevailing custom. In order to be original there is no necessity for you to introduce something novel or establish a precedent. The probability is you are not fit to do either, by education or talent. While following the style of those who are acknowledged leaders you can be original in your language. Try and clothe an idea different from what it has been clothed and better. If you are speaking or writing of dancing don't talk or write about "tripping the light fantastic toe." It is over two hundred years since Milton expressed it that way in "_L'Allegro_." You're not a Milton and besides over a million have stolen it from Milton until it is now no longer worth stealing. Don't resurrect obsolete words such as _whilom_, _yclept_, _wis_, etc., and be careful in regard to obsolescent words, that is, words that are at the present time gradually passing from use such as _quoth, trow, betwixt, amongst, froward_, etc. And beware of new words. Be original in the construction and arrangement of your language, but don't try to originate words. Leave that to the Masters of language, and don't be the first to try such words, wait until the chemists of speech have tested them and passed upon their merits. Quintilian said--"Prefer the oldest of the new and the newest of the old." Pope put this in rhyme and it still holds good: In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, Alike fantastic, if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. PROPRIETY _Propriety_ of style consists in using words in their proper sense and as in the case of purity, good usage is the principal test. Many words have acquired in actual use a meaning very different from what they once possessed. "Prevent" formerly meant to go before, and that meaning is implied in its Latin derivation. Now it means to put a stop to, to hinder. To attain propriety of style it is necessary to avoid confounding words derived from the same root; as _respectfully_ and _respectively_; it is necessary to use words in their accepted sense or the sense which everyday use sanctions. SIMPLICITY _Simplicity_ of style has reference to the choice of simple words and their unaffected presentation. Simple words should always be used in preference to compound, and complicated ones when they express the same or almost the same meaning. The Anglo-Saxon element in our language comprises the simple words which express the relations of everyday life, strong, terse, vigorous, the language of the fireside, street, market and farm. It is this style which characterizes the Bible and many of the great English classics such as the "Pilgrim's Progress," "Robinson Crusoe," and "Gulliver's Travels." CLEARNESS _Clearness_ of style should be one of the leading considerations with the beginner in composition. He must avoid all obscurity and ambiguous phrases. If he write a sentence or phrase and see that a meaning might be inferred from it otherwise than intended, he should re-write it in such a way that there can be no possible doubt. Words, phrases or clauses that are closely related should be placed as near to each other as possible that their mutual relation may clearly appear, and no word should be omitted that is necessary to the complete expression of thought. UNITY _Unity_ is that property of style which keeps all parts of a sentence in connection with the principal thought and logically subordinate to it. A sentence may be constructed as to suggest the idea of oneness to the mind, or it may be so loosely put together as to produce a confused and indefinite impression. Ideas that have but little connection should be expressed in separate sentences, and not crowded into one. Keep long parentheses out of the middle of your sentences and when you have apparently brought your sentences to a close don't try to continue the thought or idea by adding supplementary clauses. STRENGTH _Strength_ is that property of style which gives animation, energy and vivacity to language and sustains the interest of the reader. It is as necessary to language as good food is to the body. Without it the words are weak and feeble and create little or no impression on the mind. In order to have strength the language must be concise, that is, much expressed in little compass, you must hit the nail fairly on the head and drive it in straight. Go critically over what you write and strike out every word, phrase and clause the omission of which impairs neither the clearness nor force of the sentence and so avoid redundancy, tautology and circumlocution. Give the most important words the most prominent places, which, as has been pointed out elsewhere, are the beginning and end of the sentence. HARMONY _Harmony_ is that property of style which gives a smoothness to the sentence, so that when the words are sounded their connection becomes pleasing to the ear. It adapts sound to sense. Most people construct their sentences without giving thought to the way they will sound and as a consequence we have many jarring and discordant combinations such as "Thou strengthenedst thy position and actedst arbitrarily and derogatorily to my interests." Harsh, disagreeable verbs are liable to occur with the Quaker form _Thou_ of the personal pronoun. This form is now nearly obsolete, the plural _you_ being almost universally used. To obtain harmony in the sentence long words that are hard to pronounce and combinations of letters of one kind should be avoided. EXPRESSIVE OF WRITER Style is expressive of the writer, as to who he is and what he is. As a matter of structure in composition it is the indication of what a man can do; as a matter of quality it is an indication of what he is. KINDS OF STYLE Style has been classified in different ways, but it admits of so many designations that it is very hard to enumerate a table. In fact there are as many styles as there are writers, for no two authors write _exactly_ after the same form. However, we may classify the styles of the various authors in broad divisions as (1) dry, (2) plain, (3) neat, (4) elegant, (5) florid, (6) bombastic. The _dry_ style excludes all ornament and makes no effort to appeal to any sense of beauty. Its object is simply to express the thoughts in a correct manner. This style is exemplified by Berkeley. The _plain_ style does not seek ornamentation either, but aims to make clear and concise statements without any elaboration or embellishment. Locke and Whately illustrate the plain style. The _neat_ style only aspires after ornament sparingly. Its object is to have correct figures, pure diction and clear and harmonious sentences. Goldsmith and Gray are the acknowledged leaders in this kind of style. The _elegant_ style uses every ornament that can beautify and avoids every excess which would degrade. Macaulay and Addison have been enthroned as the kings of this style. To them all writers bend the knee in homage. The _florid_ style goes to excess in superfluous and superficial ornamentation and strains after a highly colored imagery. The poems of Ossian typify this style. The _bombastic_ is characterized by such an excess of words, figures and ornaments as to be ridiculous and disgusting. It is like a circus clown dressed up in gold tinsel Dickens gives a fine example of it in Sergeant Buzfuz' speech in the "Pickwick Papers." Among other varieties of style may be mentioned the colloquial, the laconic, the concise, the diffuse, the abrupt the flowing, the quaint, the epigrammatic, the flowery, the feeble, the nervous, the vehement, and the affected. The manner of these is sufficiently indicated by the adjective used to describe them. In fact style is as various as character and expresses the individuality of the writer, or in other words, as the French writer Buffon very aptly remarks, "the style is the man himself." CHAPTER X SUGGESTIONS How to Write--What to Write--Correct Speaking and Speakers Rules of grammar and rhetoric are good in their own place; their laws must be observed in order to express thoughts and ideas in the right way so that they shall convey a determinate sense and meaning in a pleasing and acceptable manner. Hard and fast rules, however, can never make a writer or author. That is the business of old Mother Nature and nothing can take her place. If nature has not endowed a man with faculties to put his ideas into proper composition he cannot do so. He may have no ideas worthy the recording. If a person has not a thought to express, it cannot be expressed. Something cannot be manufactured out of nothing. The author must have thoughts and ideas before he can express them on paper. These come to him by nature and environment and are developed and strengthened by study. There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says "Poeta nascitur non fit" the translation of which is--the poet is born, not made. To a great degree the same applies to the author. Some men are great scholars as far as book learning is concerned, yet they cannot express themselves in passable composition. Their knowledge is like gold locked up in a chest where it is of no value to themselves or the rest of the world. The best way to learn to write is to sit down and write, just as the best way how to learn to ride a bicycle is to mount the wheel and pedal away. Write first about common things, subjects that are familiar to you. Try for instance an essay on a cat. Say something original about her. Don't say "she is very playful when young but becomes grave as she grows old." That has been said more than fifty thousand times before. Tell what you have seen the family cat doing, how she caught a mouse in the garret and what she did after catching it. Familiar themes are always the best for the beginner. Don't attempt to describe a scene in Australia if you have never been there and know nothing of the country. Never hunt for subjects, there are thousands around you. Describe what you saw yesterday-- a fire, a runaway horse, a dog-fight on the street and be original in your description. Imitate the best writers in their _style_, but not in their exact words. Get out of the beaten path, make a pathway of your own. Know what you write about, write about what you know; this is a golden rule to which you must adhere. To know you must study. The world is an open book in which all who run may read. Nature is one great volume the pages of which are open to the peasant as well as to the peer. Study Nature's moods and tenses, for they are vastly more important than those of the grammar. Book learning is most desirable, but, after all, it is only theory and not practice. The grandest allegory in the English, in fact, in any language, was written by an ignorant, so-called ignorant, tinker named John Bunyan. Shakespeare was not a scholar in the sense we regard the term to-day, yet no man ever lived or probably ever will live that equalled or will equal him in the expression of thought. He simply read the book of nature and interpreted it from the standpoint of his own magnificent genius. Don't imagine that a college education is necessary to success as a writer. Far from it. Some of our college men are dead-heads, drones, parasites on the body social, not alone useless to the world but to themselves. A person may be so ornamental that he is valueless from any other standpoint. As a general rule ornamental things serve but little purpose. A man may know so much of everything that he knows little of anything. This may sound paradoxical, but, nevertheless, experience proves its truth. If you are poor that is not a detriment but an advantage. Poverty is an incentive to endeavor, not a drawback. Better to be born with a good, working brain in your head than with a gold spoon in your mouth. If the world had been depending on the so-called pets of fortune it would have deteriorated long ago. From the pits of poverty, from the arenas of suffering, from the hovels of neglect, from the backwood cabins of obscurity, from the lanes and by-ways of oppression, from the dingy garrets and basements of unending toil and drudgery have come men and women who have made history, made the world brighter, better, higher, holier for their existence in it, made of it a place good to live in and worthy to die in,--men and women who have hallowed it by their footsteps and sanctified it with their presence and in many cases consecrated it with their blood. Poverty is a blessing, not an evil, a benison from the Father's hand if accepted in the right spirit. Instead of retarding, it has elevated literature in all ages. Homer was a blind beggarman singing his snatches of song for the dole of charity; grand old Socrates, oracle of wisdom, many a day went without his dinner because he had not the wherewithal to get it, while teaching the youth of Athens. The divine Dante was nothing better than a beggar, houseless, homeless, friendless, wandering through Italy while he composed his immortal cantos. Milton, who in his blindness "looked where angels fear to tread," was steeped in poverty while writing his sublime conception, "Paradise Lost." Shakespeare was glad to hold and water the horses of patrons outside the White Horse Theatre for a few pennies in order to buy bread. Burns burst forth in never-dying song while guiding the ploughshare. Poor Heinrich Heine, neglected and in poverty, from his "mattress grave" of suffering in Paris added literary laurels to the wreath of his German Fatherland. In America Elihu Burritt, while attending the anvil, made himself a master of a score of languages and became the literary lion of his age and country. In other fields of endeavor poverty has been the spur to action. Napoleon was born in obscurity, the son of a hand-to-mouth scrivener in the backward island of Corsica. Abraham Lincoln, the boast and pride of America, the man who made this land too hot for the feet of slaves, came from a log cabin in the Ohio backwoods. So did James A. Garfield. Ulysses Grant came from a tanyard to become the world's greatest general. Thomas A. Edison commenced as a newsboy on a railway train. The examples of these men are incentives to action. Poverty thrust them forward instead of keeping them back. Therefore, if you are poor make your circumstances a means to an end. Have ambition, keep a goal in sight and bend every energy to reach that goal. A story is told of Thomas Carlyle the day he attained the highest honor the literary world could confer upon him when he was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University. After his installation speech, in going through the halls, he met a student seemingly deep in study. In his own peculiar, abrupt, crusty way the Sage of Chelsea interrogated the young man: "For what profession are you studying?" "I don't know," returned the youth. "You don't know," thundered Carlyle, "young man, you are a fool." Then he went on to qualify his vehement remark, "My boy when I was your age, I was stooped in grinding, gripping poverty in the little village of Ecclefechan, in the wilds of [Transcriber's note: Part of word illegible]-frieshire, where in all the place only the minister and myself could read the Bible, yet poor and obscure as I was, in my mind's eye I saw a chair awaiting for me in the Temple of Fame and day and night and night and day I studied until I sat in that chair to-day as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University." Another Scotchman, Robert Buchanan, the famous novelist, set out for London from Glasgow with but half-a-crown in his pocket. "Here goes," said he, "for a grave in Westminster Abbey." He was not much of a scholar, but his ambition carried him on and he became one of the great literary lions of the world's metropolis. Henry M. Stanley was a poorhouse waif whose real name was John Rowlands. He was brought up in a Welsh workhouse, but he had ambition, so he rose to be a great explorer, a great writer, became a member of Parliament and was knighted by the British Sovereign. Have ambition to succeed and you will succeed. Cut the word "failure" out of your lexicon. Don't acknowledge it. Remember "In life's earnest battle they only prevail Who daily march onward and never say fail." Let every obstacle you encounter be but a stepping stone in the path of onward progress to the goal of success. If untoward circumstances surround you, resolve to overcome them. Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail on scraps of wrapping paper while he was half starved on a diet of bread and water. That unfortunate American genius, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote "The Raven," the most wonderful conception as well as the most highly artistic poem in all English literature, in a little cottage in the Fordham section of New York while he was in the direst straits of want. Throughout all his short and wonderfully brilliant career, poor Poe never had a dollar he could call his own. Such, however, was both his fault and his misfortune and he is a bad exemplar. Don't think that the knowledge of a library of books is essential to success as a writer. Often a multiplicity of books is confusing. Master a few good books and master them well and you will have all that is necessary. A great authority has said: "Beware of the man of one book," which means that a man of one book is a master of the craft. It is claimed that a thorough knowledge of the Bible alone will make any person a master of literature. Certain it is that the Bible and Shakespeare constitute an epitome of the essentials of knowledge. Shakespeare gathered the fruitage of all who went before him, he has sown the seeds for all who shall ever come after him. He was the great intellectual ocean whose waves touch the continents of all thought. Books are cheap now-a-days, the greatest works, thanks to the printing press, are within the reach of all, and the more you read, the better, provided they are worth reading. Sometimes a man takes poison into his system unconscious of the fact that it is poison, as in the case of certain foods, and it is very hard to throw off its effects. Therefore, be careful in your choice of reading matter. If you cannot afford a full library, and as has been said, such is not necessary, select a few of the great works of the master minds, assimilate and digest them, so that they will be of advantage to your literary system. Elsewhere in this volume is given a list of some of the world's masterpieces from which you can make a selection. Your brain is a storehouse, don't put useless furniture into it to crowd it to the exclusion of what is useful. Lay up only the valuable and serviceable kind which you can call into requisition at any moment. As it is necessary to study the best authors in order to be a writer, so it is necessary to study the best speakers in order to talk with correctness and in good style. To talk rightly you must imitate the masters of oral speech. Listen to the best conversationalists and how they express themselves. Go to hear the leading lectures, speeches and sermons. No need to imitate the gestures of elocution, it is nature, not art, that makes the elocutionist and the orator. It is not _how_ a speaker expresses himself but the language which he uses and the manner of its use which should interest you. Have you heard the present day masters of speech? There have been past time masters but their tongues are stilled in the dust of the grave, and you can only read their eloquence now. You can, however, listen to the charm of the living. To many of us voices still speak from the grave, voices to which we have listened when fired with the divine essence of speech. Perhaps you have hung with rapture on the words of Beecher and Talmage. Both thrilled the souls of men and won countless thousands over to a living gospel. Both were masters of words, they scattered the flowers of rhetoric on the shrine of eloquence and hurled veritable bouquets at their audiences which were eagerly seized by the latter and treasured in the storehouse of memory. Both were scholars and philosophers, yet they were far surpassed by Spurgeon, a plain man of the people with little or no claim to education in the modern sense of the word. Spurgeon by his speech attracted thousands to his Tabernacle. The Protestant and Catholic, Turk, Jew and Mohammedan rushed to hear him and listened, entranced, to his language. Such another was Dwight L. Moody, the greatest Evangelist the world has ever known. Moody was not a man of learning; he commenced life as a shoe salesman in Chicago, yet no man ever lived who drew such audiences and so fascinated them with the spell of his speech. "Oh, that was personal magnetism," you will say, but it was nothing of the kind. It was the burning words that fell from the lips of these men, and the way, the manner, the force with which they used those words that counted and attracted the crowds to listen unto them. Personal magnetism or personal appearance entered not as factors into their success. Indeed as far as physique were concerned, some of them were handicapped. Spurgeon was a short, podgy, fat little man, Moody was like a country farmer, Talmage in his big cloak was one of the most slovenly of men and only Beecher was passable in the way of refinement and gentlemanly bearing. Physical appearance, as so many think, is not the sesame to the interest of an audience. Daniel O'Connell, the Irish tribune, was a homely, ugly, awkward, ungainly man, yet his words attracted millions to his side and gained for him the hostile ear of the British Parliament, he was a master of verbiage and knew just what to say to captivate his audiences. It is words and their placing that count on almost all occasions. No matter how refined in other respects the person may be, if he use words wrongly and express himself in language not in accordance with a proper construction, he will repel you, whereas the man who places his words correctly and employs language in harmony with the laws of good speech, let him be ever so humble, will attract and have an influence over you. The good speaker, the correct speaker, is always able to command attention and doors are thrown open to him which remain closed to others not equipped with a like facility of expression. The man who can talk well and to the point need never fear to go idle. He is required in nearly every walk of life and field of human endeavor, the world wants him at every turn. Employers are constantly on the lookout for good talkers, those who are able to attract the public and convince others by the force of their language. A man may be able, educated, refined, of unblemished character, nevertheless if he lack the power to express himself, put forth his views in good and appropriate speech he has to take a back seat, while some one with much less ability gets the opportunity to come to the front because he can clothe his ideas in ready words and talk effectively. You may again say that nature, not art, makes a man a fluent speaker; to a great degree this is true, but it is _art_ that makes him a _correct_ speaker, and correctness leads to fluency. It is possible for everyone to become a correct speaker if he will but persevere and take a little pains and care. At the risk of repetition good advice may be here emphasized: Listen to the best speakers and note carefully the words which impress you most. Keep a notebook and jot down words, phrases, sentences that are in any way striking or out of the ordinary run. If you do not understand the exact meaning of a word you have heard, look it up in the dictionary. There are many words, called synonyms, which have almost a like signification, nevertheless, when examined they express different shades of meaning and in some cases, instead of being close related, are widely divergent. Beware of such words, find their exact meaning and learn to use them in their right places. Be open to criticism, don't resent it but rather invite it and look upon those as friends who point out your defects in order that you may remedy them. CHAPTER XI SLANG Origin--American Slang--Foreign Slang Slang is more or less common in nearly all ranks of society and in every walk of life at the present day. Slang words and expressions have crept into our everyday language, and so insiduously, that they have not been detected by the great majority of speakers, and so have become part and parcel of their vocabulary on an equal footing with the legitimate words of speech. They are called upon to do similar service as the ordinary words used in everyday conversation--to express thoughts and desires and convey meaning from one to another. In fact, in some cases, slang has become so useful that it has far outstripped classic speech and made for itself such a position in the vernacular that it would be very hard in some cases to get along without it. Slang words have usurped the place of regular words of language in very many instances and reign supreme in their own strength and influence. Cant and slang are often confused in the popular mind, yet they are not synonymous, though very closely allied, and proceeding from a common Gypsy origin. Cant is the language of a certain class--the peculiar phraseology or dialect of a certain craft, trade or profession, and is not readily understood save by the initiated of such craft, trade or profession. It may be correct, according to the rules of grammar, but it is not universal; it is confined to certain parts and localities and is only intelligible to those for whom it is intended. In short, it is an esoteric language which only the initiated can understand. The jargon, or patter, of thieves is cant and it is only understood by thieves who have been let into its significance; the initiated language of professional gamblers is cant, and is only intelligible to gamblers. On the other hand, slang, as it is nowadays, belongs to no particular class but is scattered all over and gets _entre_ into every kind of society and is understood by all where it passes current in everyday expression. Of course, the nature of the slang, to a great extent, depends upon the locality, as it chiefly is concerned with colloquialisms or words and phrases common to a particular section. For instance, the slang of London is slightly different from that of New York, and some words in the one city may be unintelligible in the other, though well understood in that in which they are current. Nevertheless, slang may be said to be universally understood. "To kick the bucket," "to cross the Jordan," "to hop the twig" are just as expressive of the departing from life in the backwoods of America or the wilds of Australia as they are in London or Dublin. Slang simply consists of words and phrases which pass current but are not refined, nor elegant enough, to be admitted into polite speech or literature whenever they are recognized as such. But, as has been said, a great many use slang without their knowing it as slang and incorporate it into their everyday speech and conversation. Some authors purposely use slang to give emphasis and spice in familiar and humorous writing, but they should not be imitated by the tyro. A master, such as Dickens, is forgivable, but in the novice it is unpardonable. There are several kinds of slang attached to different professions and classes of society. For instance, there is college slang, political slang, sporting slang, etc. It is the nature of slang to circulate freely among all classes, yet there are several kinds of this current form of language corresponding to the several classes of society. The two great divisions of slang are the vulgar of the uneducated and coarse-minded, and the high-toned slang of the so-called upper classes--the educated and the wealthy. The hoyden of the gutter does not use the same slang as my lady in her boudoir, but both use it, and so expressive is it that the one might readily understand the other if brought in contact. Therefore, there are what may be styled an ignorant slang and an educated slang--the one common to the purlieus and the alleys, the other to the parlor and the drawing-room. In all cases the object of slang is to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. A school girl, when she wants to praise a baby, exclaims: "Oh, isn't he awfully cute!" To say that he is very nice would be too weak a way to express her admiration. When a handsome girl appears on the street an enthusiastic masculine admirer, to express his appreciation of her beauty, tells you: "She is a peach, a bird, a cuckoo," any of which accentuates his estimation of the young lady and is much more emphatic than saying: "She is a beautiful girl," "a handsome maiden," or "lovely young woman." When a politician defeats his rival he will tell you "it was a cinch," he had a "walk-over," to impress you how easy it was to gain the victory. Some slang expressions are of the nature of metaphors and are highly figurative. Such are "to pass in your checks," "to hold up," "to pull the wool over your eyes," "to talk through your hat," "to fire out," "to go back on," "to make yourself solid with," "to have a jag on," "to be loaded," "to freeze on to," "to bark up the wrong tree," "don't monkey with the buzz-saw," and "in the soup." Most slang had a bad origin. The greater part originated in the cant of thieves' Latin, but it broke away from this cant of malefactors in time and gradually evolved itself from its unsavory past until it developed into a current form of expressive speech. Some slang, however, can trace its origin back to very respectable sources. "Stolen fruits are sweet" may be traced to the Bible in sentiment. Proverbs, ix:17 has it: "Stolen waters are sweet." "What are you giving me," supposed to be a thorough Americanism, is based upon Genesis, xxxviii:16. The common slang, "a bad man," in referring to Western desperadoes, in almost the identical sense now used, is found in Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, Massinger's play _"A New Way to Pay Old Debts,_" and in Shakespeare's _"King Henry VIII_." The expression "to blow on," meaning to inform, is in Shakespeare's _"As You Like it_." "It's all Greek to me" is traceable to the play of _"Julius Caesar_." "All cry and no wool" is in Butler's _"Hudibras_." "Pious frauds," meaning hypocrites, is from the same source. "Too thin," referring to an excuse, is from Smollett's "_Peregrine Pickle_." Shakespeare also used it. America has had a large share in contributing to modern slang. "The heathen Chinee," and "Ways that are dark, and tricks that are vain," are from Bret Harte's _Truthful James_. "Not for Joe," arose during the Civil War when one soldier refused to give a drink to another. "Not if I know myself" had its origin in Chicago. "What's the matter with----? He's all right," had its beginning in Chicago also and first was "What's the matter with Hannah." referring to a lazy domestic servant. "There's millions in it," and "By a large majority" come from Mark Twain's _Gilded Age_. "Pull down your vest," "jim-jams," "got 'em bad," "that's what's the matter," "go hire a hall," "take in your sign," "dry up," "hump yourself," "it's the man around the corner," "putting up a job," "put a head on him," "no back talk," "bottom dollar," "went off on his ear," "chalk it down," "staving him off," "making it warm," "dropping him gently," "dead gone," "busted," "counter jumper," "put up or shut up," "bang up," "smart Aleck," "too much jaw," "chin-music," "top heavy," "barefooted on the top of the head," "a little too fresh," "champion liar," "chief cook and bottle washer," "bag and baggage," "as fine as silk," "name your poison," "died with his boots on," "old hoss," "hunkey dorey," "hold your horses," "galoot" and many others in use at present are all Americanisms in slang. California especially has been most fecund in this class of figurative language. To this State we owe "go off and die," "don't you forget it," "rough deal," "square deal," "flush times," "pool your issues," "go bury yourself," "go drown yourself," "give your tongue a vacation," "a bad egg," "go climb a tree," "plug hats," "Dolly Vardens," "well fixed," "down to bed rock," "hard pan," "pay dirt," "petered out," "it won't wash," "slug of whiskey," "it pans out well," and "I should smile." "Small potatoes, and few in the hill," "soft snap," "all fired," "gol durn it," "an up-hill job," "slick," "short cut," "guess not," "correct thing" are Bostonisms. The terms "innocent," "acknowledge the corn," "bark up the wrong tree," "great snakes," "I reckon," "playing 'possum," "dead shot," had their origin in the Southern States. "Doggone it," "that beats the Dutch," "you bet," "you bet your boots," sprang from New York. "Step down and out" originated in the Beecher trial, just as "brain-storm" originated in the Thaw trial. Among the slang phrases that have come directly to us from England may be mentioned "throw up the sponge," "draw it mild," "give us a rest," "dead beat," "on the shelf," "up the spout," "stunning," "gift of the gab," etc. The newspapers are responsible for a large part of the slang. Reporters, staff writers, and even editors, put words and phrases into the mouths of individuals which they never utter. New York is supposed to be the headquarters of slang, particularly that portion of it known as the Bowery. All transgressions and corruptions of language are supposed to originate in that unclassic section, while the truth is that the laws of polite English are as much violated on Fifth Avenue. Of course, the foreign element mincing their "pidgin" English have given the Bowery an unenviable reputation, but there are just as good speakers of the vernacular on the Bowery as elsewhere in the greater city. Yet every inexperienced newspaper reporter thinks that it is incumbent on him to hold the Bowery up to ridicule and laughter, so he sits down, and out of his circumscribed brain, mutilates the English tongue (he can rarely coin a word), and blames the mutilation on the Bowery. 'Tis the same with newspapers and authors, too, detracting the Irish race. Men and women who have never seen the green hills of Ireland, paint Irish characters as boors and blunderers and make them say ludicrous things and use such language as is never heard within the four walls of Ireland. 'Tis very well known that Ireland is the most learned country on the face of the earth--is, and has been. The schoolmaster has been abroad there for hundreds, almost thousands, of years, and nowhere else in the world to-day is the king's English spoken so purely as in the cities and towns of the little Western Isle. Current events, happenings of everyday life, often give rise to slang words, and these, after a time, come into such general use that they take their places in everyday speech like ordinary words and, as has been said, their users forget that they once were slang. For instance, the days of the Land League in Ireland originated the word _boycott_, which was the name of a very unpopular landlord, Captain Boycott. The people refused to work for him, and his crops rotted on the ground. From this time any one who came into disfavor and whom his neighbors refused to assist in any way was said to be boycotted. Therefore to boycott means to punish by abandoning or depriving a person of the assistance of others. At first it was a notoriously slang word, but now it is standard in the English dictionaries. Politics add to our slang words and phrases. From this source we get "dark horse," "the gray mare is the better horse," "barrel of money," "buncombe," "gerrymander," "scalawag," "henchman," "logrolling," "pulling the wires," "taking the stump," "machine," "slate," etc. The money market furnishes us with "corner," "bull," "bear," "lamb," "slump," and several others. The custom of the times and the requirements of current expression require the best of us to use slang words and phrases on occasions. Often we do not know they are slang, just as a child often uses profane words without consciousness of their being so. We should avoid the use of slang as much as possible, even when it serves to convey our ideas in a forceful manner. And when it has not gained a firm foothold in current speech it should be used not at all. Remember that most all slang is of vulgar origin and bears upon its face the bend sinister of vulgarity. Of the slang that is of good birth, pass it by if you can, for it is like a broken-down gentleman, of little good to any one. Imitate the great masters as much as you will in classical literature, but when it comes to their slang, draw the line. Dean Swift, the great Irish satirist, coined the word "phiz" for face. Don't imitate him. If you are speaking or writing of the beauty of a lady's face don't call it her "phiz." The Dean, as an intellectual giant, had a license to do so--you haven't. Shakespeare used the word "flush" to indicate plenty of money. Well, just remember there was only one Shakespeare, and he was the only one that had a right to use that word in that sense. You'll never be a Shakespeare, there will never be such another--Nature exhausted herself in producing him. Bulwer used the word "stretch" for hang, as to stretch his neck. Don't follow his example in such use of the word. Above all, avoid the low, coarse, vulgar slang, which is made to pass for wit among the riff-raff of the street. If you are speaking or writing of a person having died last night don't say or write: "He hopped the twig," or "he kicked the bucket." If you are compelled to listen to a person discoursing on a subject of which he knows little or nothing, don't say "He is talking through his hat." If you are telling of having shaken hands with Mr. Roosevelt don't say "He tipped me his flipper." If you are speaking of a wealthy man don't say "He has plenty of spondulix," or "the long green." All such slang is low, coarse and vulgar and is to be frowned upon on any and every occasion. If you use slang use the refined kind and use it like a gentleman, that it will not hurt or give offense to any one. Cardinal Newman defined a gentleman as he who never inflicts pain. Be a gentleman in your slang-- never inflict pain. CHAPTER XII WRITING FOR NEWSPAPERS Qualification--Appropriate Subjects--Directions The newspaper nowadays goes into every home in the land; what was formerly regarded as a luxury is now looked upon as a necessity. No matter how poor the individual, he is not too poor to afford a penny to learn, not alone what is taking place around him in his own immediate vicinity, but also what is happening in every quarter of the globe. The laborer on the street can be as well posted on the news of the day as the banker in his office. Through the newspaper he can feel the pulse of the country and find whether its vitality is increasing or diminishing; he can read the signs of the times and scan the political horizon for what concerns his own interests. The doings of foreign countries are spread before him and he can see at a glance the occurrences in the remotest corners of earth. If a fire occurred in London last night he can read about it at his breakfast table in New York this morning, and probably get a better account than the Londoners themselves. If a duel takes place in Paris he can read all about it even before the contestants have left the field. There are upwards of 3,000 daily newspapers in the United States, more than 2,000 of which are published in towns containing less than 100,000 inhabitants. In fact, many places of less than 10,000 population can boast the publishing of a daily newspaper. There are more than 15,000 weeklies published. Some of the so-called country papers wield quite an influence in their localities, and even outside, and are money-making agencies for their owners and those connected with them, both by way of circulation and advertisements. It is surprising the number of people in this country who make a living in the newspaper field. Apart from the regular toilers there are thousands of men and women who make newspaper work a side issue, who add tidy sums of "pin money" to their incomes by occasional contributions to the daily, weekly and monthly press. Most of these people are only persons of ordinary, everyday ability, having just enough education to express themselves intelligently in writing. It is a mistake to imagine, as so many do, that an extended education is necessary for newspaper work. Not at all! On the contrary, in some cases, a high-class education is a hindrance, not a help in this direction. The general newspaper does not want learned disquisitions nor philosophical theses; as its name implies, it wants news, current news, interesting news, something to appeal to its readers, to arouse them and rivet their attention. In this respect very often a boy can write a better article than a college professor. The professor would be apt to use words beyond the capacity of most of the readers, while the boy, not knowing such words, would probably simply tell what he saw, how great the damage was, who were killed or injured, etc., and use language which all would understand. Of course, there are some brilliant scholars, deeply-read men and women in the newspaper realm, but, on the whole, those who have made the greatest names commenced ignorant enough and most of them graduated by way of the country paper. Some of the leading writers of England and America at the present time started their literary careers by contributing to the rural press. They perfected and polished themselves as they went along until they were able to make names for themselves in universal literature. If you want to contribute to newspapers or enter the newspaper field as a means of livelihood, don't let lack of a college or university education stand in your way. As has been said elsewhere in this book, some of the greatest masters of English literature were men who had but little advantage in the way of book learning. Shakespeare, Bunyan, Burns, and scores of others, who have left their names indelibly inscribed on the tablets of fame, had little to boast of in the way of book education, but they had what is popularly known as "horse" sense and a good working knowledge of the world; in other words, they understood human nature, and were natural themselves. Shakespeare understood mankind because he was himself a man; hence he has portrayed the feelings, the emotions, the passions with a master's touch, delineating the king in his palace as true to nature as he has done the peasant in his hut. The monitor within his own breast gave him warning as to what was right and what was wrong, just as the daemon ever by the side of old Socrates whispered in his ear the course to pursue under any and all circumstances. Burns guiding the plough conceived thoughts and clothed them in a language which has never, nor probably never will be, surpassed by all the learning which art can confer. These men were natural, and it was the perfection of this naturality that wreathed their brows with the never-fading laurels of undying fame. If you would essay to write for the newspaper you must be natural and express yourself in your accustomed way without putting on airs or frills; you must not ape ornaments and indulge in bombast or rhodomontade which stamp a writer as not only superficial but silly. There is no room for such in the everyday newspaper. It wants facts stated in plain, unvarnished, unadorned language. True, you should read the best authors and, as far as possible, imitate their style, but don't try to literally copy them. Be yourself on every occasion--no one else. Not like Homer would I write, Not like Dante if I might, Not like Shakespeare at his best, Not like Goethe or the rest, Like myself, however small, Like myself, or not at all. Put yourself in place of the reader and write what will interest yourself and in such a way that your language will appeal to your own ideas of the fitness of things. You belong to the _great_ commonplace majority, therefore don't forget that in writing for the newspapers you are writing for that majority and not for the learned and aesthetic minority. Remember you are writing for the man on the street and in the street car, you want to interest him, to compel him to read what you have to say. He does not want a display of learning; he wants news about something which concerns himself, and you must tell it to him in a plain, simple manner just as you would do if you were face to face with him. What can you write about? Why about anything that will constitute current news, some leading event of the day, anything that will appeal to the readers of the paper to which you wish to submit it. No matter in what locality you may live, however backward it may be, you can always find something of genuine human interest to others. If there is no news happening, write of something that appeals to yourself. We are all constituted alike, and the chances are that what will interest you will interest others. Descriptions of adventure are generally acceptable. Tell of a fox hunt, or a badger hunt, or a bear chase. If there is any important manufacturing plant in your neighborhood describe it and, if possible, get photographs, for photography plays a very important part in the news items of to-day. If a "great" man lives near you, one whose name is on the tip of every tongue, go and get an interview with him, obtain his views on the public questions of the day, describe his home life and his surroundings and how he spends his time. Try and strike something germane to the moment, something that stands out prominently in the limelight of the passing show. If a noted personage, some famous man or woman, is visiting the country, it is a good time to write up the place from which he or she comes and the record he or she has made there. For instance, it was opportune to write of Sulu and the little Pacific archipelago during the Sultan's trip through the country. If an attempt is made to blow up an American battleship, say, in the harbor of Appia, in Samoa, it affords a chance to write about Samoa and Robert Louis Stephenson. When Manuel was hurled from the throne of Portugal it was a ripe time to write of Portugal and Portuguese affairs. If any great occurrence is taking place in a foreign country such as the crowning of a king or the dethronement of a monarch, it is a good time to write up the history of the country and describe the events leading up to the main issue. When a particularly savage outbreak occurs amongst wild tribes in the dependencies, such as a rising of the Manobos in the Philippines, it is opportune to write of such tribes and their surroundings, and the causes leading up to the revolt. Be constantly on the lookout for something that will suit the passing hour, read the daily papers and probably in some obscure corner you may find something that will serve you as a foundation for a good article-- something, at least, that will give you a clue. Be circumspect in your selection of a paper to which to submit your copy. Know the tone and general import of the paper, its social leanings and political affiliations, also its religious sentiments, and, in fact, all the particulars you can regarding it. It would be injudicious for you to send an article on a prize fight to a religious paper or, _vice versa_, an account of a church meeting to the editor of a sporting sheet. If you get your copy back don't be disappointed nor yet disheartened. Perseverance counts more in the newspaper field than anywhere else, and only perseverance wins in the long run. You must become resilient; if you are pressed down, spring up again. No matter how many rebuffs you may receive, be not discouraged but call fresh energy to your assistance and make another stand. If the right stuff is in you it is sure to be discovered; your light will not remain long hidden under a bushel in the newspaper domain. If you can deliver the goods editors will soon be begging you instead of your begging them. Those men are constantly on the lookout for persons who can make good. Once you get into print the battle is won, for it will be an incentive to you to persevere and improve yourself at every turn. Go over everything you write, cut and slash and prune until you get it into as perfect form as possible. Eliminate every superfluous word and be careful to strike out all ambiguous expressions and references. If you are writing for a weekly paper remember it differs from a daily one. Weeklies want what will not alone interest the man on the street, but the woman at the fireside; they want out-of-the-way facts, curious scraps of lore, personal notes of famous or eccentric people, reminiscences of exciting experiences, interesting gleanings in life's numberless by-ways, in short, anything that will entertain, amuse, instruct the home circle. There is always something occurring in your immediate surroundings, some curious event or thrilling episode that will furnish you with data for an article. You must know the nature of the weekly to which you submit your copy the same as you must know the daily. For instance, the _Christian Herald_, while avowedly a religious weekly, treats such secular matter as makes the paper appeal to all. On its religious side it is _non-sectarian_, covering the broad field of Christianity throughout the world; on its secular side it deals with human events in such an impartial way that every one, no matter to what class they may belong or to what creed they may subscribe, can take a living, personal interest. The monthlies offer another attractive field for the literary aspirant. Here, again, don't think you must be an university professor to write for a monthly magazine. Many, indeed most, of the foremost magazine contributors are men and women who have never passed through a college except by going in at the front door and emerging from the back one. However, for the most part, they are individuals of wide experience who know the practical side of life as distinguished from the theoretical. The ordinary monthly magazine treats of the leading questions and issues which are engaging the attention of the world for the moment, great inventions, great discoveries, whatever is engrossing the popular mind for the time being, such as flying machines, battleships, sky-scrapers, the opening of mines, the development of new lands, the political issues, views of party leaders, character sketches of distinguished personages, etc. However, before trying your skill for a monthly magazine it would be well for you to have a good apprenticeship in writing for the daily press. Above all things, remember that perseverance is the key that opens the door of success. Persevere! If you are turned down don't get disheartened; on the contrary, let the rebuff act as a stimulant to further effort. Many of the most successful writers of our time have been turned down again and again. For days and months, and even years, some of them have hawked their wares from one literary door to another until they found a purchaser. You may be a great writer in embryo, but you will never develop into a fetus, not to speak of full maturity, unless you bring out what is in you. Give yourself a chance to grow and seize upon everything that will enlarge the scope of your horizon. Keep your eyes wide open and there is not a moment of the day in which you will not see something to interest you and in which you may be able to interest others. Learn, too, how to read Nature's book. There's a lesson in everything--in the stones, the grass, the trees, the babbling brooks and the singing birds. Interpret the lesson for yourself, then teach it to others. Always be in earnest in your writing; go about it in a determined kind of way, don't be faint-hearted or backward, be brave, be brave, and evermore be brave. On the wide, tented field in the battle of life, With an army of millions before you; Like a hero of old gird your soul for the strife And let not the foeman tramp o'er you; Act, act like a soldier and proudly rush on The most valiant in Bravery's van, With keen, flashing sword cut your way to the front And show to the world you're a _Man_. If you are of the masculine gender be a man in all things in the highest and best acceptation of the word. That is the noblest title you can boast, higher far than that of earl or duke, emperor or king. In the same way womanhood is the grandest crown the feminine head can wear. When the world frowns on you and everything seems to go wrong, possess your soul in patience and hope for the dawn of a brighter day. It will come. The sun is always shining behind the darkest clouds. When you get your manuscripts back again and again, don't despair, nor think the editor cruel and unkind. He, too, has troubles of his own. Keep up your spirits until you have made the final test and put your talents to a last analysis, then if you find you cannot get into print be sure that newspaper writing or literary work is not your _forte_, and turn to something else. If nothing better presents itself, try shoemaking or digging ditches. Remember honest labor, no matter how humble, is ever dignified. If you are a woman throw aside the pen, sit down and darn your brother's, your father's, or your husband's socks, or put on a calico apron, take soap and water and scrub the floor. No matter who you are do something useful. That old sophistry about the world owing you a living has been exploded long ago. The world does not owe you a living, but you owe it servitude, and if you do not pay the debt you are not serving the purpose of an all-wise Providence and filling the place for which you were created. It is for you to serve the world, to make it better, brighter, higher, holier, grander, nobler, richer, for your having lived in it. This you can do in no matter what position fortune has cast you, whether it be that of street laborer or president. Fight the good fight and gain the victory. "Above all, to thine own self be true, And 'twill follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." CHAPTER XIII CHOICE OF WORDS Small Words--Their Importance--The Anglo-Saxon Element In another place in this book advice has been given to never use a long word when a short one will serve the same purpose. This advice is to be emphasized. Words of "learned length and thundering sound" should be avoided on all possible occasions. They proclaim shallowness of intellect and vanity of mind. The great purists, the masters of diction, the exemplars of style, used short, simple words that all could understand; words about which there could be no ambiguity as to meaning. It must be remembered that by our words we teach others; therefore, a very great responsibility rests upon us in regard to the use of a right language. We must take care that we think and speak in a way so clear that there may be no misapprehension or danger of conveying wrong impressions by vague and misty ideas enunciated in terms which are liable to be misunderstood by those whom we address. Words give a body or form to our ideas, without which they are apt to be so foggy that we do not see where they are weak or false. We must make the endeavor to employ such words as will put the idea we have in our own mind into the mind of another. This is the greatest art in the world--to clothe our ideas in words clear and comprehensive to the intelligence of others. It is the art which the teacher, the minister, the lawyer, the orator, the business man, must master if they would command success in their various fields of endeavor. It is very hard to convey an idea to, and impress it on, another when he has but a faint conception of the language in which the idea is expressed; but it is impossible to convey it at all when the words in which it is clothed are unintelligible to the listener. If we address an audience of ordinary men and women in the English language, but use such words as they cannot comprehend, we might as well speak to them in Coptic or Chinese, for they will derive no benefit from our address, inasmuch as the ideas we wish to convey are expressed in words which communicate no intelligent meaning to their minds. Long words, learned words, words directly derived from other languages are only understood by those who have had the advantages of an extended education. All have not had such advantages. The great majority in this grand and glorious country of ours have to hustle for a living from an early age. Though education is free, and compulsory also, very many never get further than the "Three R's." These are the men with whom we have to deal most in the arena of life, the men with the horny palms and the iron muscles, the men who build our houses, construct our railroads, drive our street cars and trains, till our fields, harvest our crops--in a word, the men who form the foundation of all society, the men on whom the world depends to make its wheels go round. The language of the colleges and universities is not for them and they can get along very well without it; they have no need for it at all in their respective callings. The plain, simple words of everyday life, to which the common people have been used around their own firesides from childhood, are the words we must use in our dealings with them. Such words are understood by them and understood by the learned as well; why then not use them universally and all the time? Why make a one-sided affair of language by using words which only one class of the people, the so-called learned class, can understand? Would it not be better to use, on all occasions, language which the both classes can understand? If we take the trouble to investigate we shall find that the men who exerted the greatest sway over the masses and the multitude as orators, lawyers, preachers and in other public capacities, were men who used very simple language. Daniel Webster was among the greatest orators this country has produced. He touched the hearts of senates and assemblages, of men and women with the burning eloquence of his words. He never used a long word when he could convey the same, or nearly the same, meaning with a short one. When he made a speech he always told those who put it in form for the press to strike out every long word. Study his speeches, go over all he ever said or wrote, and you will find that his language was always made up of short, clear, strong terms, although at times, for the sake of sound and oratorical effect, he was compelled to use a rather long word, but it was always against his inclination to do so, and where was the man who could paint, with words, as Webster painted! He could picture things in a way so clear that those who heard him felt that they had seen that of which he spoke. Abraham Lincoln was another who stirred the souls of men, yet he was not an orator, not a scholar; he did not write M.A. or Ph.D. after his name, or any other college degree, for he had none. He graduated from the University of Hard Knocks, and he never forgot this severe _Alma Mater_ when he became President of the United States. He was just as plain, I just as humble, as in the days when he split rails or plied a boat on the Sangamon. He did not use big words, but he used the words of the people, and in such a way as to make them beautiful. His Gettysburg address is an English classic, one of the great masterpieces of the language. From the mere fact that a word is short it does not follow that it is always clear, but it is true that nearly all clear words are short, and that most of the long words, especially those which we get from other languages, are misunderstood to a great extent by the ordinary rank and file of the people. Indeed, it is to be doubted if some of the "scholars" using them, fully understand their import on occasions. A great many such words admit of several interpretations. A word has to be in use a great deal before people get thoroughly familiar with its meaning. Long words, not alone obscure thought and make the ideas hazy, but at times they tend to mix up things in such a way that positively harmful results follow from their use. For instance, crime can be so covered with the folds of long words as to give it a different appearance. Even the hideousness of sin can be cloaked with such words until its outlines look like a thing of beauty. When a bank cashier makes off with a hundred thousand dollars we politely term his crime _defalcation_ instead of plain _theft_, and instead of calling himself a _thief_ we grandiosely allude to him as a _defaulter_. When we see a wealthy man staggering along a fashionable thoroughfare under the influence of alcohol, waving his arms in the air and shouting boisterously, we smile and say, poor gentleman, he is somewhat _exhilarated_; or at worst we say, he is slightly _inebriated_; but when we see a poor man who has fallen from grace by putting an "enemy into his mouth to steal away his brain" we express our indignation in the simple language of the words: "Look at the wretch; he is dead drunk." When we find a person in downright lying we cover the falsehood with the finely-spun cloak of the word _prevarication_. Shakespeare says, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and by a similar sequence, a lie, no matter by what name you may call it, is always a lie and should be condemned; then why not simply call it a lie? Mean what you say and say what you mean; call a spade a spade, it is the best term you can apply to the implement. When you try to use short words and shun long ones in a little while you will find that you can do so with ease. A farmer was showing a horse to a city-bred gentleman. The animal was led into a paddock in which an old sow-pig was rooting. "What a fine quadruped!" exclaimed the city man. "Which of the two do you mean, the pig or the horse?" queried the farmer, "for, in my opinion, both of them are fine quadrupeds." Of course the visitor meant the horse, so it would have been much better had he called the animal by its simple; ordinary name--, there would have been no room for ambiguity in his remark. He profited, however, by the incident, and never called a horse a quadruped again. Most of the small words, the simple words, the beautiful words which express so much within small bounds belong to the pure Anglo-Saxon element of our language. This element has given names to the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon and stars; to three out of the four elements, earth, fire and water; three out of the four seasons, spring, summer and winter. Its simple words are applied to all the natural divisions of time, except one, as day, night, morning, evening, twilight, noon, mid-day, midnight, sunrise and sunset. The names of light, heat, cold, frost, rain, snow, hail, sleet, thunder, lightning, as well as almost all those objects which form the component parts of the beautiful, as expressed in external scenery, such as sea and land, hill and dale, wood and stream, etc., are Anglo-Saxon. To this same language we are indebted for those words which express the earliest and dearest connections, and the strongest and most powerful feelings of Nature, and which, as a consequence, are interwoven with the fondest and most hallowed associations. Of such words are father, mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son, daughter, child, home, kindred, friend, hearth, roof and fireside. The chief emotions of which we are susceptible are expressed in the same language--love, hope, fear, sorrow, shame, and also the outward signs by which these emotions are indicated, as tear, smile, laugh, blush, weep, sigh, groan. Nearly all our national proverbs are Anglo-Saxon. Almost all the terms and phrases by which we most energetically express anger, contempt and indignation are of the same origin. What are known as the Smart Set and so-called polite society, are relegating a great many of our old Anglo-Saxon words into the shade, faithful friends who served their ancestors well. These self-appointed arbiters of diction regard some of the Anglo-Saxon words as too coarse, too plebeian for their aesthetic tastes and refined ears, so they are eliminating them from their vocabulary and replacing them with mongrels of foreign birth and hybrids of unknown origin. For the ordinary people, however, the man in the street or in the field, the woman in the kitchen or in the factory, they are still tried and true and, like old friends, should be cherished and preferred to all strangers, no matter from what source the latter may spring. CHAPTER XIV ENGLISH LANGUAGE Beginning--Different Sources--The Present The English language is the tongue now current in England and her colonies throughout the world and also throughout the greater part of the United States of America. It sprang from the German tongue spoken by the Teutons, who came over to Britain after the conquest of that country by the Romans. These Teutons comprised Angles, Saxons, Jutes and several other tribes from the northern part of Germany. They spoke different dialects, but these became blended in the new country, and the composite tongue came to be known as the Anglo-Saxon which has been the main basis for the language as at present constituted and is still the prevailing element. Therefore those who are trying to do away with some of the purely Anglo-Saxon words, on the ground that they are not refined enough to express their aesthetic ideas, are undermining main props which are necessary for the support of some important parts in the edifice of the language. The Anglo-Saxon element supplies the essential parts of speech, the article, pronoun of all kinds, the preposition, the auxiliary verbs, the conjunctions, and the little particles which bind words into sentences and form the joints, sinews and ligaments of the language. It furnishes the most indispensable words of the vocabulary. (See Chap. XIII.) Nowhere is the beauty of Anglo-Saxon better illustrated than in the Lord's Prayer. Fifty-four words are pure Saxon and the remaining ones could easily be replaced by Saxon words. The gospel of St. John is another illustration of the almost exclusive use of Anglo-Saxon words. Shakespeare, at his best, is Anglo-Saxon. Here is a quotation from the _Merchant of Venice_, and of the fifty-five words fifty-two are Anglo-Saxon, the remaining three French: All that glitters is not gold-- Often have you heard that told; Many a man his life hath sold, But my outside to behold. Guilded _tombs_ do worms infold. Had you been as wise as bold, Young in limbs, in _judgment_ old, Your answer had not been inscrolled-- Fare you well, your _suit_ is cold. The lines put into the mouth of Hamlet's father in fierce intenseness, second only to Dante's inscription on the gate of hell, have one hundred and eight Anglo-Saxon and but fifteen Latin words. The second constituent element of present English is Latin which comprises those words derived directly from the old Roman and those which came indirectly through the French. The former were introduced by the Roman Christians, who came to England at the close of the sixth century under Augustine, and relate chiefly to ecclesiastical affairs, such as saint from _sanctus_, religion from _religio_, chalice from _calix_, mass from _missa_, etc. Some of them had origin in Greek, as priest from _presbyter_, which in turn was a direct derivative from the Greek _presbuteros_, also deacon from the Greek _diakonos_. The largest class of Latin words are those which came through the Norman-French, or Romance. The Normans had adopted, with the Christian religion, the language, laws and arts of the Romanized Gauls and Romanized Franks, and after a residence of more than a century in France they successfully invaded England in 1066 under William the Conqueror and a new era began. The French Latinisms can be distinguished by the spelling. Thus Saviour comes from the Latin _Salvator_ through the French _Sauveur_; judgment from the Latin _judiclum_ through the French _jugement_; people, from the Latin _populus_, through the French _peuple_, etc. For a long time the Saxon and Norman tongues refused to coalesce and were like two distinct currents flowing in different directions. Norman was spoken by the lords and barons in their feudal castles, in parliament and in the courts of justice. Saxon by the people in their rural homes, fields and workshops. For more than three hundred years the streams flowed apart, but finally they blended, taking in the Celtic and Danish elements, and as a result came the present English language with its simple system of grammatical inflection and its rich vocabulary. The father of English prose is generally regarded as Wycliffe, who translated the Bible in 1380, while the paternal laurels in the secular poetical field are twined around the brows of Chaucer. Besides the Germanic and Romanic, which constitute the greater part of the English language, many other tongues have furnished their quota. Of these the Celtic is perhaps the oldest. The Britons at Caesar's invasion, were a part of the Celtic family. The Celtic idiom is still spoken in two dialects, the Welsh in Wales, and the Gaelic in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. The Celtic words in English, are comparatively few; cart, dock, wire, rail, rug, cradle, babe, grown, griddle, lad, lass, are some in most common use. The Danish element dates from the piratical invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries. It includes anger, awe, baffle, bang, bark, bawl, blunder, boulder, box, club, crash, dairy, dazzle, fellow, gable, gain, ill, jam, kidnap, kill, kidney, kneel, limber, litter, log, lull, lump, mast, mistake, nag, nasty, niggard, horse, plough, rug, rump, sale, scald, shriek, skin, skull, sledge, sleigh, tackle, tangle, tipple, trust, viking, window, wing, etc. From the Hebrew we have a large number of proper names from Adam and Eve down to John and Mary and such words as Messiah, rabbi, hallelujah, cherub, seraph, hosanna, manna, satan, Sabbath, etc. Many technical terms and names of branches of learning come from the Greek. In fact, nearly all the terms of learning and art, from the alphabet to the highest peaks of metaphysics and theology, come directly from the Greek-- philosophy, logic, anthropology, psychology, aesthetics, grammar, rhetoric, history, philology, mathematics, arithmetic, astronomy, anatomy, geography, stenography, physiology, architecture, and hundreds more in similar domains; the subdivisions and ramifications of theology as exegesis, hermeneutics, apologetics, polemics, dogmatics, ethics, homiletics, etc., are all Greek. The Dutch have given us some modern sea terms, as sloop, schooner, yacht and also a number of others as boom, bush, boor, brandy, duck, reef, skate, wagon. The Dutch of Manhattan island gave us boss, the name for employer or overseer, also cold slaa (cut cabbage and vinegar), and a number of geographical terms. Many of our most pleasing euphonic words, especially in the realm of music, have been given to us directly from the Italian. Of these are piano, violin, orchestra, canto, allegro, piazza, gazette, umbrella, gondola, bandit, etc. Spanish has furnished us with alligator, alpaca, bigot, cannibal, cargo, filibuster, freebooter, guano, hurricane, mosquito, negro, stampede, potato, tobacco, tomato, tariff, etc. From Arabic we have several mathematical, astronomical, medical and chemical terms as alcohol, alcove, alembic, algebra, alkali, almanac, assassin, azure, cipher, elixir, harem, hegira, sofa, talisman, zenith and zero. Bazaar, dervish, lilac, pagoda, caravan, scarlet, shawl, tartar, tiara and peach have come to us from the Persian. Turban, tulip, divan and firman are Turkish. Drosky, knout, rouble, steppe, ukase are Russian. The Indians have helped us considerably and the words they have given us are extremely euphonic as exemplified in the names of many of our rivers and States, as Mississippi, Missouri, Minnehaha, Susquehanna, Monongahela, Niagara, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Nebraska, Dakota, etc. In addition to these proper names we have from the Indians wigwam, squaw, hammock, tomahawk, canoe, mocassin, hominy, etc. There are many hybrid words in English, that is, words, springing from two or more different languages. In fact, English has drawn from all sources, and it is daily adding to its already large family, and not alone is it adding to itself, but it is spreading all over the world and promises to take in the entire human family beneath its folds ere long. It is the opinion of many that English, in a short time, will become the universal language. It is now being taught as a branch of the higher education in the best colleges and universities of Europe and in all commercial cities in every land throughout the world. In Asia it follows the British sway and the highways of commerce through the vast empire of East India with its two hundred and fifty millions of heathen and Mohammedan inhabitants. It is largely used in the seaports of Japan and China, and the number of natives of these countries who are learning it is increasing every day. It is firmly established in South Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and in many of the islands of the Indian and South Seas. It is the language of Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and Christian missionaries are introducing it into all the islands of Polynesia. It may be said to be the living commercial language of the North American continent, from Baffin's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and it is spoken largely in many of the republics of South America. It is not limited by parallels of latitude, or meridians of longitude. The two great English-speaking countries, England and the United States, are disseminating it north, south, east and west over the entire world. CHAPTER XI MASTERS AND MASTERPIECES OF LITERATURE Great Authors--Classification--The World's Best Books. The Bible is the world's greatest book. Apart from its character as a work of divine revelation, it is the most perfect literature extant. Leaving out the Bible the three greatest works are those of Homer, Dante and Shakespeare. These are closely followed by the works of Virgil and Milton. INDISPENSABLE BOOKS Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Goethe. (The best translation of _Homer_ for the ordinary reader is by Chapman. Norton's translation of _Dante_ and Taylor's translation of Goethe's _Faust_ are recommended.) A GOOD LIBRARY Besides the works mentioned everyone should endeavor to have the following: _Plutarch's Lives_, _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_, _Chaucer_, _Imitation of Christ_ (Thomas a Kempis), _Holy Living and Holy Dying_ (Jeremy Taylor), _Pilgrim's Progress, Macaulay's Essays, Bacon's Essays, Addison's Essays, Essays of Elia_ (Charles Lamb), _Les Miserables_ (Hugo), _Heroes and Hero Worship_ (Carlyle), _Palgrave's Golden Treasury_, _Wordsworth_, _Vicar of Wakefield_, _Adam Bede_ (George Eliot), _Vanity Fair_ (Thackeray), _Ivanhoe_ (Scott), _On the Heights_ (Auerbach), _Eugenie Grandet_ (Balzac), _Scarlet Letter_ (Hawthorne), _Emerson's Essays_, _Boswell's Life of Johnson_, _History of the English People_ (Green), _Outlines of Universal History, Origin of Species, Montaigne's Essays, Longfellow, Tennyson, Browning, Whittier, Ruskin, Herbert Spencer_. A good encyclopoedia is very desirable and a reliable dictionary indispensable. MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE _Scarlet Letter, Parkman's Histories, Motley's Dutch Republic, Grant's Memoirs, Franklin's Autobiography, Webster's Speeches, Lowell's Bigelow Papers_, also his _Critical Essays_, _Thoreau's Walden_, _Leaves of Grass_ (Whitman), _Leather-stocking Tales_ (Cooper), _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, _Ben Hur_ and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. TEN GREATEST AMERICAN POETS Bryant, Poe, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Whitman, Lanier, Aldrich and Stoddard. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH POETS Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH ESSAYISTS Bacon, Addison, Steele, Macaulay, Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle, Thackeray and Matthew Arnold. BEST PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE In order of merit are: _Hamlet_, _King Lear_, _Othello_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, _Macbeth_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_, _As You Like It_, _Winter's Tale_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Twelfth Night_, _Tempest_. ONLY THE GOOD If you are not able to procure a library of the great masterpieces, get at least a few. Read them carefully, intelligently and with a view to enlarging your own literary horizon. Remember a good book cannot be read too often, one of a deteriorating influence should not be read at all. In literature, as in all things else, the good alone should prevail. 
28097	----	Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 28097-h.htm or 28097-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/8/0/9/28097/28097-h/28097-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/2/8/0/9/28097/28097-h.zip) ENGLISH: COMPOSITION AND LITERATURE by W. F. WEBSTER Principal of the East High School Minneapolis, Minnesota Houghton Mifflin Company Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 85 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1900 and 1902, by W. F. Webster All Rights Reserved PREFACE In July, 1898, I presented at the National Educational Association, convened in Washington, a Course of Study in English. At Los Angeles, in 1899, the Association indorsed the principles[1] of this course, and made it the basis of the Course in English for High Schools. At the request of friends, I have prepared this short text-book, outlining the method of carrying forward the course, and emphasizing the principles necessary for the intelligent communication of ideas. It has not been the purpose to write a rhetoric. The many fine distinctions and divisions, the rarefied examples of very beautiful forms of language which a young pupil cannot possibly reproduce, or even appreciate, have been omitted. To teach the methods of simple, direct, and accurate expression has been the purpose; and this is all that can be expected of a high school course in English. The teaching of composition differs from the teaching of Latin or mathematics in this point: whereas pupils can be compelled to solve a definite number of problems or to read a given number of lines, it is not possible to compel expression of the full thought. The full thought is made of an intellectual and an emotional element. Whatever is intellectual may be compelled by dint of sheer purpose; whatever is emotional must spring undriven by outside authority, and uncompelled by inside determination. A boy saws a cord of wood because he has been commanded by his father; but he cannot laugh or cry because directed to do so by the same authority. There must be the conditions which call forth smiles or tears. So there must be the conditions which call forth the full expression of thought, both what is intellectual and what is emotional. This means that the subject shall be one of which the writer knows something, and in which he is interested; that the demands in the composition shall not be made a discouragement; and that the teacher shall be competent and enthusiastic, inspiring in each pupil a desire to say truly and adequately the best he thinks and feels. These conditions cannot be realized while working with dead fragments of language; but they are realized while constructing living wholes of composition. It is not two decades ago when the pupil in drawing was compelled to make straight lines until he made them all crooked. The pupil in manual training began by drawing intersecting lines on two sides of a board; then he drove nails into the intersections on one side, hoping that they would hit the corresponding points on the other. Now no single line or exercise is an end in itself; it contributes to some whole. Under the old method the pupil did not care or try to draw a straight line, or to drive a nail straight; but now, in order that he may realize the idea that lies in his mind, he does care and he does try: so lines are drawn better and nails are driven straighter than before. In all training that combines intellect and hand, the principle has been recognized that the best work is done when the pupil's interest has been enlisted by making each exercise contribute directly to the construction of some whole. Only in the range of the spiritual are we twenty years behind time, trying to get the best construction by compulsion. It is quite time that we recognized that the best work in composition can be done, not while the pupil is correcting errors in the use of language which he never dreamed of, nor while he is writing ten similes or ten periodic sentences, but when both intellect and feeling combine and work together to produce some whole. Then into the construction of this whole the pupil will throw all his strength, using the most apt comparisons, choosing the best words, framing adequate sentences, in order that the outward form may worthily present to others what to himself has appeared worthy of expression. There are some persons who say that other languages are taught by the word and sentence method; then why not English? These persons overlook the fact that we are leaving that method as rapidly as possible, and adopting a more rational method which at once uses a language to communicate thought. And they overlook another fact of even greater importance: the pupil entering the high school is by no means a beginner in English. He has been using the language ten or twelve years, and has a fluency of expression in English which he cannot attain in German throughout a high school and college course. The conditions under which a pupil begins the study of German in a high school and the study of English composition are entirely dissimilar; and a conclusion based upon a fancied analogy is worthless. It is preferable, then, to practice the construction of wholes rather than the making of exercises; and it is best at the beginning to study the different kinds of wholes, one at a time, rather than all together. No one would attempt to teach elimination by addition and subtraction, by comparison and by substitution, all together; nor would an instructor take up heat, light, and electricity together. In algebra, or physics, certain great principles underlie the whole subject; and these appear and reappear as the study progresses through its allied parts. Still the best results are obtained by taking up these several divisions of the whole one after another. And in English the most certain and definite results are secured by studying the forms of discourse separately, learning the method of applying to each the great principles that underlie all composition. If the forms of discourse are to be studied one after another, which shall be taken up first? In general, all composition may be separated into two divisions: composition which deals with things, including narration and description; and composition which deals with ideas, comprising exposition and argument. It needs no argument to justify the position that an essay which deals with things seen and heard is easier for a beginner to construct than an essay which deals with ideas invisible and unheard. Whether narration or description should precede appears yet to be undetermined; for many text-books treat one first, and perhaps as many the other. I have thought it wiser to begin with the short story, because it is easier to gain free, spontaneous expression with narration than with description. To write a whole page of description is a task for a master, and very few attempt it; but for the uninitiated amateur about three sentences of description mark the limit of his ability to see and describe. To get started, to gain confidence in one's ability to say something, to acquire freedom and spontaneity of expression,--this is the first step in the practice of composition. Afterward, when the pupil has discovered that he really has something to say,--enough indeed to cover three or four pages of his tablet paper,--then it may be time to begin the study of description, and to acquire more careful and accurate forms of expression. Spontaneity should be acquired first,--crude and unformed it may be, but spontaneity first; and this spontaneity is best gained while studying narration. There can be but little question about the order of the other forms. Description, still dealing with the concrete, offers an admirable opportunity for shaping and forming the spontaneous expression gained in narration. Following description, in order of difficulty, come exposition and argument. I should be quite misunderstood, did any one gather from this that during the time in which wholes are being studied, no attention is to be given to parts; that is, to paragraphs, sentences, and words. All things cannot be learned at once and thoroughly; there must be some order of succession. In the beginning the primary object to be aimed at is the construction of wholes; yet during their construction, parts can also be incidentally studied. During this time many errors which annoy and exasperate must be passed over with but a word, in order that the weight of the criticism may be concentrated on the point then under consideration. As a pupil advances, he is more and more competent to appreciate and to form good paragraphs and well-turned sentences, and to single out from the multitude of verbal signs the word that exactly presents his thought. The appreciation and the use of the stronger as well as the finer and more delicate forms of language come only with much reading and writing; and to demand everything at the very beginning is little less than sheer madness. Moreover there never comes a time when the construction of a paragraph, the shaping of a phrase, or the choice of a word becomes an end in itself. Paragraphs, sentences, and words are well chosen when they serve best the whole composition. He who becomes enamored of one form of paragraph, who always uses periodic sentences, who chooses only common words, has not yet recognized that the beauty of a phrase or a word is determined by its fitness, and that it is most beautiful because it exactly suits the place it fills. The graceful sweep of a line by Praxiteles or the glorious radiancy of a color by Angelico is most beautiful in the place it took from the master's hand. So Lowell's wealth of figurative language and Stevenson's unerring choice of delicate words are most beautiful, not when torn from their original setting to serve as examples in rhetorics, but when fulfilling their part in a well-planned whole. And it is only as the beauties of literature are born of the thought that they ever succeed. No one can say to himself, "I will now make a good simile," and straightway fulfill his promise. If, however, the thought of a writer takes fire, and instead of the cold, unimpassioned phraseology of the logician, glowing images crowd up, and phrases tipped with fire, then figurative language best suits the thought,--indeed, it is the thought. But imagery upon compulsion,--never. So that at no time should one attempt to mould fine phrases for the sake of the phrases themselves, but he should spare no pains with them when they spring from the whole, when they harmonize with the whole, and when they give to the whole added beauty and strength. It is quite unnecessary at this day to urge the study of literature. It is in the course of study for every secondary school. Yet a word may be said of the value of this study to the practice of composition. There are two classes of artists: geniuses and men of talent. Of geniuses in literature, one can count the names on his fingers; most authors are simply men of talent. Talent learns to do by doing, and by observing how others have done. When Brunelleschi left Rome for Florence, he had closely observed and had drawn every arch of the stupendous architecture in that ancient city; and so he was adjudged by his fellow citizens to be the only man competent to lift the dome of their Duomo. His observation discovered the secret of Rome's architectural grandeur; and the slow accumulation of such secrets marks the development of every art and science. Milton had his method of writing prose, Macaulay his, and Arnold his,--all different and all excellent. And just as the architect stands before the cathedrals of Cologne, Milan, and Salisbury to learn the secret of each; as the painter searches out the secret of Raphael, Murillo, and Rembrandt; so the author analyzes the masterpieces of literature to discover the secret of Irving, of Eliot, and of Burke. Not that an author is to be a servile imitator of any man's manner; but that, having knowledge of all the secrets of composition, he shall so be enabled to set forth for others his own thought in all the beauty and perfection in which he himself conceives it. One thing further. A landscape painter would not make a primary study of Angelo's anatomical drawings; a composer of lyric forms of music would not study Sousa's marches; nor would a person writing a story look for much assistance in the arguments of Burke. The most direct benefit is derived from studying the very thing one wishes to know about, not from studying something else. That the literature may give the greatest possible assistance to the composition, the course has been so arranged that narration shall be taught by Hawthorne and Irving, description by Ruskin and Stevenson, exposition by Macaulay and Newman, and argument by Webster and Burke. Literature, arranged in this manner, is not only a stimulus to renewed effort, by showing what others have done; it is also the most skillful instructor in the art of composition, by showing how others have done. It would be quite impossible for any one at the present time to write a text-book in English that would not repeat what has already been said by many others. Nor have I tried to. My purpose has been rather to select from the whole literature of the subject just those principles which every author of a book on composition or rhetoric has thought essential, and to omit minor matters and all those about which there is a difference of opinion. This limits the contents to topics already familiar to every teacher. It also makes it necessary to repeat what has been written before many times. Certain books, however, have treated special divisions of the whole subject in a thorough and exhaustive manner. There is nothing new to say of Unity, Mass, and Coherence; Mr. Wendell said all concerning these in his book entitled "English Composition." So in paragraph development, Scott and Denney hold the field. Other books which I have frequently used in the classroom are "Talks on Writing English," by Arlo Bates, and Genung's "Practical Rhetoric." These books I have found very helpful in teaching, and I have drawn upon them often while writing this text-book. If the field has been covered, then why write a book at all? The answer is that the principles which are here treated have not been put into one book. They may be found in several. These essentials I have repeated many times with the hope that they will be fixed by this frequent repetition. The purpose has been to focus the attention upon these, to apply them in the construction of the different forms of discourse, paragraphs, and sentences, and to repeat them until it is impossible for a student to forget them. If the book fulfils this purpose, it was worth writing. Acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for their kind permission to use the selections from the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson contained in this book; also, to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., The Century Co., and Doubleday & McClure Co. for selections from the writings of Rudyard Kipling. W. F. WEBSTER. MINNEAPOLIS, 1900. CONTENTS Chapter I.--Forms of Discourse Composition 1 English Composition 1 Composition, Written and Oral 2 Conventions of Composition 2 Five Forms of Discourse 3 Definitions 4 Difficulty in distinguishing 4 Purpose of the Author 6 Chapter II.--Choice of Subject Form and Material 8 Author's Individuality 8 Knowledge of Subject 9 Common Subjects 10 Interest 11 The Familiar 11 Human Life 12 The Strange 12 Chapter III.--Narration Material of Narration 13 In Action 14 The Commonest Form of Discourse 14 Language as a Means of Expression 15 Without Plot 15 Plot 16 Unity, Mass, and Coherence 20 Main Incident 20 Its Importance 21 Unity 21 Introductions and Conclusions 23 Tedious Enumerations 23 What to include 24 Consistency 25 An Actor as the Story-teller 26 The Omniscience of an Author 27 The Climax 28 Who? Where? When? Why? 29 In what Order? 29 An Outline 32 Movement 32 Rapidity 32 Slowness 33 Description and Narration 34 Characters few, Time short 35 Simple Plot 36 Suggestive Questions and Exercises 38 Chapter IV.--Description Difficulties of Language for making Pictures 49 Painting and Sculpture 50 Advantages of Language 50 Enumeration and Suggestion 52 Enumerative Description 54 Suggestive Description 55 Value of Observation 55 The Point of View 56 Moving Point of View 58 The Point of View should be stated 58 Mental Point of View 59 Length of Descriptions 63 Arrangement of Details in Description 64 The End of a Description 70 Proportion 73 Arrangement must be natural 74 Use Familiar Images 75 Simile, Metaphor, Personification 77 Choice of Words. Adjectives and Nouns 78 Use of Verbs 79 Suggestive Questions and Exercises 81 Chapter V.--Exposition General Terms difficult 89 Definition 91 Exposition and Description distinguished 91 Logical Definition 91 Genus and Differentia 92 Requisites of a Good Definition 93 How do Men explain? First, by Repetition 94 Second, by telling the obverse 95 Third, by Details 96 Fourth, by Illustrations 97 Fifth, by Comparisons 98 The Subject 99 The Subject should allow Concrete Treatment 100 The Theme 100 The Title 102 Selection of Material 102 Scale of Treatment 104 Arrangement 108 Use Cards for Subdivisions 108 An Outline 109 Mass the End 110 The Beginning 112 Proportion in Treatment 114 Emphasis of Emotion 115 Phrases indicating Emphasis 116 Coherence 116 Transition Phrases 118 Summary and Transition 119 Suggestive Questions and Exercises 121 Chapter VI.--Argument Induction and Deduction 129 Syllogism Premises 129 Terms 129 Enthymeme 130 Definition of Terms 130 Undistributed Middle 131 False Premises 131 Method of Induction 132 Arguments from Cause 133 Arguments from Sign 134 Sequence and Cause 135 Arguments from Example 137 Selection of Material 138 Plan called The Brief 138 Climax 139 Inductive precedes Deductive 140 Cause precedes Sign 140 Example follows Sign 141 Refutation 141 Analysis of Burke's Oration 142 Suggestive Questions 148 Chapter VII.--Paragraphs Definition 151 Long and Short Paragraphs 151 Topic Sentence 157 No Topic Sentence 161 The Plan 162 Kinds of Paragraphs 163 Details 163 Comparisons 165 Repetition 167 Obverse 169 Examples 171 Combines Two or More Forms 173 Unity 173 Need of Outline 174 Mass 174 What begins and what ends a Paragraph? 175 Length of opening and closing Sentences 178 Proportion 179 Coherence and Clearness 180 Two Arrangements of Sentences in a Paragraph 181 Definite References 187 Use of Pronouns 188 Of Conjunctions 190 Parallel Constructions 192 Summary 195 Suggestive Questions 196 Chapter VIII.--Sentences Definition and Classification. Simple Sentences 200 Compound Sentences 200 Short Sentences 204 Long Sentences 204 Unity 205 Mass 207 End of a Sentence 208 Effect of Anti-climax 210 Use of Climax 211 Loose and Periodic 212 The Period 212 Periodic and Loose combined 214 Which shall be used? 215 Emphasis by Change of Order 217 Subdue Unimportant Elements 219 The Dynamic Point of a Sentence 221 Good Use 223 Clearness gained by Coherence 224 Parallel Construction 226 Balanced Sentences 227 Use of Connectives 228 Suggestive Questions 231 Chapter IX.--Words Need of a Large Vocabulary 236 Dictionary 237 Study of Literature 238 Vulgarisms are not reputable 240 Slang is not reputable 240 Words must be National. Provincialisms 242 Technical and Bookish Words 242 Foreign Words 243 Words in Present Use 244 Words in their Present Meaning 245 Words of Latin and Saxon Origin 245 General and Specific 248 Use Words that suggest most 249 Synecdoche, Metonymy 250 Care in Choice of Specific Words 250 Avoid Hackneyed Phrases 253 "Fine Writing" 253 In Prose avoid Poetical Words 254 Chapter X.--Figures of Speech Figurative Language 257 Figures based upon Likeness 259 Metaphor 260 Epithet 260 Personification 260 Apostrophe 261 Allegory 261 Simile 261 Figures based upon Sentence Structure 262 Inversion 262 Exclamation 262 Interrogation 262 Climax 262 Irony 262 Metonymy 263 Synecdoche 263 Allusion 263 Hyperbole 263 Exercises in Figures 264 Chapter XI.--Verse Forms Singing Verse 269 Poetic Feet 272 Kinds of Metre 273 Stanzas 275 Scansion 276 Variations in Metres 276 First and Last Foot 281 Kinds of Poetry 284 Exercises in Metres 286 APPENDIX A. Suggestions to Teachers 293 B. The Form of a Composition 296 C. Marks for Correction of Compositions 300 D. Punctuation 301 E. Supplementary List of Literature 309 A COURSE OF STUDY IN LITERATURE AND COMPOSITION The Course of Study which follows is presented, not because it is better than many others which might be made. For the purposes of this book it was necessary that some course be adopted as the basis of the text. The principles which guided in arranging this course I believe are sound; but the preferences of teachers and the peculiarities of environment will often make it wise to use other selections from literature. Of this a large "supplementary list" is given at the back of the book. It is now a generally accepted truth that the study of English should continue through the four years of a high-school course. The division of time that seems best is to take Narration and Description in the first year. In connection with Description, Figures of Speech should be studied. The next year, Exposition and Paragraphs form the major part of the work. This may be pleasantly broken by a study of Poetry, following the outline in the chapter on Verse Forms. In the third year, while the work in literature is mainly the Novel and the Drama, Sentences and Words should be studied in composition, with a review of the chapters on Narration and Description. Towards the close of the year, Exposition should be reviewed and the study of Argument taken up. The fourth year should be devoted to the study of such College Requirements as have not been taken in the course, and to the study of the History of English Literature as given in some good text book. In some instances, it will be found impossible to give so much time to the study of English. In such cases, the amount of literature to be studied should be decreased, and the work in the text book should be more rapidly done. The sequence of the parts should remain the same, but the time should be modified to suit the needs of any special environment. NARRATION. Composition. _To give Spontaneity._ I. External Form of Composition (p. 296). II. Marks for the Correction of Compositions (p. 300). III. Simple Rules for Punctuation (pp. 301-309). IV. Forms of Discourse. Definitions (pp. 1-7). V. Choice of Subject (pp. 8-12). VI. Study of Narration (pp. 13-48). a. Definition and General Discussion. b. Narration without Plot. Interest the Essential Feature. c. Narration with Plot. 1. Selection of Main Incident of first Importance. It gives to the story Unity, ridding it of Long Introductions and Conclusions, Tedious Enumerations, and Irrelevant Details. 2. Arrangement of Material. Close of Story contains Main Incident. Opening of Story contains Characters, Place, and Time. Incidents generally follow in Order of Time. 3. Movement. 4. Use of Description in Narration. 5. Some General Considerations. Literature. The Great Stone Face, The Gentle Boy, The Gray Champion, Roger Malvin's Burial, and other Stories. _Hawthorne._ Tales of a Wayside Inn. _Longfellow._ The Gold Bug. _Poe._ Marmion, or The Lady of the Lake. _Scott._ A Christmas Carol, or The Cricket on the Hearth. _Dickens._ The Vision of Sir Launfal, and other Narrative Poems. _Lowell._ An Incident of the French Camp, Hervé Riel, The Pied Piper, How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. _Browning._ Meaning of the Author, calling for A Study of Words. Outline of Story. Turning Points in the Story. Central Idea, or Purpose of the Story. Method of the Author. Is there a Main Incident? Do all other Incidents converge to it? Is the Order a Sequence of Time alone? Is the Interest centred in Characters or Plot? Style of the Author. Compare the Works of the Author. DESCRIPTION. Composition. _To secure Accuracy of Expression_ (pp. 49-88). I. Definition and General Discussion. Difficulties in Language as a Means of Picturing. Value of Observation. II. Structure of Whole. a. To secure Unity. Select a Point of View. b. To secure Coherence. Arrange Details in Natural Order. c. To secure Emphasis. Arrange and proportion Treatment to effect your Purpose. III. Paragraph Structure. Definition. Length of Paragraphs. Development of Paragraphs. IV. Words. Specific rather than General. Adjectives, Nouns, and Verbs. V. Figures Of Speech (pp. 257-268). Based on Likeness. Based on Sentence Structure. Miscellaneous Figures. Literature. The Old Manse, The Old Apple Dealer. _Hawthorne._ An Indian-Summer Reverie, The Dandelion, The Birch, The Oak, and other Descriptive Poems. _Lowell._ The Fall of the House of Usher. _Poe._ The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Selections from the Sketch Book. _Irving._ Selections from Childe Harold. _Byron._ The Deserted Village. _Goldsmith._ Julius Cæsar. _Shakespeare._ Poems selected from Palgrave's Golden Treasury. Meaning of the Author (as under Narration). Method of the Author. Does the Author keep his Point of View? Are the Details arranged in a Natural Order? Has any Detail a Supreme Importance? Are the Details treated in Proper Proportion? Has the Whole a Unity of Effect? Do you see the Picture distinctly? For what Purpose has the Author used Description? Does the Author employ Figures? Style of the Author. EXPOSITION, PARAGRAPHS, VERSE FORMS. Composition. _To encourage Logical Thinking and Adequate Expression_ (pp. 89-127). _Exposition._ I. Definition and General Considerations. II. Exposition of Terms. Definition. III. Exposition of Propositions. a. Clear Statement of the Proposition in a "Key Sentence." This will limit b. The Discussion. 1. What shall be included? 2. What shall be excluded? 3. How shall Important Matters be emphasized? Mass and Proportion. Expansion and Condensation. To effect these ends use an 4. Outline. _Paragraphs_ (pp. 151-199). I. Definition. II. Length of Paragraphs. III. Development of Paragraphs. IV. Principles of Structure. Unity. Mass. Coherence. _Verse Forms_ (pp. 269-291). Poetry Defined. Kinds of Feet. Number of Feet in a Verse. Substitutions and Rests. Kinds of Poetry. Literature. Essay on Milton. _Macaulay._ Essay on Addison. _Macaulay._ Commemoration Ode. _Lowell._ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. _Coleridge._ Intimations of Immortality, and other Poems. _Wordsworth._ Selections from Palgrave's Golden Treasury. The Bunker Hill Oration, or Adams and Jefferson. _Webster._ Sesame and Lilies. _Ruskin._ Meaning of the Author. Outline showing the Main Thesis with the Dependence of Subordinate Propositions. Method of the Author. Does he hold to his Point and so gain Unity Does he arrange his Material so as to secure Emphasis? Does one Paragraph grow out of another? Does each Paragraph treat a Single Topic? Are the Sentences dovetailed together? Does the Author use Figures? Are the Figures Effective? Are his Words General or Specific? Style of the Author. Is it Clear? Has it Force? Is the Diction Elegant? How has he gained these Ends? SENTENCES, WORDS, ARGUMENT. Composition. _Sentences_ (pp. 200-234). I. Definition and Classification. II. Principles of Structure. a. Unity. b. Mass. 1. Prominent Positions in a Sentence. 2. Periodic Sentences. 3. Loose Sentences. c. Coherence. 1. Parallel Constructions. 2. Connectives. _Words_ (pp. 235-256). Reputable Words. Latin or Saxon Words. General or Specific. Figures of Speech. The One Rule for the Use of Words. _Narration and Description Reviewed._ _Exposition Reviewed._ Literature. _Argument_ (pp. 128-150). I. Kinds of Argument. II. Order of Arguments. III. Refutation. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. _Addison._ The Vicar of Wakefield. _Goldsmith._ Silas Marner. _Eliot._ Ivanhoe. _Scott._ Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream. _Shakespeare._ Conciliation with the Colonies. _Burke._ COMPOSITION. In the last year of the course, the compositions should be such as will test the maturer powers of the pupil. They should be written under the careful supervision of the teacher. They should be of all forms of discourse, and the subjects should be drawn from the subjects of study in the high school, especially from the literature. LITERATURE. _Difficult Selections._ L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. _Milton._ Paradise Lost. Two Books. _Milton._ Essay on Burns. _Carlyle._ In Memoriam, The Princess, and other Poems. _Tennyson._ Selections. _Browning._ Selections. _Emerson._ A History of English Literature * * * * * ENGLISH: COMPOSITION AND LITERATURE CHAPTER I FORMS OF DISCOURSE Composition. Composition, from the Latin words _con,_ meaning together, and _ponere,_ meaning to place, signifies a placing together, a grouping or arrangement of objects or of ideas. This arrangement is generally made so that it will produce a desired result. Speaking accurately, the putting together is the composition. Much of the desired result is gained by care in the selection of materials. Placing together a well-worn book, a lamp, and a pair of heavy bowed spectacles makes a suggestive picture. The selection and grouping of these objects is spoken of as the composition of the picture. So in music, an author composes, when he groups certain musical tones and phrases so that they produce a desired effect. In literature, too, composition is, strictly speaking, the selection and arrangement of materials, whether the incidents of a story or the details of a description, to fulfill a definite purpose. English Composition. In practice, however, English composition has come to include more than the selection and arrangement of the materials,--incidents, objects, or ideas, as the case may be; the term has been extended to include the means by which the speaker or writer seeks to convey this impression to other persons. As a painter must understand drawing, the value of lights and shades, and the mixing of colors before he can successfully reproduce for others the idea he has to express, so the artist in literature needs a knowledge of elementary grammar and of the simpler usages of language in order clearly to represent to others the idea which lies in his own mind. As commonly understood, then, _English composition_ may be defined as _the art of selecting, arranging, and communicating ideas by means of the English language._ Composition, Written and Oral. The term "English composition" is now generally understood to mean written composition, and not oral composition. At first thought they seem to be the same thing. So far as the selection and arrangement of matter is concerned, they are the same. Moreover, both use words, and both employ sentences; but here the likeness ends. If sentences should be put upon paper exactly as they were spoken, in most instances they would not convey to a reader the same thought they conveyed to a listener. It is much more exacting to express the truth one wishes to convey, by silent, featureless symbols than by that wonderful organ of communication, the human voice. Now, if to the human voice be added eyes, features, gestures, and pose, we easily understand the great advantage a speaker has over a writer. Conventions of Composition. Moreover, there are imposed upon a writer certain established rules which he must follow. He must spell words correctly, and he must use correctly marks of punctuation. These things need not annoy a speaker; yet they are conditions which must be obeyed by a writer. A man who eats with a knife may succeed in getting his food to his mouth, yet certain conventions exclude such a person from polite society. So in composition, it is possible for a person to make himself understood, though he write "alright" instead of "all right," and never use a semicolon; still, such a person could hardly be considered a highly cultured writer. To express one's thoughts correctly and with refinement requires absolute obedience to the common conventions of good literature. The study of composition includes, first, the careful selection of materials and their effective arrangement; and second, a knowledge of the established conventions of literature: of spelling; of the common uses of the marks of punctuation,--period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, semicolon, comma; of the common idioms of our language; and of the elements of its grammar. From the beginning of the high school course, the essay, the paragraph, the sentence, the word, are to be studied with special attention to the effective use of each in adequately communicating ideas. Five Forms of Discourse. All written composition may be arranged in two classes, or groups. The first group will include all composition that deals with actual happenings and real things; the second, all that deals with abstract thoughts and spiritual ideas. The first will include narration and description; the second, exposition, argument, and persuasion. All literature, then, may be separated into five classes,--narration, description, exposition, argument, and persuasion. Narration tells what things do; description tells how things look. Narration deals with occurrences; description deals with appearances. Exposition defines a term, or explains a proposition; argument proves the truth or falsity of a proposition; persuasion urges to action upon a proposition. Exposition explains; argument convinces; persuasion arouses. These are the broad lines of distinction which separate the five forms of discourse. Definitions. _Narration is that form of discourse which recounts events in a sequence._ It includes stories, novels, romances, biographies, some books of travel, and some histories. _Description is that form of discourse which aims to present a picture._ It seldom occurs alone, but it is usually found in combination with the other forms of discourse. _Exposition is that form of discourse which seeks to explain a term or a proposition._ Text-books, books of information, theses, most histories, many magazine articles, and newspaper leaders are of this class of literature. _Argument is that form of discourse which has for its object the proof of the truth or falsity of a proposition._ _Persuasion is that form of discourse the purpose of which is to influence the will._ Difficulty in distinguishing. Though these definitions seem to set apart the great classes of literature, and to insure against any danger of confusion, it is not always easy to place individual pieces of literature in one of these divisions. Whittier's "Barbara Frietchie" and Stevenson's "Treasure Island" are narrative beyond any question; but what about "Snow-Bound" and "Travels with a Donkey" by the same authors? Are they narration or description? In them the narrative and descriptive portions are so nearly equal that one hesitates to set them down to either class; the reader is constantly called from beautiful pictures to delightful stories. The narrative can easily be separated from the descriptive portions; but when this has been done, has it been decided whether the whole piece is narration or description? When a person takes up the other forms of discourse, the difficulty becomes still greater. Description and narration are frequently used in exposition. If a boy should be asked to explain the working of a steam engine, he would, in all likelihood, begin with a description of an engine. If his purpose was to explain how an engine works, and was not to tell how an engine looks, the whole composition would be exposition. So, too, it is often the easiest way to explain what one means by telling a story. The expression of such thoughts would be exposition, although it might contain a number of stories and descriptions. Narration and description may be found in a piece of exposition; and all three may be employed in argument. If a person should wish to prove the dangers of intemperance, he might enforce his proof by a story, or by a description of the condition of the nervous system after a drunken revel. And one does not need to do more than explain the results of intemperance to a sensible man to prove to him that he should avoid all excesses. The explanation alone is argument enough for such a person. Still, is such an explanation exposition or argument? If the man cared nothing about convincing another that there are dangers in intemperance, did not wish to prove that the end of intemperance is death and dishonor, the composition is as much exposition as the explanation of a steam engine. If, on the other hand, he explained these results in order to convince another that he should avoid intemperance, then the piece is argument. Persuasion introduces a new element into composition; for, while exposition and argument are directed to a man's reason, persuasion is addressed to the emotions and the will. Its purpose is to arouse to action. One can readily imagine that a simple explanation of the evils of intemperance might be quite enough to convince a man that its dangers are truly great,--so great that he would determine to fight these evils with all his strength. In such a case explanation alone has convinced him; and it has aroused him to do something. Is the piece exposition, or argument, or persuasion? Here, as before, the answer is found in the purpose of the author. If he intended only to explain, the piece is exposition; if to convince, it is argument; if to arouse to action, it belongs to the literature of persuasion. It must now be plain that few pieces of literature are purely one form of discourse. The forms are mingled in most of our literature. Hardly a story can be found that does not contain some descriptions; and a description of any considerable length is sure to contain some narrative portions. So, too, narration and description are often found in exposition, argument, and persuasion; and these last three forms are frequently combined. Purpose of the Author. It must also be evident that the whole piece of literature will best be classified by discovering the purpose of the author. If his purpose is simply to tell a good story, his work is narration; if the purpose is merely to place a picture before the reader's mind, it is description; if to explain conditions and nothing more, it is exposition; if to prove to the reason the truth or falsity of a proposition, it is argument; while, if the writer addresses himself to the emotions and the will, no matter whether he tells anecdotes or paints lurid pictures, explains conditions or convinces of the dangers of the present course,--if he does all these to urge the reader to do something, the composition belongs to the literature of persuasion. The five forms of discourse are most easily distinguished by discovering the purpose of the author. One addition should be made. Few novels are written in which there is nothing more than a story. Nearly all contain some teaching; and it is a safe conclusion that the authors have taught "on purpose." In "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," Kipling has shown the imperative necessity of a "real, live, lovely mamma;" in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving has placed before us a charming picture of rural life in a dreamy Dutch village on the Hudson; and in his "Christmas Carol," Dickens shows plainly that happiness is not bought and sold even in London, and that the only happy man is he who shares with another's need. Yet all of these, and the hundreds of their kind, whatever the purpose of the authors when writing them, belong to the "story" or "novel" class. The purpose _in telling_ the story is secondary to the purpose _to tell_ a story. They are to be classified as narration. English composition, then, is a study of the selection and arrangement of ideas, and of the methods of using the English language to communicate them. All composition is divided into five great classes. These classes have broad lines of distinction, which are most easily applied by determining the purpose of the author. * * * * * CHAPTER II CHOICE OF SUBJECT Form and Material. From the considerations in the preceding chapter may be derived several principles regarding the choice of subject. If the composition is to be narrative, it should be upon a subject that readily lends itself to narrative form. One can tell a story about "A Day's Hunt" or "What We did Hallowe'en;" but it would try one's powers of imagination to write a story of "A Tree" or "A Chair." The latter subjects do not lend themselves to narration, but they may be described. Josiah P. Cooke has written a brilliant exposition of "Fire" in "The New Chemistry;" yet a young person would be foolish to take "Fire" as a subject for exposition, though he might easily write a good description of "How the Fire looked from My Window," or narrate "How a Fireman rescued My Sister." So in all work in composition, _select a subject that readily lends itself to the form of discourse demanded; or, conversely, select the form of discourse suitable for presenting most effectively your material._ Author's Individuality. If an author is writing for other purposes than for conscious practice, he should choose the form of discourse in which he can best work, and to which he can best shape his material. Some men tell stories well; others are debaters; while yet others are wonderfully gifted with eloquence. Emerson understood life thoroughly. He knew man's feelings, his motives, his hopes, his strength, his weakness; yet one cannot imagine Emerson shaping this material into a novel. But just a little way down the road lived a wizard who could transmute the commonest events of this workaday world to the most beautiful shapes; no one wishes that Hawthorne had written essays. The second principle guiding in the choice of a subject is this: _Select a subject which is suited to your peculiar ability as an author._ Knowledge of Subject. The form, then, should suit the matter; and it should be the form in which the author can work. There is a third principle that should guide in the choice of a subject. _It should be a subject of which the author knows something._ Pupils often exclaim, "What can I write about!" as if they were expected to find something new to write. An exercise in composition has not for its object the proclaiming of any new and unheard-of thing; it is an exercise in the expression of things already known. Even when the subject is known, the treatment offers difficulties enough. It is not true that what is thoroughly understood is easily explained. Many excellent scholars have written very poor text-books because they had not learned the art of expression. A necessary antecedent of all good composition is a full and accurate knowledge of the subject; and even when one knows all about it, the clear expression of the thought will be difficult enough. To demand accurate knowledge of the subject before an author begins work upon it narrows the field from which themes may be drawn. Burroughs is an authority on all the tenants of our groves; "Wake-Robin," "Pepacton," and his other books all show a master's certain hand. So Stedman is an authority in matters relating to literature. But Burroughs and Stedman alike would find difficulty in writing an essay on "Electricity in the Treatment of Nervous Diseases." They do not know about it. A boy in school probably knows something of fishing; of this he can write. A girl can tell of "The Last Parlor Concert." Both could write very entertainingly of their "First Algebra Recitation;" neither could write a convincing essay on "The Advantages of Free Trade." Common Subjects. This will seem to limit the list of subjects to the commonplace. The fact is that in a composition exercise the purpose is not to startle the world with some new thing; it is to learn the art of expression. And here in the region of common things, things thoroughly understood, every bit of effort can be given to the manner of expression. The truth is, it does not require much art to make a book containing new and interesting material popular; the matter in the book carries it in spite of poor composition. Popular it may be, but popularity is not immortality. Columns of poorly written articles upon "Dewey" and "The Philippines" have been eagerly read by thousands of Americans; it would require a literary artist of great power to write a one-column article on "Pigs" so that it would be eagerly read by thousands. Real art in composition is much more manifest when an author takes a common subject and treats it in such a way that it glows with new life. Richard Le Gallienne has written about a drove of pigs so beautifully that one forgets all the traditions about these common animals.[2] Choose common subjects, then,--subjects that allow every particle of your strength to go into the manner of saying what you already know. The requirement that the subject shall be common does not mean that the subject shall be trivial. "Sliding to First," "How Billy won the Game," with all of this class of subjects, at once put the writer into a trifling, careless attitude toward his work. The subjects themselves seem to call forth a cheap, slangy vocabulary and the vulgar phrases of sporting life. An equally common subject could be selected which would call forth serious, earnest effort. If a boy knew nothing except about ball games, it would be advisable for him to write upon this subject. Such a condition is hardly possible in a high school. _Choose common subjects, but subjects that call for earnest thinking and dignified expression._ Interest. Interest is another consideration in the choice of a subject. It applies equally to writer and reader. _Choose subjects that are interesting._ Not only must an author know about the subject; he must be interested in it. A pupil may have accurate knowledge of the uses of a semicolon; but he would not be likely to succeed in a paragraph about semicolons, largely because he is not much interested in semicolons. This matter of interest is so important that it is well to know what things all persons, authors and readers alike, are interested in. What, then, is generally interesting? The Familiar. First, _the familiar is interesting._ When reading a newspaper each one instinctively turns to the local column, or glances down the general news columns to see if there is anything from his home town. To a former resident, Jim Benson's fence in Annandale is more interesting than the bronze doors of the Congressional Library in Washington. For the same reason a physician lights upon "a new cure for consumption," a lawyer devours Supreme Court decisions, while the dealer in silks is absorbed in the process of making silk without the aid of the silkworm. Each is interested in that which to him is most familiar. Human Life. Second, _human life in all its phases is interesting._ The account of a fire or of a railroad accident takes on a new interest when, in addition to the loss of property, there has been a loss of life. War is horribly fascinating, not so much because there is a wanton destruction of property, as because it involves the slaughter of men. Stories about trees and animals are usually failures, unless handled by artists who breathe into them the life of man. Andersen's "Tannenbaum" and Kipling's "Jungle Books" are intensely interesting because in them trees and animals feel and act just as men do. The Strange. Third, _the romantic, the unique, and the impossible are interesting._ A new discovery, a new invention, a people of which little is known,--anything new is interesting. The stories of Rider Haggard and Jules Verne have been popular because they deal with things which eye hath not seen. This peculiar trait of man allows him to relish a good fish story, or the latest news from the sea-serpent. Just for the same reason, children love to hear of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. Children and their parents are equally interested in those things which are entirely outside of their own experience. These, then, are the general conditions which govern the choice of a subject. It shall easily lend itself to the form of discourse chosen; it shall be suited to the peculiar ability of the author; it shall be thoroughly understood by the author,--common, but not trivial; it shall be interesting to both reader and author. * * * * * CHAPTER III NARRATION Material of Narration. Narration has been defined as the form of discourse which recounts events in a sequence. It includes not only letters, journals, memoirs, biographies, and many histories, but, in addition, that great body of literature which people generally include in the comprehensive term of "stories." If this body of literature be examined, it will be found that it deals with things as opposed to ideas; incidents as opposed to propositions. Sometimes, it is true, the author of a story is in reality dealing with ideas. In the fable about "The Hare and the Tortoise," the tortoise stands for the idea of slow, steady plodding; while the hare is the representative of quick wits which depend on their ability to show a brilliant burst of speed when called upon. The fable teaches better than an essay can that the dullness which perseveres will arrive at success sooner than brilliancy of mind which wastes its time in doing nothing to the purpose. Andersen's "Ugly Duckling," Ruskin's "King of the Golden River," and Lowell's "Sir Launfal" stand for deep spiritual ideas, which we understand better for this method of presentation. In an allegory like "Pilgrim's Progress," the passions and emotions, the sins and weaknesses of men are treated as if they were real persons. Ideas are represented by living, breathing persons; and we may say that all such narratives deal, not with ideas, but, for want of a better word, with things. In Action. Not only does narration deal with things, but with things doing something. Things inactive might be written of, but this would be description. It is necessary in narration that the things be in an active mood; that something be doing. "John struck James," then, is a narrative sentence; it tells that John has been doing something. Still, this one sentence would not ordinarily be accepted as narration. For narration there must be a series, a sequence of individual actions. _Recounting events in a sequence is narration._ The Commonest Form of Discourse. Narration is the most popular form of discourse. Between one fourth and one third of all books published are stories; and more than one half of the books issued by public libraries belong to the narrative class. Such a computation does not include the large number of stories read in our papers and magazines. In addition to being the most popular form of discourse, it is the most natural. It is the first form of connected discourse of the child; it is the form employed by the uncultured in giving his impressions; it is the form most used in conversation. Moreover, narration is the first form found in great literatures: the Iliad and the Odyssey, the songs of the troubadours in France, and the minnesingers in Germany, the chronicles and ballads of England,--all are narrative. Language as a Means of Expression. Narration is especially suited to the conditions imposed by language. Men do not think in single words, but in groups of words,--phrases, clauses, and sentences. In hearing, too, men do not consider the individual words; the mind waits until a group of words, a phrase, or a simple sentence perhaps,--which expresses a unit of thought, has been uttered. In narration these groups of words follow in a sequence exactly as the actions which they represent do. Take this rather lurid bit from Stevenson:-- "He dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol, whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at the same time either my courage came again, or I grew so much afraid as came to the same thing; for I gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the body." ("Kidnapped.") Each phrase or clause here is a unit of thought, and each follows the others in the same order as the events they tell of occurred. On the other hand, when one attempts description, and exposition too in many cases, he realizes the great difficulties imposed by the language itself; for in these forms of discourse the author not infrequently wishes to put the whole picture before the reader at once, or to set out several propositions at the same time, as belonging to one general truth. In order that the reader may get the complete picture or the complete thought, he must hold in mind often a whole paragraph before he unites it into the one conception the author intended. In narration one action is completed; it can be dropped. Then another follows, which can also be dropped. They need not be held in mind until the paragraph is finished. Narration is exactly suited to the means of its communication. The events which are recorded, and the sentences which record them, both follow in a sequence. Without Plot. The sequence of events in narration may be a simple sequence of time, in which case the narrative is without plot. This is the form of narration employed in newspapers in giving the events of the day. It is used in journals, memoirs, biographies, and many elementary histories. It makes little demand upon an author further than that he shall say clearly something that is interesting. Interesting it must be, if the author wishes it to be read; readers will not stay over dull material. Newspapers and magazines look out for interesting material, and it is for the matter in them that they are read. So memoirs and biographies are read, not to find out what happens at last,--that is known,--but to pick up information concerning an interesting subject. Plot. Or the sequence may be a more subtle and binding relation of cause and effect. This is the sequence employed in stories. One thing happens because another thing has happened. Generally the sequence of time and the sequence of cause and effect correspond; for effects come after causes. When, however, more than one cause is introduced, or when some cause is at work which the author hides until he can most advantageously produce it, or when an effect is held back for purposes of creating interest, the events may not be related exactly in the order in which they occurred. When any sequence is introduced in addition to the simple sequence of time, or when the time sequence is disturbed for the purpose of heightening interest, there is an arrangement of the parts which is generally termed plot. Plot is a term difficult to define. We feel, however, that Grant's "Memoirs" have no plot, and we feel just as sure that "King Lear" has a plot. So, too, we say that "Robinson Crusoe" has little, almost no plot; that the plot is simple in "Treasure Island," and that "Les Misérables" has an intricate plot. A plot seems to demand more than a mere succession of events. _Any arrangement of the parts of a narrative so that the reader's interest is aroused concerning the result of the series of events detailed is a plot._ It often occurs that a book which, as a whole, is without a plot, contains incidents which have a plot. In "Travels with a Donkey," by Stevenson, no one cares for the plot of the whole book,--in fact there is none; yet the reader is interested in the purchase of the "neat and high bred" Modestine up to the "last interview with Father Adam in a billiard-room at the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy." This incident has a plot. The following is a paragraph from "An Autumn Effect" by Mr. Stevenson. The simple events are perfectly ordered, and there is a delightful surprise at the end. This paragraph has a plot. Yet the thirty pages of "An Autumn Effect" could not be said to have a plot. "Bidding good-morning to my fellow-traveler, I left the road and struck across country. It was rather a revelation to pass from between the hedgerows and find quite a bustle on the other side, a great coming and going of school-children upon by-paths, and, in every second field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. The way I followed took me through many fields thus occupied, and through many strips of plantation, and then over a little space of smooth turf, very pleasant to the feet, set with tall fir-trees and clamorous with rooks, making ready for the winter, and so back again into the quiet road. I was now not far from the end of my day's journey. A few hundred yards farther, and, passing through a gap in the hedge, I began to go down hill through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches. I was soon in shadow myself, but the afternoon sun still colored the upmost boughs of the wood, and made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. A little faint vapor lay among the slim tree-stems in the bottom of the hollow; and from farther up I heard from time to time an outburst of gross laughter, as though clowns were making merry in the bush. There was something about the atmosphere that brought all sights and sounds home to one with a singular purity, so that I felt as if my senses had been washed with water. After I had crossed the little zone of mist, the path began to remount the hill; and just as I, mounting along with it, had got back again from the head downwards, into the thin golden sunshine, I saw in front of me a donkey tied to a tree. Now, I have a certain liking for donkeys, principally, I believe, because of the delightful things that Sterne has written of them. But this was not after the pattern of the ass at Lyons. He was of a white color, that seemed to fit him rather for rare festal occasions than for constant drudgery. Besides, he was very small, and of the daintiest proportions you can imagine in a donkey. And so, sure enough, you had only to look at him to see he had never worked. There was something too roguish and wanton in his face, a look too like that of a schoolboy or a street Arab, to have survived much cudgeling. It was plain that these feet had kicked off sportive children oftener than they had plodded with freight through miry lanes. He was altogether a fine-weather, holiday sort of a donkey; and though he was just then somewhat solemnized and rueful, he still gave proof of the levity of his disposition by impudently wagging his ears at me as I drew near. I say he was somewhat solemnized just then; for with the admirable instinct of all men and animals under restraint, he had so wound and wound the halter about the tree that he could go neither back nor forwards, nor so much as put his head down to browse. There he stood, poor rogue, part puzzled, part angry, part, I believe, amused. He had not given up hope, and dully revolved the problem in his head, giving ever and again another jerk at the few inches of free rope that still remained unwound. A humorous sort of sympathy for the creature took hold upon me. I went up, and, not without some trouble on my part, and much distrust and resistance on the part of Neddy, got him forced backwards until the whole length of the halter was set loose, and he was once more as free a donkey as I dared to make him. I was pleased (as people are) with this friendly action to a fellow-creature in tribulation, and glanced back over my shoulder to see how he was profiting by his freedom. The brute was looking after me; and no sooner did he catch my eye than he put up his long white face into the air, pulled an impudent mouth at me, and began to bray derisively. If ever any one person made a grimace at another, that donkey made a grimace at me. The hardened ingratitude of his behavior, and the impertinence that inspired his whole face as he curled up his lip, and showed his teeth and began to bray, so tickled me and was so much in keeping with what I had imagined to myself of his character, that I could not find it in my heart to be angry, and burst into a peal of hearty laughter. This seemed to strike the ass as a repartee, so he brayed at me again by way of rejoinder; and we went on for awhile, braying and laughing, until I began to grow a-weary of it, and shouting a derisive farewell, turned to pursue my way. In so doing--it was like going suddenly into cold water--I found myself face to face with a prim, little old maid. She was all in a flutter, the poor old dear! She had concluded beyond question that this must be a lunatic who stood laughing aloud at a white donkey in the placid beech-woods. I was sure, by her face, that she had already recommended her spirit most religiously to Heaven, and prepared herself for the worst. And so, to reassure her, I uncovered and besought her, after a very staid fashion, to put me on my way to Great Missenden. Her voice trembled a little, to be sure, but I think her mind was set at rest; and she told me, very explicitly, to follow the path until I came to the end of the wood, and then I should see the village below me in the bottom of the valley. And, with mutual courtesies, the little old maid and I went on our respective ways." Books of travel, memoirs, and biographies, as whole books, are generally without any arrangement serious enough to be termed a plot; yet a large part of the interest in such books would be lost were the incidents there collected not well told, with a conscious attempt to set them out in the very best fashion; indeed, if each incident did not have a plot. In "Vanity Fair" with its six hundred pages, in "Silas Marner" with its two hundred pages, in the short stories of our best magazines, in the spicy little anecdotes in the "Youth's Companion,"--in the least bit of a good story as well as the three-volume novel, the authors have used the means best suited to retain the interest to the end. They have constructed plots. Unity, Mass, and Coherence. In the construction of any piece of composition there are three principles of primary importance: they are Unity, which is concerned with the material itself; and Mass and Coherence, which are concerned with the arrangement of the material. A composition has unity when all the material has been so sifted and selected that each part contributes its share to the central thought of the whole. Whether of a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole composition, all those parts must be excluded which do not bring something of value to the whole; and everything must be included which is necessary to give a clear understanding of the whole. Mass, the second principle of structure, demands that those parts of a composition, paragraph, or sentence which are of most importance shall be so placed that they will arrest the attention. By coherence is meant that principle of structure which, in sentences, paragraphs, and whole compositions, places those parts related in thought near together, and keeps separate those parts which are separated in thought. Main Incident. For the construction of a story that will retain the reader's interest to the end, for the selection of such material as will contribute to a central thought, for the arrangement of this material so that the most important matter shall occupy the most important position in the theme, one simple rule is of value. It is this: _First choose the main incident_ towards which all the other incidents converge, and for the accomplishment of which the preceding incidents are necessary. A few pages will be given to the application of this rule, and to the results of its application. Its Importance. There should be in each story, however slight the plot, some incident that is more important than the others, and toward which all the others converge. A reader is disappointed if, after reading a story through, he finds that there is no worthy ending, that all the preparation was made for no purpose. If, in "Wee Willie Winkie," Kipling had stopped just before Miss Allardyce started across the river, it would have been a poor story. It would have had no ending. It is because a story gets somewhere that we like it. Yet not just somewhere; it must arrive at a place worthy of all the preparation that has preceded. A very common fault with the compositions of young persons is that they begin big and end little. It is not infrequent that the first paragraph promises well; the second is not quite so good; and the rest gradually fall off until the end is worthless. The order should be changed. Have the first paragraph promise well, make the second better, and the last best of all. The main incident should be more important than each incident that precedes it. Get the main incident in mind before beginning; be sure it is the main incident; then bend all your energies to make it the most important incident toward which all the other incidents converge. Unity. The choice of a main incident will determine what incidents to exclude. The world is full of incidents--enough to make volumes more than we now have. A phonograph and a camera could gather enough any day at a busy corner in a city to fill a volume; yet these pictures and these bits of conversation, interesting as each in itself might be, would not be a unit,--not one story, but many. Few persons, indeed, would write anything so disjointed as the report made by this phonograph; yet good writers are often led astray by the brilliancy of their own ideas. They have so many good stories on hand which they would like to tell, that they force some of them into their present story, and so spoil two stories. In the very popular "David Harum," it would puzzle any one to know why the author has introduced the ladies from the city and the musical party at the lake. The episode is good enough in itself; but in this story it has not a shadow of excuse. There is a phrase of Kipling's that should ring in every story-teller's ears. Not once only, but a number of times, this prince of modern story-tellers catches himself--almost too late sometimes--and writes, "But that is another story." One incident calls up another; paragraph follows paragraph naturally. It is easy enough to look back and trace the road by which the writer arrived at his present position; yet it would be very hard to tell why he came hither, or to see how the journey up to this point will at all put him toward his destination. He has digressed; he has left the road. And he must get back to the road. By this digression he has wasted just as much time as it has taken to come from the direct road to this point added to the time it will take to go back. Do not digress; tell one story at a time; let no incident into your story which cannot answer the question, "Why are you here?" by "I help;" keep your eye on the main incident; things which do not unquestionably contribute something to the main incident should be excluded. Introductions and Conclusions. The choice of the main incident towards which all other incidents converge will rid compositions of worthless introductions and trailing conclusions. A story should get under way at once; and any explanations at the beginning, the introduction of long descriptions or tedious paragraphs of "fine writing," will be headed off if the pupil keeps constantly in mind that it must all lead directly toward the main incident. Again, if everything converges to the main incident, when that has been told the story is finished. After that there must be no explanations, no moralizing, nothing. When the story has been told it is a good rule to stop. An excellent example of a short story well told is "An Incident of the French Camp," by Robert Browning. Only the absolutely necessary has been introduced. The incidents flash before the reader. Nothing can be said after the last line. "Hervé Riel" is a vivid piece of narrative too. Such an exhibition of manliness appeals to all. Was it necessary to attach the last stanza? If this poem needed it, why not the other? If the story has no moral in it, no man can tie it on; if there is one, the reader should be accounted intelligent enough to find it without any help. Tedious Enumerations. Making all the incidents converge to one main incident will avoid tiresome enumerations of inconsequential events, which frequently fill the compositions of young pupils. Such essays generally start with "a bright, clear morning," and "a party of four of us." After recounting a dozen events of no consequence whatever, "we came home to a late supper, well repaid for our day's outing." These compositions may be quite correct in the choice of words, sentences, and paragraphs, and with it all be flat. There is nothing to them; they get the reader nowhere. Pick out one of the many incidents. Work it up. Turn back to the paragraph from Stevenson and notice how little there is to it when reduced to bare outline. He has worked it up so that it is good. Always remember that a short anecdote well told is worth pages of aimless enumeration. What to include. The selection of the main incident will guide in determining what to include; for every detail must be included that is necessary to make the main incident possible. A young pupil wrote of a party in the woods. The girls had found pleasant seats in a car and were chatting about their friends, when they felt a sudden lurch, and soon one of the party was besmeared by slippery, sticky whites of eggs. Now, if eggs were in the habit of clinging to the roofs of cars and breaking at unfortunate moments, there would be no need of any explanation; but as the cook forgot to boil the eggs and the girl had put them up into the rack herself, some of this should have been told. Enough at least should be told to make the main incident a possibility. Stories are full of surprises, but they can be understood easily from the preceding incidents; or else the new element is one that happens frequently, and of itself is nothing new. In the paragraph from Stevenson, the entrance of the "prim, little old maid" is a surprise, but it is a very common thing for ladies to walk upon a public highway. Any surprise must be natural,--the result of causes at work in the story, or of circumstances which are always occurring and by themselves no surprises. If the story be a tangled web of incidents culminating in some horror, as the death of the beautiful young wife in Hawthorne's "Birthmark," all the events must be told that are necessary to carry the reader from the first time he beholds her beauty until he sees her again, her life ebbing away as the fairy hand fades from her cheek. In "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" it would be impossible to pass directly from the sweet boy of the first chapter to the little liar of the last; something must be told of those miserable days that intervene, and their telling effect on the little fellow. So a reader could not harmonize his idea of old Scrooge gained in the first chapter with generous Mr. Scrooge of the last without the intermediate chapters. Keeping the main incident in mind, include all that is necessary to make it possible. Consistency. This same rule more than any other will make a story consistent. If incidents are chosen with relation to the one main incident, they will all have a common quality; they can scarcely be inconsistent. It is much more essential that a story be consistent than that it be a fact. Indeed, facts are not necessary in stories, and they are dangerous. Ian Maclaren says that the only part of his stories that has been severely criticised is a drowning episode, which was a fact, and the only one he ever used. Yet to those who have read "The Bonnie Brier Bush," the old doctor is as well known as any person who lives across the street; he is real to us, though he never lived. "Old Scrooge" and "Brom Bones" are better known than John Adams is. A good character or a good story need not be drawn from facts. Indeed, in literature as in actual life, facts are stubborn things, and will not accommodate themselves to new surroundings. Make the story consistent; be not too careful about the facts. A story may be good and be entirely contrary to all known facts. "The Ugly Duckling" is as true as Fiske's "History of the United States," and every whit as consistent. "Alice in Wonderland" is an excellent story; yet it contains no facts. The introduction of a single fact would ruin the story; for between the realm of fact and the region of fancy is a great gulf fixed, and no man has successfully crossed it. Whatever conditions of life and action are assumed in one part of a story must be continued throughout. If walruses talk and hens are reasonable in one part of the story, to reduce them to every-day animals would be ruinous. Consistency, that the parts stand together, that the story seem probable,--this is more essential than facts. And to gain this consistency the surest rule is to test the material by its relation to the main incident. The choice of the main incident, then, will determine to a great degree what to exclude and what to include; it will assist in ridding compositions of countless enumerations, aimless wanderings, and flat endings; it will help the writer to get started, and insure a stop when the story is told; and it will give to the story the quality most essential for its success, consistency. An Actor as the Storyteller. There is yet another condition that enters into the selection of materials: it makes a difference who tells the story. If the story be told in the first person, that is, if one of the actors tell the story, he cannot be supposed to know all that the other persons do when out of sight and hearing, nor can he know what they think. To take an illustration from a pupil's essay. A girl took her baby sister out upon the lake in a rowboat. A violent storm arose, lashing the lake into a fury. The oars were wrenched from her hands. Helpless on the water, how was she to be saved? Here the essayist recited an infinite amount of detail about the distress at home, giving the conversation and the actions. These things she could not have known in the character she had assumed at the beginning, that of the chief actor. All of that should have been excluded. When Stevenson tells of the fight in the round house, though he knew what those old salts were doing outside, matters of great interest to the reader, he does not let David say anything except what he could see or hear, and a very little of what he "learned afterwards." Stevenson knew well who was telling the story; David is too good a story-teller to tell what he could not know. In the pupil's essay and in "Kidnapped," all such matters would have a direct bearing on the main incident; they could be included without destroying the unity of the story. But they cannot be included when the story is told by one of the actors. The Omniscience of an Author. Many stories, probably most stories, are told in the third person. In this case the author assumes the position of an omniscient power who knows everything that is done, said, or thought by the characters in his story. Not only what happens in the next room, but what is thought at the other side of the world, is comprehended in his omniscience. This is the position assumed by Irving in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," by Kipling in the series of stories included with "Wee Willie Winkie," by Scott in "Marmion," and by most great novelists. Omniscience is, however, a dangerous prerogative for a young person. The power is so great that the person who has but recently come into possession of it becomes dizzy with it and uncertain in his movements. A young person knows what he would do under certain conditions; but to be able to know what some other person would do and think under a certain set of circumstances requires a sure knowledge of character, and the capability of assuming entirely different and unaccustomed points of view. It is much safer for the beginner to take the point of view of one of the actors, and tell the story in the first person. Then when the grasp has become sure from this standpoint, he may assume the more difficult role of the omniscient third person. To sum up what has been said about the selection of materials: only those materials should be admitted to a story which contribute to its main incident, which are consistent with one another, and which could have been known by the narrator. The Climax. When the materials for a story have been selected, the next consideration is their arrangement. If the materials have been selected to contribute to the main incident and converge toward it, it will follow that _the main incident_ will come last in the story; it _will be the climax_ towards which the several parts of the story are directed. Moreover, it should be last, in order to retain the interest of the reader up to that time. This is in accordance with the demands of the second great principle of structure, Mass. An essay is well massed if the parts are so arranged that things of importance will arrest the attention. In literature to be read, to arrest the attention is almost equivalent to catching the eye. The positions that catch the eye, whether in sentence, paragraph, or essay, are the beginning and the end. Were it not for another element which enters into the calculation, these positions would be of nearly equal importance. Since, however, the mind retains the most vivid impression of the thing it received last, the impression of the end of the sentence, paragraph, or essay is stronger than the impression made by its beginning. The climax of a story should come at the end, both because it is the result of preceding incidents, and because by this position it receives the additional emphasis due to its position. Who? Where? When? Why? The beginning is the position of second importance. What, then, shall stand in this place? A story resembles a puzzle. The solution of the puzzle is given at the end; the thing of next importance is the conditions of the puzzle. In "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" the story culminates in the surprise of a devoted mother when she discovers that her boy is a secretive little liar, who now deserves to be called "Black Sheep." This is the end; what was the beginning,--the conditions necessary to bring about this deplorable result? First, they were _the persons;_ second, _the place;_ third, _the time._ In many stories there is introduced the reason for telling the story. These conditions, answering the questions Who? Where? When? and Why? are all, or some of them, introduced at the beginning of any narrative, and as soon as it can be done, they ought all to be given. In a short essay, they are in the first paragraph; in a novel, in the first chapters. In "Marmion" the time, the place, and the principal character are introduced into the first canto. So Irving begins "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" with the place and time, then follow the characters. In all stories the beginning is occupied in giving the conditions of the story; that is, the principal characters, the time, and the place. In what Order? Having the end and the beginning clearly in mind, the next question is how best to get from one to the other. Shall the incidents be arranged in order of time? or shall other considerations govern? If it be any narrative of the journal form, whether a diary or a biography, the chronological arrangement will direct the sequence of events. Again, if it be a simple story with a single series of events, the time order will prevail. If, however, it be a narrative which contains several series of events, as a history or a novel, it may be wise, even necessary, to deviate from the time sequence. It would have been unwise for Scott to hold strictly to the order of time in "Marmion;" after introducing the principal character, giving the time and the setting, it was necessary for him to bring in another element of the plot, Constance, and to go backward in time to pick up this thread of the story. The really essential order in any narrative is the order of cause and effect. As causes precede effects, the causal order and the time order generally coincide. In a single series of events, that is, where one cause alone produces an effect, which in turn becomes the cause of another effect, the time order is the causal order. In a novel, or a short story frequently, where there are more than one series of incidents contributing to and converging towards the main incident, these causes must all be introduced before the effect, and may break the chronological order of the story. In "Roger Malvin's Burial," it would be impossible to tell what the stricken father was doing and what the joyous mother was thinking at the same time. Hawthorne must leave one and go to the other until they meet in their awful desolation. The only rule that can be given is, introduce causes before effects. In all stories, short or long, this will result in an approximation to the order of time; in a simple story it will invariably give a time sequence. There is one exception to this rule which should be noted. It is necessary at the very beginning to have some incident that will arrest the attention. This does not mean that persons, place, and time shall not come first. They shall come first, but they shall be so introduced as to make an interesting opening to the story. The novels of some decades ago did not sufficiently recognize the principle. One can frequently hear it said of Scott's stories, "I can't get started with them; they are too dry." The introductory chapters are often uninteresting. So much history is introduced, so much scenery is described before the author sets out his characters; and all this is done before he begins the story. Novelists of to-day realize that they must interest the reader at the beginning; when they have caught him, they are quite certain that he will bear with them while they bring up the other divisions of the story, which now have become interesting because they throw light on what has already been told. Even more than novelists, dramatists recognize this principle. When the curtain rises on the first act, something interesting is going on. The action frequently begins far along in the time covered by the story; then by cleverly arranged conversation all circumstances before the time of the opening that are necessary to the development of the plot are introduced. The audience receives these minor yet essential details with no impatience, since they explain in part a situation already interesting. The time order may be broken in order to introduce at the beginning of the story some interesting situation which will immediately engage the reader's attention. In arranging the materials of a story, the main considerations are Mass and Coherence. Mass demands important matters at the beginning and at the end of a story. Coherence demands that events closely related shall stand close together: that an effect shall immediately follow its cause. Beginning with some interesting situation that will also introduce the principal characters, the time, and the setting, the story follows in the main the order of time, and concludes with the main incident. An Outline. One practical suggestion will assist in arranging the parts of a story. Use an outline. It will guard against the omission of any detail that may afterward be found necessary, and against the necessity of offering the apology, inexcusable in prepared work, of "forgetting to say;" it will help the writer to see the best arrangement of the parts, to know that causes have preceded effects. The outline in narration should not be too much in detail, nor should it be followed if, as the story progresses, new light comes and the writer sees a better way to proceed. The writer should be above the outline, not its slave; but the outline is a most valuable servant of the writer. Movement. _Movement is an essential quality of narrative;_ a story must advance. This does not mean that the story shall always go at the same rate, though it does mean that it shall always go. If a story always had the rapidity and intensity of a climax, it would be intolerable. Music that is all rushing climaxes is unbearable; a picture must not be a glare of high lights. The quiet passages in music, the grays and low tones in the background of the picture, the slow chapters in a story, are as necessary as their opposites; indeed, climaxes are dependent on contrasts in order to be climaxes. Rapidity. The question of movement resolves itself into these two: how is rapidity of movement obtained, and how can the writer delay the movement. Rapidity is gained by the omission of all unnecessary details, and the use of the shortest, tersest sentences to express the absolutely essential. Dependent clauses disappear; either the sentences are simple, just one sharp statement, or they are made of coördinate clauses with no connectives. Every weight that could clog the story is thrown away, and it runs with the swiftness of the thought. At such a time it would be a waste of good material to introduce beautiful descriptions or profound philosophy. Such things would be skipped by the reader. Everything must clear the way for the story. Slowness. What has been said of rapidity will indicate the answer to the second question. Slowness of movement is obtained by introducing long descriptions, analyses of characters, and information regarding the history or customs of the time. Sentences become long and involved; dependent clauses abound; connective words and phrases are frequent. Needless details may be introduced until the story becomes wearisome; it has almost no movement. Very closely connected with what has been said above is another fact concerning movement. Strip the sentences as you may, there are still the verbs remaining. Verbs and derivatives from verbs are the words which denote action. If other classes of words be taken out, the ratio of verbs to the other words in the sentence is larger. Shorter sentences and an increased ratio of verbs mark the passages in which the movement is more rapid. In "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" the sentences average twenty-five words in the slower parts; in the intenser paragraphs the sentences have an average of fifteen words. Poe's "Gold-Bug" changes from thirty-eight to twenty-one. Again, Stevenson's essays have a verb to eight words, while the fight at the round house has a verb to about five and a half words. One of Kipling's stories starts in with a verb to eight and a half words, and the climax has a verb in every four words. These figures mean that as the sentences are shortened, adjectives, adverbs, phrases, connectives, disappear. Everything not absolutely necessary is thrown away when the passage is to express rapid movement. No person should think that, by eliminating all dependent clauses, cutting away all unnecessary matters, and putting in a verb to every four words, he can gain intensity of expression. These are only accompanying circumstances. Climaxes are in the thought. When the thought moves rapidly, when things are being done with a rush, when the climax has been reached, then the writer will find that he can approach the movement of the thought most nearly by using these means. Description and Narration. _A valuable accessory to narration is description;_ in truth, description for its own sake is not frequently found. The story must be somewhere; and it is more real when we know in what kind of a place it occurs. Still it is not wise to do as Scott so often has done,--give chapters of description at the beginning of the story. Rather the setting should be scattered through the story so that it is hardly perceptible. At no time should the reader halt and realize that he is being treated to a description. Even in the beautiful descriptions by Stevenson quoted in the next chapter, the work is so intimately blended with the story that the reader unfortunately might pass over it. A large part of the pleasure derived from the best stories is supplied by good descriptions, giving a vivid picture of the setting of the story. Description has another use in narration beside giving the setting of the story; it is often used to accent the mood of the action. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Poe, much of the gloomy foreboding is caused by the weird descriptions. Hawthorne understood well the harmony between man's feelings and his surroundings. The Sylvan Dance in "The Marble Faun" is wonderfully handled. Irving, in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," throws about the story a "witching influence," and long before the Headless Horseman appears, the reader is quite sure that the region abounds in "ghosts and goblins," dwelling in its "haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses." The danger in the use of description for this purpose is in overdoing it. The fact is, as Arlo Bates says, "the villains no longer steal through smiling gardens whose snowy lilies, all abloom, and sending up perfume like incense from censers of silver, seem to rebuke the wicked." Yet when handled as Stevenson and Irving handled it, description assists in accenting the mood of the action. Characters few, Time short. _The number of characters should be few_ and the time of the action short. Pupils are not able to handle a large number of persons. There is, however, a stronger reason for it than incapacity. A young person would have great trouble in remembering the large number of persons introduced into "Little Dorrit." Many of them would always remain entire strangers. Such a scattering of attention is unfavorable to a story. To focus the interest upon a few, to have the action centred in these few, increases the movement and intensity of the narrative. The writers of short stories in France (perhaps the best story-tellers of the present), Kipling, Davis, Miss Wilkins, and some others of our best authors, find few characters all that are necessary, and they gain in intensity by limiting the number of characters. For the same reason _the time should be short._ If all the incidents chosen are crowded into a short period of time, the action must be more rapid. The reader does not like to know five years have elapsed between one event and the next, even if the story-teller does not try to fill up the interim with matters of no consequence to the narrative. One exception must be made to this rule. In stories whose purpose is to portray a change of character, a long time is necessary; for the transformation is not usually the result of a day's experience, but a gradual process of years. "Silas Marner" and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" demand time to make naturally the great changes recounted. In general, however, the time should be short. Simple Plot. Moreover, _the plot should be simple._ This is not saying that the plot should be evident. No one is quite satisfied if he knows just how the story will turn out. There are, however, so many conditions in a story that the accentuation of one or the subordination of another may bring about something quite unexpected, yet perfectly natural. Complicated plots have had their day; simple plots are now in vogue. They are as natural as life, and quite as unfathomable. In Davis's "Gallegher" there is nothing complicated; one thing follows another in a perfectly natural way; yet there are many questions in the reader's mind as to how the little rascal will turn out, and whether he will accomplish his mission. Much more cleverness is shown by the sleight-of-hand trickster, who, unassisted and in the open, with no accessories, dupes his staring assembly, than by him who, on the stage, with the aid of mirrors, lights, machines, and a crowd of assistants, manages to deceive your eyes. A story that by its frank simplicity takes the reader into its confidence, and brings him to a conclusion that is so natural that it should have been foreseen from the beginning, has a good plot. The conclusion of a story must be natural,--the result of the causes at work in the story. It must be an expected surprise. If it cannot be accounted for by the causes at work in the story, the construction is faulty. In the world of fiction there is not the liberty one experiences in the world of fact. There things unexpected and unexplainable occur. But the story-teller has no such privilege. Truth is stranger than fiction dare be. A simple, natural story, with few characters and covering but a short period of time, has three elements of success. Paragraph structure, sentence structure, and choice of words are taken up in subsequent chapters. Of paragraphs it may be wise to say that there will be as many as there are divisions in the outline; and sometimes, by reason of the length of topic, a subdivision may be necessary. The paragraph most common in narration is the paragraph of details, the first form presented in the chapter on paragraphs. What needs to be said of sentences has already been said when treating of movement. Of words one thing may be suggested. Choose live words, specific words, words that have "go" in them. It should be remembered that everything cannot be learned at once. The study of the whole is the principal occupation just now. Select the main incident; choose other incidents to be consistent with it; start out at once giving the conditions of the story; proceed now fast, now slow, as the thought demands, arriving at a conclusion that is an expected surprise, the result of forces at work in the story. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES The questions are only suggestive. They indicate how literature can be made to teach composition. Some questions may seem hard, and will provoke discussion. To have even a false opinion, backed by only a few facts, is better than an entire absence of thought. Encourage discussion. The answers to the questions have not been suggested in the questions themselves. The object has been to throw the pupil upon his own thinking. These questions upon the "Method of the Author" should not be considered until the far more important work of deriving the "Meaning of the Author" has been finished. Only after the whole piece has been carefully studied can the relation of the parts to the whole be understood. Reserve the questions for the review. QUESTIONS. THE GREAT STONE FACE. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 40.) In what paragraphs is the main incident? Can you find one sentence on the second page of the story that foreshadows the result? How many incidents or episodes contribute to the story? Do these help in the development of Ernest's character? If not, what is the use of them? Why are they arranged in this order? Introduce into its proper place an incident of a scientist. Write it up. Do you think one of the incidents could be omitted? Which one? Are the incidents related in the order in which they occurred? Is one the cause of another? Has the story a plot? Why do you think so? What is a plot? Where are introduced the time, place, and the principal character? What is the use of the description of "the great stone face"? Why does the author tell only what "was reported" of the interior of Mr. Gathergold's palace? Is it better so? Are the descriptions to accent the mood of the story? or are they primarily to make concrete and real the persons and places? Is there any place where the movement of the story is rapid? Does the author begin at once, and close when the story is told? Did you find any use of comparisons in the piece? (See top of p. 6, top of p. 19, middle of p. 22.)[3] Of what value are they in composition? THE GENTLE BOY. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 145.) What is the main incident? In relation to the whole story, in what place does it stand? Do the other incidents serve to develop the character of "the gentle boy"? or are they introduced to open up to the reader that character? (Compare with "Wee Willie Winkie.") Do you consider all the incidents necessary? Why has the author introduced the fact that Ilbrahim gently cared for the little boy who fell from the tree? What is the use of the first two pages of the story? Where does the story really begin? How could you know the time, if the first page were not there? Is it a delicate way of telling "when"? Notice that time, place, and principal characters all are introduced into the first paragraph of the real story. Why does the author note the change in Tobias's circumstances? Does it add to the interest of the story? Would you omit it? Do you think this plot more complicated than that of "The Great Stone Face"? What is the use of the description on p. 31? What do you note as the difference between (a) second line of p. 19, sixth line of p. 27, sixteenth line of p. 29, and (b) fourth line of p. 25, the figure in the complete paragraph on p. 40? THE GRAY CHAMPION. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 145.) Note the successive stages by which the time is approached. (Compare with the beginning of "Silas Marner.") Can you feel any difference between the movement of this story and the movement in "The Gentle Boy"? Is there any difference in the length of the sentences? (Remember that the independent clauses of a compound sentence are very nearly the same as simple sentences.) Is there any difference in the proportion of verbs and verbals? What parts of speech have almost disappeared? ROGER MALVIN'S BURIAL. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 145.) Why is the first paragraph needed? Why could the incident in the first paragraph on p. 50 not be omitted? Do you find it later? How many chapters could you divide the story into? What is the basis of division? Why did not Hawthorne tell the result of the shot at once? A plot is usually made by introducing more than one cause, by hiding one of the causes, or by holding back an effect. Which in this story? Is there a change of movement between the beginning and the end of the story? Look at the last two pages carefully. How has the author expressed the intensity of the situation? Does the story end when it is finished? THE WEDDING KNELL. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 145.) Of the three common ways of giving uncertainty to a plot, which has been used? Do you call this plot more complicated than those of the other tales studied? Why does the author say, at the top of p. 72, "necessary preface"? Could it not be omitted? If not, what principle of narrative construction would be violated by its omission? Why has he introduced the last paragraph on p. 74 reaching over to p. 75? THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 40.) In what order are the elements of the story introduced? Pick out phrases which prepare you for the catastrophe. Can you detect any difference in the movement of the different parts of the story? What aids its expression? THE GOLD-BUG. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 120.) Would you have been satisfied if the story had stopped when the treasure was discovered? What more do you want to know? What, then, is the main incident? Was the main incident the last to occur in order of time? Why did Poe delay telling it until the end? Do you see how relating the story in the first person helped him to throw the main incident last? Why could he not tell it before? Does Poe tell any other stories in the first person? In what person are "Treasure Island" and "Kidnapped" told? Are they interesting? If a friend is telling you a story, do you care more for it if it is about a third party or about himself? Why? What, then, is the advantage of making an actor the narrator? What are some of the disadvantages? Do you think this plot as good as those of Hawthorne's stories? Why was it necessary to have "a day of remarkable chilliness" (p. 3), and a Newfoundland dog rushing into the room (p. 6)? What principle would it violate to omit these little matters? (Text-book, p. 24.) What of the rapidity of movement when they are digging? How has rapidity been gained? What form of wit does Poe attempt? Does he succeed? Do you think the conversation is natural? If not, what is the matter with it? Are negroes usually profane? Does Jupiter's general character lead you to expect profanity from him? Is anything gained by his oaths? Is anything sacrificed? In this story is profanity artistic? (To know what is meant by "artistic," read the last line of "L'Envoi" on p. 253 of the text-book.) THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 30.) What is the purpose of the first stanza? What connection in thought is there between the second, third, and fourth stanzas? What have these stanzas to do with the story? If they have nothing to do with it, what principle of structure do they violate? Would Lowell be likely to do this? What is the use of the description beginning "And what is so rare as a day in June"? Would the story be complete without the preludes? Would the teaching be understood without them? Are time and place definitely stated in the poem? Why should they be, or not be? Why does so much time elapse between Part I. and Part II. of the story? In what lines do you find the main incident? In the first prelude is Lowell describing a landscape of New England or Old England? Where is the story laid? What comment have you to make upon these facts? Pick out the figures. Are they useful? Can you find passages of exposition and description in this narrative? Why do you call it narration? What is Lowell's criticism upon himself? (See "Fable for Critics.") A CHRISTMAS CAROL. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 57.) Is the opening such as to catch the attention? What is the essential idea in the description of Scrooge? Do all details enforce this idea? Do you know Scrooge? In what paragraph does Dickens tell where the story occurs? Find places on p. 19 and p. 96 where Dickens has used "in" or "into." What advantage to the story is the appearance in Scrooge's office of his nephew and the two gentlemen? Do they come into the story again? Are the details in the description of the apparition on p. 41 in the order in which they would be noted? Which is the most important detail? Where is it in the description? Is the description of Mrs. Fezziwig on p. 52 successful? What helps express rapidity of movement in the paragraph at the bottom of p. 53? (See also paragraph on p. 85.) Examining the words used by Dickens and Hawthorne, which are longer? Which are most effectual? Are you sure? Rewrite one of Hawthorne's paragraphs with a Dickens vocabulary. What is the result? What word is the topic of the last paragraph on p. 73? Recast the first sentence of the last paragraph on p. 77. Does Dickens use slang? (Do not consider conversation in the answer to this question.) What is the main incident? Is there one of the minor incidents that could be omitted? Which one could you most easily spare? What is the need of the last chapter? MARMION. (Rolfe's Student's Series, Vol. 2.) How do you know the time of "Marmion"? Do you see any reason why stanza vi. of Canto I. would better precede stanza v.? Where is the first mention of De Wilton? the first intimation of Clara de Clare? of Constance? What form of discourse in stanza vii. of Canto II.? What part in the development of the narrative does Fitz-Eustace's song make? Does the tale related by the host break the unity of the whole? Is it "another story"? What value has it? Why does Scott not tell of Marmion's encounter with the Elfin Knight in Canto III.? Where is it told? Why there? Why is Canto II. put after Canto I.? Did the events related in II. occur after those related in I.? How many of the descriptions of persons in "Marmion" begin with the face? How many times are they of the face only? Try to write the incident related in stanzas xix., xx., xxi., and xxii. of Canto III. in fewer words than Scott has done it without sacrificing any detail. Are you satisfied with the description of King James in stanza viii. Canto V.? Do you see him? Write an outline of the plot of "Marmion" in two hundred words. Why is the story of Lady Clare reserved until Canto V.? What cantos contain the main incident? Were all that precedes omitted, would "The Battle" be as interesting? Do you think the plot good? Is it complicated? What of the number of figures used in the last canto compared with those used in any other canto? Do you find more in narrative or descriptive passages? Why? Read stanza viii. Canto III. Can you describe a voice without using comparison? Do the introductions to the several cantos form any part of the story? Would they be just as good anywhere else? Would the story be better with them, or without them? What principle of structure do they violate? EXERCISES. The subjects for composition given below are not intended as a course to be followed, but only to suggest a plan for the work. The individual topics for essays may not be the best for all cases. Long lists of topics can be found in rhetorics. Bare subjects, however, are usually unsuggestive. They should be adapted to the class. Put the subjects in such shape that there is something to get hold of. Give the pupils a fair start. 1-4. In order to place before the pupils good models for constructing stories, read one like "A Piece of String" in "An Odd Number," by Maupassant. Stories for this purpose should not be long. Talk the story over with the pupils, bringing out clearly the main incident and the several episodes which contribute to it. Have them notice how characters, time, and place are introduced; and how each succeeding event is possible and natural. Then have it rewritten. This will fix the idea of plan. For this purpose some of Miss Wilkins's stories are excellent; Kenneth Grahame's "The Golden Age," and Miss Jewett's short stories are good material. Some of the short stories in current magazines serve well. 5, 6. Read the first of a story and its close,--enough to indicate the main incident and the setting of the story. Have the pupils write it complete. 7. Read the close of a story. The pupils will then write the whole. 8. Read the opening of a story. Have the pupils complete it. 9. Finish "The Circus-Man's Story" (Text-book, p. 297.) 10. My First Algebra Lesson. Remember that in composition a good story is worth more than a true one. The basis may be a fact. Do not hesitate to fix it up. 11. A delivery horse runs away. No persons are in the wagon. Tell about it. 12. Write about a runaway in which you and your little sister are injured. (I have found it very helpful to use the same subject, but having the relation of the narrator to the incident very different. It serves to bring out a whole new vocabulary in order to express the difference in the feelings of the narrator.) 13. Write the story suggested to your mind by these words: Digging in the sand I found a board much worn by the waves, on which were cut, in characters scarcely traceable, these words: "Dec.----18 9, N. J." 14. A humorous incident in a street car, in which the joke was on the other fellow. 15. Another in which the joke was on me. The same incident may be used with good effect. The choice of new words to express the difference of feelings makes an excellent exercise. 16. Tell the story that Doreas related to her neighbors about her husband's escape and her father's death. 17. To bring out the fact that the language must be varied to suit the character of the reader or listener, tell a fairy story to a sleepy five-year old so that he will not go to sleep. Do not hesitate at exaggerations. Only remember it must be consistent. 18. Have "The Gentle Boy" tell one of the incidents in which he was cruelly treated. This may well be an incident of your own life adapted to its purpose. 19, 20. Jim was a mean boy. Meanness seemed to be in his blood. He was all mean. His hair was mean; his freckles were mean; his big, chapped hands were mean. And he was always mean. He was mean to his pets; he was meaner to small boys; and he was as mean as he dared to be to his equals in size. Write one incident to show Jim's meanness. Write another to show how Jim met his match, and learned a lesson. 21. Work up the following into a story. It all occurs in one day at the present time. Place, your own city. Characters, a poor sewing girl, her little sick brother, and a wealthy society lady. Incidents: a conversation between brother and sister about some fruit; a conversation between the sewing girl and the lady about money due for sewing; stealing apples; arrest; appearance of the lady. Title: Who was the Criminal? 22. A story of a modern Sir Launfal. 23. The most thrilling moment of my life. 24. Tell the whole story suggested by the stanza of "A Nightingale in the Study," by Lowell, which begins, "Cloaked shapes, a twanging of guitars." 25. Write a story which teaches a lesson. Remember that the lesson is in the story, not at its end. In the work at this time but little attention can be given to the teaching of paragraphs and sentences. The pupil should learn what a paragraph is, and should have his composition properly divided into paragraphs. But the form and massing of paragraphs cannot be taken up at this time. The same may be said of sentences. He should have no sentences broken in two by periods; nor should he have two sentences forced into one. Grammatical errors should be severely criticised. However, the present work is to get the pupils started; and they cannot get started if there is a teacher holding them back by discouraging criticisms. Mark all mistakes of whatever kind; but put the stress upon the whole composition: its unity, its coherence, its mass, and its movement. Everything cannot be done at once; many distressing faults will have to be passed over until later. * * * * * CHAPTER IV DESCRIPTION Difficulties of Language for making Pictures. Description has been defined as the form of literature which presents a picture by means of language. In the preceding chapter, it has been pointed out that the sequence of language is perfectly adapted to detail the sequence of action in a narrative. For the purpose of constructing a picture, the means has serious drawbacks. The picture has to be presented in pieces; and the difficulties are much as would be experienced if "dissected maps and animals" used for children's amusement were to be put together in the head. It would not be easy to arrange the map of the United States from blocks, each containing a small part of it, taken one at a time from a box. Yet this closely resembles the method language forces us to adopt in constructing a picture. Each phrase is like one of the blocks, and introduces a new element into the picture; from these phrases the reader must reconstruct the whole. This means not alone that he shall remember them all, but there is a more serious trouble: he must often rearrange them. For example, a description by Ruskin begins, "Nine years old." Either a boy or a girl, the reader thinks, as it may be in his own home. In the case of this reader it is a boy, rather tall of his age, with brown hair and dark eyes. But the next phrase reads, "Neither tall nor short for her age." Now the reader knows it is a girl of common stature. Later on he learns that her eyes are "deep blue;" her lips "perfectly lovely in profile;" and so on through the details of the whole sketch. Many times in the course of the description the reader makes up a new picture; he is continually reconstructing. Any one who will observe his own mind while reading a new description can prove that the picture is arranged and rearranged many times. This is due to the means by which it is presented. Language presents only a phrase at a time,--a fragment, not a whole,--and so fails in the instantaneous presentation of a complete picture. Painting and Sculpture. The painter or sculptor who upon canvas or in stone flashes the whole composition before us at the same instant of time, has great advantages over the worker in words. In these methods there is needed no reconstruction of previous images, no piecing together of a number of fragments. Without any danger of mistakes which will have to be corrected later, the spectator can take in the whole picture at once,--every relation, every color, every difference in values. It is because pictures are the surest and quickest means of representing objects to the mind that books, especially text-books, and magazines are so profusely illustrated. No magazine can claim popularity to-day that does not use illustrations where possible; no text-book in science or history sells unless it contains pictures. And this is because all persons accurately and quickly get the idea from a picture. Advantages of Language. Whatever be the disadvantages of language, there are some advantages. Who could paint this from Hawthorne? "Soon the smoke ascended among the trees, impregnated with _savory incense,_ not _heavy, dull,_ and _surfeiting,_ like the steam of cookery indoors, but _sprightly_ and _piquant._ The _smell_ of our feast was akin to the woodland odors with which it mingled." ("Mosses from an Old Manse.") Or this from Lowell?-- "Under the yaller-pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all _sweet-scented,_ An' _hear_ among their furry boughs The _baskin'_ west wind _purr contented,_ While 'way o'erhead, ez _sweet_ an' _low Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin',_ The wedged wil' geese _their bugles blow,_ Further an' further South retreatin'."[4] Or cut this from marble?-- "O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida, Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die. For now the noonday quiet holds the hill; The grasshopper is silent in the grass; The lizard, with his shadow on the stone, Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead. The purple flower droops; the golden bee Is lily-cradled; I alone awake. My eyes are full of tears, my heart of love, My heart is breaking, and my eyes are dim, And I am all aweary of my life."[5] The painter cannot put sounds upon a canvas, nor can the sculptor carve from marble an odor or a taste. We use the other senses in determining qualities of objects; and words which describe effects produced by other senses beside sight are valuable in description. As Lowell says, "we may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing" a large number of beautiful things. Moreover, language suggests hidden ideas that the representative arts cannot so well do. The following from a "Song" by Lowell has in it suggestions which the picture could not present. "Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years? Or with gladness are they full, For the night so beautiful, And longing for those far-off spheres? "Thy little heart, that hath with love Grown colored like the sky above, On which thou lookest ever,-- Can it know All the woe Of hope for what returneth never, All the sorrow and the longing To these hearts of ours belonging?" Enumeration and Suggestion Description, like narration, has two large divisions: one simply to give information or instruction; the other to present a vivid picture. One is _representative_ or _enumerative;_ the other, _suggestive._ One may be illustrated by guide-books; the other by the descriptions of Stevenson or Ruskin. And in the most artistic fashion the two have been made to supplement each other in the following picture of "bright and beautiful Athens" by Cardinal Newman. From the first, to the sentence beginning "But what he would not think of," there is simply an enumeration of features which a commercial agent might see; the rest is what the artistic soul of the lover of beauty saw there. One is enumeration; the other a gloriously suggestive picture. "A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers, meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains, commanding the plain,--Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not always full;--such is about the report which the agent of a London company would have made of Attica. He would report that the climate was mild; the hills were limestone; there was plenty of good marble; more pasture land than at first survey might have been expected, sufficient, certainly, for sheep and goats; fisheries productive; silver mines once, but long since worked out; figs fair; oil first-rate; olives in profusion. But what he would not think of noting down was that that olive-tree was so choice in nature and so noble in shape that it excited a religious veneration; and that it took so kindly to the light soil as to expand into woods upon the open plain, and to climb up and fringe the hills. He would not think of writing word to his employers, how that clear air, of which I have spoken, brought out, yet blended and subdued, the colors on the marble, till they had a softness and harmony, for all their richness, which in a picture looks exaggerated, yet is after all within the truth. He would not tell how that same delicate and brilliant atmosphere freshened up the pale olive, till the olive forgot its monotony, and its cheek glowed like the arbutus or beech of the Umbrian hills. He would say nothing of the thyme and the thousand fragrant herbs which carpeted Hymettus; he would hear nothing of the hum of its bees; nor take account of the rare flavor of its honey, since Gaza and Minorca were sufficient for the English demand. He would look over the �gean from the height he had ascended; he would follow with his eyes the chain of islands, which, starting from the Sunian headland, seemed to offer the fabled divinities of Attica, when they would visit their Ionian cousins, a sort of viaduct thereto across the sea; but that fancy would not occur to him, nor any admiration of the dark violet billows with their white edges down below; nor of those graceful, fan-like jets of silver upon the rocks, which slowly rise aloft like water spirits from the deep, then shiver, and break, and spread, and shroud themselves, and disappear in a soft mist of foam; nor of the gentle, incessant heaving and panting of the whole liquid plain; nor of the long waves, keeping steady time, like a line of soldiery as they resound upon the hollow shore,--he would not deign to notice the restless living element at all except to bless his stars that he was not upon it. Nor the distinct details, nor the refined coloring, nor the graceful outline and roseate golden hue of the jutting crags, nor the bold shadows cast from Otus or Laurium by the declining sun;--our agent of a mercantile firm would not value these matters even at a low figure. Rather, we must turn for the sympathy we seek to yon pilgrim student, come from a semi-barbarous land to that small corner of the earth, as to a shrine, where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection. It was the stranger from a remote province, from Britain or from Mauritania, who in a scene so different from that of his chilly, woody swamps, or of his fiery, choking sands, learned at once what a real University must be, by coming to understand the sort of country which was its suitable home."[6] Enumerative Description. Enumerative description has one point of great difference from suggestive description. In the former everything is told; in the latter the description is as fortunate in what it omits as in what it includes. Were an architect to give specifications for the building of a house, every detail would have to be included; but after all the pages of careful enumeration the reader would know less of how it looked than after these few words from Irving. "A large, rickety wooden building stood in its place, with great gaping windows, some of them broken and mended with old hats and petticoats, and over the door was painted 'The Union Hotel, by Jonathan Doolittle.'" So the manual training student uses five hundred words to describe in detail a box which would be thrown off with but a few words in a piece of literature. In enumerative description, one element is of as much importance as another; no special feature is made primary by the omission or subdual of other qualities. It has value in giving exact details of objects, as if for their construction, and in including an object in a class. Suggestive Description. Suggestive description, description the aim of which is not information, but the reproduction of a picture, is the kind most employed in literature. To present a picture, not all the details should be given. The mind cannot carry them all, and, much worse, it cannot arrange them. Nor is there any need for a detailed enumeration. A room has walls, floor, and ceiling; a man naturally has ears, arms, and feet. These things may be taken for granted. It is not what is common to a class that describes; it is what is individual, what takes one object out of a class. Value of Observation. This leads to the suggestion that _good description depends largely on accurate observation._ A selection frequently quoted, but none the less valuable because often seen, is in point here. It is the last word on the value of observation. "Talent is long patience. It is a question of regarding whatever one desires to express long enough and with attention close enough to discover a side which no one has seen and which has been expressed by nobody. In everything there is something of the unexplored, because we are accustomed to use our eyes only with the thought of what has already been said concerning the thing we see. The smallest thing has in it a grain of the unknown. Discover it. In order to describe a fire that flames or a tree in the plain, we must remain face to face with that fire or that tree until for us they no longer resemble any other tree or any other fire. This is the way to become original. "Having, moreover, impressed upon me the fact that there are not in the whole world two grains of sand, two insects, two hands, or two noses absolutely alike, he forced me to describe a being or an object in such a manner as to individualize it clearly, to distinguish it from all other objects of the same kind. 'When you pass,' he said to me, 'a grocer seated in his doorway, a concierge smoking his pipe, a row of cabs, show me this grocer and this concierge, their attitude, all their physical appearance; suggest by the skill of your image all their moral nature, so that I shall not confound them with any other grocer or any other concierge; make me see, by a single word, wherein a cab-horse differs from the fifty others that follow or precede him.'... Whatever may be the thing which one wishes to say, there is but one word for expressing it; only one verb to animate it, but one adjective to qualify it. It is essential to search for this verb, for this adjective, until they are discovered, and never to be satisfied with anything else."[7] The Point of View. With the closest observation, an author gets into his own mind what he wishes to present to another; but with this essential step taken, he is only ready to begin the work of communication. For the successful communication of a picture there are some considerations of value. And first is _the point of view._ It has much the same relation to description as the main incident has to narration. In large measure it determines what to exclude and what to include. When a writer has assumed his point of view, he must stay there, and tell not a thing more than he can see from there. It would hardly be possible for a man, telling only so much as he saw while gazing from Eiffel Tower into the streets below, to say that the people looked like Lilliputians and that their hands were dirty. To one lying on the bank of a stream, it does not look like "a silver thread running through the landscape." Things do not look the same when they are near as when at a distance. This fact has been acted upon more by the modern school of painting than ever before in art. Verboeckhoven painted sheep in a marvelous way. The drawing is perfect, giving the animal to the life. Still, no matter how far away the artist was standing, there are the same marvelously painted tufts of wool, showing almost the individual fibres. Tufts of wool were on the sheep, and made of fibres; but no artist at twenty rods could see them. The new school gives only what actually can be seen. Its first law is that each "shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of Things as They Are." Make no additions to what you can actually see because, as a result of experience, you know that there are some things not yet mentioned in your description; the hands may be dirty, but the man on the tower cannot see the dirt. Neither make an addition simply because it sounds well; the "silver thread through the landscape" is beautiful, but, unfortunately, it is not always true. Not only does distance cut out details from a picture; the fact that man sees in a straight line and not around a corner eliminates some features. In describing a house, remember that as you stand across the street from it, the back porch cannot be seen, neither can the shrubbery in the back yard. A writer would not be justified in speaking of a man's necktie, if the man he was describing were walking in front of him. In enumerative description the inside of a box may be told of; a man may be turned around, as it were; but to present a picture, only one side can be described, just as it would be shown in a photograph. Any addition to what can actually be known from the point of view assumed by the author is a fault and a source of confusion. Choose your point of view; stay there; and tell only what is seen from that point. Moving Point of View. It has been said that the point of view should not be changed. This requires one modification. It may be changed, if the reader is kept informed of the changes. If a person wished to describe an interior, he would be unable to see the whole from any one point of view. As he passed from room to room he should inform his reader of his change of position. Then the description, though a unit, is a combination of several descriptions; just as the house is one, though made of dining-room, sitting-rooms, bedrooms, and attic. This kind of description is very common in books of travel, in which the author tells what he sees in passing. The thing to be remembered in writing this kind of description is to inform the reader where the author is when he writes the different parts of the description,--to give the points of view. The Point of View should be stated. The point of view, whether fixed or moving, should be made clear. Either it should be definitely stated, or it should be suggested by some phrase in the description. In the many examples which are quoted in this chapter, it would be well to see what it is that gives the point of view. The picture gains in distinctness when the point of view is known. The following sentences are from "The Old Manse;" there is no mistake here. The reader knows every move the author makes. It opens with:-- "Between two tall gateposts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld the gray front of the old parsonage terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash-trees." From the street the reader is taken to "the rear of the house," where there was "the most delightful little nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar." Through its window the clergyman saw the opening of the "deadly struggle between two nations." He heard the rattle of musketry, and "there needed but a gentle wind to sweep the battle smoke around this quiet house. Perhaps the reader, whom I cannot help considering as my guest in the Old Manse and entitled to all courtesy in the way of sight-showing,--perhaps he will choose to take a nearer view of the memorable spot. We stand now on the river's brink."... "Here we are, at the point where the river was crossed by the old bridge."... "The Old Manse! We had almost forgotten it, but will return thither through the orchard."... "What with the river, the battle-field, the orchard, and the garden, the reader begins to despair of finding his way back into the Old Manse. But in agreeable weather it is the truest hospitality to keep him out-of-doors. I never grew quite acquainted with my habitation till a long spell of sulky rain had confined me beneath its roof. There could not be a more sombre aspect of external nature than as then seen from the windows of my study." And so Hawthorne continues through this long and beautiful description of "The Old Manse;" every change in the point of view is noted. Mental Point of View. Closely connected with the physical point of view is the mood or purpose of the writer; this might be called _the mental point of view._ Not everything should be told which the author could know from his position, but only those things which at the time serve his purpose. In the description already quoted from Newman, the mercantile gentleman notes a large number of features which are the commercial advantages of Attica; of these but three are worthy of mention by "yon pilgrim student" in giving his impression of Athens as "a shrine where he might take his fill of gazing on those emblems and coruscations of invisible unoriginate perfection." The others--the soil, the streams, the climate, the limestone, the fisheries, and the silver mines--do not serve his purpose. Hawthorne in the long description already mentioned has retained those features which suggest quiet and peace. Such a profusion of "quiet," "half asleep," "peaceful," "unruffled," "unexcitable" words and phrases never "loitered" through forty pages of "dreamy" and "whispering" description. In the following bit from "Lear," where Edgar tells his blinded father how high the cliff is, only those details are included which measure distance. "How fearful And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles; half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire,--dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on th' unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.--I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong." The following is from Kipling's "The Light that Failed:"-- "What do you think of a big, red, dead city built of red sandstone, with green aloes growing between the stones, lying out neglected on honey-colored sands? There are forty dead kings there, Maisie, each in a gorgeous tomb finer than all the others. You look at the palaces and streets and shops and tanks, and think that men must live there, till you find a wee gray squirrel rubbing its nose all alone in the marketplace, and a jeweled peacock struts out of a carved doorway and spreads its tail against a marble screen as fine pierced as point-lace. Then a monkey--a little black monkey--walks through the main square to get a drink from a tank forty feet deep. He slides down the creepers to the water's edge, and a friend holds him by the tail, in case he should fall in. "Is all that true? "I have been there and seen. Then evening comes and the lights change till it's just as though you stood in the heart of a king-opal. A little before sundown, as punctually as clockwork, a big bristly wild boar, with all his family following, trots through the city gate, churning the foam on his tusks. You climb on the shoulder of a big black stone god, and watch that pig choose himself a palace for the night and stump in wagging his tail. Then the night-wind gets up, and the sands move, and you hear the desert outside the city singing, 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and everything is dark till the moon rises." Note how every detail introduced serves to make the city dead. Dead kings, a wee gray squirrel, a little black monkey, a bristly wild boar, the night wind, and the desert singing,--these could not be seen or heard in a live city with street cars; but all serve to emphasize the fact that here is "a big, red, dead city." At the risk of over-emphasizing this point that the purpose of the author, the mental point of view of the writer, the feeling which the object gives him and which he wishes to convey to the reader, the central thought in the description, is primary, and an element that cannot be overlooked in successful description, I give another example. This point really cannot be over-emphasized: a writer cannot be too careful in selecting materials. Careless grouping of incongruous matters cannot make a picture. Nor does the artistic author leave the reader in doubt as to the purpose of the description; its central thought is usually suggested in the first sentence. In the quotations from Shakespeare and Kipling, the opening sentences are the germ of what follows. Each detail seems to grow out of this sentence, and serves to emphasize it. In the following by Stevenson, the paragraphs spring from the opening sentence; they explain it, they elaborate it, and they accent it. "Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles; and there is one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet. It is then that the first cock crows, not this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman speeding the course of the night. Cattle awake on the meadows; sheep break their fast on the dewy hillsides, and change to a new lair among the ferns; and houseless men, who have lain down with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of the night. "At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life? Do the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of mother earth below our resting bodies? Even shepherds and old country-folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrection. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes place; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like the luxurious Montaigne, 'that we may the better and more sensibly enjoy it.' We have a moment to look upon the stars. And there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our neighborhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille of civilization, and are become, for the time being, a more kindly animal and a sheep of Nature's flock." ("Travels with a Donkey.") Length of Descriptions. There is one more step in the exclusion of details. This considers neither the point of view nor the purpose of the writer, but it is what is due the reader. Stevenson says in one of his essays that a description which lasts longer than two minutes is never attempted in conversation. The listener cannot hold the details enumerated. The clearest statement regarding this comes from Jules Lemaître in a criticism upon some descriptions by Emile Zola which the critic says are praised by persons who have never read them. He says:-- "It has been one of the greatest literary blunders of the time to suppose that an enumeration of parts is a picture, to think that forever placing details side by side, however picturesque they may be, is able in the end to make a picture, to give us any conception of the vast spectacles in the physical universe. In reality, a written description arranges its parts in our mind only when the impression of the first features of which it is formed are remembered sufficiently, so that we can easily join the first to those which complete and end it. In short, a piece of description is ineffective if we cannot hold in mind all its details at one time. It is necessary that all the details coexist in our memory just as the parts of a painting coexist under our eye. This becomes next to impossible if the description of one definite object last over fifteen minutes of reading. The longer it is, the more obscure it becomes. The individual features fade away in proportion to the number which are presented; and for this reason one might say that we cannot see the forest for the trees. Every description which is over fifty lines ceases to be clear to a mind of ordinary vigor. After that there is only a succession of fragmentary pictures which fatigues and overwhelms the reader."[8] These, then, are the principles that guide in the choice of materials for a description. First, the point of view, whether fixed or movable, should be made clear to the reader; it should be retained throughout the description, or the change should be announced. By regard for it the writer will be guided to the exclusion of matters that could not be observed, and to the inclusion of such details as can be seen and are essential. Second, the writer will keep out matters that do not contribute to his purpose, and will select only those details which assist in producing the desired impression. Third, the limitations of the reader's powers advise a writer to be brief: five hundred words should be the outside; two hundred are enough for most writers. These principles will give to the whole that unity of materials and of structure which is the first requisite of an effective description. The next matter for consideration is the arrangement of the materials. The arrangement depends on the principles that guided in narration, Mass and Coherence. Arrangement of Details in Description. After we have looked at any object long enough to be able to write about it, one feature comes to assume an importance that sets it far above all others. To a writer who has looked long at a man, he may shrink to a cringing piece of weakness, or he may grow to a strong, self-centred power whose presence alone inspires serenest trust. Hawthorne, standing in St. Peter's, saw only the gorgeous coloring; proportions, immensity, and sacredness were as nothing to the harmonious brilliancy of this expanded "jewel casket."[9] Stevenson, thinking of the beast of burden best suited to carry his great sleeping sack, discarded the horse, for, as he says, "she is a fine lady among animals."[10] The description of a horse which follows this statement emphasizes the fact that a horse is not intended for carrying burdens. From the germinal impression of a description, all the details grow; to this primary impression they all contribute. In the case of buildings, or other things material, this impression is generally one of form, sometimes of the height of the object; if striking, it may be color. The strongest impression of persons is a quality of character which shows itself either in the face or in the pose of a man. An example of each may be found in the following paragraphs from "David Copperfield:"-- "At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long, low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low-arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruits and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills. "When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person--a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown; so unsheltered and unshaded that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neck cloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise." Hawthorne thus begins his description of "The House of the Seven Gables:"-- "Maule's Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind." And in the same volume his description of "The Pyncheon of To-day" begins:-- "As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a man, considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible." If the description be long, and the object will lend itself to such a treatment, a definite, tangible, easily understood shape or form should be suggested at once. Notice Newman's first sentence describing Attica: "A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth." Like this is the beginning of the description of the battle of Waterloo by Victor Hugo. "Those who would get a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to lay down upon the ground in their mind a capital letter A. The left stroke of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right stroke is the road from Genappe, the cross of the A is the sunken road from Ohain to Braine l'Alleud. The top of the A is Mont Saint Jean, Wellington is there; the left-hand lower point is Hougomont, Reille is there with Jerome Bonaparte; the right-hand lower point is La Belle Alliance, Napoleon is there. A little below the point where the cross of the A meets and cuts the right stroke, is La Haie Sainte. At the middle of this cross is the precise point where the final battle word was spoken. There the lion is placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard. The triangle contained at the top of the A, between the two strokes and the cross, is the plateau of Mont Saint Jean. The struggle for this plateau was the whole of the battle."[11] In "The Vision of Sir Launfal" Lowell opens his beautiful description with the words, "And what is so rare as a day in June?" From this general and comprehensive sentence follow all the details which make a June day perfect. Hawthorne, after telling how he happened to write of him, begins his long description of "The Old Apple Dealer" with the following paragraph:-- "He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff color, closely buttoned, and half concealing a pair of gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though clean and entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His face, thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which even age has failed to render impressive, has a frost-bitten aspect. It is a moral frost which no physical warmth or comfortableness could counteract. The summer sunshine may fling its white heat upon him, or the good fire of the depot room may make him the focus of its blaze on a winter's day; but all in vain; for still the old man looks as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, with scarcely warmth enough to keep life in the region about his heart. It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless, shivering aspect. He is not desperate,--that, though its etymology implies no more, would be too positive an expression,--but merely devoid of hope. As all his past life, probably, offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he takes his present poverty and discomfort as entirely a matter of course; he thinks it the definition of existence, so far as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfortable. It may be added, that time has not thrown dignity as a mantle over the old man's figure: there is nothing venerable about him: you pity him without a scruple." So this old apple dealer shivers all through this description of nine pages to the last sentences:-- "God be praised, were it only for your sake, that the present shapes of human existence are not cast in iron nor hewn in everlasting adamant, but moulded of the vapors that vanish away while the essence flits upward to the Infinite. There is a spiritual essence in this gray and lean old shape that shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a region where the lifelong shiver will pass away from his being, and that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so many years to breathe, will be brought to a close for good and all." The prominent characteristic may be the feeling aroused by the object. It may be horror, as in a description of a haunted house or a murderer; it may be love, as in the picture of an old home or a sainted mother. The emotion occasioned is often mentioned or suggested at once, and the details are afterward given which have called forth the feeling. Poe uses this in the first paragraph of "The House of Usher." "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, _a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit._ I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant, eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of a reveler upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.... It was, possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate, its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows." And one may see from looking back at the illustrations given that the dominant impression which gives the character to the whole description, this leading quality which is the essence of the whole, usually stands at the very beginning, and to it all the succeeding details cling. The End of a Description. The end of a description is equally as important as the opening. In most descriptions, whether short or long, the most important detail, the detail that emphasizes most the general feeling of the whole, stands at the end. If the description be short, the necessity of a comprehensive opening statement is not imperative,--indeed, it may be made so formal and ostentatious when compared with the rest of the description as to be ridiculous; yet even in the short description some important detail should close it. In a long description the repetition of the opening statement in a new form sometimes stands at the end. If the description be of movement or change, the end will be the climax of the movement, the result of the change. In the examples already given there are illustrations of the methods of closing. In each case, there is an important detail or an artistic repetition of the general impression. Many examples of short characterization can be found in all narratives. In Irving's description of Ichabod Crane, the next to the last sentence gives the significant detail, and the last gives another general impression. It reads:-- "The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew." ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.") So far this is but an amplification of his likeness to a crane; certainly "a long snipe nose" "upon his spindle neck" is the most important detail. Next the author gives another general impression:-- "To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield." The following is from "The House of Usher:"-- "Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen, and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn." In this every detail emphasizes the "excessive antiquity" of the house; and on reading the story there is no question of the importance of the "barely perceptible fissure." Thereby hangs the tale. The two following are descriptions of dawn, of change; they have marked climaxes. The first is by Edward Everett, the second by Stevenson. The similarity in choice of words and in the feelings of the men is remarkable. "Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of the sky began to soften; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance, till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy teardrops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state." ("The Uses of Astronomy.") "At last she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but a crack and flash of a percussion cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began insensibly to change; the grass, too, short as it was, and the whole winding staircase of the brook's course, began to wear a solemn freshness of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning, finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was almost emptied of stars. Such as still lingered shone with a changed and waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the color of the sky itself was most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the herald of the morning. 'Oh!' she cried, joy catching at her voice, 'Oh! it is the dawn!' "In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and fairly ran in the dim alleys. As she ran, her ears were aware of many pipings, more beautiful than music; in the small, dish-shaped houses in the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover, warmly pressed, the bright-eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for the day. Her heart melted and flowed forth to them in kindness. And they, from their small and high perches in the clerestories of the wood cathedral, peered down sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted below them on the carpet of the moss and tassel. "Soon she had struggled to a certain hilltop, and saw far before her the silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and whitened; the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were extinguished like the street-lamps of a human city. The whiteness brightened into silver; the silver warmed into gold, and the gold kindled into pure and living fire; and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew its first long breath, steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods sighed and shivered. And then, at one bound the sun had floated up; and her startled eyes received day's first arrow, and quailed under the buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep and solitary eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued slowly and royally to mount." ("Prince Otto.") Proportion. One thing further should be said regarding Mass. Not everything can stand first or last; some important details must be placed in the midst of a description. These particulars will not be of equal importance. The more important details may be given their proportionate emphasis by relatively increasing the length of their treatment. If one detail is more important than another, it requires more to be said about it; unimportant matters should be passed over with a word. Proportion in the length of treatment is a guide to the relative importance of the matters introduced into a description. In the description of "The House of Usher," position emphasizes the barely perceptible fissure. Proportion singles out the crumbling condition of the individual stones and makes this detail more emphatic than either the discoloration or the fungi. And in Newman's description, the olive-tree, the brilliant atmosphere, the thyme, the bees, all add to the charms of bright and beautiful Athens; but most of all the �gean, with its chain of islands, its dark violet billows, its jets of silver, the heaving and panting of its long waves,--the restless living element fascinates and enraptures "yon pilgrim student." Position and proportion are the means of emphasis in a paragraph of description. Arrangement must be natural. Having settled the massing of the description, the next matter for consideration is the arrangement. In order that the parts of a description may be coherent, hold together, they should be arranged in the order in which they would naturally be perceived. What strikes the eye of the beholder as most important, often the general characteristic of the whole, should be mentioned first; and the details should follow as they are seen. In a building, the usual way of observing and describing is from foundation to turret stone. A landscape may be described by beginning with what is near and extending the view; this is common. Sometimes the very opposite plan is pursued; or one may begin on either hand and advance toward the other. Of a person near by, the face is the first thing observed; for it is there that his character can be best discovered. Afterward details of clothing follow as they would naturally be noticed. If a person be at a distance his pose and carriage would be about all that could be seen; as he approaches, the other details would be mentioned as they came into view. To arrange details in the order in which they are naturally observed will result in an association in the description of the details that are contiguous in the objects. Jumping about in a description is a source of confusion. How entirely it may ruin a paragraph can be estimated by the effect upon this single sentence, "He was tall, with feet that might have served for shovels, narrow shoulders, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, long arms and legs, and his whole frame most loosely hung together." This rearrangement makes but a disjointed and feeble impression; and the reason is entirely that an order in which no person ever observed a man has been substituted for the commonest order,--from head to foot. Arrange details so that the parts which are contiguous shall be associated in the description, and proceed in the order in which the details are naturally observed. The following is by Irving; he is describing the stage-coachman:-- "He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his heels. He wears a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat; a huge roll of colored handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his buttonhole, the present, most probably, of some enamored country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright color, striped, and his small-clothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs."[12] Use Familiar Images. When the materials have been selected and arranged, the hardest part of the work has been done. It now remains to express in language the picture. A few suggestions regarding the kind of language will be helpful. The writer must always bear in mind the fact that in constructing a mental picture each reader does it from the images he already possesses. "Quaint arabesques" is without meaning to many persons; and until the word has been looked up in the dictionary, and the picture seen there, the beautiful line of "Sir Launfal" suggests no image whatever. So when Stevenson speaks of the birds in the "clerestories of the wood cathedral," the image is not distinct in the mind of a young American. Supposing a pupil in California were asked to describe an orange to an Esquimau. He might say that it is a spheroid about the size of an apple, and the color of one of Lorraine's sunsets. This would be absolutely worthless to a child of the frigid zone. Had he been told that an orange was about the size of a snowball, much the color of the flame of a candle, that the peeling came off like the skin from a seal, and that the inside was good to eat, he would have known more of this fruit. The images which lie in our minds and from which we construct new pictures are much like the blocks that a child-builder rearranges in many different forms; but the blocks do not change. From them he may build a castle or a mill; yet the only difference is a difference in arrangement. So it is with the pictures we build up in imagination: our castle in Spain we have never seen, but the individual elements which we associate to lift up this happy dwelling-place are the things we know and have seen. A reader creates nothing new; all he does is to rearrange in his own mind the images already familiar. Only so may he pass from the known to the unknown. The fact that we construct pictures of what we read from those images already in our minds warns the writer against using materials which those for whom he writes could not understand. It compels him to select definite images, and it urges him to use the common and the concrete. It frequently drives him to use comparisons. Use of Comparisons. To represent the extremely bare and unornamented appearance of a building, one might write, "It looked like a great barn," or "It was a great barn." In either case the image would be definite, common, and concrete. In both cases there is a comparison. In the first, where the comparison is expressed, there is a _simile;_ in the second, where the comparison is only implied, there is a _metaphor._ These two figures of speech are very common in description, and it is because they are of great value. One other is sometimes used,--_personification,_ which ascribes to inanimate things the attributes of life which are the property of animate nature. What could be happier than this by Stevenson: "All night long he can hear Nature breathing deeply and freely; even as she takes her rest she turns and smiles"? or this, "A faint sound, more like a moving coolness than a stream of air"? And at the end of the chapter which describes his "night under the pines," he speaks of the "tapestries" and "the inimitable ceiling" and "the view which I command from the windows." In this one chapter are personification, simile, metaphor,--all comparisons, and doing what could hardly be done without them. Common, distinct, concrete images are surest. Choice of Words. Adjectives and Nouns. To body forth these common, distinct, concrete images calls for a discriminating choice of words; for in the choice of words lies a large part of the vividness of description. If the thing described be unknown to the reader, it requires the right word to place it before him; if it be common, still must the right word be found to set it apart from the thousand other objects of the same class. The words that may justly be called describing words are adjectives and nouns; and of these the adjective is the first descriptive word. The rule that a writer should never use two adjectives where one will do, and that he should not use one if a noun can be found that completely expresses the thought, is a good one to follow. One certain stroke of the crayon is worth a hundred lines, each approaching the right one. One word, the only one, will tell the truth more vividly than ten that approach its expression. For it must be remembered that a description must be done quickly; every word that is used and does nothing is not only a waste of time, but is actually in the way. In a description every word must count. It may be a comparison, an epithet, personification, or what not, but whatever method is adopted, the right word must do it quickly. How much depends on the nice choice of words may be seen by a study of the selections already quoted; and especially by a careful reading of those by Stevenson and Everett. To show the use of adjectives and nouns in description, the following from Kipling is a good illustration. Toomai had just reached the elephants' "ball-room" when he saw-- "white-tusked wild males, with fallen leaves and nuts and twigs lying in the wrinkles of their necks and the folds of their ears; fat, slow-footed she-elephants, with restless pinky-black calves only three or four feet high, running under their stomachs; young elephants with their tusks just beginning to show, and very proud of them; lanky, scraggy, old-maid elephants, with their hollow, anxious faces, and trunks like rough bark; savage old bull-elephants, scarred from shoulder to flank with great weals and cuts of by-gone fights, and the caked dirt of their solitary mud bath dropping from their shoulders; and there was one with a broken tusk and the marks of the full-stroke, the terrible drawing scrape of a tiger's claw on his side."[13] One third of the words in this paragraph are descriptive nouns and adjectives, none of which the reader wishes to change. Use of Verbs. Verbs also have a great value in description. In the paragraph picturing the dawn, Stevenson has not neglected the verbs. "Welled," "whitened," "trembled," "brightened," "warmed," "kindled," and so on through the paragraph. Try to change them, and it is apparent that something is lost by any substitution. Kaa, the python, "_pours_ himself along the ground." If he is angry, "Baloo and Bagheera could see the big swallowing-muscles on either side of Kaa's throat _ripple_ and _bulge._" Yet in the choice of words, one may search for the bizarre and unusual rather than for the truly picturesque. Stevenson at times seems to have lapsed. When he says that Modestine would feel a switch "more _tenderly_ than my cane;" that he "must _instantly_ maltreat this uncomplaining animal," meaning constantly; and at another place that he "had to labor so _consistently_ with" his stick that the sweat ran into his eyes, there is a suspicion of a desire for the sensational rather than the direct truth. On the other hand, the beginner finds himself using words that have lost, their meaning through indiscriminate usage. "Awful good," "awful pretty," and "awful sweet" mean something less than good, pretty, and sweet. "Lovely," "dear," "splendid," "unique," and a large number of good words have been much dulled by the ignorant use of babblers. Superlatives and all words denoting comparison should be used with stinginess. One cannot afford to part with this kind of coin frequently; the cheaper coins should be used, else he will find an empty purse when need arises. Thackeray has this: "Her voice was the sweetest, low song." How much better this, Her voice was a sweet, low song. All the world is shut out from this, while in the former he challenges the world by the comparison. Shakespeare was wiser when he made Lear say,-- "Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low,--an excellent thing in woman." Avoid words which have lost their meaning by indiscriminate use; shun the sensational and the bizarre; use superlatives with economy; but in all you do, whether in unadorned or figurative language, choose the word that is quick and sure and vivid--the one word that exactly suggests the picture. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES QUESTIONS. THE OLD MANSE. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 69.) Are there narrative portions in "The Old Manse"? paragraphs of exposition? Do you term the whole narration, description, or exposition? Why? Frame a sentence which you think would be an adequate topic sentence for the whole piece. What phrase in the first paragraph allows the author to begin the second with the words, "Nor, in truth, had the Old Manse," etc.? Where in the second paragraph is found the words which are the source of "my design," mentioned in the third? How does the author pass from the fourth paragraph to the fifth? In the same way note the connections between the succeeding paragraphs. They are most skillfully dovetailed together. Now make a list of the phrases in the first fifteen pages which introduce paragraphs, telling from what in the preceding paragraph each new paragraph springs. Do you think that such a felicitous result just happened? or did Hawthorne plan it? Does Hawthorne generally introduce his descriptions by giving the feeling aroused by the object described, a method very common with Poe? In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 18, what do you think of the selection of material? What have guided in the inclusion and exclusion of details? Write a paragraph upon this topic: There could not be a more joyous aspect of external nature than as seen from the windows of my study just after the passing of a cooling shower. Be careful to select things that have been made happy, and to use adjectives and nouns that are full of joy. Make a list of the words used to describe "The Old Apple Dealer." Has this description Unity? What relation to the whole has the first sentence of paragraph three? the last? Do you think there is a grammatical error in the third sentence of this paragraph? By contrasts to what has Hawthorne brought out better the character of the Apple Dealer? When can contrasts help? AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE, AND OTHER POEMS. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 30.) In this poem what purpose is served by the first two stanzas? Where in the landscape does the author begin? Which way does he progress? Quote stanzas in which other senses than sight are called upon. Make a list of the figures of speech. How many similes? metaphors? examples of personification? Which seems most effective? Which instance of its use do you prefer? Has Lowell used too many figures? Read "The Oak," "The Dandelion," and "Al Fresco." Are they description or exposition? Do they bear out Lowell's estimate of himself? THE SKETCH-BOOK. (Riverside Literature Series, Nos. 51, 52.) Why has Irving given four pages to the description of Sleepy Hollow before he introduces Ichabod Crane? Why, then, seven pages to Ichabod before the story begins? What gives the peculiar interest to this tale? In the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" how many paragraphs of description close with an important detail? In how many with a general characterization? In all the descriptions of buildings by Irving that you have read, what are the first things mentioned,--size, shape, color, or what? Make a list, so as to be sure. Does Irving use many comparisons? Are the likenesses to common things? Select the ten you think best. Are there more in narrative or descriptive passages? What do you gather from this fact? In "Christmas Day," on p. 51 (R. L. S., No. 52), does Irving proceed from far to near in the landscape? Is this common? Find another example. How has Irving emphasized the littleness of the minister described on p. 56 (R. L. S., No. 52)? THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 119.) Is the arrangement of the details in the last two lines of the first paragraph stronger than the arrangement of the same details on p. 63? Why, or why not? In the description of the hall, pp. 67 and 68, do the details produce the effect upon you which they did upon Poe? Find a description in this piece which closes with an important detail. Is Usher described at all when Poe says, "I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe"? Do the details enumerated arouse such feelings in you? Would the feeling have been called forth if it had not been suggested by Poe? Is there, then, any advantage in this method of opening a description? What good was done by describing Usher as Poe knew him in youth? Why is the parenthetical clause on p. 72 necessary? On p. 80, should Poe write "previously to its final interment"? What do you think of the length of the sentence quoted on p. 85? Does Poe use description to accent the mood of the narrative, or to make concrete the places and persons? Why is "The Haunted Palace" introduced into the story? Is this story as good as "The Gold-Bug"? SILAS MARNER. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 83.) Why is not the early history of Silas Marner related first in the story? By what steps has the author approached the definite time? From the fragments about his appearance, do you get a clear idea of how Marner looks? Do you approve this method of scattering the description along through the story? Write a description of Marner on the night he was going to the tavern. Could not the quarrel between Godfrey and Dunsey been omitted? Describe the interior of Marner's cottage. Why should Sally Oates and her dropsy be admitted to the story? Do you know as well how George Eliot's characters look as how they think and feel? What do you think of the last sentence of Chapter IV.? Why does not Chapter V. go on with Dunsey's story? Why is Chapter VI. introduced at all? What of its close? What figure in the last sentence of Chapter X.? Would you prefer to know how tall Eppie was, what kind of clothes she wore, etc., to the knowledge you gain of her on p. 178? Suppose that Dunsey came home the night he staked Wildfire, recite the conversation between him and Godfrey. Have Dolly Winthrop, Priscilla Lammeter, and Mr. Macey talk over "The New Minister." Write on "What I see in George Eliot's Face." THE DESERTED VILLAGE. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 68.) Is this piece description or exposition? In the first stanza where is the topic sentence? The author has made two groups of charms. Would it be as well to change them about? Give your reasons. Where has he used the ear instead of the eye to suggest his picture? Is it clear? What method is adopted in lines 125-128? See also lines 237-250. Can you unite the paragraphs on p. 25? Why do you think so? Could you suggest a new arrangement of details in lines 341-362 that would be as good as the present? What are the last four lines for? EXERCISES. Enumerative Description may well employ a few lessons. In it accuracy of detail must be studied, and every detail must be introduced. 1. The Teacher's Desk. 2. Write a letter to a carpenter giving details for the construction of a small bookcase. 3. By telling how you made it, describe a camp, a kite, a dress, or a cake. Narration may be employed for the purpose of description. A good example may be found in "Robinson Crusoe" in the chapter describing his home after the shipwreck. 4. Describe an unfurnished room. Shape, size, position, and number of windows, the fireplace, etc., should be definite. Be sure to give the point of view. To say "On my right hand," "In front of me," or any similar phrases means nothing unless the reader knows where you are. In these exercises the pupil will doubtless employ the paragraph of particulars. This is the most common in description. Other forms are valuable. 5. Using a paragraph telling what it was not, finish this: I followed the great singer to her home. Imagine my surprise in finding that the house in which this lady lived was not a home of luxury and splendor,--not even a home of comfort. Go on with the details of a home of luxury which were _not_ there. Finish with what you did see. This is really a description of two houses set in artistic contrast to heighten the effect. Remember you are outside. 6. By the use of comparison finish this: The home of my poor little friend was but little better than a barn. Choose only such details as emphasize the barn-like appearance of the home. There is but one room. Remember where you are standing; and keep in mind the effect you wish to produce. 7. Using a moving point of view, describe an interior. Do not have too many rooms. 8. Furnish the room described in number four to suit your taste. Tell how it looks. Remember that a few things give character to a room. 9. Describe your childhood's home as it would look to you after years of absence. 10. Using a paragraph of the obverse, describe the appearance of the house from which you were driven by the cruelty of a drunken father. 11. Describe a single tree standing alone in a field. It will be well for the teacher to read to the class some descriptions of trees,--Lowell's "Birch" and "Oak," "Under the Willows," and some stanzas from "An Indian Summer Reverie." Holmes has some good paragraphs on trees in "The Autocrat." Any good tree descriptions will help pupils to do it better than they can without suggestion. They should describe their own tree, however. 12. Describe some single flower growing wild. Read Lowell's "Dandelion," "Violet, Sweet Violet," Wordsworth's "Daisy," "The Daffodils," "The Small Celandine," and Burns's "Daisy." These do not so much describe as they arouse a feeling of love for the flowers which will show itself in the composition. 13. Describe a view of a lake. If possible, have your point of view above the lake and use the paragraph of comparison. 14. Describe a landscape from a single point of view. Read Curtis's "My Castles in Spain" from "Prue and I," many descriptions in "An Inland Voyage" by Stevenson, and "Bay Street" by Bliss Carman in "The Atlantic Monthly." 15. Describe your first view of a small cluster of houses or a small town. 16. Approach the town, describing its principal features. Keep the reader informed as to where you are. 17. Describe a dog of your own. 18. Describe a dog of your neighbor's. Before the description is undertaken read "Our Dogs" and "Rab" by Dr. Brown; "A Dog of Flanders" by Ouida. Scott has some noble fellows in his novels. 19. Describe a flock of chickens. There are good descriptions of chickens in "The House of the Seven Gables" and in "Sketches" by Dickens. 20. Describe the burning of your own home. Be careful not to narrate. 21. Describe a stranger you met on the street to-day. It is easier to describe a person if you and the person you describe move toward each other. Remember that you begin the description at a distance. Details should be mentioned as they actually come into view. 22. Describe your father in his favorite corner at home. 23. Describe a person you do not like, by telling what he is not. 24. Describe a person you admire, but are not acquainted with, using the paragraph of comparisons. 25. Describe a picture. It would be well to have at the end of this year four or five stories written, in which description plays a part. Its principal use is to give the setting to the story, to give concreteness to the characters, and to accent the mood of the story. Most passages of description are short. Rarely will any pupil write over three hundred words. One hundred are often better. The short composition gives an opportunity for the study of accuracy of expression. What details to include; in what order to arrange them that they produce the best effect, both of vividness and naturalness; and the influence of the point of view and the purpose of the author on the unity of description should be kept constantly present in the exercises. Careful attention should be paid to choice of words, for on right words depends in a large degree the vividness of a description. Right words in well-massed paragraphs of vivid description should be the object this term. * * * * * CHAPTER V EXPOSITION So far we have studied discourse which deals with things,--things active, doing something, considered under the head of narration; and things at rest, and pictured, considered in description. Now we come to exposition, which deals with ideas either separately or in combinations. Instead of Mr. Smith's horse, exposition treats of the general term, horse. "The Great Stone Face" may have taught a lesson by its story, but the discussion of the value of lofty ideals is a subject for exposition. General Terms Difficult. That general terms and propositions are harder to get hold of than concrete facts is readily apparent in the first reading of an author like Emerson. To a young person it means little. Yet when he puts in the place of the general terms some specific examples, and so verifies the statements, the general propositions have a mine of meaning, and "the sense of the author is as broad as the world." This stanza from Lowell is but little suggestive to young readers:-- "Such earnest natures are the fiery pith, The compact nucleus, round which systems grow! Mass after mass becomes inspired therewith, And whirls impregnate with the central glow."[14] Yet when Columbus and Luther and Garrison are mentioned as illustrations of the meaning, it becomes world-wide in its application. Still in order to get at the thought, there is first the need of the specific and the concrete; afterward we pass to the general and the abstract. As abstract ideas are harder to get hold of than concrete facts, so exposition has difficulties greater than those found in narration and description. It is not so hard to tell what belongs in a story; the events are all distinct. Nor is it so difficult to know what to include in a description; one can look and see. In exposition this is not so. In most minds ideas do not have distinct limits; the edges rather are indistinct. It is hard to tell where the idea stops. In writing of "The Uses of Coal," it is easy to wander over an indistinct boundary and to take a survey of "The Origin of Coal." Not only may one include what unquestionably should be excluded, but there is no definite guide to the arrangement of the materials, such as was found in narration. There a sequence of time was an almost infallible rule; here the writer must search carefully how to arrange hazy ideas in some effective form. As discourse comes to deal more with general ideas, the difficulties of writing increase; and the difficulties are not due to any new principles of structure which must be introduced. When one says that the material should be selected according to the familiar law of Unity, he has given the guiding principle. Yet the real difficulty is still before an author: it is to decide what stamp to put upon such elusive matter as ideas. They cannot be kept long enough in the twilight of consciousness to analyze them; and often ideas that have been marked "accepted" have, upon reëxamination, to be "rejected." To examine ideas--the material used in this form of discourse--so thoroughly that they may be accurately, definitely known in their backward relation and their bearing upon what follows, this is the seat of the difficulty in exposition. Exposition may conveniently be classified into exposition of a term, or definition; and exposition of a proposition, which is generally suggested by the term exposition. Definition. Definition of a word means giving its limits or boundaries. Of man it might be said that it is a living animal, having a strong bony skeleton; that this skeleton consists of a trunk from which extend four limbs, called arms and legs, and is surmounted by a bony cavity, called a skull; that the skeleton protects the vital organs, and is itself covered by a muscular tissue which moves the bones and gives a rounded beauty to their ugliness; that man has a highly developed nervous system, the centre of which is the brain placed in the skull. So a person might go on for pages, enumerating the attributes which, taken together, make up the general idea of man. Exposition and Description distinguished. This sort of exposition is very near description; indeed, were the purpose different, it would be description. The purpose, however, is not to tell how an individual looks, but to place the object in a class. It is therefore not description, but exposition. Moreover, the method is different. In description those characteristics are given that distinguish the object from the rest of the class; while in exposition those qualities are selected which are common to all objects of its class. Logical Definition. On account of the length of the definition by an enumeration of all the attributes, it is not frequently used except in long treatises. For it there has been substituted what is called a _logical definition._ Instead of naming all the characteristics of an object, a logical definition groups many attributes under one general term, and then adds a quality which distinguishes the object from the others of the general class. Man has been defined as the "reasoning animal." In this definition a large number of attributes have been gathered together in the general term "animal;" then man is separated from the whole class "animal" by the word "reasoning." A logical definition consists, then, of two parts: the general term naming the genus, and the limiting term naming the distinguishing attribute called the differentia. Genus and Differentia. Genus and differentia are found in every good definition. The _genus_ should be a term more general than the term defined. "Man is a person who reasons" is a poor definition; because "person" is no more general than "man." "A canine is a dog that is wild" is very bad, because "dog," the general term in the definition, is less general than the word defined. However, to say that "a dog is a canine that has been domesticated," is a definition in which the genus is more general than the term defined. Next, the genus should be a term well understood. "Man is a mammal who reasons" is all right, in having a genus more general than the term defined, but the definition fails with many because "mammal" is not well understood. "Botany is that branch of biology which treats of plant life" has in it the same error. "Biology" is not so well understood as "botany," though it is a more general term. In cases of this sort, the writer should go farther toward the more general until he finds a term perfectly clear to all. "Man is an animal that reasons," "botany is the branch of science that treats of plant life," would both be easily understood. The genus should be a term better understood than the term defined; and it should be a term more general than the term defined. A definition may be faulty in its _differentia_ also. The differentia is that part of a definition which names the difference between the term defined and the general class to which it belongs. "Man is a reasoning animal." "Animal" names the general class, and "reasoning" is the differentia which separates "man" from other "animals." On the selection of this limiting word depends the accuracy of the definition. "Man is an animal that walks," or "that has hands," or "that talks," are all faulty; because bears walk, monkeys have hands, and parrots talk. Supposing the following definitions were given: "A cat is an animal that catches rats and mice;" "A rose is a flower that bears thorns;" "Gold is a metal that is heavy;" all would be faulty because the differentia in each is faulty. Notice, too, the definitions of "dog" and "canine" already given. Even "man is a reasoning animal" may fail; since many men declare that other animals reason. The differentia should include all the members that the term denotes, and it should exclude all that it does not denote. Requisites of a good Definition. The requisites of a good definition are: first, that it shall include or denote all the members of the class; second, that it shall exclude everything which does not belong to its class; third, that the words used in the definition shall be better understood than the word defined; fourth, that it shall be brief. A definition may perfectly expound a term; and because of the very qualities that make it a good definition, accuracy and brevity, it may be almost valueless to the ordinary reader. For instance, this definition, "An acid is a substance, usually sour and sharp to the taste, that changes vegetable blue colors to red, and, combining with an earth, an alkali, or a metallic oxide, forms a salt," would not generally be understood. So it frequently becomes necessary to do more than give a definition in order to explain the meaning of a term. This brings us to the study of exposition, as it is generally understood, in which all the resources of language are called into service to explain a term or a proposition. How do Men explain? First, by Repetition. What, then, are the methods of explaining a proposition? First, _a proposition may be explained by the repetition of the thought in some other form._ To be effective, repetition must add something to what has been said; the words used may be more specific or they may be more general. For example, "A strong partisan may not be a good citizen. The stanchest Republican may by reason of a blind adherence to party be working an injury to the country he loves. Indeed, one can easily conceive a body of men so devoted to a theory, beautiful though it may be in many respects, that they stand in the way of the world's progress." The second sentence repeats the thought of the first in more specific terms; the third repeats it in more general terms. The specific may be explained by the general; more often the general is cleared up by the specific. In either case, the proposition must be brought one step nearer to the reader by the restatement, or the repetition is not good. Speaking of written or printed words, Barrett Wendell writes:-- "In themselves, these black marks are nothing but black marks more or less regular in appearance. Modern English type and script are rather simple to the eye. Old English and German are less so; less so still, Hebrew and Chinese. But all alphabets present to the eye pretty obvious traces of regularity; in a written or printed page the same mark will occur over and over again. This is positively all we see,--a number of marks grouped together and occasionally repeated. A glance at a mummy-case, an old-fashioned tea-chest, a Hebrew Bible, will show us all that any eye can ever see in a written or printed document. The outward and visible body of style consists of a limited number of marks which, for all any reader is apt to know, are purely arbitrary." ("English Composition.") In this paragraph every sentence is a repetition of some part of the opening or topic sentence, and serves to explain it. Second, by telling the obverse. Second, _a proposition may be explained by telling what it is not._ At times this is as valuable as telling what it is. Care should be taken that the thing excluded or denied have some likeness to the proposition or term being explained; that the two be really in some danger of being confused. Unless to a hopelessly ignorant person, it would not explain anything to say "a horse is not a man;" but to assert that "a whale is not a fish, though they have many points in common," would prepare the way for an explanation of what a whale is. The obverse statement is nearly always followed by a repetition of what the thing is. The following from Newman illustrates the method: "Now what is Theology? First, I will tell you what it is not. And here, in the first place (though of course I speak on the subject as a Catholic), observe that, strictly speaking, I am not assuming that Catholicism is true, while I make myself the champion of Theology. Catholicism has not formally entered into my argument hitherto, nor shall I just now assume any principle peculiar to it, for reasons which will appear in the sequel, though of course I shall use Catholic language. Neither, secondly, will I fall into the fashion of the day, of identifying Natural Theology with Physical Theology; which said Physical Theology is a most jejune study, considered as a science, and really no science at all, for it is ordinarily no more than a series of pious or polemical remarks upon the physical world viewed religiously, whereas the word 'Natural' comprehends man and society, and all that is involved therein, as the great Protestant writer, Dr. Butler, shows us. Nor, in the third place, do I mean by Theology polemics of any kind; for instance, what are called 'Evidences of Religion,' or 'the Christian Evidences.'... Nor, fourthly, do I mean by Theology that vague thing called 'Christianity,' or 'our common Christianity,' or 'Christianity the law of the land,' if there is any man alive who can tell what it is.... Lastly, I do not understand by Theology, acquaintance with the Scriptures; for, though no person of religious feeling can read Scripture but he will find those feelings roused, and gain much knowledge of history into the bargain, yet historical reading and religious feeling are not a science. I mean none of these things by Theology. I simply mean the Science of God, or the truths we know about God put into a system; just as we have a science of the stars, and call it astronomy, or of the crust of the earth, and call it geology."[15] Third, by Details. Third, _a common way of explaining a proposition is to go into particulars about it._ Enough particulars should be given to furnish a reasonable explanation of the proposition. Macaulay, writing of the "muster-rolls of names" which Milton uses, goes into details. He says:-- "They are charmed names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood,--the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses."[16] Fourth, by Illustrations. Fourth, _a proposition may be explained by the use of a single example or illustration._ The value of this method depends on the choice of the example. It must in no essential way differ from the general case it is intended to illustrate. Supposing this proposition were advanced by some woman-hater: "All women are, by nature, liars," and it should be followed by this sentence, "For example, take this lady of fashion." Such an illustration is worthless. The individual chosen does not fairly represent the class. If, on the other hand, a teacher in physics should announce that "all bodies fall at the same rate in a vacuum," and should illustrate by saying, "If I place a bullet and a feather in a tube from which the air has been exhausted, they will be found to fall equally fast," his example would be a fair one, as the two objects differ in no manner essential to the experiment from "all bodies." Here should be included anecdotes used as illustrations. They are of value if they are of the same type as the general class they are intended to explain. They may be of little value, however. It could safely be said that half the stories told in campaign speeches are not instances in point at all, but are told only to amuse and deceive. Specific instances must be chosen with care if they are to serve a useful purpose in exposition. This example is from Newman:-- "To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct. A man knows that he should get up in the morning,--he lies abed; he knows that he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. A laboring man knows that he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows that she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. There are, then, large families of instances, to say the least, in which men may become wiser, without becoming better."[17] Fifth, by Comparisons. Last, _a thing may be explained by telling what it is like, or what it is not like._ This method of comparison is very frequently employed. To liken a thing to something already known is a vivid way of explaining. Moreover in many cases it is easier than the method of repetition or that of details. By this method Macaulay explains his proposition that "it is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them first." He says:-- "A newly liberated people may be compared to a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion, and, after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious."[18] The comparison may be a simile or a metaphor, as when Huxley writes, explaining "the physical basis of life:"-- "Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod."[19] These, then, are the methods commonly adopted for explaining terms and propositions. First, by the use of definitions; second, by repeating the proposition either directly or obversely, adding something to the thought by each repetition; third, by enumerating particulars which form the ground for the statement; fourth, by selecting an instance which fairly illustrates the proposition; fifth, by the use of comparisons and analogies. The Subject. Some general considerations regarding the choice of a subject have been given. A subject should lend itself to the form of discourse employed; next, it should be a subject interesting to the readers; and third, it should be interesting to the writer and suited to his ability. The last condition makes it advisable to limit the subject to a narrow field. Few persons have the ability to view a general subject in all its relations. "Books" everybody knows something of; yet very few are able to treat this general subject in all its ramifications. A person writing of the general topic "books" would not only be compelled to know what a book is, what may truly be called a book, and what is the value of books to readers, and therefore the influence of the different kinds of literature; he would also be driven to study the machinery for making books, the history of printing, illustrating, and binding books, and all the mechanical processes connected with the manufacture of books. The subject might take quite another turn, and be the development of fiction or drama; it might be a discussion of the influences, political or social, that have moulded literature; it might be a study of character as manifested in an author's works. No one is well fitted to write on the general topic "books." A subject should be limited. The Subject should allow Concrete Treatment. For young persons _the subject should be so selected and stated that the treatment may be concrete._ As persons advance they make more generalizations; few, however, go so far as to think in general terms. Macaulay says, "Logicians may reason about abstractions, but the great mass of men must have images." That author depended largely for his glittering effects upon the use of common, concrete things which the masses understand. The subject should be such that it can be treated concretely. "Love," as a general proposition, is beautiful; but what more can a young writer say about it? Let him leave the whole horde of abstract subjects found in old rhetorics alone. They are subjects for experience; they cannot be handled by youth. The Theme. After the subject has been chosen, the writer next considers how he shall treat it. He selects the attitude he will assume toward the proposition, his point of view; and this position he embodies in a short sentence, called his _theme._ For instance, "patriotism" is the subject; as it stands it is abstract and very general. However, this, "Can a partisan be a patriot?" would be sufficiently concrete to be treated. Even yet there is no indication of the author's point of view. Should he write, "A real partisan is no patriot," his theme is announced, and his point of view known. A _theme,_ either explicit or implicit, _is essential in exposition._ It is not necessary that it shall be stated to the reader, but it must be clearly stated by the writer for his own guidance. It is, however, usually announced at the opening of the essay. Whether announced or not, it is most essential to the success of the essay. It is the touchstone by which the author tries all the material which he has collected. Not everything on the subject of patriotism should be admitted to an essay that has for its theme, "A real partisan cannot be a true patriot." It would save many a digression if the theme were always written in bold, black letters, and placed before the author as he writes. Every word in a theme should be there for a purpose, expressing some important modification of the thought. For instance, the statement above regarding a partisan may be too sweeping; perhaps the essayist would prefer to discuss the modified statement that "a blind partisan cannot always be a true patriot." The theme should state exactly what will be treated in the essay. The statement of it should employ the hardest kind of thinking; and when the theme is determined definitely and for all, the essay is safe from the intrusion of foreign ideas which disturb the harmony of the whole. Another advantage in the theme is that, when once chosen, it will go far toward writing the essay. One great trouble with the young writer is that he is not willing to rely on his theme to suggest his composition. Mr. Palmer well says:-- "He examines his pen point, the curtains, his inkstand, to see if perhaps ideas may not be had from these. He wonders what the teacher will wish him to say, and he tries to recall how the passage sounded in the Third Reader. In every direction but one he turns, and that is the direction where lies the prime mover of his toil, his subject. Of that he is afraid. Now, what I want to make evident is that his subject is not in reality the foe, but the friend. It is his only helper. His composition is not to be, as he seems to suppose, a mass of laborious inventions, but it is made up exclusively of what the subject dictates. He has only to attend. At present he stands in his own way, making such a din with his private anxieties that he cannot hear the rich suggestions of his subject. He is bothered with considering how he feels, or what he or somebody else will like to see on his paper. This is debilitating business. He must lean on his subject, if he would have his writing strong, and busy himself with what it says, rather than with what he would say."[20] The Title. Having selected a subject, and with care stated the theme, it yet remains to give the essay a name. There is something in a name, and those authors who make a living by the pen are the shrewdest in displaying their wares under the most attractive titles. _The title should be attractive,_ but it should not promise what the essay does not give. Newspaper headlines are usually attractive enough, but shamefully untruthful. Next, the title should _indicate the scope of the essay._ When Mr. Palmer calls his little book "Self-Cultivation in English," it is evident that it is not a text-book, and that it will not treat English as literature or as a science. Then, the title should be _short._ The theme can rarely be used as a title; it is too long. But the paramount idea developed in the essay should be embodied in the title. "Partisanship and Patriotism" would be a good subject to give the essay we have spoken of. The title, then, should be attractive; it should be short; and it should truthfully indicate the contents of the essay. Selection of Material. One of the important factors in the construction of an essay is the selection of material. Though theme and title have already been discussed, it was not because they are the things for a writer to consider next after he has chosen his subject, but because they are so intimately bound up in the subject that their consideration at that time was natural. Before a writer can decide upon the position he will assume toward a proposition, he should have looked over the field in a general way; for only with the facts before him is he competent to choose his point of view and to state his theme. The title is not in the least essential to the writing of the essay; it may be deferred until the essay is finished. It is necessary, however, that the writer have much knowledge of his subject, and that from this knowledge he be able to frame an opinion regarding the subject. When this has been done he is ready to begin the work of constructing his essay; and the first question in exposition, as in narration and description, is the selection of material to develop the theme he has chosen. The selection of material is a more difficult matter in exposition than in narration and description. It requires the shrewdest scrutiny to keep out matter that does not help the thought forward. In narration we decided by the main incident; in description by the purpose and the point of view; in exposition we test all material by its relation to the theme. Does it help to explain the theme? If not, however good material it may be, it has no business in the essay. Association of ideas is a law by which, when one of two related ideas is mentioned, the other is suggested. To illustrate, when Manila is mentioned, Admiral Dewey appears; when treason is spoken of, Arnold is in the mind. This law is of fundamental importance in arranging an essay; one thing should suggest the next. But valuable as it is, even indispensable, it may become the source of much mischief. For instance, a pupil has this for a topic, "Reading gives pleasure to many." He writes as his second sentence, "By pleasure I mean the opposite of pain," and goes on. "All things are understood by their opposites. If we did not know sickness, we could not enjoy our health. Joy is understood through sorrow. I remember my first sorrow. My father had just given me a new knife,--my first knife," and so on from one thing to another. And not so unnaturally either; each sentence has suggested the next, but not one is on the topic. The most anxious watch must be kept in the selection of material. Some will be admitted without any question; some will be excluded with a brusqueness almost brutal. There is a third class, however, that is allied with the subject, yet it is not so easy to determine whether it should be admitted or rejected. This class requires the closest questioning. It must contribute to the strength of the essay, not to its pages, or it has no place there. Scale of Treatment. _There is another condition which must be considered in the selection of material, the scale of treatment._ If Macaulay had been asked by a daily paper to contribute a paragraph of five hundred words on Milton, he could not have introduced all the numerous topics which have their place in his essay of one hundred pages. He might have mentioned Milton's poetry and his character, the two main divisions of the present essay; but Dante and �schylus, Puritan and Royalist, would scarcely have received notice. The second consideration in selecting material is the purpose and length of the essay, and the consequent thoroughness with which the subject is to be treated. _The exhaustiveness with which an author treats any subject depends, first, on his knowledge._ Any person could write a paragraph on Milton; Macaulay and Lowell wrote delightful essays on the topic; David Masson has written volumes about him. These would have been impossible except to a person who had been a special student of the subject. Second, the thoroughness of the treatment depends _on the knowledge of the readers._ For persons acquainted with the record of the momentous events of Milton's time, it would have been quite unnecessary, it might be considered even an insult to intelligence, to go into such details of history. The shortest statement suffices when the reader is already familiar with the subject and needs only to know the application in this case. Third, the scale of treatment depends _on the purpose for which the essay is written._ If a newspaper paragraph, it is one thing; if for a magazine, it is quite another; if it is to be the final word on the subject, it may reach to volumes. An apt illustration of proportion in the scale of treatment has been given by Scott and Denny in their "Composition-Rhetoric." They suggest that three maps of the United States, one very large, another half the size of the first, and a third very small, be hung side by side. If a comparison be made, it will be found that, whereas a great number of cities are represented on the largest map, only half as many appear on the middle-sized map. If the smallest map be examined, only the largest cities, the longest rivers, the greatest lakes, and the highest mountains can be found; all others must be omitted. On all three maps the same relation of parts is maintained. In proportion to the whole, New York State will hold the same position in all of them. The Mississippi River will flow from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, and the Gulf will sweep in a curve from Texas to Florida. The scale is different, but the proportion does not change. This principle applies in the construction of themes. In a paragraph only very important topics will receive any mention. In an essay these important topics retain their proper place and relation, while many other points of subordinate rank will be introduced. If the treatment be lengthened to a book, a host of minor sub-topics will be considered, each adding something to the development of the theme, and each giving to its principal topic the relative importance which belongs to the main divisions of the essay. The scale of treatment will have much to do with the selection of material. Using Macaulay's "Milton" as an illustration, the analyses below will show how by increasing the size of the essay new subjects come into the field for notice. The first is but a paragraph and has the two main divisions of the essay. The second is an outline for an essay of two thousand words. In the third only one of the sub-topics is analyzed, as Macaulay has discussed it. It would take too much space to analyze minutely the whole essay. MILTON. A. Milton's poetry has given him his position among great men. B. His conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. In the following outline the same main headings are retained, and the sub-topics which explain them are introduced. The numbers indicate the paragraphs in Macaulay's essay given to each topic. INTRODUCTION (1-8). A. Milton's poetry has given him his position among men. (9-46.) I. No poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. (10-19.) II. In his lesser works he shows his great power. (20-31.) III. There is but one modern poem that can be compared with "Paradise Lost;" Dante's "Divine Comedy" has great power, is upon a kindred subject, but in style of treatment widely different. (32-46.) Transition. (47-49.) B. His conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. (50-90.) I. He lived at one of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, and his conduct must be judged as that of the people is judged. (50-78.) II. There were some peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. (79-90.) Conclusion. (91-94.) Again, taking up but one section, B, II., the analysis is as follows:-- II. There were some peculiarities which distinguished him from his contemporaries. (79-90.) A. Milton adopted the noblest qualities of every party-- 1. Puritans. (80-84.) a. They excited contempt. However b. They were no vulgar fanatics; but c. They derived their peculiarities from their daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. d. Thus the Puritan was made up of two men,--the one all self-abasement, the other all pride. e. Résumé of character of Puritans. 2. Heathens were passionate lovers of freedom. (85.) 3. Royalists had individual independence, learning, and polite manners of the Court. B. But he alone fought the battle for the freedom of the mind. (88.) 1. This led him to discard parties; and (89) 2. To dare the boldest literary services. (90.) The fundamental principle guiding in the selection of material is unity. It decides what may with propriety be admitted to the essay, and it determines in part what must be left out. Another principle, secondary to this, is scale of treatment. If the essay is to be short, only essentials may be used; if long, many related sub-topics must take their subordinate positions in the essay. Arrangement. Following the selection of material comes its arrangement. Here also there is greater difficulty than was experienced in narration or description. Though the same principles of Coherence and Mass guide, they are more difficult to apply. The seat of the difficulty is in the elusiveness of the material. It is hard to picture distinctly the value and relation of the different topics of an essay. Suppose the subject is "The Evils of War." The first paragraph might contain a general statement announcing the theme. Then these topics are to be discussed:-- 1. The effect on the _morale_ of a nation. 2. The suffering of friends and relatives. 3. The destruction of life. 4. The backward step in civilization. 5. The destruction of property. The order could not be much worse. How shall a better be obtained? Use Cards for Subdivisions. The most helpful suggestion regarding a method of making the material in some degree visible, capable of being grasped, is that each subdivision be placed on a separate card, and that, as the material is gathered, it be put upon the card containing the group to which it belongs. By different arrangements of these cards the writer can find most easily the order that is natural and effective. It is much like anagrams, this ordering of matter in an essay. Take these letters, s-l-y-w-a-r-e, and in your head try to put them together to make a word; you will have some trouble, probably. If, however, these same letters be put upon separate slips of paper, you may with some arrangement get out the rather common word, lawyers. It is much the same with topic cards in exposition; they can be moved and rearranged in all possible ways, and at last an order distinctly better than any other will be found. Speaking of cards, it might be well to say that the habit of putting down a fact or an idea bearing on a topic just as soon as it occurs to one is invaluable for a writer. All men have good memories; some persons have better ones than others. But there is no one who does not forget; and each catches himself very often saying, "I knew that, but I forgot it." It is a fact, not perhaps complimentary, that paper tablets are surer than the tablets of memory. An Outline. In exposition, where the whole attention of the reader should be given to the thought, where more than ever the mind should be freed from every hindrance, and its whole energy directed to getting the meaning, the greatest care should be given to making a plan. No person who has attained distinction in prose has worked without a plan. Any piece of literature, even the most discursive, has in it something of plan; but in literature of the first rank the plan is easily discovered. How clear it is in Macaulay's essay has been seen. In Burke it is yet more logical and exact. However beautiful a piece may be, however naturally one thought grows out of another, as though it were always so and could be no other way, be sure it is so because of some man's thought, on account of careful planning. And it may be said without a chance of contradiction that when an essay has been well planned it is half done, and that half by far the harder. "We can hardly at the present day understand what Menander meant, when he told a man who inquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen as he went along." The brilliant things are but the gargoyles and the scrolls, the ornaments of the structure; and when so brilliant as to attract especial attention, they divert the mind from the total effect much as a series of beautiful marbles set between those perfect columns would have ruined the Parthenon. It was not in any single feature--not in pediment, column, or capital, not in frieze, architrave, or tympanum--that its glorious beauty lay, but in the simple strength and the harmonious symmetry of the whole, in the general plan. Webster planned his orations, Newman planned his essays, Carlyle planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, is but sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, that absolute essential is the total effect secured by making a plan. Mass the End. The principles governing the arrangement of material are Mass and Coherence. Both are equally essential, but in practice some questions regarding Mass are settled first. _The important positions in an essay are the beginning and the end; of these the more important is the end._ In this place, then, there shall be those sentences or those paragraphs which deserve that distinction. Here frequently stands the theme, the conclusion of the whole matter, that for which the composition was constructed. So that if one wished to know the theme of an essay, he would be justified in looking at its conclusion to find it. In the essay on "Milton," it is evident from the last paragraph that Macaulay never intended it to be only a criticism of his poetry, though he has devoted many pages to this discussion. Here is just the last sentence: "Nor do we envy the man who can study either the life or the writings of the great poet and patriot without aspiring to emulate, not indeed the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our literature, but the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and his fame." Notice the last sentence of a delightful essay by George William Curtis; one could easily guess the contents and the title. "Fear of yourself, fear of your own rebuke, fear of betraying your consciousness of your duty and not doing it--that is the fear that Lovelace loved better than Lucasta; that is the fear which Francis, having done his duty, saved, and justly called it honor." Examples of the ending in which the theme of the essay stands in the place of greatest distinction are so plentiful that there needs no collector to establish the assertion. In a single paragraph of exposition not exceeding two or three hundred words, it is a very safe rule for a beginner always to have the theme in the last sentence; or if he has stated the theme in the opening, to have a restatement of it in different form, fuller and more explicit usually, sometimes a shorter and more epigrammatic form, in the conclusion. If the pupil should obey this little rule to have at the end something worthy of the position, a vast amount of time would be saved both to teacher and to pupil. It can be safely said that not more than one half the essays end when the thought ends. Instead of quitting when he has finished, the writer dribbles on, repeating in diluted fashion what he has said with some force before, and often introducing matters that are not within hailing distance of his theme. When one has said what he started out to say, it is time to stop. If he stops then, he will have something important in the place of distinction. The Beginning. _The position of second importance is the beginning._ If but a paragraph be written, the topic is usually announced at the opening. In short essays this is the most frequent beginning, and it may safely be used at all times. Exposition is explanation; the natural thing is to let the reader know at once what the writer is attempting to explain. Then the reader knows what the author is talking about and can relate every statement to the general proposition. To delay the topic compels the reader to hold in mind all that has been said up to the time the real theme is uncovered; this frequently results in inattention. In the little book by Mr. Palmer, the first paragraph opens with these two sentences: "English as a study has four aims: the mastery of our language as a science, as a history, as a joy, and as a tool. I am concerned with but one, the mastery of it as a tool." So, too, the essay of which the last sentence has been quoted begins: "These are very precious words of Lovelace:-- 'I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.' And Francis First's message to his mother after Pavia, 'All is lost but honor,' is in the same key." Instead of announcing the theme at the very beginning, in essays of some length there is sometimes an account of the occasion which led to the composition. Macaulay has used this opening in the essay on "Milton." Second, the opening may be the clearing away of matters unrelated in reality, but which people have commonly associated with the topic. And third, the essay may open with definitions of the terms that will be used in the discussion. Of these three, only the first will be much used by young persons. It makes an easy approach to the subject, and avoids the unpleasant jar of an abrupt start. It is common with Macaulay, Lowell, and many essayists that write in an easy, almost conversational style. There is one case in which the theme should not be announced at the opening. If the proposition were distasteful, if it were generally believed to be false, it would not be policy to announce it at the beginning. However reasonable men may be, it is still true that reason is subject to emotions and beliefs to a greater degree than is praiseworthy. If a man should open an address upon Abraham Lincoln by saying that he was a cringing coward, he would have difficulty to get an audience to hear anything he said after that, no matter how much truth he spoke. The author of such a statement would be so disliked that nothing would win for him favor. When an unwelcome theme is to be discussed, it must be approached carefully by successive steps which prepare the reader for the reception of a truth that before seemed false to him. In this case the theme will be stated at the end, but not at the beginning of the essay. Get started as soon as you can, and stop when you have finished; by so doing you will have important matters in those places which will emphasize them. Shun the allurements of high-sounding introductions and conclusions. Professor Marston used to tell his pupils to write the best introduction they could, to fashion their most gorgeous peroration, and to be sure to have the discussion clear, logical, and well expressed. Then he said that when he had cut off both ends, he generally had left a good essay. An essay should be done much as a business man does business. He does not want the gentleman who calls on him during business hours to bow and scatter compliments before he takes up the matter which brought him there; nor does he care to see him swaying on the doorknob after the business is finished. To the business at once, and leave off when you have done. Introductions, exordiums, perorations, and conclusions are worthless unless they be in reality a part of the discussion and necessary to the understanding of the whole. Proportion in Treatment. Everything, however, cannot occupy the first and last places. How can other matters be emphasized? To refer to the parallel of the map, in order to make people see that the Mississippi River is longer than the Hudson, the designer made it longer on the map. That is exactly what is done in an essay. If one matter is of greater importance than another, it should take up a larger part of the essay. When Macaulay passes over Milton's sonnets with a paragraph, while he devotes sixteen paragraphs to "Paradise Lost," he indicates by the greater mass the greater value he ascribes to the epic. So again, a very good proof that he did not intend this essay to be a literary criticism primarily, another evidence beside the closing paragraph, is found in his division of the whole essay. To Milton's poetry he has given forty-one paragraphs, and to his character fifty-two paragraphs. The most common way of emphasizing important divisions of an essay is by increasing the length of treatment. Emphasis of Emotion. However, there are times when this cannot be done: a point may be so well known that it needs no amplification. In such a case there may be an emphasis of emotion; that is, the statement may be made with an intensity that counterbalances the weight of the larger treatment. It might be said that the one has great velocity and little mass, while the other has great mass and little velocity. By hurling forth the smaller mass at a higher velocity, the momentum may be as great as when the larger mass moves with little velocity. The dynamic force of burning words may give an emphasis to a paragraph out of all proportion to the length of treatment. In one paragraph Macaulay dashes aside all the defenses of Charles. He writes:-- "The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James II. no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being the judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood." ("Essay on Milton.") Phrases indicating Emphasis. Moreover, phrases and sentences may be introduced to show that a writer considers some topics of equal importance to others, or even of greater importance, though they do not demand the same length of treatment. _Of equal importance, not less weighty, beyond question the most pertinent,_ illustrate what is meant by phrases which indicate values. These and many of their class which the occasion will call forth are necessary to give certain topics the rank they hold in the writer's conception of the whole subject. In discussing the temper and character of the American people, Burke ascribes it to six powerful causes. The relative value of these is indicated in the last three by phrases. I quote only the opening sentences. "First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen."... "They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies."... "If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect."... "There is a circumstance attending these [southern] colonies which makes the spirit of liberty _still more_ high and haughty than in those to the northward."... "Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance which contributes _no mean part_ towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit."... "The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is _hardly less powerful_ than the rest."[21] Emphasis is indicated, then, by position; by the length of treatment; by dynamic statement; and by phrases denoting values. Coherence. Coherence is the second principle which modifies the internal structure of a composition. That arrangement should be sought for that places in proximity one to another those ideas which are most closely related. More than in composition dealing with things, in those forms of discourse dealing with intangible, invisible ideas,--with thoughts, with speculations,--the greatest care is necessary to make one topic spring of necessity from a preceding topic. And this is not impossible when the material has been carefully selected. The principal divisions of the subject bear a necessary and logical relation to the whole theme, and the subordinate divisions have a similar relation to their main topic. In the essay on "Milton," Macaulay is seeking to commend his hero to the reader for two reasons: first, because his writings "are powerful, not only to delight, but to elevate and purify;" second, because "the zeal with which he labored for the public good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity, the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants, and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with his fame" made him a patriot worthy of emulation. We feel instinctively that this arrangement, poetry first and character next, and not the reverse, is the right order. To discuss character first and poetry last would have been ruinous to Macaulay's purpose. Notice next the development of a sub-topic in the same essay. Only one sentence from a paragraph is given. The defenders of Charles do not choose to discuss "the great points of the question," but "content themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which public commotions necessarily give birth." "Be it so." "Many evils were produced by the Civil War." "It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them first." Yet "there is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom." "Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates, stood firmly by the cause of public liberty." No other arrangement of these paragraphs seems possible. To shift the sequence would break the chain. Each paragraph grows naturally from the paragraph preceding. Closely related topics stand together. There is Coherence. Transition Phrases. The logical connection between topics which have been well arranged may be made more evident by the skillful use of words and phrases that indicate the relation of what has been said to what is to be said. These phrases are guideposts pointing the direction the next topic will take. They advise the reader where he is and whither he is going. Cardinal Newman, who had the ability to write not only so that he could be understood, but so that he could not be misunderstood, made frequent use of these guides. The question in one of his essays is "whether knowledge, that is, acquirement, is the real principle of enlargement, or whether that is not rather something beyond it." These fragments of sentences open a series of paragraphs. 1. "For instance, let a person ... go for the first time where physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms," etc. 2. "Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens," etc. 3. "And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign animals," etc. 4. "Hence Physical Science generally," etc. 5. "Again, the study of history," etc. 6. "And in like manner, what is called seeing the world," etc. 7. "And then again, the first time the mind comes across the arguments and speculations of unbelievers," etc. 8. "On the other hand, Religion has its own enlargement," etc. 9. "Now from these instances, ... it is plain, first, that the communication of knowledge certainly is either a condition or a means of that sense of enlargement, or enlightenment of which at this day we hear so much in certain quarters: this cannot be denied; but next, it is equally plain, that such communication is not the whole of the process." How extremely valuable such phrases are may be realized from the fact that, though the matter is entirely unknown, any one can know the relation of the parts of this essay, whither it tends, and can almost supply Newman's thoughts. Summary and Transition. To secure coherence between the main divisions of an essay, instead of words and phrases, there are employed sentences and paragraphs of summary and transition. Summaries gather up what has been said on the topic, much like a conclusion to a theme; transitions show the relation between the topic already discussed and the one next to be treated. Summaries at the conclusion of any division of the whole subject are like the seats on a mountain path which are conveniently arranged to give the climber a needed rest, and to spread out at his feet the features of the landscape through which he has made his way. Summaries put the reader in possession of the situation up to that point, and make him ready for the next stage of the advance. At the end of the summary there is frequently a transition, either a few sentences or sometimes a short paragraph. The sentence or paragraph of transition is much more frequent than the paragraph which summarizes. The examples of these summaries and transitions are so frequent in Macaulay and Burke that one transition is sufficient to indicate their use. Macaulay writes:-- "There are several minor poems of Milton on which we would willingly make a few remarks.... Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest class of human compositions." ("Essay on Milton.") To conclude, exposition embraces definition and explanation. Definition is usually too concise to be clear, and needs an added explanation. In any piece of exposition there must be unity, and this principle will dispense with everything that is not essential to the theme; there must be judicious massing, that those parts of the essay deserving emphasis may receive it; and there must be a coherence between the parts, large and small, so close and intimate that the progress from one topic to another shall be steady and without hindrance. Unity, Mass, and Coherence should be the main considerations in composition the aim of which is to explain a term or a proposition. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES. QUESTIONS. MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 103.) What makes up the introduction of this essay? Does he use the same method in the Essay on Addison? Take a volume of his essays and see how many begin in similar fashion. At what paragraph of this Essay on Milton does the introduction end? Would it be as well to omit it? Give reasons for your opinion. Make an analysis of his argument of the proposition, "No poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton." Does Macaulay give a definition of poetry on page 13, or is it an exposition of the term? What figure of speech do you find in the last sentence of the paragraph on page 43? When Macaulay begins to discuss "the public conduct of Milton," what method of introduction does he adopt? What value is there in it? Do the trifles mentioned at the end of the paragraph on page 55 make an anticlimax? What arrangement of sentences in the paragraph does he use most, individual or serial? Does he close his paragraphs with a repetition of the topic more frequently than with a single detail emphasizing the topic? Is his last sentence, in case it is a repetition of the topic, longer or shorter than the topic sentence? Does Macaulay frequently use epigrams? antitheses? Find all transition paragraphs. Find ten full sentence transitions outside of the transition paragraphs. Where, in such paragraphs, is the topic sentence? In this essay find examples of the five methods of expounding a proposition. Which method does Macaulay use oftenest? Is his treatment of the subject concrete? What advantage is there in such treatment? OF KINGS' TREASURIES. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 142.) Do you think the title good? Is Ruskin wise in disclosing his subject at once? In section 3 what purpose does the first paragraph fulfill? What method of exposition is adopted in the last paragraph? What method in section 4? For what purpose is the first paragraph of section 5 introduced? Is the last paragraph of this section a digression? Do you think the last sentence of section 9 upon the topic announced in the first sentence? Where does Ruskin begin to treat the second topic? Should there be two paragraphs? Find the genus and differentia in the definition of "a good book of the hour." What is the use of the analogy in section 13? What figure do you find in section 14? Do you think a large part of section 30 a digression? What do you think of the structure of sentences 4 and 8 in section 32? Could you improve it by a change of punctuation? What is the effect of the supposed case at the end of section 33? Is it a fair deduction? Is it at the right place in the paragraph, and why? Where would you divide the paragraph in section 37? Is the example in section 36 a fair one, and does it prove the case? What is a very common method with Ruskin of connecting paragraphs? Could you break up the sixth sentence of section 31 so that it would be better? If his audience had been hostile to him would he have been fortunate in some of his assertions? Make an analysis of the whole essay. Does he seem to you to have digressed from his topic? At what point? Should it be two essays? What led Ruskin into this long criticism of English character? Could you include all the main topics that Ruskin has included, and by a change in proportion keep the essay on the subject? WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATION. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 56.) Number the paragraphs in this oration. Why is paragraph 3 introduced? What method of development is used in paragraph 7? In paragraph 8? In how many paragraphs is the last sentence short? In how many is the last sentence a repetition of the topic? What purpose is served in paragraphs 8, 9, and 10? In paragraph 12 note the use of contrast. What kind of development in paragraph 27? Analyze the oration from paragraph 28. Does he place the topic sentence near the beginning of the paragraphs? Does he frequently use transition sentences? Do you think the outline of this as distinct as that of Macaulay's Essay on Milton? Should it be? What figure of speech in the word "axe" in paragraph 32, and "bayonet" in paragraph 36? What figure at the end of paragraph 40? Does he use figures as frequently as Macaulay? EXERCISES. This year, taking up the study of exposition, offers especially good opportunities for exercises in paragraph and sentence construction. During the first eight or ten weeks the pupils will write isolated paragraphs. The unity and arrangement of these should be carefully criticised. Also the exercises should be arranged so that the pupils will employ all forms of paragraphs. Before he begins to write a paragraph, the pupil should know what he is to include in it, and in what order; otherwise the paragraph will fail in unity and effective massing. Paragraphs are made by forethought, not by inspiration. Following the writing of isolated paragraphs is the composition of the long essay. The first thing is a study of outlines. This will take up six or eight weeks. To secure the view of the whole in different arrangements, use the cards. When the class has gained some grasp of outlines, the writing of essays should be begun. At the option of the pupils, they may write some of the essays already outlined, or study new themes. Two or three paragraphs are all that can be well done for a lesson. Good, not much, should be the ideal. In this way a single essay may occupy a class from three to six weeks. It should be remembered that these exercises are written consciously for practice. They are exercises--no more. Their purpose is to give skill and judgment in composition. It is because they are exercises that they may be somewhat stereotyped and artificial in form, just as exercises in music may be artificially constructed to meet the difficulties the young musician will have to confront. During the writing of these essays special attention should be given to sentence construction. The inclusion of just the ideas needed in the sentence and no more; the massing that makes prominent the thought that deserves prominence; and the nice adjustment of one sentence to the next: these objects should be striven for during this semester. 1, 2. Write definitions of such common terms as jingoism, civil service, gold standard, the submerged tenth, sweat shop, internal revenue, cyclonic area, foreign policy, imperialism, free silver, mugwump, political pull, Monroe doctrine, etc. Five or six terms which are not found in a dictionary will make a hard exercise; and two or three lessons in definitions will set the pupils in the direction of accurate and adequate statements. For isolated paragraphs write upon the following subjects:-- 3. Novel reading gives one a knowledge of the world not to be gained in any other way. Particulars. 4. Novel reading unfits people for the actualities of life. Specific instances. 5. Among the numerous uses of biography three stand forth preëminent,--it furnishes the material of history, it lets us into the secrets of the good and great, and it sets before us attainable ideals of noble humanity. Repetition. 6. It is beyond any possibility of successful contradiction that the examination system encourages cheating. Proofs. 7. Electric cars and automobiles are driving horses out of the cities. Instances. 8. Every great development in the culture of a nation has followed a great war. Proofs. 9. From the following general subjects have the pupils state definite themes. Write isolated paragraphs on a few of them. Political Parties. War. Books. Machines. Inventions. Great Men. Planets. Civil Service. Coeducation. Roads. Tramps. Boycotts. 10. Place another similar list on the board and have the pupils vote on what three they prefer. Use these in making outlines. Then select more. Supposing they had settled upon this theme: The tramp is the logical result of our economic system; have it outlined. The result might be as follows:-- A. What is a tramp? 1. Who become tramps? 2. Their number. 3. Where are they? B. Why is he a tramp? 1. Inventions have increased the power of production more rapidly than the demand for products has grown. a. On the farm. b. Transportation. c. Factories. d. Piecework. 2. Women now do much work formerly done by men. a. As clerks. b. As typewriters, stenographers, and bookkeepers. c. In the professions. 3. The result of these causes is that many men willing to work are out of employment. C. What must be done? 11. Fill out the following outline. Subject: The Thermometer. A. Its Invention. B. Its Construction. C. Its Value and Uses. 12. Outline six more themes. 13. Beginning the writing of long essays, write essays in sections. Using "Tramps" for an illustration, as it is outlined it contains about twelve paragraphs. All of section "A" may be included in one paragraph. "B, 1" may be a paragraph of repetition; "a," "b," "c," "d," may each make a paragraph of particulars. By stating "B, 2" in the following way, it may be a paragraph of "what not:" It was once considered unladylike for women to engage in any occupation outside of the home. Men said that they could not retain, etc.--Go on with the things woman could not do, closing with a statement of what she does do. "B, 2, a." On account of their fidelity, honesty, and courtesy, women succeed as clerks. Repetition. b. The quickness of their intelligence and the accuracy of their work have made women more desirable for routine work in an office than men. Comparison and Contrast. c. There are certain feminine qualities which especially fit women for the practice of teaching and medicine. Details. "B, 3." By Combination of Forms. "C." By Details. It would be a pleasure to go on with this list of exercises, but it is unnecessary and it is unwise. These indicate the objects to be sought for in the exercises. They are not a specific course, though they might suit a certain environment. Each teacher knows her own pupils,--their attainments and their interests. The subjects should be chosen to suit their special cases. Only make them interesting; put them into such form that there is something to get hold of; and adapt them so that all the topics to be studied will be illustrated in the work. The pupils should be able to write any form of paragraph, to arrange it so that any idea is made prominent, and to make easy transitions. Arrange the exercises to accomplish definite results. During the third year, attention should be given to words and to the refinements of elegant composition. These the pupils will best learn by careful watch of the literature. The teacher should be quick to feel the strength and beauty of any passage and able to point out the means adopted to obtain the delightful effect. Clearness first is the thing to be desired; if to this can be added force and a degree of elegance during the last two years, the work of the instructor has been well done. * * * * * CHAPTER VI ARGUMENT Argument has been defined as that form of discourse the purpose of which is to convince the reader of the truth or falsity of a proposition. It is closely allied with exposition. To convince a person, it is first necessary that the proposition be explained to him. This is all that is necessary in many cases. Did men decide all matters without prejudice, and were they willing to accept the truth at any cost, even to discard the beliefs that have been to them the source of greatest happiness, the simple explanation would be sufficient. However, as men are not all-wise, and as they are not always "reasonable," they are found to hold different opinions regarding the same subject; and one person often wishes to convince another of the error of his beliefs. Men continually use the words _because_ and _therefore;_ indeed, a great deal of writing has in it an element of argument. From the fact that argument and exposition are so nearly alike, it follows that they will be governed by much the same principles. As argument, in addition to explaining, seeks to convince, it is necessary, in addition to knowing how to explain, to know what is considered convincing,--what are proofs; and secondly, what is the best order in which to arrange proofs. Induction and Deduction. Arguments have been classified as inductive and deductive.[22] Induction includes arguments that proceed from individual cases to establish a general truth. Deduction comprises arguments that proceed from a general truth to establish the proposition in specific instances, or groups of instances. Syllogism. Premises. If one should say "Socrates is mortal because he is a man," or "Socrates will die because all men are mortal," or "Socrates is a man, therefore he will die," by any of these he has expressed a truth which all men accept. In any of these expressions are bound up two propositions, called premises, from which a third proposition, called a conclusion, is derived. If expanded, the three propositions assume this form: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal. This is termed a syllogism. A syllogism consists of a major premise, a predication about all the members of a general class of objects; a minor premise, a predication that includes an individual or a group of individuals in the general class named by the major premise; and a conclusion, the proposition which is derived from the relation existing between the other two propositions. The propositions above would be classified as follows:-- Major premise: All men are mortal, a predication about _all_ men. Minor premise: Socrates is a man, including an individual in the general class. Conclusion: Socrates is mortal. Terms. In every syllogism there are three terms,--major, minor, and middle. The middle term is found in both the premises, but not in the conclusion. It is the link connecting the major and minor terms. The major term is usually the predicate of the major premise and the predicate of the conclusion. The minor term is the subject of the minor premise and the subject of the conclusion. "Men" is the middle term, "are mortal" the major term, and "Socrates," the minor term. Enthymeme. It is rarely the case in literature that the syllogism is fully stated: generally one of the premises is omitted. Such a form of statement is termed an enthymeme. "Socrates will die because all men are mortal" is an enthymeme. The minor premise has been omitted. "Socrates is mortal because he is a man" is also an enthymeme, because the major premise which states that "all men are mortal" has been omitted. The conclusions arrived at by means of syllogisms are irresistible, provided the form be correct and the premises be true. It is impossible here to discuss the forms of syllogisms; they are too many. It will be of value, however, to call attention to a few of the commonest errors in syllogisms. Definition of Terms. The first error arises from a misunderstanding of terms. It is often said that George Eliot is a poet; there are some who disagree. Certain it is that she wrote in verse form; and it is true that she has embodied noble thoughts in verse; but it is quite as true that she lacks "the bird-note." If this were reduced to a syllogism, it would not be a discussion of whether George Eliot be a poet, but rather a discussion of what is a poet. Stated, it reads: All persons who embody noble thoughts in verse form are poets. George Eliot is a person who has embodied noble thoughts in verse form. Therefore George Eliot is a poet. If the major premise of this syllogism be granted, the conclusion is unquestionable. The terms should be defined at the beginning; then this error, springing from a misunderstanding of terms, perhaps the most common, would be avoided. Undistributed Middle. The second error arises from the fact that the middle term is not "distributed;" that is, the major premise makes no statement about all the members of a class. The premises in the following are true, but the conclusion is nonsense. A horse is an animal. Man is an animal. Therefore, man is a horse. The middle term, in this case "animal," must be "distributed;" some statement must be made of _all_ animals. The following would be true: All animals have life; therefore man has life. The major premise predicates life of all animals. False Premises. A third error in a syllogism is in the premises themselves. If either premise be false, the conclusion is not necessarily true. A parent might say to his son, "You are doing wrong, and you will pay the penalty for it soon." Generally he would be right. However, if this were put into a syllogism, it would read as follows: All persons who do wrong pay the penalty soon. You are such a person. Therefore, etc. Admitting the son is breaking the law, the fact is that the major premise is not always true, and the conclusion holds the weakness of the weak premise. Again, supposing everybody accepted the general truth, "All unrepentant sinners will be punished." The minister might then say to a young man, "You will certainly be punished, because all unrepentant sinners will be punished." The young man might deny the suppressed minor premise, which is, "You are an unrepentant sinner." Both premises must be true if they prove anything. The conclusion contains the weakness of either premise. In both of these examples note that the mistake is in the premise which does not appear. In an enthymeme, great care should be taken with the suppressed premise. Be sure it is true when you use this form of argument, and be sure to look for it and state it in full when examining another's argument. It is a common way of hiding a weak point to cover it in the suppressed premise of an enthymeme. Method of Induction. Induction, which proceeds directly opposite to the method of deduction, is the method by which all our ultimate knowledge has been obtained. By observing individual instances man has gathered a great store of general truths. There was a time when the first man would not have been justified in saying, "The sun will rise in the east to-morrow." The general law had not been established. To-day it is practically certain that the sun will rise in the east to-morrow morning, because it has done so for thousands of years; the large number of instances establishes the general truth. Yet there may come a day when it will rise in the south, or not rise at all. Until every case has been tried and found to conform to the law, theoretically man cannot be absolutely certain of any general truth. There may come an exception to the general rule that all men must die. So far, however, there is no experience to justify any man in hoping to escape death. "As sure as death" means in practice absolutely sure, though this is not what is called a perfect induction; that is, an induction in which every possible case has been included. "All the other States are smaller than Texas" is a perfect induction, but it forms no basis for argument. All the cases must be known for a perfect induction; there is no unknown to argue to. This, then, is only a short statement of many individual truths, and has but little of value. Induction that is imperfect is more valuable; for with many cases the probability becomes so strong that it is a practical certainty. It is the method of science. More valuable for literature is another division of arguments into arguments from cause, arguments from sign, and arguments from example. Arguments from Cause. Arguments from cause include those propositions which, if they were granted, would account for the fact or proposition maintained. The decisive test is to suppose the proposition to be true; then, if it will account for the condition, it is an argument from cause. A child holds its finger in a flame; therefore its finger is burned. If the first proposition be supposed to be true, it will account for a burned finger. It is an argument from cause, and it is conclusive. Again, if a man severs his carotid artery, he will die. If the first proposition be supposed to be true, it will account for the man's subsequent death. Now, supposing a man takes strychnine, he will die. This is not quite so sure. If a stomach-pump were used or an antidote given, he might not die. The cause has been hindered in its action, or another cause has intervened to counterbalance the first. If, then, a cause be adequate to produce the effect, and if it act unhindered or unmodified, the effect will certainly follow the active cause. An argument that uses as a premise such a cause may predicate its effect as a conclusion with absolute certainty. Such an argument is conclusive. The argument from cause is used more frequently to establish a probability than to prove a fact or proposition. However strong the proofs of a statement may be, men hesitate to accept either the statement or the proofs if the proposition is not plausible, or, as people say, if "they do not understand it," or if "it is not reasonable." If a murder be done and circumstances all point to your friend, you do not believe your friend to be the criminal until some fact is produced sufficient to cause your friend to commit the crime,--until some motive is established. If it be shown that the friend hated the murdered man and would be benefited by his death, a motive is established,--the proposition is made plausible. A man could "understand how he came to do it." The hatred and the benefit being granted, they would account for his deed. It is an argument from cause, used not as a proof, but to establish a probability. It makes the proposition ready for proof. Arguments from Sign. The second class of arguments, arguments from sign, is most often used for proof. If two facts or conditions always occur together, the presence of one is a sign of the presence of the other. Cause and effect are so related that if either be observed, it is an indication of the other. No cause acts without a consequent effect; an effect is a sure sign of a preceding cause. Supposing one should say, "Because the flowers are dead, there was a frost," or "If ice has formed on the river, it must have been cold," in both instances the argument would be an argument from sign. Both also proceed from the effect to the cause. Only a low temperature forms ice on the river; the argument from effect to cause is conclusive. In the first case, the argument is not conclusive, because flowers may die from other causes. In a case like this, it is necessary to find all possible causes, and then by testing each in succession to determine which could not have acted and leave the one that is the only actual cause. A man is found dead; death has resulted from natural causes, from murder, or from suicide. Each possible cause would be tested; and by elimination of the other possible causes the one right cause would be left. This method of elimination is frequently employed in arguments from effect to cause. When this method is used the alternatives should be few, else it gives rise to confusion and to lack of attention caused by the tediousness of the discussion. And an enumeration of all possible causes must be made; for if one be omitted it may be the one that is in fact the right one. The relation between cause and effect is so intimate that the occurrence of one may be regarded as a sure sign of the presence of the other. If an effect is produced by only one cause, the presence of the effect is a certain indication of the cause. If several causes produce the same effect, some other methods must be used to determine the cause operating in this special case. Sequence and Cause. In reasoning from effect to cause, one must be sure that he is dealing with a cause. As effect follows cause, there is danger that anything that follows another may be considered as caused by it. Because a man died just after eating, it would not be quite reasonable to connect eating and death as cause and effect. The fact is that death is surer to follow starvation. The glow at evening is generally followed by fair weather the next day; but the fair weather is not an effect of a clear sunset. Common sense must be used to determine whether the relation is one of cause and effect; something more than a simple sequence is necessary. Another argument from sign associates conditions that frequently occur together, though one is not the cause of the other. "James is near, because there is his blind father," means that James always accompanies his father; where the father is, the son is too. If one had noticed that potatoes planted at the full of the moon grew well, and potatoes planted at other times did not thrive, he might say as a result of years of observation that a certain crop would be a failure because it was not planted at the right time. This argument might have weight with ignorant people, but intelligent persons do not consider it a sure sign. All signs belong to this class of arguments; they are of value or worthless as they come true more or less frequently. Every time there is an exception the argument is weakened; another case of its working strengthens it. Where there is no sure relation like cause and effect, the strength of the argument depends on the frequency of the recurrence of the associated conditions. A third argument from sign associates two effects of the same cause. A lad on waking exclaims, "The window is covered with frost; I can go skating to-day." The frost on the window is not the cause of the ice on the river. Rather, both phenomena are results of the same cause. This kind of argument is not necessarily conclusive; yet with others it always strengthens a case. Testimony is usually called an argument from sign. The assertion by some one that a thing occurred is not sure proof; it is only a sign that it occurred. People have said that they have seen witches, ghosts, and sea serpents, and unquestionably believed it; men generally do not accept their testimony. In a criminal case, it would be difficult to accept the testimony of both sides. Though testimony seems a strong argument, it is or it is not, according to the conditions under which it is given. One would care little for the testimony of an ignorant man in a matter that called for wisdom; he would hesitate to accept the testimony of a man who claimed he saw, but upon cross-examination could not report what he saw; and he would not think it fair to be condemned upon the testimony of his enemies. Books have been written upon evidence, but three principles are all that are needed in ordinary arguments. First, the person giving testimony must be capable of observation; second, he must be able to report accurately what he has observed; third, he must have a desire to tell the exact truth. Arguments from Example. The third large division comprises arguments from example. That is, if a truth be asserted of an individual, it can therefore be predicated of the class to which the individual belongs. For instance, if the first time a person saw a giraffe, he observed that it was eating grass, he would be justified in saying that giraffes are herbivorous. All gold is yellow, heavy, and not corroded by acid, though no one has tested it all. However, every giraffe does not have one ear brown and the other gray because the first one seen happened to be so marked; neither is all gold in the shape of ten-dollar gold pieces. Only common sense will serve to pick out essential qualities; but if essential and invariable qualities be selected, the argument from the example of an individual to all members of its class is very powerful. Analogies resemble examples. In exposition they are used for illustration; in argument they are employed as proofs. Though two things belong to different classes of objects, they may have some qualities that are similar, and so an argument may be made from one to another. "Natural Law in the Spiritual World" is a book written to show how the physical laws hold true in the region of spirit. It is not because an enemy sowed tares in a neighbor's field that there are wicked men in the world; nor is it because a lover of jewels will sell everything that he has to buy the pearl of greatest price that men devote everything they have to the kingdom of heaven. Analogies prove nothing. They clear up relations and often help the reader to appreciate other arguments. They are valuable when the likeness is broad and easily traced. They should never be used alone. These, then, are the principal forms of argument: deduction and induction; arguments from cause, from sign, and from example. Upon these men depend when they wish to convince of truth or error. Selection of Material. In argument the material is selected with reference to its value as proof. Every particle of matter must be carefully tested. While a piece of material that could be omitted without loss to the explanation may sometimes find a place in exposition, such a thing must not occur in argument. As soon as a reader discovers that the writer is off the track, either he loses respect for the author's words, or he suspects him of trying to hide the weakness of his position in a cloud of worthless and irrelevant matters. Every bit of material should advance the argument one step; it should fill its niche in the well-planned structure; it should contribute its part to the strength of the whole. Plan called The Brief. When the material has been selected, it must be arranged. An argument is a demonstration. Each of its parts is the natural result of what has preceded, and, up to the last step, each part is the basis for the next step. As in geometry a demonstration that omits one step in its development, or, which comes to the same thing, puts the point out of its logical order, is worthless as a demonstration, so in argument not one essential step can be omitted, nor can it be misplaced. The plan in an argument may be more evident than in exposition. We are a little offended if the framework shows too plainly in exposition; but there is no offense in a well-articulated skeleton in an argument. It is quite the rule that the general plan and the main divisions of the argument are announced at the very beginning. Any device that will make the relation of the parts clearer should be used. Over and over again the writer should arrange the cards with the topics until he is certain that no other order is so good. The writing is a mere trifle compared with the outline, called in argument the brief. Though the brief is so essential, it is unfortunately a thing about which but few suggestions can be given. The circumstances under which arguments are written--especially whether written to defend a position or to attack it--are so various that rules cannot be given. Still a few general principles may be of value. Climax. Proofs should be arranged in a climax. This does not mean that the weakest argument should come first, and the next stronger should follow, and so on until the last and strongest is reached. It is necessary to begin with something that will catch the attention; and in argument it is frequently a proof strong enough to convince the reader that the writer knows what he is contending for, and that he can strike a hard blow. Then again, it is evident that in all arguments there are main points in the discussion that must be established by points of minor importance. The main points should be arranged in a logical climax, and the sub-topics which go to support one of the main divisions should have their climax. At the end of the whole should be the strongest and the most comprehensive argument. It should be a general advance of the whole line of argument, including all the propositions that have previously been called into action, sweeping everything before it. Inductive precedes Deductive. To gain this climax what kind of arguments should precede? Of inductive and deductive, the inductive proofs generally go first. The advance from particular instances to general truths is the best suited to catch the attention, for men think with individual examples, and general truths make little appeal to them. Moreover, if one is addressing people of opposing views,--and in most cases he is, else why is he arguing?--it is unwise to begin with bald statements of unwelcome truths. They will be rejected without consideration. They can with advantage be delayed until they are reached in the regular development, and the reader has been prepared for their reception. General truths and their application by deductive arguments usually stand late in the brief. Cause precedes Sign. Of arguments from cause, sign, or example, it is ordinarily wise to place arguments from cause first. A person does not listen to any explanation of an unknown truth until he knows that the explanation is plausible; that the cause assigned is adequate to produce the result. After one knows that the cause is sufficient and may have brought about the result, he is in a position to learn that it is the very cause that produced the effect. Arguments from cause are very rarely conclusive proofs of fact. They only establish a probability. And it would be unwise to prove that a thing might be a possibility after one had attempted to prove that it is a fact. It would be a long step backward, a retreat. Therefore arguments from cause, unless absolutely conclusive proof of fact, should not come last; but by other arguments,--by testimony, by example, by analogy,--the possibility, which has been reached by the argument from cause, may be established as a fact. Example follows Sign. Of the two, sign and example, example generally follows sign. In arguments about human affairs, examples seldom prove anything; for under similar conditions one person may not act like another. Though this be true, the argument from example is one of the most effective--it is not at all conclusive--in that class of cases where oratory is combined with argument to convince and persuade. This is because men learn most readily from examples. To reason about matters of conduct on abstract principles of morality convinces but few; to point to a Lincoln or a Franklin has persuaded thousands. Examples are of most use in enforcing and illustrating and strengthening a point already established, and they generally follow arguments from sign. Refutation. One other class of arguments finds a place in debate: namely, indirect arguments. It is often as much an advantage to a debater to dispose of objections as it is to establish his own case. This is because a question usually has two alternatives. If one can refute the arguments in favor of the opponent's position, he has by that very process established his own. If the points of the refutation are of minor importance and are related to any division of his own direct argument, the refutation of such points should be taken up in connection with the related parts of the direct argument. If, however, it is an argument of some weight and should be considered separate and apart from the direct argument, it is generally wisest to proceed to its demolition at the end of the direct argument and before the conclusion of the whole. For then the whole weight of the direct argument will be thrown into the refutation and will render every word so much the more destructive. Again, if the opposing argument be very strong and have taken complete possession of the audience, it must be attacked and disposed of at the very beginning. Otherwise it is impossible for the direct argument to make any advance. From these suggestions one derives the general principle that each case must be considered by itself. There will be cases of conflict among the rules, and there must be a careful weighing of methods. Common sense and patient labor are the most valuable assistants in arranging a powerful argument. It hardly needs to be said that the suggestions made in the chapter on Exposition regarding Mass and Coherence should be observed here. In argument as in exposition, topics are emphasized by position, and by proportion in the scale of treatment. Here as there, matters that are closely related in thought should be connected in the discourse, and matters that are not related in thought should not be associated in the essay. It will be an advantage now to look through "Conciliation with the Colonies" and note its general plan of structure. Only the main divisions of this powerful oration can be given, as to make a full brief would deprive this piece of literature of half its value for study. Analysis of Burke's Oration. Mr. Burke begins by saying that it is "an awful subject or there is none this side of the grave." He states that he has studied the question for years, and while Parliament has pursued a vacillating policy and one aggravating to the colonies, he has a fixed policy and one sure to restore "the former unsuspecting confidence in the Mother Country." His policy is simple peace. This by way of introduction. He then divides the argument into two large divisions and proceeds. I. OUGHT YOU TO CONCEDE? A. What are "the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us?" I. America has a rapidly growing population. II. It has a rapidly increasing commercial value, shown by 1. Its demand for our goods. 2. The value of its agricultural products. 3. The value of the products of its fisheries. III. There is in the people a "fierce spirit of liberty." This is the result of 1. Their descent from Englishmen. 2. Their popular form of government. 3. Religion in the North. 4. The haughty spirit of the South. 5. Their education. 6. Their remoteness from the governing body. B. "You have before you the object." "What ... shall we do with it?" "There are but three ways of proceeding relative to this stubborn spirit in the colonies." I. To change it by removing the causes. This is impracticable. II. To prosecute it as criminal. This is inexpedient. III. _To comply with it as necessary._ This is the answer to the first question. II. OF WHAT NATURE OUGHT THE CONCESSION TO BE? A. A concession that grants to any colony the satisfaction of the grievances it complains of brings about conciliation and peace. This general proposition is established by the following examples. It has done so in 1. Ireland, 2. Wales, 3. Durham, and 4. Chester. B. The grievances complained of in America are unjust taxation and no representation. C. Therefore these resolutions rehearsing facts and calculated to satisfy their grievances will bring about conciliation and peace. I. They are unrepresented. II. They are taxed. III. No method has been devised for procuring a representation in Parliament for the said Colonies. IV. Each colony has within itself a body with powers to raise, levy, and assess taxes. V. These assemblies have at sundry times granted large subsidies and aids to his Majesty's service. VI. Experience teaches that it is expedient to follow their method rather than force payment. D. As a result of the adoption of these resolutions, "everything which has been made to enforce a contrary system must, I take it for granted, fall along with it. On that ground, I have drawn the following resolutions." I. It is proper to repeal certain legislation regarding taxes, imports, and administration of justice. II. To secure a fair and unbiased judiciary. III. To provide better for the Courts of Admiralty. E. He next considers objections. Conclusion. Notice first the introduction. It goes straight to the question. To tell a large opposition that it has vacillated on a great question is not calculated to win a kind hearing; yet this point, necessary to Burke's argument, is so delicately handled that no one could be seriously offended, nor could any one charge him with weakness. The introduction serves its purpose; it gains the attention of the audience and it exactly states the proposition. He then divides the whole argument into two parts. The framework is visible, and with intent. These great divisions he takes up separately. First, that there may be a perfect understanding of the question, he explains "the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us." This illustrates the use of exposition in argument. The descent and education did not prove that the Americans had a fiery spirit; that was acknowledged and needed no proof. It simply sets forth the facts,--facts which he afterward uses as powerful instruments of conviction. As long as a man can use exposition, he can carry his readers with him; it is when he begins to argue, to force matters, that he raises opposition. So this use of exposition was fortunate. America was an English colony. Her strength and riches were England's strength and wealth. It would be pleasing to all Englishmen to hear the recital of America's prosperity. Up to the time he asks, "What, in the name of God, shall we do with it," the oration is not essentially argument; it does nothing more than place "before you the object." In the section marked "I. B," Burke begins the real argument by the method of elimination. He asserts that there are only three ways of dealing with this fierce spirit of liberty. Then he conclusively proves the first impracticable and the second inexpedient. There is left but the one course, concession. This method of proof is absolutely conclusive if every possible contingency is stated and provided for. Notice that in this section "B" everything that was mentioned in the first section "A" is used, and the whole is one solid mass moving forward irresistibly to the conclusion of the first and the most important part of this argument. The second main division is devoted to the conclusion of the first. If you must concede,--the conclusion of the first half,--what will be the nature of your concession? A concession, to be a concession, must grant what the colonists wish, not what the ministry thinks would be good for them. Then by the history of England's dealings with Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham, he proves that such a concession has been followed by peace. This makes the major premise of his syllogism, stated in "II. A." The minor premise is a statement of the grievances of the colonies. The conclusion is in the resolutions for the redress of the grievances of the colonies. The second part is then one great syllogism, the premises of which are established by ample proof, the conclusion of which cannot well be disputed. "And here I should close," says the orator; the direct argument is finished. There are some objections which demand dignified consideration. At this point, however, it is easy to refute any objections, for behind each word there is now the crushing weight of the whole argument. The conclusion recites the advantages of Burke's plan over all others, and reasserts its value, now proven at every point. It is a powerful summary, and a skillful plea for the adoption of a policy of conciliation with the colonies of America. Every kind of argument is used in this oration. One would look long for a treasury better supplied with illustrations. The great conclusions are reached by the certain methods of elimination and deduction. In establishing the minor points Burke has used arguments from sign, cause, example, and induction. He calls in testimony; he quotes authority; he illustrates. Not any device of sound argument that a man honest in his search for truth may use has been omitted. It is worthy of patient study. In conclusion, the student of argument should learn well the value of different kinds of argument; he should exercise the most careful scrutiny in selecting his material, without any hesitation rejecting irrelevant matter; he should state the proposition so that it cannot be misunderstood; he must consider his readers, guiding his course wisely with regard for all the conditions under which he produces his argument; he should remember that the law in argument is climax, and that coherence should be sought with infinite pains. Above all, the man who takes up a debate must be fair and honest; only so will he win favor from his readers, and gain what is worth more than victory,--the distinction of being a servant of truth. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS QUESTIONS. MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 103.) Put into a syllogism, Macaulay's opponents said, "An educated man living in an enlightened age has better facilities for writing poetry than an uneducated man at the dawn of civilization. Milton was an educated man, living in an enlightened age; therefore Macaulay had better facilities," etc. Which premise does Macaulay attack? Does he demolish it? What value is there in an analogy between experimental sciences and imitative arts? Between poetry and a magic-lantern? Is either an argument that is convincing? Are both effective in the essay? What do you think of Macaulay's estimate of Wordsworth? Granting that this estimate is true, what kind of a proof is it of the proposition that "his very talents will be a hindrance to him"? Is it a uniform phenomenon that as civilization advances, poetry declines? Name some instances that prove it. Name some instances that disprove it. What method of proof have you used in both? Is an uncivilized state of society the cause of good poetry, or only an attendant circumstance? What method of proof is adopted on pages 34 and 35? Granting that you cannot conceive "a good man and an unnatural father," does that prove anything about the first sentence at the bottom of page 55? Does the example of the prisoner on page 60 prove anything? BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 100.) What argument does Burke use to prove that hedging in the population is not practicable? When he says that they will occupy territory because they have done so, is that an inductive or deductive argument, or is it an argument from sign? If it is deductive, what is the suppressed premise? Are the arguments from 48 to 64 more in the nature of direct or indirect proofs? What value is there in an indirect argument? "Americans speak the English language, therefore they are English." Is the argument good? Where is the fault? Look for the suppressed premise. Is paragraph 55 direct or indirect argument? Does he prove that criminal procedure against the colonies would fail, by sign or by deduction? Do the four precedents which he cites of Ireland, Wales, Durham, and Chester prove that his plan will work in America? Upon what general principle do all arguments from example depend? Is paragraph 79 in itself exposition or argument? What method is adopted in paragraph 88 to prove that the principle of concession is applicable to America? How does he prove that Americans were grieved by taxes? How does he establish the competence of the colony assemblies? How could the arguments have made "the conclusion irresistible"? (Paragraph 112.) What principle of argument is stated in paragraph 114? In paragraph 127 is the one example cited enough to prove the rule? Find an example of argument from sign. Is it a relation of cause and effect? Is it conclusive? In paragraph 129 what does Burke mention as arguments of value? What kind of arguments in paragraphs 128 to 136? What is the conclusion? Whenever Burke states a general truth it forms a part of what? Supply the other premise in five cases, and derive a conclusion. Does he ever use an argument from cause to establish a probability? To establish a fact? Does he use deduction more frequently than sign? Does he seek for a climax in the arrangement of the parts of his brief? * * * * * CHAPTER VII PARAGRAPHS Definition. So far we have been dealing with whole compositions; we now take up the study of paragraphs, sentences, and words. A paragraph in many respects resembles a whole composition. It may be narrative, descriptive, expositive, or argumentative. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is constructed with regard to Unity, Mass, and Coherence. And as a whole composition treats a single theme, so a paragraph treats one division of a theme. It has been defined as a composition in miniature. A paragraph is a sentence or a group of sentences serving a single purpose in the development of a theme. The purpose may be simply to announce the theme-subject, to make a conclusion, to indicate a transition; but in the great majority of cases its purpose is to treat a single topic. So true is this that many authors, with good reason, define a paragraph as a group of sentences treating a single topic. Long and Short Paragraphs. Nobody would have trouble in telling where on a page a paragraph began and where it ended. The indention at the beginning, and usually the incomplete line at the end, mark its visible limits. Unfortunately there is no specified length after which the writer is to make a break in the lines and begin a new paragraph. The length of a paragraph depends on something deeper than appearances; as the topic requires a lengthy or but a short treatment, as the paragraph may be a long summary or a short transition, the length of a paragraph varies. Yet there is one circumstance which should counsel an author to keep his paragraphs within certain bounds: he should always have regard for his readers. Readers shirk heavy labor. If a book or an article looks hard, it is passed by; if it looks easy, it is read. If the paragraphs be long and the page solid, the composition looks difficult; if the paragraphs be short and the page broken, the piece looks easy. This fact should advise a writer to make the page attractive by using short paragraphs; provided, and the provision is important, he can so make real paragraphs, divisions of composition that fully treat one topic. These divisions may in reality be but one sentence, and they may just as unquestionably be two pages of hard reading. Successive paragraphs, each more than a page of ordinary print in length, repel as too hard; and a series of paragraphs of less than a quarter of a page impresses a reader as scrappy, and the work seems to lack the authority of complete treatment. An author will serve his readers and himself best by so subdividing his subject that the paragraphs are within these limits. The following paragraph is much too long and can with no difficulty be subdivided. The paragraphs in the next group are too short, and they are incomplete. "Keating rode up now, and the transaction became more complicated. It ended in the purchase of the horse by Bryce for a hundred and twenty, to be paid on the delivery of Wildfire, safe and sound, at the Batherley stables. It did occur to Dunsey that it might be wise for him to give up the day's hunting, proceed at once to Batherley, and, having waited for Bryce's return, hire a horse to carry him home with the money in his pocket. But the inclination for a run, encouraged by confidence in his luck, and by a draught of brandy from his pocket-pistol at the conclusion of the bargain, was not easy to overcome, especially with a horse under him that would take the fences to the admiration of the field. Dunstan, however, took one fence too many, and got his horse pierced with a hedge-stake. His own ill-favored person, which was quite unmarketable, escaped without injury; but poor Wildfire, unconscious of his price, turned on his flank, and painfully panted his last. It happened that Dunstan, a short time before, having had to get down to arrange his stirrup, had muttered a good many curses at this interruption, which had thrown him in the rear of the hunt near the moment of glory, and under this exasperation had taken the fences more blindly. He would soon have been up with the hounds again, when the fatal accident happened; and hence he was between eager riders in advance, not troubling themselves about what happened behind them, and far-off stragglers, who were as likely as not to pass quite aloof from the line of road in which Wildfire had fallen. Dunstan, whose nature it was to care more for immediate annoyances than for remote consequences, no sooner recovered his legs, and saw that it was all over with Wildfire, than he felt a satisfaction at the absence of witnesses to a position which no swaggering could make enviable. Reinforcing himself, after his shake, with a little brandy and much swearing, he walked as fast as he could to a coppice on his right hand, through which it occurred to him that he could make his way to Batherley without danger of encountering any member of the hunt. His first intention was to hire a horse there and ride home forthwith, for to walk many miles without a gun in his hand, and along an ordinary road, was as much out of the question to him as to other spirited young men of his kind. He did not much mind about taking the bad news to Godfrey, for he had to offer him at the same time the resource of Marner's money; and if Godfrey kicked, as he always did, at the notion of making a fresh debt, from which he himself got the smallest share of advantage, why, he wouldn't kick long: Dunstan felt sure he could worry Godfrey into anything. The idea of Marner's money kept growing in vividness, now the want of it had become immediate; the prospect of having to make his appearance with the muddy boots of a pedestrian at Batherley, and to encounter the grinning queries of stablemen, stood unpleasantly in the way of his impatience to be back at Raveloe and carry out his felicitous plan; and a casual visitation of his waistcoat-pocket, as he was ruminating, awakened his memory to the fact that the two or three small coins his fore-finger encountered there were of too pale a color to cover that small debt, without payment of which the stable-keeper had declared he would never do any more business with Dunsey Cass. After all, according to the direction in which the run had brought him, he was not so very much farther from home than he was from Batherley; but Dunsey, not being remarkable for clearness of head, was only led to this conclusion by the gradual perception that there were other reasons for choosing the unprecedented course of walking home. It was now nearly four o'clock, and a mist was gathering: the sooner he got into the road the better. He remembered having crossed the road and seen the finger-post only a little while before Wildfire broke down; so, buttoning his coat, twisting the lash of his hunting-whip compactly round the handle, and rapping the tops of his boots with a self-possessed air, as if to assure himself that he was not at all taken by surprise, he set off with the sense that he was undertaking a remarkable feat of bodily exertion, which somehow, and at some time, he should be able to dress up and magnify to the admiration of a select circle at the Rainbow. When a young gentleman like Dunsey is reduced to so exceptional a mode of locomotion as walking, a whip in his hand is a desirable corrective to a too bewildering dreamy sense of unwontedness in his position; and Dunstan, as he went along through the gathering mist, was always rapping his whip somewhere. It was Godfrey's whip, which he had chosen to take without leave because it had a gold handle; of course no one could see, when Dunstan held it, that the name _Godfrey Cass_ was cut in deep letters on that gold handle--they could only see that it was a very handsome whip. Dunsey was not without fear that he might meet some acquaintance in whose eyes he would cut a pitiable figure, for mist is no screen when people get close to each other; but when he at last found himself in the well-known Raveloe lanes without having met a soul, he silently remarked that that was part of his usual good luck. But now the mist, helped by the evening darkness, was more of a screen than he desired, for it hid the ruts into which his feet were liable to slip--hid everything, so that he had to guide his steps by dragging his whip along the low bushes in advance of the hedgerow. He must soon, he thought, be getting near the opening at the Stone-pits: he should find it out by the break in the hedgerow. He found it out, however, by another circumstance which he had not expected--namely, by certain gleams of light, which he presently guessed to proceed from Silas Marner's cottage. That cottage and the money hidden within it had been in his mind continually during his walk, and he had been imagining ways of cajoling and tempting the weaver to part with the immediate possession of his money for the sake of receiving interest. Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added to the cajolery, for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages of interest; and as for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him believe that he would be paid. Altogether, the operation on the miser's mind was a task that Godfrey would be sure to hand over to his more daring and cunning brother: Dunstan had made up his mind to that; and by the time he saw the light gleaming through the chinks of Marner's shutters, the idea of a dialogue with the weaver had become so familiar to him, that it occurred to him as quite a natural thing to make the acquaintance forthwith. There might be several conveniences attending this course: the weaver had possibly got a lantern, and Dunstan was tired of feeling his way. He was still nearly three quarters of a mile from home, and the lane was becoming unpleasantly slippery, for the mist was passing into rain. He turned up the bank, not without some fear lest he might miss the right way, since he was not certain whether the light were in front or on the side of the cottage. But he felt the ground before him cautiously with his whip-handle, and at last arrived safely at the door. He knocked loudly, rather enjoying the idea that the old fellow would be frightened at the sudden noise. He heard no movement in reply: all was silence in the cottage. Was the weaver gone to bed, then? If so, why had he left a light? That was a strange forgetfulness in a miser. Dunstan knocked still more loudly, and, without pausing for a reply, pushed his fingers through the latch-hole, intending to shake the door and pull the latch-string up and down, not doubting that the door was fastened. But, to his surprise, at this double motion the door opened, and he found himself in front of a bright fire, which lit up every corner of the cottage--the bed, the loom, the three chairs, and the table--and showed him that Marner was not there."[23] "The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silver tinted with red. "A bell, far off, began to toll. "The old 'Sauvage' remained standing before her ruined dwelling, armed with her gun, her son's gun, for fear lest one of those men might escape. "When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier. A loud report rang back. "People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians. "They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied. "A German officer, who spoke French like a son of France, demanded of her:-- "'Where are your soldiers?' "She extended her thin arm towards the red heap of fire which was gradually going out, and she answered with a strong voice:-- "'There!' "They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:-- "'How did it take fire?' "She said:-- "'It was I who set it on fire.'"[24] Topic Sentence. Paragraphs are developments of a definite topic; and this topic is generally announced at the beginning of the paragraph. In isolated paragraphs, paragraphs that are indeed compositions in miniature, the topic-sentence is the first sentence. The reader is then advised of the subject of the discussion; and as sentence after sentence passes him, he can relate it to the topic, and the thought is a cumulative whole. If the subject be not announced, the individual sentences must be held in mind until the reader catches the drift of the discussion, or the author at last presents the topic. Below are four paragraphs, from different forms of discourse, all having the topic-sentence at the beginning. "_But success or defeat was a minor matter to them, who had only thought for the safety of those they loved._ Amelia, at the news of the victory, became still more agitated even than before. She was for going that moment to the army. She besought her brother with tears to conduct her thither. Her doubts and terrors reached their paroxysm; and the poor girl, who for many hours had been plunged into stupor, raved and ran hither and thither in hysteric insanity,--a piteous sight. No man writhing in pain in the hard-fought field fifteen miles off, where lay, after their struggles, so many of the brave--no man suffered more keenly than this poor harmless victim of the war. Jos could not bear the sight of her pain. He left his sister in the charge of her stouter female companion and descended once more to the threshold of the hotel, where everybody still lingered, and talked, and waited for more news."[25] "_Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated._ Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all kinds of makeshifts; they go into chimneys, into barns and outhouses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several chimneys in my locality with disused flues are taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One day, while bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farmhouse where I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken possession of his chimney, and another had gone under the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He had taken a large lot of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me that one day his family had seen a number of bees examining a knot-hole in the side of his house; the next day as they were sitting down to dinner their attention was attracted by a loud humming noise, when they discovered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of the house and pouring into the knot-hole. In subsequent years other swarms came to the same place."[26] "_It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life;_ that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,--to the question: How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day; they have fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayyam's words: 'Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque.' Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them; in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word _life,_ until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against _life;_ a poetry of indifference toward moral ideas is a poetry of indifference toward _life._"[27] "_The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious._ It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books: we cannot have such a supply unless men of letters are liberally remunerated; and the least objectionable way of remunerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot depend for literary instruction and amusement on the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active life. Such men may occasionally produce compositions of great merit. But you must not look to such men for works which require deep meditation and long research. Works of that kind you can expect only from persons who make literature the business of their lives. Of these persons few will be found among the rich and the noble. The rich and the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves, or by the desire of benefiting the community. But it is generally within these walls that they seek to signalize themselves and to serve their fellow-creatures. Both their ambition and their public spirit, in a country like this, naturally take a political turn. It is then on men whose profession is literature, and whose private means are not ample, that you must rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must be remunerated for their literary labor. And there are only two ways in which they can be remunerated. One of those ways is patronage; the other is copyright."[28] Frequently the topic-sentence is delayed until after the connection between what was said in the preceding paragraph and what will be said has been made. To establish this relation requires sometimes but a word or a short phrase, and sometimes sentences. In these cases the topic-sentence follows the transition, and it may come as late as the middle of the paragraph. "The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every season that one sees an eagle. _Hence I must preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went bee-hunting._ As I was laboring up the side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography, when he bent his course thitherward, and gradually vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look upon one without emotion; I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding sea-coast. The waters are his, and the woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces."[29] "Now these insinuations and questions shall be answered in their proper places; here I will but say that I scorn and detest lying, and quibbling, and double-tongued practice, and slyness, and cunning, and smoothness, and cant, and pretence, quite as much as any Protestants hate them; and I pray to be kept from the snare of them. But all this is just now by the bye; _my present subject is my Accuser;_ what I insist upon here is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;--to poison by anticipation the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers suspicion and mistrust of everything that I may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells." ("Apologia.") In exposition and argument, and sometimes in the other forms of discourse, the topic-sentence may be at the end of the paragraph. This is for emphasis in narration and description. In exposition and argument it is better to lead up to an unwelcome truth than to announce it at once. "Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. _Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse._"[30] No Topic-Sentence. Sometimes no topic-sentence appears in the paragraph. In such a case it is easily discovered; or at times it is too fragile to be compressed into any definite shape--a feeling, or a sentiment too delicate, too volatile for expression. A paragraph with no topic-sentence is most common in narration and description. "The tide of color has ebbed from the upper sky. In the west the sea of sunken fire draws back; and the stars leap forth, and tremble, and retire before the advancing moon, who slips the silver train of cloud from her shoulders, and, with her foot upon the pine-tops, surveys heaven." ("Richard Feverel," by George Meredith.) The Plan. Whether the topic form a part of the paragraph or not, it should be distinctly before the writer, and he should write upon the topic. Nothing contributes so much to the success of paragraphs as a definite treatment of one single topic. The paragraph is the development, the growth of this topic, as the plant is the development of its seed. Moreover, the development is according to a definite plan. The different steps are not usually laid out, as was done in the outline of a theme. Genung, in the "Practical Elements of Rhetoric," presents what he calls a typical form for a paragraph. It shows that a paragraph which is fully developed is in reality a miniature theme. It is as follows:-- The Subject proposed. I. Whatever is needed to explain the subject. Repetition. Obverse. Definition. II. Whatever is needed to establish the subject. Exemplification or detail. Illustration. Proof. III. Whatever is needed to apply the subject. Result or consequence. Enforcement. Summary or recapitulation. Kinds of Paragraphs. This typical form of a paragraph embodies all that paragraphs may do, and it is the logical arrangement. However, it is rare, perhaps it never occurs, that a paragraph is found having all these elements developed. The purpose determines which part of a paragraph should receive the amplification. If it be narrative or descriptive, there is no definition or proof; but the development by details will predominate. In an argument, definition and proof will form the large part of the paragraphs. Again, the position in the theme determines what kind of a paragraph should be used. In exposition the first paragraphs would be devoted to stating the proposition, and would therefore be largely given up to definition and repetition; the body would be especially paragraphs of detail and illustration; while the closing paragraph would be taken up with results and a summary. As one of the elements of a paragraph has been especially developed, paragraphs have been named paragraphs of repetition,[31] of the obverse, of details, of instances or examples, and of comparisons. Such a division is somewhat mechanical; but for purposes of study and for conscious practice in construction it has value. Details. The paragraph of details is by far the most common. It is found in all kinds of discourse. It originates from the fact that persons generally give the general truth first and follow this statement with the details or particulars. Whether the storyteller begins by saying, "Now I'll tell you just how they happened to be there;" or the traveler writes, "From the Place de la Concorde one has about him magnificent views," or "There were many unfortunate circumstances about the Dreyfus affair;" in each case he will follow the general statement of the opening sentence with sentences going into particulars or details. _"All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom._ The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early emancipation."[32] "It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, _which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country._ Old farmers, a spare leathern-faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stocking, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close crimped caps, long-waisted short-gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eelskin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair."[32] "The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take issue in the great points of the question. They content themselves with exposing some of _the crimes and follies_ to which public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence of the army. They laugh at the scriptural names of the preachers. Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers reveling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through the market-place; Fifth-monarchy men shouting for King Jesus; agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag,--all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the great Rebellion."[33] In narration and in a short paragraph of description this paragraph of details is frequently without a topic-sentence. The circumstances that make up a transaction are grouped, but there is no need of writing, "I will now detail this." In the following, since the paragraph is plainly about the preparation for the fight, it is unnecessary to say so. Such a patent statement would hinder the movement of the story. "Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness on the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses, and one had been let fall; and after that silence again."[34] Comparisons. The paragraph of comparisons tells what a thing is like and what a thing is not like. It is much used in description and exposition. It is often the clearest way to describe an object or to explain a proposition. One thing may be likened to a number of things, drawing from each a quality that more definitely pictures it; or it may be compared with but one, and the likeness may be followed out to the limit of its value. In the same manner it is often of value to tell what a thing or a proposition does not resemble, to contrast it with one or more ideas, and by this means exclude what might otherwise be confusing. Note that after the negative comparison the paragraph closes with what it is like, or what it is. From Macaulay's long comparison of the writings of Milton and Dante, one paragraph is enough to illustrate the use of contrast. "Now let us _compare_ with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea monster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas; his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod: 'His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome, and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.'" ("Essay on Milton.") The following indicates the use of similarity. "It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be _compared to_ a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion, and, after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy. Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting errors, skepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-finished edifice; they point to the flying dust, the falling bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the whole appearance, and then ask in scorn where the promised splendor and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good government in the world." ("Essay on Milton," by Lord Macaulay.) Repetition. A third method of developing a paragraph from a topic-sentence is by repetition. Simply to repeat in other words would be useless redundancy; but so to repeat that with each repetition the thought broadens or deepens is valuable in proposing a subject or explaining it. No person has attained greater skill in repetition than Matthew Arnold, and much of his clearness comes from his repetition, often of the very same phrases. "Wordsworth has been in his grave for some thirty years, and certainly his lovers and admirers cannot flatter themselves that this great and steady light of glory as yet shines over him. He is not fully recognized at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of Wordsworth is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, of which all the world now recognizes the worth, undoubtedly the most considerable in our language from the Elizabethan age to the present time. Chaucer is anterior; and on other grounds, too, he cannot well be brought into the comparison. But taking the roll of our chief poetical names, besides Shakespeare and Milton, from the age of Elizabeth downwards, and going through it,--Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Coleridge, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Byron, Shelley, Keats (I mention those only who are dead),--I think it certain that Wordsworth's name deserves to stand, and will finally stand, above them all. Several of the poets named have gifts and excellencies which Wordsworth has not. But taking the performance of each as a whole, I say that Wordsworth seems to me to have left a body of poetical work superior in power, in interest, in the qualities which give enduring freshness, to that which any one of the others has left." ("Essay on Wordsworth," by Matthew Arnold.) "Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry, we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors. Thus the greatest of the poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigor and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled:-- 'As imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.' These are the fruits of the 'fine frenzy' which he ascribes to the poet,--a fine frenzy, doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry, but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just, but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement of the intellect. Hence, of all people, children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces in them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding Hood. She knows it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds." ("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.) Obverse. A fourth method of building up a paragraph from a topic-sentence consists in telling what it is not; that is, giving the obverse. This is very effective in argument, and is employed in exposition and description. The obverse usually follows a positive statement, and again is followed by the affirmative; that is, first what it is, then what it is not, and last, what it is again. In the following description by Ruskin, the method appears and reappears. Notice the "nots" and "buts," indicating the change from the negative to the positive statement. It would be a sacrilege to omit the last paragraph, though it does not illustrate this manner of development. "For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth. "Fifteen feet thick, not of flowing, but flying water; not water, neither--melted glacier, rather, one should call it; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time. "Waves of clear sea are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradise blue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow. "The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem angry, and great rivers are often too sullen; but there is no anger, no disdain in the Rhone. It seemed as if the mountain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave that danced all day, as if Perdita were looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; there were currents that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill-stream, and were looking busily for mills to turn again; and there were shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into the air, and now sprang up again, laughing, that they had only fallen a foot or two;--and in the midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skimming in spite of petrels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphires."[35] This extract from Burke's speech is a good example of the same method. "I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that _no_ partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show you that it is _not_ to be considered as one of those _minima_ which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; _not_ a paltry excrescence of the state; _not_ a mean dependent, who may be neglected with little damage and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity."[36] Examples. A fifth method of expanding a topic is by means of illustrations and examples. It is used largely in establishing or enforcing a proposition. The author selects one example, or perhaps more than one, to illustrate his proposition. Note the words that may introduce specific instances: _for example, for instance, to illustrate, a case in point,_ and so forth. In the first of the following quotations, Cardinal Newman is showing that simply to acquire is not true mental enlargement. The paragraph is made up of a series of instances. The second paragraph is by Macaulay. "The _case is the same still more strikingly when_ the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, _for example,_ range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects which they have encountered forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were, on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much the same to him as another; or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule, or to disapprove, while conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it philosophy." ("Idea of a University," by Cardinal Newman.) "I will give _another instance._ One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's 'Life of Johnson.' Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family. He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason, that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous and degrading light. And thus he became so sore and irritable that at last he could not bear to hear the 'Life of Johnson' mentioned. Suppose that the law had been what my honorable and learned friend wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' had belonged, as it well might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldest son. What would have been the consequence? An unadulterated copy of the finest biographical work in the world would have been as scarce as the first edition of Camden's 'Britannia.'" (Speech, "Copyright," by Macaulay.) Combines Two or More Forms. As was said at the beginning, a paragraph is seldom made exclusively of one form. One part of the typical paragraph is usually developed more than any other and gives to the paragraph its character and its name. By far the most common variety of paragraph is that which combines two or more of the other forms. It is not necessary to cite examples; they are everywhere. Though combination is the commonest method of development, it should be guarded. It is a poor paragraph that combines the forms indiscriminately. It should follow some plan; and the best plan is the one already given in the typical paragraph. All paragraphs, whatever be the special method of development, are governed by the three principles which have guided in the structure of whole compositions. Whether the purpose be to prove or to narrate, to enforce a conclusion or to illustrate, if a paragraph is to produce its greatest effect, it should have unity, it should be well massed, and it should be coherent. It is not necessary now to define unity in a paragraph; the need is rather to notice the offenses against it that frequently occur. They are manifestly two: too much may be included, and not all may be included. The accompanying circumstance of the one, not necessarily the cause, however, is often a very long paragraph, and of the other a short paragraph. Unity. Violations of the unity of a paragraph most frequently result from including more than belongs there. The theme has been selected; it is narrow and concise. When one begins to write, many things crowd in pell-mell. Impressions, which come and go, we hardly know how or why, are the only products of most minds. Impressions, not shaped and logical thoughts, make up the mixed confusion frequently called a theme. The writer puts down enough of these impressions to make a paragraph, and then goes on to do it again, fancying that so he is really paragraphing. Even should he keep within the limits of his theme, he cannot in this way paragraph. As everything upon a subject does not belong in a theme, so everything in a theme may not be introduced indiscriminately into any paragraph. The other danger lies in the short paragraph. It does not allow a writer room to say all he has to say upon the topic, so it runs over into the next paragraph. All of the thought-paragraph should appear in one division on the page. This error is not so common as the former. Examples of each are to be found on pages 152-157. Need of Outline. The remedy for this confusion clearly is hard thinking; and a great assistance is the outline. Before a word is written, think through the theme; get clearly the purpose of each paragraph in the development of the whole. Then write just what the paragraph was intended to include, and no more. More will be suggested because the parts of a whole theme are all closely related, but that more belongs somewhere else. Make a sharp outline, and follow it. Mass. A paragraph should be so arranged that the parts which arrest the eye will be important.[37] When a person glances down a page, his eye rests upon the beginning and the end of each paragraph. A reader going rapidly through an article to get what he wants of it does not read religiously every word; he knows that he will be directed to the contents of each paragraph by the first and last sentences. If a writer considers his readers, if he desires to arrange his paragraph so that it will be most effective, he will have at these points such sentences as will accurately indicate its contents and the trend of the discussion; and he will form these sentences so well that they will deserve the attention which is given them by reason of their position in the paragraph. What begins and what ends a Paragraph? What are the words that deserve the distinction of opening and closing a paragraph? As in the theme, so in a paragraph, the first thing is to announce the subject of discussion. When the subject is simply announced without giving any indication as to the drift of the discussion, the conclusion of the discussion is generally stated in the last sentence. Burke says, "The first thing we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is the number of people in the colonies." He concludes the paragraph with, "Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations." In other cases the opening sentence states the conclusion at which the paragraph will arrive. Then the closing sentence may be a repetition of the opening or topic sentence; or it may be one of the points used to exemplify or establish the proposition which opens the paragraph. Again, in a short paragraph the topic need not be announced at the beginning; in this case it should be given in the concluding sentence. Or, should the topic be given in the opening sentence of a short paragraph, it is unnecessary to repeat it at the end. In any case, whether the paragraph opens with a simple announcement of the topic to be discussed, or with the conclusion which the paragraph aims to explain, establish, or illustrate, or whether it closes with the conclusion of the whole matter, or with one of the main points in the development, the sentences at the beginning and the end of a paragraph should be strong sentences worthy of their distinguished position. In the first paragraph below, there is a proposition in the first sentence and its repetition in the last. In the two following, though they close with no general statement, the specific assertions used to substantiate and illustrate the first sentences are strong and carry in themselves the truth of the topic-sentence. "The eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his general character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic; and such the crisis required. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object--this, this is eloquence: or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action."[38] "The prejudiced man travels, and then everything he sees in Catholic countries only serves to make him more thankful that his notions are so true; and the more he sees of Popery, the more abominable he feels it to be. If there is any sin, any evil in a foreign population, though it be found among Protestants also, still Popery is clearly the cause of it. If great cities are the schools of vice, it is owing to Popery. If Sunday is profaned, if there is a carnival, it is the fault of the Catholic Church. Then, there are no private houses, as in England; families live in staircases; see what it is to belong to a Popish country. Why do the Roman laborers wheel their barrows so slow in the Forum? why do the Lazzaroni of Naples lie so listlessly on the beach? why, but because they are under the _malaria_ of a false religion. Rage, as is well known, is in the Roman like a falling sickness, almost as if his will had no part in it and he had no responsibility; see what it is to be a Papist. Bloodletting is as frequent and as much a matter of course in the South as hair-cutting in England; it is a trick borrowed from the convents, when they wish to tame down refractory spirits."[39] "Excuse me, Sir, if turning from such thoughts I resume this comparative view once more. You have seen it on a large scale; look at it on a small one. I will point out to your attention a particular instance of it in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 1704 that province called for £11,459 in value of your commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. What did it demand in 1772? Why, nearly fifty times as much; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was £507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies together in the first period."[40] The following illustrates the weakness of closing with a specific instance when it does not rise to the level of the remainder of a paragraph. The last sentence would better be omitted. "We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing; but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence, substitute one synonym for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, 'Open Wheat,' 'Open Barley,' to the door which obeyed no sound but 'Open Sesame.' In the miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the 'Paradise Lost' is a remarkable instance of this." ("Essay on Milton," by Macaulay.) Length of opening and closing Sentences. By examination, one finds that the first sentence of a paragraph of exposition and of argument is usually a terse statement of the proposition; and that after the proposition has been established there follows a longer sentence gathering up all the points of the discussion into a full, rounded period which forms a suitable climax and conclusion of the paragraph. Of Macaulay's "Milton" one is quite inside the truth when he says that of those paragraphs containing an opening topic-sentence and its restatement as a conclusion, the closing sentence is the longer in the ratio of two to one. In Burke's "Conciliation," the ratio rises as high as four to one. There are, however, exceptions to the rule. Paragraphs sometimes close with a shorter statement of the proposition, a sort of aphorism or epigram. As this kind of sentence is fascinating, some books have said that paragraphs should close so; that it is like cracking a whip, and gives a snap to the paragraph not gained in any other way. Even if readers enjoyed having paragraphs close in this cracking manner, it must be borne in mind that not all conclusions are capable of such a statement, and, what is worse, that the tendency to seek for epigrams leads to untruth and a degenerated form of witticism. Such forced sentences are only half truths, or they are a bit of cheap repartee. Such a close is effective, if the whole truth can be so expressed; but to seek for such sentences is dangerous. The best rule is the one already stated; it applies to the long sentence and the short sentence alike. It is that a paragraph should close with words that deserve distinction. Proportion. The body of a paragraph should have the matter so proportioned that the more important points shall receive the longer treatment. In a paragraph of proof, details, or comparison, that point in the proof, that particular, that part of the comparison, which for the specific purpose has most significance, should have proportionately fuller treatment. It is the same principle already noticed in exposition. Indicate the relative importance of topics in a paragraph by the relative number of words used in their treatment. For mass in a paragraph, then, keep in mind that the last sentence should contain matter and form worthy of the position it occupies; that the position of next importance is at the beginning; and that the relative importance of the matters in the body of a paragraph is pretty correctly indicated by the relative length of treatment. Coherence and Clearness. Coherence, the third principle of structure, is the most important; and it is the most difficult to apply. For one can make a beginning and an end, he can select his materials so that there is unity, but to make all the parts stick together, to arrange the sentences so that one grows naturally from the preceding and leads into the next, requires nice adjustment of parts, and rewriting many times. How essential coherence in a paragraph is, simply to make the thought easy to grasp, may be seen by taking a paragraph to pieces and mixing up its sentences, and at the same time removing all words that bind its parts together. The following can hardly be understood at all, but in its original condition it is so clear that it cannot be misunderstood. If the sentences be arranged in the following order, the original paragraph will appear: 1, 5, 3, 9, 8, 6, 2, 4, 7, 10. 1. "The first question which obviously suggests itself is how these wonderful moral effects are to be wrought under the instrumentality of the physical sciences. 2. To know is one thing, to do is another; the two things are altogether distinct. 3. Does Sir Robert Peel mean to say, that whatever be the occult reasons for the result, so it is; you have but to drench the popular mind with physics, and moral and religious advancement follows on the whole, in spite of individual failures? 4. A man knows he should get up in the morning,--he lies abed; he knows he should not lose his temper, yet he cannot keep it. 5. Can the process be analyzed and drawn out, or does it act like a dose or a charm which comes into general use empirically? 6. It is natural and becoming to seek for some clear idea of the meaning of so dark an oracle. 7. A laboring man knows he should not go to the ale-house, and his wife knows she should not filch when she goes out charing, but, nevertheless, in these cases, the consciousness of a duty is not all one with the performance of it. 8. Or rather, does he mean, that, from the nature of the case, he who is imbued with science and literature, unless adverse influences interfere, cannot but be a better man? 9. Yet when has the experiment been tried on so large a scale as to justify such anticipations? 10. There are, then, large families of instances, to say the least, in which men may become wiser, without becoming better; what, then, is the meaning of this great maxim in the mouth of its promulgators?" Coherence, so necessary to the easy understanding of a paragraph, is gained in three ways: by the order in which the sentences are arranged; by the use of parallel constructions for parallel ideas; and by the use of connectives. Two Arrangements of Sentences in a Paragraph. Material which has been selected with regard to the principle of unity is all informed with one idea. Yet though one thought runs through it all and unites it, the parts do not stand in an equally close relation to the conclusion, nor is each part equally related to every other part. Had they been, the last paragraph quoted would have been as well in one order as another. Rather the sentences seem to fall into groups of more closely related matters; or at times one sentence seems to follow as the direct consequence of the preceding sentence. With respect to the way in which the sentences contribute to the topic of the paragraph, whether the topic be announced first or last, sentences may be said to contribute directly to the proposition or indirectly. If directly, the paragraph is a collection of sentences, each having a common purpose, each having a similar relation to the topic, arranged, as it were, side by side, and advancing as one body to the conclusion. This may be termed an individual arrangement of sentences, since as individuals they each contribute to the topic. The conclusion derives its force from the combined mass of all. If indirectly, the paragraph is a series of sentences, each growing out of the one preceding it, each receiving a push from the sentence before, and the last having the combined force of all. This may be styled a serial arrangement of sentences, since in such a case each contributes to the topic only as one in a chain. The former overcomes by its mass; the latter strikes by reason of its velocity. The one advances in rank; the other advances in single file. An illustration of each will help to an understanding of this. In the following paragraph from Macaulay's essay on Milton, each of the details mentioned points directly to "those days" when the race became a "byword and a shaking of the head to the nations." Their aggregate mass enforces the topic of the paragraph. They are all one body equally informed with the common principle which is the topic. Notice that one sentence is not the source of the next, but that all the sentences stand in a similar relation to the conclusion. This arrangement is common in description. In the second paragraph, from Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," each detail contributes to the appearance of Ichabod, not through some other sentence, but directly. "Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love; of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds; the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival that he might trample on his people; sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed with complacent infamy her degrading insults and her more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the policy of the state. The government had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed of God and man, was a second time driven forth to wander on the face of the earth, and to be a byword and a shaking of the head to the nations." "Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horse's tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight." The following paragraph in the essay on Milton contains an example of the second method of arrangement. Each sentence is the result of the one before it. The sentences advance in single file. Notice that each sentence does not contribute directly to the conclusion, but that it acts through the succeeding sentence. The phrases from which a succeeding sentence springs are in small capitals; and the phrases which refer back are in italics. "Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public character of Milton apply to him only as one of A LARGE BODY. WE SHALL PROCEED to notice some of the peculiarities which distinguished him _from his contemporaries._ _And for that purpose_ it is necessary to take a short survey of THE PARTIES into which the political world was at that time divided. We must premise that our observations are intended to apply only to THOSE WHO ADHERED, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side. In days of public commotion, _every faction,_ like an Oriental army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, a useless and heartless RABBLE, who prowl round its line of march in the hope of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded with fickle and _selfish politicians,_ who transferred their support to every government as it rose; who kissed the hand of the king in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649; who shouted with equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn; who dined on calves' heads or broiled rumps, and cut down oak branches or stuck them up, as circumstances altered, without the slightest shame or repugnance. _These_ we leave out of account. We take our estimate of parties from _those who_ really deserve to be called partisans." (For other examples of the same arrangement see the next quotation, and also a paragraph quoted on page 222.) Paragraphs are most frequently found to combine the two methods. In the following, notice that the second sentence grows out of the first, the third from the second, and so the serial arrangement is maintained until the eighth is reached. Sentences nine, ten, eleven, and twelve give body to sentence eight. Then begins again the regular succession. Sentences sixteen to twenty are the outgrowth of the phrase "on his account." "1. The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. 2. Not content with acknowledging in general terms an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. 3. To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him, was with them the great end of existence. 4. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. 5. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with Him face to face. 6. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. 7. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. 8. They recognized no title to superiority but His favor; and, confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. 9. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. 10. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. 11. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. 12. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away. 13. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt; for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. 14. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest; who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. 15. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes had been ordained on his account. 16. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. 17. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed His will by the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the prophet. 18. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. 19. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. 20. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God." This division has been made because by its aid an approach can be made toward rules for arrangement. In the paragraph quoted on page 183, the different sentences are equally related to the topic. Is there, then, no reason why one should be first rather than another? Notice the topics of the sentences and the order becomes a necessity. King, state policy, government, liberty, religion,--it is an ascending scale. On page 96 is a paragraph on the charmed names used by Milton. "One," "another," "a third," "a fourth,"--for all one can see as to the relation of each to the topic, "a fourth" might as well have been "one" as fourth. But upon reading the paragraph it is evident that Macaulay thought the last more important than the first. So in the paragraph just quoted about the Puritans, when the arrangement of the first eight sentences changes in sentences nine through eleven, and again in sentences sixteen to twenty, the order is a climax. Moreover, those topics are associated which are more closely related in thought. King is more closely related to government than to religion, and religion is more intimately associated with the idea of liberty than with king. The order, then, is the natural order of association. From these examples we derive the first principle of arrangement. In a paragraph where several sentences contribute individually to the topic, they must be arranged in the order in which the thoughts are associated and follow each other; and, when possible, they should take the order of a climax. Definite References. In the paragraph made up of sentences in a series, each linked to the sentence before and after, the difficulty is in transmitting the force of one sentence to the next one undiminished. This is done by binding the sentences so closely together that one cannot slip on the other. In the paragraph about the Puritans, of the second sentence the "Great Being" goes back to "superior beings" of the first; and "Him" in the next springs from "Great Being." "To know Him, to serve Him, to enjoy Him,"--what is it but the "pure worship" of the fourth? while "ceremonious homage" of the fourth is the "occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil" of the fifth. One sentence grows out of some phrase of the preceding sentence; the sentences are firmly locked together by the repetition, a little modified, of the thought of a preceding phrase. There is no slipping. To get this result there must be no question of the thought-sequence in the sentences. Each sentence must be a consequence of a preceding sentence. And there must be attention to the choice and position of the words from which the following sentence is to spring. Such words cannot be indefinite, mushy words; they must be definite, firm words. Moreover, they must not be buried out of sight by a mass of unimportant matters; they must be so placed that they are unhindered, free to push forward the thought toward its ultimate conclusion. This often requires inversion in the sentence. That phrase which is the source of the next sentence must be thrown up into a prominent position; and it is usually pressed toward the end of the sentence, nearer to the sentence which is its consequence. In a paragraph quoted on page 222, where this same subject is taken up in connection with sentences, there is an excellent illustration of this. "Slow and obscure," "inadequate ideas," "small circle," and the numerous phrases which repeat the thought, though not the words, are firm words binding the sentences together indissolubly. Use of Pronouns. Not all sentences permit such clear reference as this. Still it must be said that where the thought is logical and clear, the reference is never missed: the binding words are important words and they occupy prominent positions. There is, however, a whole group of words whose function is to make the references sure. They are pronouns. Pronouns refer back, and they point forward. Their careful use is the commonest method of making sure of references, and so of binding sentences together. The ones in common use are _this, that, the former, the latter;_ the relatives _who, which,_ and _that;_ and the personal pronouns _he, she, it._ To these may be added some adverbs: _here, there, hence, whence, now, then, when,_ and _while._ The binding force of these words is manifest in every paragraph of composition. The following paragraph, from Burke's speech on "Conciliation with the Colonies," illustrates the use of pronouns as words referring back, and binding the whole into one inseparable unit. "As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought _those_ acquisitions of value, for _they_ seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which _that_ enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what in the world is equal to _it?_ Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow _them_ among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold _them_ penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for _them_ beneath the arctic circle, we hear that _they_ have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that _they_ are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of _their_ victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to _them_ than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst _some_ of _them_ draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, _others_ run the longitude and pursue _their_ gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by _their_ fisheries; no climate that is not witness to _their_ toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise ever carried _this_ most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which _it_ has been pushed by _this_ recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate _these_ things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon _these_ effects, when I see how profitable _they_ have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty." Of Conjunctions. Another group of words which give coherence to a paragraph is conjunctions. They indicate the relations between sentences, and they point the direction of the new sentence. The common relations between sentences indicated by conjunctions are coördinative, subordinative, adversative, concessive, and illative. Each young writer has usually but one word, at the most two words, in his vocabulary to express each of these relations. He knows _and, but, if, although,_ and _therefore._ Each person should learn from a grammar the whole list, for no class of words indicates clear thinking so unmistakably as conjunctions. Two words of advice should be given regarding the use of conjunctions. If the thought all bends one way, if this direction is perfectly clear, there is no need of conjunctions. It is when the course of the discussion is tortuous, when the road is not direct, when the reader may lose the way without these guides, that conjunctions should be used. On the other hand, conjunctions are an annoyance when not needed. Just as guideposts along a road where there is no chance to leave the direct path are useless, and their recurrence is a cause of aggravation, so it is with unnecessary conjunctions. They attract attention to themselves, and so draw it from the thought. The first caution is, Do not use conjunctions unless needed. In the following, the repetition of _and_ is unnecessary and annoying. "Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly. They want to get away from each other when there is only such a very slight bond as that between them; and one day, I suppose, the pain and the dull monotony of it all had stood before her eyes plainer than usual, and the mocking spectre had frightened her. She had made one last appeal to friends, but, against the chill wall of their respectability, the voice of the erring outcast fell unheeded; _and_ then she had gone to see her child--had held it in her arms and kissed it, in a weary, dull sort of way, _and_ without betraying any particular emotion of any kind, _and_ had left it, after putting into its hand a penny box of chocolate she had bought it, _and_ afterwards, with her last few shillings, had taken a ticket _and_ come down to Goring. "It seemed that the bitterest thoughts of her life must have centred about the wooded reaches and the bright green meadows around Goring; but women strangely hug the knife that stabs them, and, perhaps, amidst the gall, there may have mingled also sunny memories of sweetest hours, spent upon those shadowed deeps over which the great trees bend their branches down so low. "She had wandered about the woods by the river's brink all day, _and_ then, when evening fell _and_ the gray twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched out her arms to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. _And_ the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, _and_ had laid her weary head upon its bosom, _and_ had hushed away the pain." The other word is: When possible put the conjunction that connects two sentences into the body of the sentence, rather than at its beginning. In this way its binding power is increased. This principle should limit the use of _and_ and _but_ at the beginning of a sentence. Rarely is _and_ needed in such a place. If the thought goes straight forward--and it must do so if _and_ correctly expresses the relation--there is usually no gain in its use. At times when the reader might be led to expect some change of direction from some phrase in the preceding sentence, then it would be wise to set him right by the use of _and._ Moreover, there are times when coördinate thoughts are so important, and the expression of the coördination is so important, that a sentence beginning with _and_ is the only adequate means of expressing it. However, be very sure that there is need for every _and_ that you use. The same caution may be given about _but._ _But_ indicates an abrupt turn in the thought. Is such a contrast in the thought? If so, is there no other word to express the thought? Some persons go so far as to say that these words should never begin a sentence. This is too pedantic and not true. When coördinative and adversative relations are to be expressed, however, it is certainly more elegant if some variety can be obtained, and the union is closer if the conjunction be placed in the body of the sentence. This requires the use of other words besides _and_ and _but._ _Also, in like manner, besides, too, nevertheless, however, after all, for all that,_ should be as familiar as the two overworked words _and_ and _but._ Look for ways to bind sentences in the middle rather than at the end. It is more elegant and it is much safer. Parallel Constructions. A third principle of arrangement is the use of parallel constructions for parallel thoughts. By parallel structure is meant that the principal elements of the sentences shall be arranged in the same order. If subordinate clauses precede principal clauses in one sentence, they shall in the other; if they follow in one, they shall follow in the other. If an active voice be used in one, it shall be used in the other; if the predicate go before the subject in one, it shall in the other. The use of parallel structure frequently demands repetition of forms and even of identical words and phrases. It is very effective in giving clearness to a paragraph and in securing coherence of its parts. In the first of the two illustrations below, read one sentence this way and observe the ruin that is wrought. "The North American colonies made such a struggle against the mother country." In the second paragraph, change two of the sentences to the passive voice. The effect is evident loss in clearness and strength. "All history is full of revolutions, produced by causes similar to those which are now operating in England. A portion of the community which had been of no account, expands and becomes strong. It demands a place in the system, suited, not to its former weakness, but to its present power. If this is granted, all is well. If this is refused, then comes the struggle between the young energy of one class and the ancient privileges of another. Such was the struggle between the Plebeians and Patricians of Rome. Such was the struggle of the Italian allies for admission to the full rights of Roman citizens. Such was the struggle of our North American colonies against the mother country. Such was the struggle which the Third Estate of France maintained against the aristocracy of birth. Such was the struggle which the Roman Catholics of Ireland maintained against the aristocracy of creed. Such is the struggle which the free people of color in Jamaica are now maintaining against the aristocracy of skin. Such, finally, is the struggle which the middle classes in England are maintaining against an aristocracy of mere locality, against an aristocracy, the principle of which is to invest a hundred drunken pot-wallopers in one place, or the owner of a ruined hovel in another, with powers which are withheld from cities renowned to the furthest ends of the earth for the marvels of their wealth and of their industry."[41] "Man is a being of genius, passion, intellect, conscience, power. He exercises these various gifts in various ways, in great deeds, in great thoughts, in heroic acts, in hateful crimes. He founds states, he fights battles, he builds cities, he ploughs the forest, he subdues the elements, he rules his kind. He creates vast ideas, and influences many generations. He takes a thousand shapes, and undergoes a thousand fortunes. Literature records them all to the life.... He pours out his fervid soul in poetry; he sways to and fro, he soars, he dives, in his restless speculations; his lips drop eloquence; he touches the canvas, and it glows with beauty; he sweeps the strings, and they thrill with an ecstatic meaning. He looks back into himself, and he reads his own thoughts, and notes them down; he looks out into the universe, and tells over and celebrates the elements and principles of which it is the product."[42] (The principles of Mass and Coherence in paragraphs are closely allied with these same principles regarding sentences. Some further discussion of these important matters, as well as more illustrations, will be found in the next chapter.) Good sense must be exercised in the use of parallel constructions. Although a short series of sentences containing parallel thoughts is common and demands this treatment, it is not at all frequent that one has such a long series as these paragraphs contain. In these paragraphs the parallel is in the thought; it has not been searched out. Because one is pleased with these effects of parallel construction, he should not be led to seek for opportunities where he can force sentences into similar shapes. The thoughts must be parallel. If the thought is actually parallel, a parallel treatment may be adopted with great advantage to clearness and force; if it is not parallel, any attempt to treat it as such is detected as a shallow trick. To search for thoughts to trail along in a series results in thinnest bombast. As everywhere else in composition, so here a writer must rely on his good taste and good sense. Summary. Whatever may be the special mode of development, of whatever form of discourse it is to be a part, the three fundamental principles which guide in making a paragraph are Unity, Mass, and Coherence. The unity of the paragraph is secured by referring all of the material to the topic, including what contributes to the main thought and excluding what has no value. Paragraphs excessively long or very short may lead to offenses against unity. Mass in a paragraph is gained by placing worthy words in the positions of distinction; by treating the more important matters at greater length; and, when possible without disturbing coherence, by arranging the material in a climax. Coherence is secured by keeping together matters related in thought; by a wise choice and placing of all words which bind sentences together; and by the use of parallel constructions for parallel ideas. Carefully chosen material, arranged so that worthy words occupy the positions of distinction, and all so skillfully knit together that every sentence, every phrase, every word, takes the reader one step toward the conclusion,--this constitutes a good paragraph. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS THE OLD MANSE. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 69.) In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 19, what do you think of the selection of material? Does the last detail give the finishing touch to the paragraph? Is it a real climax? On page 25 a paragraph begins, "Lightly as," etc. In the second sentence "bound volume" goes back to what words in the first sentence? "he," of the third, to what of the second? "thus it was" to what before? Now take the paragraph on pages 34 and 35 and trace the connection of the sentences, drawing two lines under the phrase from which a succeeding sentence springs, and one line under words that refer back to a preceding phrase; also trace out the dovetailing in the sentences on pages 6 and 7. In the paragraph on pages 18 and 19 the development is not so. Each sentence emphasizes "the sombre aspect of external nature." What is the law of their arrangement? (See text-book, pages 181-187.) Find other paragraphs arranged in this way. (See pages 35, 36.) What is the topic of the second paragraph? Can you divide the paragraph filling the middle of page 8? Where? What is the relation between the first sentence and the last in the paragraph at the bottom of page 11? Give the words that join the sentences of the paragraph together. In the paragraph beginning on page 13, what is the purpose of the first two sentences? On page 14, does it seem to you that Hawthorne had forgotten the Old Manse enough so that it could be called a digression? or do you think that the delightful, rambling character of the essay permits it? Can you divide this paragraph on pages 14 and 15? Where? What figure at the bottom of page 15? Is it the custom to use a capital letter in such a case? Has the paragraph in which the figure occurs unity? Where could you divide it? Give the topic of both new paragraphs. Of the paragraph on pages 16 and 17, what is the relation of the last three sentences to the topic? What comment would you make upon the last sentence of the paragraph ending at the top of page 25? At the opening of the paragraph beginning on page 29, do you like the figure? Trace the relation between the first and second sentences; between the second and the third. Could this paragraph be divided? RIP VAN WINKLE AND THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 51.) In the paragraph on page 11, what is the relation between the first and last sentences? Why is the middle of the paragraph introduced? Is it effective? What method of development is adopted in the next paragraph? Trace out the connection of the paragraphs in the first five pages of this essay. What words at the beginning of each paragraph are especially helpful in joining the parts? On page 13 Irving writes, "Times grew worse and worse for Rip Van Winkle," etc. How many paragraphs are given to this topic? Could all of them be put into one? Should they? What is the last part of the first sentence of this paragraph? Why are there so few topic sentences in this essay? How did Irving know where to paragraph? Give topics of the paragraphs on pages 16, 17, 18. In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of p. 17, why are the clothes of the man mentioned first? What method of paragraph development is adopted in the paragraph beginning in the middle of page 23? Is the last detail important? From the use on pages 24 and 25, what do you gather as to the rule for paragraphing where dialogue is reported? In the paragraph on page 40, what reason has Irving for saying "therefore"? From what sentence does the last of this paragraph arise? Do you think the specific closing of the paragraph worthy of the position? When Irving says on page 41 that he was "an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity," did he mean that he was shrewd, or that he was not shrewd? Can you find anything in the paragraphs to develop the thought that he was shrewd? How many paragraphs are given to his simple credulity? Why so many? In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 42, what advantage is there in the exclamatory sentences? Would it be as well to divide the next paragraph into three sentences? Give your reasons. As the paragraph stands, is the sentence loose or periodic? In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 45, what is the method of development? Why is the chanticleer mentioned last? Are Irving's sentences long? Do they seem long? Why, or why not? What is the relation of the first sentence of the first paragraph on page 55 to the last? What is the topic of the next paragraph? Do you think it would be just as well to put the second sentence of this paragraph last? In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 55, what method of development has been used? Why is the "blue jay" mentioned last? THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 119.) Do you think the first paragraph too long? Where can you divide it? What is the test of the length of a paragraph? At the bottom of page 67, do you think the first sentence of the paragraph the topic? or is it the last sentence? Give reasons. Is the detail at the end of the paragraph beginning on the middle of page 71 upon the topic of the paragraph? Is it good there? How do you know that Usher did not say "him"? Of the paragraph on page 73, what sentence is the topic? What proportion of the paragraphs have topic sentences? Have the others topics? Give them for the paragraphs on the first five pages. What method of paragraph development has Poe adopted in the paragraph beginning in the middle of page 81? What is the relation between the opening and the close of the paragraph? Why is the middle needed? Do you like the second sentence of the next paragraph? What is there disagreeable in it? As you read along do the paragraphs run into one another? Is such a condition good? SILAS MARNER. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 83.) Divide paragraphs on pages 10 and 11. What is the topic of each of the new paragraphs? In the first paragraph of chapter two each sentence grows out of the one preceding. Put two lines under the words in each sentence which are the source of the next sentence. Draw one line under the words in each sentence which refer back to the preceding sentence. In the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 94, what is the topic sentence? What relation has the last sentence to the first? What method of development in the paragraph? Can the paragraphs of exposition usually be divided? Do they violate unity? If not, upon what principle can you divide them? What is the tendency in regard to the length of paragraphs in recent literature? * * * * * CHAPTER VIII SENTENCES Definition and Classification. Simple Sentences. A sentence is a group of words expressing a complete thought. Sentences have been classified as simple, complex, and compound. In reality there are but two classes of sentences,--simple and compound. It is not material to the construction of a sentence whether a modifier be a word, a phrase, or a clause; it still remains an adjective, adverb, or noun modifier, and the method in which the subject and predicate are developed is the same. By means of modifiers, a subject and predicate of but two words may grow to the size of a paragraph, and yet be a group of words expressing one complete thought. In the sentence below, the subject and predicate are "we are free." This does not, however, express Burke's complete thought. It is not what he meant. Free to do what? How free? When may it be done? Why now? What bill? All these introduce modifications to the simple assertion, "we are free," modifications which are essential to the completeness of the thought. "By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American government as we were on the first day of the session." Compound Sentences. On the other hand, the compound sentence is usually said to consist of at least two independent clauses; and the very fact of their independence, which is only a grammatical independence, to be sure, makes the clauses very nearly independent sentences. So near to sentences may the clauses be in their independence that some writers would make them so. The following group of sentences Kipling certainly could have handled in another way. "The reason for her wandering was simple enough. Coppy, in a tone of too hastily assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river. And she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson." Certainly the last two sentences could be united into a compound sentence, nor would it be straining the structure to put all three sentences into one. This example is not exceptional. Many similar cases may be found in all prose writers; and in Macaulay's writings there are certainly occasions when it would be better to unite independent sentences. If the fundamental ideas of the two clauses bear certain definite and evident relations to each other, they should stand in one compound sentence. These evident relations are: first, an assertion and its repetition in some other form; second, an assertion and its contrast; third, an assertion and its consequence; and fourth, an assertion and an example. If the clauses do not bear one of these evident relations to each other, they should receive special attention; for they may be two separate, independent thoughts requiring for their expression two sentences. The following sentences illustrate the common relations that may exist between the clauses of a compound sentence. _Repetition._ "Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a promise or history." "But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant religion." _Contrast._ "If the people approve the way in which these authorities are interpreting and using the Constitution, they go on; if the people disapprove, they pause, or at least slacken their pace." "Every court is equally bound to pronounce, and competent to pronounce, on such questions, a State court no less than a Federal court; but as all the more important questions are carried by appeal to the supreme Federal court, it is practically that court whose opinion determines them." _Consequence._ "The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, _therefore,_ been the scene of marauding, and infested with refugees, cow-boys, and all kinds of border chivalry." _Example._ "He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together." There is another condition which masses many details into one compound sentence. If in narration a writer wishes to give the impression that many things are done in a moment of time, and together form one incident, he may group many circumstances, nearly independent except for the matter of time, into one compound sentence. In description he may present groups of details hastily in one sentence, and so give the impression of unity. The same thing may be done in exposition. Many independent ideas may bear a common relation to another idea, either expressed or understood; and in order to get them before the reader as one whole, the author may group them in a single sentence. The examples below illustrate this method of sentence development. _Narration._ "For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper's wrath passed across his mind, for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskillful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse's backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder."[43] _Description._ "In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock oranges and conch shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds' eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china."[43] _Exposition._ "That perfection of the Intellect, which is the result of Education, and its _beau idéal,_ to be imparted to individuals in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres."[44] (Notice the use of the semicolon in the last two groups of sentences. The parts of compound sentences such as these should be separated by semicolons.) Short Sentences. Having determined approximately what relations may be grouped in a single sentence, the first question for consideration is whether sentences should be long or short. This cannot be definitely answered. Since they should be concise, the short sentence is well suited for definitions. Since a proposition should be announced in as few words as can be used, without sacrificing brevity to clearness, short sentences serve best for this purpose. As changes in the direction of the development of a thought should be quickly indicated, a short sentence is generally used for transition. And as at times when the mind is under a stress of strong feeling, or the action of a story is rapid, all explanatory matters are cut away, the barest statements in shortest sentences serve best to express strong emotion and rapid action. Long Sentences. Long sentences have the very opposite uses. To amplify a topic, to develop a proposition by repetition, by details, by proofs, or by example, long sentences are serviceable; by them the finer modifications of a thought can be expressed. So, too, a summary of a paragraph or a chapter frequently employs long sentences to express the whole thought with precision and with proper subordination of parts. Again, as short sentences best express haste and intensity, so long sentences give the feeling of quiet deliberation and dignified calm. Illustrations of definitions, propositions, transitions, and exemplifications are to be found everywhere. Slow movement expressed by long sentences is well illustrated in Irving and Hawthorne. One selection from George Meredith, to show the peculiar adaptation of the short sentence to express intensity of feeling, is given. Richard Feverel has just learned that the wife whom he had deserted has borne him a son. Description and narration are mingled. The short, nervous sentences express both the vividness of his impressions and the intensity of his emotions. "A pale gray light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the dawn. Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched woods lay all about his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths, where the peasants halt to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and saw the Virgin holding her Child. He moved not by. But not many steps had he gone before the strength went out of him, and he shuddered. What was it? He asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's touch. With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths; they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he had a sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again." Unity. In a sentence, as in a theme or a paragraph, the first question regarding its structure is what to put into it. The germ of a paragraph is usually a sentence; of the sentence it is one word or but very few words. This kernel of a sentence may be developed through the many modifications of the thought; but always the additions must be distinctly related to the germ words. If this relation of parts to the kernel of the sentence be unmistakable, the sentence has unity; if there are parts whose connection with the germ of the sentence cannot be easily traced, they should be rejected as belonging to another sentence. The pith of the whole sentence can be stated in a few words, if the sentence has unity. Long sentences should be watched. One thing easily suggests another, interesting too, it may be; and when an essay is to be written, anything,--especially if it have so worthy a quality as interest to recommend it,--anything is allowed to go in. Such a sentence as the following can be explained on no other principle: "Just then James came rushing downstairs like mad to find the fellow who had punched a hole in the tire of his bicycle, which was a Columbia which he got two years before at a second-hand store, paying for it in work at fifteen cents an hour." Plainly everything after "bicycle" is nothing to the present purpose and should be excluded. The following from a description of Cologne Cathedral is as bad, in some respects, worse; for there is one point where the break is so abrupt that a child would detect it. "The superintendence was intrusted to Mr. Ahlert, whose ideas were not well adapted to inspire him for his grand task, under his direction much of the former beauty and artistical skill was lost sight of, but at all events it was a great satisfaction to see the work go on and to have the expenses defrayed by the State." In this case the writer, beyond doubt, thinks long sentences the correct thing. Long sentences are necessary at times; but the desire simply to write long sentences or to fill up space should never lead one to forget that a sentence is the expression of one--not more--of one complete thought. On the other hand, sentences should contain the whole of one thought; none of it should run over into another sentence. Strange as it may seem, sentences are sometimes found like the following: "James was on the whole a bad boy. But he had some redeeming qualities." "The first day at school was all new to me. While it was interesting as well." "He said that he was going. And that I might go with him." There is no ground for an explanation of such errors as these except laziness and grossest illiteracy. It is by no device so simple as the insertion of a period that man can separate what has been joined in thought. _And_ and _but_ rarely begin sentences; in nearly all cases it will be found that the sentences they purport to connect are but the independent clauses of one compound sentence. _While_ or any other subordinating conjunction introduces a dependent clause; a dependent clause is not a sentence; it can never stand alone. The offenses against the unity of a sentence are including too much and including too little. Both are the result of carelessness or inability to think. The purpose, the kernel, the germ of the sentence, should be so clearly in mind that every necessary modification of the thought shall be included and every unnecessary phrase be excluded. Some further suggestions concerning unity are found in the paragraphs treating primarily of mass and coherence. Mass. As advance is made in the ability to grasp quickly the thought of a book, it becomes more and more evident that the eye must be taken into account when arranging the parts of a composition. The eye sees the headings of the chapters; it catches the last words of one paragraph and the first words of the next; it lights upon the words near the periods; so the parts of a composition should be arranged so that these points shall contain worthy words. Moreover, within the sentence the colon marks the greatest independence of the parts; the semicolon comes next; and the comma marks the smallest division of thought. Following the guidance of the eye, then, the words before a period should be the most important; those near a colon, a semicolon, and a comma will have a descending scale of value. A speaker has no difficulty with punctuation; unconsciously he pauses with the thought. So true is this, that one is inclined to say that if the writer will read aloud his own composition, and punctuate where he pauses in the reading, always remembering the rank of the marks of punctuation, he will not be far from right. It will be noticed that he has paused in the reading after important words, as if the thought stayed a moment there for the help of the reader. Naturally we pause after important words; and conversely, the places of importance in a sentence are near the marks of punctuation, increasing from the comma to the period. End of a Sentence. The end of a sentence is more important than the beginning; and the difference in value is greater than in a paragraph. In a paragraph the opening is very important, generally containing the topic. In a sentence, however, the beginning more often has some phrase of transition, or some modifier; while it is the end that contains the gist of the sentence. This fact makes it imperative that no unworthy matter stand at the end. How important a position it is, and how much is expected of the final words of a sentence, is evident from the effect of failure produced by a sentence that closes with weak words. In the following sentences, phrases have been moved from their places; the weakness is apparent. Abstract liberty is not to be found; and this is true of other mere abstractions. This is a persuasion built upon liberty, and not only favorable to it. I pass, therefore, to their agriculture, another point of view. Of course Burke never wrote such sentences as these. However, sentences like them can be found in school compositions. "Lincoln's character is worthy to be any young man's ideal; having in it much to admire." "Euclid Avenue, with its broad lawns, and with Wade Park as the fitting climax of its spacious beauty, is the most attractive driveway in the United States, which is saying a good deal." "Minnesota has many beautiful lakes; Mille Lacs, fringed with dark pines; Osakis, with its beach of glistening sand; Minnetonka, skirted by a lovely boulevard bordered by cool lawns and cosy cottages; and many others not so big." Such sentences as these are not uncommon. Their ruin is wrought by the closing words. Watch for trailing relatives, dangling participles, and straggling generalities at the end of sentences. The end of a sentence is a position of distinction; it should be held by words of distinction. So influential is position in a sentence that by virtue of it a word or a clause of equal rank with others can be made to take on a certain added authority. By observing the end of a sentence, a reader can determine what was uppermost in the mind of an author careful of these things. In the following sentence as it was written by Burke the emphasis is on the duration of the time; but by a change of position it is put upon the fact. "Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion; and ever will be so, as long as the world endures." Changing the last clause it reads, "and, as long as the world endures, ever will be so." This is not weak; but the stress is not where Burke placed it. The position of the words gives them an importance that does not inhere in the words themselves. Effect of Anti-climax. Still, as the tenure of a place of distinction cannot save a fool from the reputation of folly, position in a sentence cannot redeem empty words from their truly insipid character. Indeed, as the imbecility of a shallow pate is made all the more apparent by a position of distinction, so is the utter unfitness of certain words for their position painfully manifest. This is the secret of anti-climax. By reason of its very position in a sentence, the last phrase should be distinguished; instead the position is held by a silly nothing. Disappointing anti-climaxes, like those already cited, are frequently made by young writers; and they are sometimes met with in the works of the best authors. The following sentence is from Newman: from the point of view of an ardent churchman, it may be a climax; but from the point of view of the general reader who considers the whole greater than any of its parts, in spite of all the sense preceding the final phrase, that is absurd and disappointing nonsense. "I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called university, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a university which had no professors and examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these methods was the better discipline of the intellect,--mind, I do not say which is _morally_ the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief,--but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, and enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that university which did nothing, over that which exacted an acquaintance with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What could come, on the other hand, of the ideal systems of education which have fascinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually considered, is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that the universities and scholastic establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,--I say, at least, they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it is,--able to subdue the earth, _able to domineer over Catholics._"[45] Use of Climax. From what has been said, it is evident that the parts of a sentence, as far as may be, should be arranged in a climax. The climax should be in the thought, with a corresponding increase in the weight of the phrases. If the thoughts increase in importance, the words that express them should increase in number. The number of words in the treatment bears a pretty constant ratio to the importance of the subject treated. The paragraph quoted from Newman is an excellent illustration of the use of climax,--until it comes to that last phrase. Note in the first sentence the repetition of the condition, three times repeated. Change the second to the third and see how different it is. Then he has "public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity,"--a steady increase in the thought, and a corresponding increase in the length of phrases. The last sentence contains a fine example of climax. "Of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it is,--able to subdue the earth." Climax is the arrangement that produces the effect of vigorous strength. In arranging a succession of modifiers, so far as possible without breaking some other more important principle, a writer will gain in force if he seeks for climax. Loose and Periodic. Sentences are divided into two classes: loose and periodic. A loose sentence may be broken at some point before the end, and up to that point be grammatically a complete sentence. An arrangement of the parts of a sentence that suspends the meaning until the close is called periodic. The periodic sentence is generally so massed that the end contains words of distinction, and the sentence forms a climax. Not all climaxes are periods; but nearly all periods are climaxes. The Period. The philosophy of the periodic sentence has been best stated by Herbert Spencer. He starts with the axiom that the whole amount of attention a reader can give at any moment is limited and fixed. A reader must give a part of it to merely acquiring the meaning; the remainder of his attention he can give to the thought itself. In reading Cicero the pupil has to put a large part of his attention upon the vocabulary, upon the order and construction of the words; the barest fragment of attention he can bestow upon the thought of the great orator. So when the reader attacks one of Browning's most involved and obscure passages, he is kept from the thought by the difficulties in the language. As it is the purpose of language to convey thought, and as it is usually the wish of an author to be understood, he should use up as little as possible of the reader's limited attention for the mere acquisition of the thought, and leave the reader as much as he can to put upon the meaning. In applying this to sentences, the question is, which form of sentence demands least effort to get at its meaning: the periodic sentence, which suspends the meaning to the end; or the loose sentence, which may be broken at several points and gives its meaning in installments? The old example is as good as any: shall we say as the French do, a horse black; or shall we say as the English do, a black horse? for in the arrangement of these three words there lies the difference between a loose and a periodic sentence. Consider the French order first. When a person hears the words "a horse," he at once thinks of the horse he knows best; that is, generally, a bay horse. When the word "black" follows, the whole image has to be changed from the bay horse he knows to the black horse he has occasionally seen. There has been a waste of attention. On the other hand, when the words "a black" are heard, the mind constructs no image; it waits until the noun modified is spoken. Then the whole image springs up at once; it is correct and it needs no remodeling. The following sentence illustrates the point. "I am wasting time" is the beginning. It would be difficult to enumerate the many thoughts suggested by these words; each person has his own idea of wasting time. When the rest of the sentence is added, "trying to learn my geometry lesson," the whole has to be reconstructed. On the other hand the periodic statement suspends the meaning to the end. There is no place where, without additions to the words used, the mind can rest. "Trying to learn a geometry lesson is for me a waste of time." Theoretically the periodic sentence is better than the loose sentence; for it economizes attention. There is another side to the question, however. If the details be many, and if each be long, they would be more than the mind could carry without great effort; and instead of economy of attention, there is improvident waste. The mind will carry a long, carefully arranged period at intervals; but a succession of periods is sure to result in its absolute refusal to do so any longer. There is a limit to the length of a period that economizes attention; and there is a limit to the number of successive periods which a reader can endure. Periodic and Loose combined. There is another form of sentence, which combines the loose and the periodic. It generally begins with the periodic form and sustains this until it is better to relieve the mind of the stress, when the period ends or the loose structure begins; and the sentence may as a whole be periodic while containing parts that are loose. This kind of sentence is a common form for long sentences. It gives to prose much of the dignity of the period, together with the familiarity of the loose sentence. The sentence below may be changed, by putting the last clause first, to a loose sentence; and by placing it after the word "subject" it becomes mixed. "By all persons who have written of the subject, for the grandeur of its mountains and the deep quiet of its green valleys for the leaping torrents of its foaming rivers and blue calm of its crag-walled lakes, Switzerland has been named 'the Paradise of Europe.'" The following paragraph from Burke contains examples of loose, periodic, and mixed sentences:-- "To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so distracted as, ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, some confidence from what in other circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or adventitious, I was very sure that, if my proposition were futile or dangerous--if it were weakly conceived, or improperly timed,--there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or delude you. You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it just as it deserves."[46] Which shall be used? Which shall be used, loose sentences or periodic? In literature the loose more frequently occur. They are informal and conversational, and are especially suited to letter-writing, story-telling, and the light essay. The period is formal; it has the air of preparation. The oration, the formal essay, well-wrought argument,--forms of literature where preparation is expected,--may use the period with good effect. It has a finish, a scholarly refinement, not found in the loose sentence; and yet a series of periods would be as much out of place in a letter as a court regalia at a downtown restaurant. The loose sentence is easy, informal, and familiar; the periodic is stiff, artificial, and aristocratic. To use none but loose sentences gives a composition an air of familiarity even to the verge of vulgarity; to employ only periodic sentences induces a feeling of stiff artificiality bordering on bombast. The fitness of each for its purpose is the guide for its use. There is, however, a reason why young persons should be encouraged to use periodic sentences. Usually they compose short sentences, so there is little danger of overburdening the reader's attention. With this danger removed, the result of the generous use of periodic sentences will be nothing worse than a too obvious preparation. The sentences will all be finished to a degree, and unquestionably will give a feeling of artificiality. However, the attention to sentence-structure necessary in order to make it periodic is a thing devoutly to be wished at this stage of growth. No other fault is so common in sentence-construction as carelessness. A theme will be logically outlined, a paragraph carefully planned, but a sentence,--anybody standing on one foot can make a sentence. A well-turned sentence is a work of art, and it is never made in moments when the writer "didn't think." The end must be seen at the beginning: else it does not end; it plays out. There is no other remedy for careless, slipshod sentence-making so effective as the construction of many periodic sentences. Not only will there be care in the arrangement of the material, but when all details must be introduced before the principal thought, there will be little chance of any phrase slipping into the sentence that does not in truth belong there. Dangling participles, trailing relatives, and straggling generalities can find no chance to hang on to a periodic sentence. Every detail must be a real and necessary modification of the germ thought of the sentence, else it can hardly be forced in. Periodic sentences, then, besides insuring a careful finish to the work, are also a safeguard against the introduction of irrelevant material,--the commonest offense against sentence-unity. Emphasis by Change of Order. Closely connected with the emphasis gained by the periodic arrangement of the parts of a sentence is the emphasis gained by forcing words out of their natural order. In a sentence the points which arrest the eye and the attention are the beginning and the end. However, if the subject stands first and the words of the predicate in their natural order, there is no more emphasis upon them than these important elements of a sentence ordinarily deserve. To emphasize either it is necessary to force it out of its natural position. "George next went to Boston," is the natural order of this sentence. Supposing, however, that a writer wished to emphasize the fact that it was George who went next, not James or Fred, he could do it by forcing the word "George" from its present natural position to a position unnatural. He could write, "It was George who next went to Boston," or, "The next to go to Boston was George." Forcing the subject toward the position usually occupied by the predicate emphasizes the subject. This is similar to the emphasis given by the period. "It was George" is so far periodic, followed by the loose structure; and the last arrangement is quite periodic. Every device for throwing the subject back into the sentence makes the sentence up to the point where the subject is introduced periodic; this arrangement throws the emphasis forward to the word that closes the period. Other parts of a sentence may be emphasized by being placed out of their natural order. In the natural order, adjectives and adverbs precede the words they modify; conditional and concessive clauses precede the clauses they modify; an object follows a verb; and prepositional phrases and adjective clauses follow the words they modify. These rules are general. Moving a part of a sentence from this general order usually emphasizes it. "George went to Boston next" emphasizes a little the time; but "Next George went to Boston" places great emphasis on the time. So "It was to Boston that George went next" emphasizes the place. "Went" cannot be so dealt with. It seems irrevocably fixed that in a prose declarative sentence the verb shall never stand first. It is not allowed by good use. The rearrangement of the following sentence illustrates the emphasis given by putting words out of their natural order:-- The strong and swarthy sailors of the Patria slowly rowed the party to the shore. The sailors of the Patria, strong and swarthy, slowly rowed the party to the shore. Slowly the strong and swarthy sailors of the Patria rowed the party to the shore. Of the steamer Patria, the sailors, strong and swarthy, rowed the party to the shore. To show the arrangement of clauses the following will be sufficient:-- He cannot make advancement, even if he studies hard. Even if he studies hard, he cannot make advancement. "Your Irish pensioners would starve, if they had no other fund to live on than the taxes granted by English authority." If they had no other fund to live on than the taxes granted by English authority, your Irish pensioners would starve. The latter arrangement emphasizes the conclusion much more than the former; at the same time it subordinates the condition. Burke wished the emphasis to be upon the condition; he placed it after the conclusion. Subdue Unimportant Elements. Emphasis is gained by placing words in important positions in a sentence by arranging the parts to form a climax; by the use of the period; by forcing words out of their natural order. It is also gained by the subdual of parts not important. This emphasis is a matter of relative intensity. The beauty and strength of any artistic product depend as much upon the subdual of the accessories as upon the intensifying of the necessaries. In order to get the emphasis upon certain phrases, it is necessary to subordinate other phrases. In the talk of a child every thought phrases itself as a simple sentence. Not until it grows to youth does the child recognize that there is a difference in values, and adopt means for expressing it. To grasp firmly the principal idea and then subdue all other ideas is an elegant way of emphasizing. The subdual of parts is accomplished by reducing to subordinate clauses, to phrases, to words, some of the ideas which in a child's talk would be expressed in sentences. A thought of barely enough importance to be mentioned should be squeezed into a word. If it deserves more notice, perhaps a prepositional phrase will express it. A participial phrase will often serve for a clause or a sentence. A subordinate clause may be needed if the thought is of great importance. And last, if it deserves such a distinction, the thought may demand an independent clause or a sentence for itself. If the following sentence be broken into bits as a child would tell it, the nice effects of emphasis which Irving has given it are ruined:-- "When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war."[47] Put into simple sentences, it would be like this: The dance was at an end. Ichabod was attracted to a knot of folks. The folks were older. They sat at the end of the piazza. Old Van Tassel was with them. They were smoking, etc. In such sentences, nothing is emphatic; it is all alike. In Irving's sentences, where ideas are reduced to clause, phrase, even a word, there is no question about what is important and what is unimportant. He has secured an exquisite emphasis by a discriminating subdual of subordinate ideas. This brings up the sentences by Kipling already quoted on page 201. The author has used three independent sentences. They can be written as one, thus: The reason of her wandering was simple enough; for Coppy, in a tone of too-hastily-assumed authority, had told her over night that she must not ride out by the river, and she had gone to prove her own spirit and teach Coppy a lesson. There is a reason, however, why Kipling wished that last sentence to stand alone. Subordinated as it is here rewritten, it does not half express the spiteful independence she assumed to teach Coppy a lesson. It needs the independent construction. Just as surely as Kipling is right in putting the reasons into two sharp, independent sentences, is Irving right when he puts the reason in the following sentence into a subordinate clause. It is not important enough to deserve a sentence all by itself. "He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's 'History of New England Witchcraft,' in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed." In the following sentence the effect of subordination is unmistakable:-- "He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear _which_ made a clean mark down one cheek." Now read it again:-- "He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass; yet it is certain that he shed a tear, _and the tear_ made a clean mark down one cheek." The last clause has burst away from its former submission, and in its independence has made the most important announcement of the sentence,--the witty climax. Emphasis is, to a large degree, a matter of position, but position cannot emancipate any clause from the thralldom of subordination. To emphasize one idea, subordinate ancillary ideas; make them take their proper rank in the sentence. Reduce them to a clause or to a phrase; and if a word justly expresses the relative importance of the thought, reduce its expression to a single word. The Dynamic Point of a Sentence. In the chapter on paragraphs it was said that one sentence is often the source of the succeeding sentence; that such a sentence seemed to be charged like a Leyden jar, and to discharge its whole power through a single word or phrase; and further, that this word or phrase should be left free to act,--it should be uncovered. How a sentence can be arranged so that this word or phrase shall have the prominence it deserves, and can unhindered transmit the undiminished force of one sentence to the next, has now been explained. First, such words can be made dynamic by placing them at the beginning or the end of a sentence; second, by placing them near the major marks of punctuation; third, by forcing them from their natural order; and fourth, by the subdual of the other parts of the sentence. The greatest care in massing sentences so that none of their power be lost in transmission is one of the secrets of the literature that carries the reader irresistibly forward. Sometimes he may be annoyed by the repetition of phrases; but he cannot get away; he must go forward. In the paragraph below, quoted from Matthew Arnold, every phrase that is the point from which the next sentence springs is in a position where it can act untrammeled. Through it the whole force of the sentence passes:-- "It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and that, by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it condemns itself as a slow and obscure work. Slow and obscure it may be, but it is the only proper work of criticism. The mass of mankind will never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate ideas will satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush and uproar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England. But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually threaten him."[48] Good Use. Good use has been mentioned. In massing the parts of a sentence for the purpose of emphasizing some idea, a writer has not entire freedom. Good use, which is the use of acknowledged masters, decides what may be done. There are certain arrangements of words to which we are accustomed; and the disregard of them leads to obscurity or downright contrariety in the thought. "Brutus stabbed Cæsar" is the common order; "Brutus Cæsar stabbed," or "Stabbed Brutus Cæsar," is obscure; while "Cæsar stabbed Brutus" is the very opposite of the truth. Those who have studied Latin know that as far as understanding the sentence is concerned, it would make no difference in which order the three Latin words should be arranged; though it would make a mighty difference in the emphasis. In Latin the case endings determine the construction of the words. In an inflected language the words may be massed almost to suit the writer; in an uninflected language, within certain limits the order determines the relation between groups of words. Though for emphasis it might be advisable to have the object first, for the sake of clearness in a short sentence the object cannot stand first. The primary consideration in making any piece of literature is that it may be understood. To be understood, the sentence must be arranged in the order to which we are accustomed. The order to which we are accustomed has been determined by good use. The variety in the arrangement of the parts of a sentence that has been sanctioned by good usage is great, yet there are limits. Grammar is based upon the usage of the best writers. Any offense against the grammar of our language is a sin against good use. Browning may use constructions so erratic that the ordinary reader does not know what he is reading about; Carlyle may forge a new word rather than take the trouble to find one that other people have used. But the young writer, at least, is far safer while keeping within the limits of good use. Clearness gained by Coherence. Coherence in a sentence is that principle of structure by which its parts are best arranged to stick together. The parts of a sentence containing related ideas should be so associated that there can be no mistake regarding the reference or the modification. Such a sentence as the following cannot be understood; the reference is obscure. "James told him that he did not see what he was to do in the matter." If the reader were sure of the first "he," he could not come nearer than a guess at the reference of the second "he." The third personal pronoun--he, she, it--in all its cases is especially uncertain in its references. The first sentence below is from an English grammar. The second is from a recently published biography. Both are obscure in the reference of the pronouns. "When 'self' is added to a pronoun of the First and Second person, it is preceded by the Possessive case. But when it is added to a pronoun of the Third person, it is preceded by a pronoun in the Objective case." "I am reminded of Swinburne's view of Providence when he said that he never saw an old gentleman give a sixpence to a beggar, but he was straightway run over by a 'bus." The relative pronoun is also uncertain in its references. Some Southerners were among the ship's passengers, of whom a few had served in the Rebellion. (Obscure reference.) Red lights were displayed in a peculiar succession, which warned of impending storm. (No antecedent.) To make the reference of pronouns, personal and relative, distinct, the antecedent must be made prominent; sometimes the only way out of the difficulty is a repetition of the antecedent. And the pronoun should stand near the word to which it refers. Keep associated ideas together. Like pronouns in the uncertainty of their reference are participles. Either the subject is not expressed, or it is uncertain. Hastening up the steps, the door opened. (None.) Coming from the spring, with a pail of water in either hand, he saw her for the first time. (Uncertain.) Adverbs are sometimes placed so that they make a sentence ridiculous; and frequently their meaning is lost by being separated from the words they modify. "Only" is a word to be watched. Like adverbs are correlative conjunctions. They are frequently so placed that they do not join the elements they were intended to unite. He seized the young girl as she rose from the water almost roughly. I think I hardly shall. I only went as far as the gate. "Who shall say, of us who know only of rest and peace by toil and strife?" He not only learned algebra readily but also Latin. Phrases and clauses may lose their reference by being removed from the words they modify. Toiling up the hill, he arrived at Hotel Bellevue through a drizzling rain. Addison rose to a post which dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honor to fill without high birth, and with little property. "Fred was liked well; but he had the habit of that class that cannot get the English Language in the right order when a little excited." All the classes of errors which have been exemplified here are due to the infringement of one rule: things that belong together in thought should stand together in composition. Nothing should be allowed to come between a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb, a correlative, a phrase, or a clause, and the word it modifies. Sometimes other modifiers have to be taken into account: where more than one word or phrase modifies the same word, a trial will have to be made to arrange them so that there shall be no obscurity or absurdity. Keep related ideas together; keep unrelated ideas apart. Parallel Construction. The second principle which helps to make the relation of parts clear is parallel construction. It has already been explained in paragraphs. In sentences the commonest errors are in linking an infinitive with a gerund, a participle with a verb, an active with a passive voice, a phrase with a clause. The result is sentences like the following:-- You cannot persuade him to go and into buying what he does not want. Thus he spoke, and turning to the door. The king began to force the collection of duties, and an army was sent by him to execute his wishes. He was resolved to use patience and that he would often exercise charity. Such sentences are offensive to the ear; and were they as long as the ones below, they would not be clear. "You cannot persuade them _to burn_ their books of curious science; _to banish_ their lawyers from their courts of laws; or _to quench_ the lights of their assemblies by refusing to choose those persons who are best read in their privileges." "For though rebellion is declared, it _is_ not _proceeded against_ as such, nor _have_ any steps _been taken_ towards the apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, either on our late or our former Address; but modes of public coercion _have been adopted,_ and such as have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility towards an independent power than the punishment of rebellious subjects." "My Resolutions therefore mean TO ESTABLISH the equity and justice of a taxation of America by grant and not by imposition; TO MARK the legal competency of the colony Assemblies for the support of their government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; TO ACKNOWLEDGE _that this legal competency has had_ a dutiful and beneficial exercise; and _that experience has shown_ the benefit of their grants, and the futility of Parliamentary taxation as a method of supply."[49] In the second sentence Burke has used a passive voice when it would certainly be more elegant to change to the active. "Is proceeded against" is surely awkward, but for uniformity and resulting clearness he has retained the passive. In the last sentence the infinitives "to establish," "to mark," and "to acknowledge" are in the same construction; they are objects of "mean." Then comes a change of form to show that the clauses "that this legal competency has had," etc., and "that experience has shown," etc., are in a like relation to the infinitive "to acknowledge." Though the last clause by reason of the punctuation looks correlative with the others, it is not related as object to the verb "mean," as the others are, but it is the object of "to acknowledge." There could hardly be a better example of the value of parallel constructions for the purpose of avoiding confusion, and linking together parts that are related. Balanced Sentences. Parallel constructions are used in balanced sentences. In balanced sentences one part is balanced against another,--a noun and a noun, an adjective and an adjective, phrase and phrase. Balanced sentences are especially suited to express antithesis, the figure of speech where two ideas are sharply opposed to each other. In the following from Newman, the balancing is admirable: "Inebriated with the cup of insanity, and flung upon the stream of recklessness, she dashes down the cataract of nonsense and whirls amid the pools of confusion." This is not antithesis, however; but the following from Macaulay is: "She seems to have written about the Elizabethan age, because she had read much about it; she seems, on the other hand, to have read a little about the age of Addison, because she had determined to write about it." The danger in the use of balanced sentences is excess. Macaulay is very fond of brilliant contrasts. _But_ is a very common word with him. In some cases the reader feels that for the sake of the figure he has forced the truth. Balanced sentences are palpably artificial, and should be used but sparingly. There is, however, but little danger of overdoing the parallel construction where there is no antithesis. The parts of succeeding sentences do not resemble each other so much in thought that there is great danger of resulting monotony in its expression. However, should the difficulty arise, the monotony may be broken up by a trifling variation. Macaulay has done this well in the sentences quoted on page 186, beginning with the words, "For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed," and continuing to the end of the paragraph. Use of Connectives. The third method of securing coherence in a sentence is by the use of connectives. The skillful use of prepositions and conjunctions indicates a master of words. The use of connectives has been discussed when treating of emphasis secured by subdual of unimportant details. Such parts are connected, and in a very definite way. The relations are evident. Two examples will illustrate. The first group of sentences are the fragments of but one of Irving's. He did not look to the right or left. He did not notice the scene. The scene was of rural wealth. He had often gloated on this scene. He went straight to the stable. He kicked and cuffed his steed several times, and so forth. Now note the value of prepositions in giving these separate sentences coherence. "Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most unceremoniously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover." The next also is from Irving, and shows the skillful use of conjunctions to point out unerringly the relation of the clauses in a sentence. "What seemed particularly odd to Rip was that, though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed." Coherence, the principle of structure that surely holds the parts of a sentence together, is of greater importance than Mass. Upon Coherence depends the meaning of a sentence; upon Mass the force with which the meaning is expressed. That the meaning may be clear, it is necessary that the relation of the parts shall be perfectly evident. This lucidity is gained by placing related parts near together, and conversely, by separating unrelated ideas; by using parallel constructions for parallel thoughts; and by indicating relations by the correct use of prepositions and conjunctions. To summarize, sentences are the elements of discourse. The ability of a sentence to effect with certainty its purpose depends upon Unity, Mass, and Coherence. A sentence must contain all that is needed to express the whole thought, but it must contain no more. A sentence must be arranged so that its important parts shall be prominent. Position and proportion are the means of emphasis in a sentence. By placing the important words near the major marks of punctuation, by arranging the parts in a climax or a period, by forcing words out of the natural order, and by subduing unimportant details, a sentence is massed to give the important elements their relative emphasis. Last, the parts of a sentence should be arranged so that their relations shall be clear and unmistakable. Proximity of related parts, parallel construction for parallel ideas, and connectives are the surest means of securing Coherence in a sentence. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS SILAS MARNER. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 83.) On page 18 put together the sentence beginning "Every man's work," etc., with the next. What connective and what punctuation will you use? What is the difference in effect? What one of the relations of a compound sentence does the second part bear to the first? On page 26 could you make two sentences of the sentence beginning, "Raveloe lay low among the bushy trees"? Would it be as well? Would it be better? On page 35 do the three parts of the compound sentence beginning, "He would have liked," etc., belong to one sentence? Which one? Is it right to say, "He would have liked to spring," or would it be better to say, "He would have liked to have sprung"? Do you think colons are used too frequently in Silas Marner? Compare their use with their use in Hawthorne's Stories and Irving's Sketches. In the sentence beginning, "Let him live," etc., at the bottom of page 94, is "a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming," a climax or an anti-climax? Why? At the bottom of page 183 why was it necessary to crowd so much into one sentence? MACAULAY'S ESSAY ON MILTON. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 103.) Re-write the sentence on page 33 beginning, "Of all poets," etc., making it loose. Is it better or worse? Why does "here" stand first in the next sentence? What poets with whom you are familiar have philosophized too much? Is the first sentence of the paragraph beginning in the middle of page 36 periodic or loose? How many periodic sentences in this paragraph? In the paragraph on pages 37 and 38 trace the relation of the succeeding sentences. At the bottom of page 45 what is the reason for putting first in the sentence, "of those principles"? What do you think of the massing of the whole sentence? What has been made emphatic? Note the last two sentences at the end of the paragraph on page 58. Is their arrangement effective? Change one. What is the effect? (See also the middle of page 64.) On page 60 why did he not say, "She grovels like a beast, she hisses like a serpent, she stings like a scorpion"? What arrangement of clauses in the first sentence in the paragraph beginning at the bottom of page 66? Does it add clearness? In the same paragraph find a balanced sentence. What advantage is there in the short sentences on page 68? In the first sentence of the paragraph, beginning on page 71, read one of the clauses, "by whom king, church, and aristocracy were trampled down." What is the effect of the change? Is the parallel construction in the last sentence beginning on page 77 good? Is it good in the last sentence of this paragraph? In the next paragraph, why is Macaulay's way better than this: "He was neither Puritan, free thinker, nor royalist"? When a sentence is introduced by a participial phrase or a dependent clause it is in part or wholly periodic. Does Macaulay frequently use this introduction? What is the effect upon his style? Can you find examples of sentences beginning with a loose structure, and having within them examples of the periodic structure? In the paragraph filling pages 79 and 80 there are many examples of periodic and parallel structure. Contrast this paragraph with some of Lamb's paragraphs. What is the effect of position upon the phrase, "Even in his hands," on page 67? When Macaulay inverts the order of a sentence does he usually do it for emphasis or to secure coherence? Does he use many pronouns and conjunctions? Does he repeat words? BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 100.) How many sentences in the first paragraph are periodic? What kind of sentences in paragraph 10? What is the effect of this paragraph? Notice the arrangement of loose and periodic clauses in the last sentence in paragraph 12. Make this sentence entirely loose. In the long sentence in paragraph 25 do the he's and him's all refer to the same person? What would you say of Burke's use of pronouns? Find examples of balanced sentences in this oration. Are you ever astray regarding Burke's meaning? What has he done to gain clearness? For what purpose does he frequently use questions? WEBSTER'S BUNKER HILL ORATION. (Riverside Literature Series, No. 56.) What relation has the second sentence of paragraph 1 to the first? Is the last sentence in paragraph 3 clear? How has he made it so? Compare this sentence with the one beginning at the bottom of page 12. In the last sentence of paragraph 6 where does loose structure change to the periodic? In paragraph 7 why would it be a blemish to write, "That we may keep alive similar sentiments"? Why does he repeat "We wish" so many times? Why did he not substitute synonyms? In paragraph 18 why has he used the word "interest" more than once? If the thought is to be repeated, why not some other word? In the eighth sentence of paragraph 21 is the structure periodic or loose? Reverse the order of clauses in the last sentence of paragraph 28. What is the effect? * * * * * CHAPTER IX WORDS A word is the sign of an idea. Whether the idea be an object, a quality, an action, simple existence, or a relation, if it be communicated to another, it must have some sign; in language these signs are words. Infinitely varied are the ideas man has to express. Each day, each moment, has its new combination of circumstances; yet by the common person the effect of the novel situation is described as "horrid" or "awful" or "perfectly lovely." Three adjectives to describe all creation! No wonder that people are constantly misunderstood; that others do not get their ideas. How can they? Do the best the master can, the thought will not pass from him to his reader without considerable deflection. He cannot say exactly what he would. His words do not hold the same meaning for him as for others. "Mother" to him is a dear woman with a gentle voice, always dressed in black, sitting by the window of home; to another she is a shrieking termagant, whose phrases are punctuated by blows. There is not a word that means exactly the same to two persons; yet with words men must express their thoughts, their feelings, their hopes, their purposes,--always changing, ever new,--and for all this shall they use but a few score of words? Words are the last, least elements of language; without these least elements, these atoms of language, no sentence, however simple, can be made; by means of them, the master drives mobs to frenzy or soothes the pain of eternal loss. The calm and peace which Emerson knew, we know; the perpetual benediction of past years which Wordsworth felt, all may feel. These thoughts masters have expressed in words, but not in three words. Thousands are not enough accurately to transfer their visions of this changing universe from them to us. Ideas infinite in their variety demand for their expression all the means which our language has placed at the disposal of the master. For this true expression the whole dictionary with its thousands of words is all too small. Need of a Large Vocabulary. Whoever hopes to be understood must acquire a full, rich vocabulary. However clearly he may think, however much he may feel, until he has words, the thought, the emotion, must remain his alone. To get a vocabulary, then, is a person's business. He who has it can command him who has it not. Not in literature alone, but in business,--in medicine, in law, behind the accountant's desk or the salesman's counter,--he is master who can say what he means so that the person to whom he speaks must know just what he means. Now it is a singular truth that when we read any great author, the words which we do not understand are remarkably few. Even in Shakespeare there are not many; and the few are unknown by reason of a constantly changing vocabulary. It was probably true then, as it would certainly be to-day, that the large majority of audiences lost not a word of his fifteen thousand, while they themselves used less than eight hundred. We know what others say; yet we say nothing ourselves. What a vocabulary one could accumulate, if from six to eighteen he added only two words a day! Twelve years, and each year more than seven hundred words! It does not look a difficult task. Children do more, and never realize the superiority of their achievement. Nine thousand words at eighteen! Shakespeare alone used more. Macaulay needed scarcely six thousand. Dictionary. How shall a vocabulary be accumulated? One method is by the use of a dictionary; and many persons find it a source of great pleasure. The genealogy and biography of words are as fascinating to a devoted philologist as stamps to a philatelist or cathedrals to an architect. "Canteen" is quite an unassuming little word. Yet imperious Cæsar knew it in its childhood. The Roman camp was laid out like a small city, with regular streets and avenues. On one of these streets called the "Via Quintana" all the supplies were kept. When the word passed into the Italian, it became "cantina;" and cantinas may be found among all nations who have drawn their language from the Latin. There is this difference, however: that whereas eatables were to be had in the Roman quintana, only drinkables can be found in the Italian cantina. When the English adopted the word, the middle meaning, a place where wines are stored, a wine-cellar, came to be a small flask especially fitted for the rough usage of a soldier's life, in which a necessary supply of some sort of liquid may be carried. So the name of a street has become the much-berated canteen of the sutler and the much needed canteen of the soldier. The dictionary is full of such fascinating biographies. Still its fascination is not the reason why most people study the dictionary: it is because such a study is necessary for the person who hopes for an accurate knowledge of the words he reads. It is not impossible to know "pretty nearly what it means" from the context; but no master uses words without knowing exactly what they mean. Certainty of meaning precedes frequency of use; and this necessary confidence is gained from a study of the dictionary. In a general way we know all the words of Macaulay's vocabulary; but the average man uses only eight hundred of them. His knowledge of words is no more than an indistinct, mumbling knowledge. To lift each word out of its context, to make it a distinct, living entity, capable of serving, the definition must be studied. Then the student knows just what service the word is fitted for, and finds a pleasure in being competent to command that service. The dictionary is a necessity to the person who hopes to use words. Study of Literature. Yet the knowledge of words that the student derives from the dictionary is not sufficient. When one hears an educated foreigner speak, he detects little errors in his use of words,--errors which are not the fault of definition, but errors in the idiomatic use of words. This use cannot be learned from a dictionary, where words are studied individually, but only by studying them in combination with other words where the influence of one word upon another may be noted. There is little difference in the size of a pile of stones, whether we say a great pile of stones or a large pile of stones; but a great man is of much more consequence than a large man. A dictionary could hardly have told a foreigner this. A man may pursue or chase a robber, as the author wishes; but he may not chase a course. Prepositions are especially liable to be misused, and their correct use comes from a study of literature, not of the dictionary. The nice and discriminating refinements in the use of words are learned by careful reading. When a phrase is met, such as "the steep and solitary eastern heaven," where each word has been born to a new beauty; or this, "And the sweet city with her dreaming spires," where the adjectives "sweet" and "dreaming" have a richer content, they should be regarded with great care and greeted with even more delight than words entirely new. How to read that we may gain this complete mastery of words, Mr. Ruskin has best told us in "Sesame and Lilies." Every person should know "Of Kings' Treasuries" by reading and re-reading. Literature, the way masters have used words, will furnish a knowledge of the nicer discriminations in their use. The dictionary and literature are the sources of a full and refined vocabulary. But the vocabulary which may be perfectly understood is not entirely in one's possession until it is used. Seek the first opportunity to use the newly acquired word. It will be hard to utter it; you will feel an effort in getting it out. Only once, however; after that it rises as easily as any old familiar word. Because the companion with whom you speak is always "just as mad as" she can be, is no reason why you may not at times be vexed, annoyed, aggravated, exasperated, or angry. Men are not always either "perfectly lovely" or "awful;" neither are all ladies "jewels." There are degrees of villainy and nobility; and all jewels have not the same lustre. Know what you want to say, and find the one word that will exactly say it. This costs work, it is true; but what is there worth having which has not cost some one work? Do the work; search for the word; then use it. In this way a vocabulary becomes a real possession. The words which a person may use are generally described as reputable, national, and present. Words must be reputable; that is, sanctioned by the authority of the creators of English literature. They must be national; words that are the property of the mass of the people, not of a clique or a district. And they must be of the present; Chaucer's vocabulary, though it be the source of English, will not satisfy the conditions of to-day. Vulgarisms are not reputable. First, words must be of reputable use. No person would consider vulgarisms reputable. When a person says "I hain't got none," he has reached about the acme of vulgarisms, the language of the illiterate. Grammar has been disregarded; a word has been used which is not a word; and another word has no reason for its appearance in the sentence. Yet sometimes this expression is heard; seldom seen written. It is always set down to the account of an illiterate home; for no one can reach a high school without knowing its grammatical errors. The unerring use of _don't, me, I, lie, lay, set,_ and _sit,_ is not so assured that the list can be omitted. Adjectives are used for adverbs; "real good" is not yet forgotten. Nouns are called upon to do the work of verbs. This is the language of the illiterate, and it should be avoided; for vulgarisms are not reputable. Slang is not reputable. Neither is slang reputable. He would be a prude who would not recognize that slang is sometimes right to the point; and that many of our strongest idioms were originally slang. Still, although many phrases which to-day are called slang were at one time reputable, the fact of their respectable birth cannot save them from the slight imputation that now they are slang. Notwithstanding the fact that we owe some of our strongest idioms to slang, the free use of slang always vulgarizes. It generally is called upon to supply a deficiency either in thought or in the power of expression. People too lazy to think, too indolent to read, with little to say, and but a few slang phrases to say it with, may be allowed to practice this vulgarity; but cultured persons in cultured conversation will eschew all acquaintance with it. To find it in the serious composition of educated persons always raises a question of their refinement. It is the stock in trade of the lazy and the uncultured. It is used to divert attention from poverty of thought and a threadbare vocabulary. It is unnecessary for the complete expression of thought by the scholar and man of refinement. It is a real misfortune that many good words have been tarnished by the handling of the illiterate. "Awful," "horrid," and "lovely" are good words; but they have been sullied by common use. So common have they become that they approach slang. They may be rescued from that charge in each person's writing, if he shows by accurate use of them that he is master of their secret strength. Milton wrote in "Paradise Lost:"-- "No! let us rather choose, Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once O'er Heav'n's high towers to force resistless way, Turning our tortures into _horrid_ arms Against the Torturer." Lord Lytton makes Richelieu exclaim:-- "Look where she stands! Around her form I draw The _awful_ circle of our solemn church." And in the New Testament we read:-- "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are _lovely,_ whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." There is no question here of the words; they have all the freshness and vigor of their youth. Do not hesitate to use such words exactly. When the thought calls for them, they say with certainty what can be expressed only doubtfully by other words. Words must be national. Provincialisms. Second, words must be of national use. They cannot be words confined to a locality. When Morris talks of a house that has been "gammoned," he deprives a large number of readers of his meaning. "Gums" and "brasses" may be good in certain districts of England, but in literature they should not be used, for they would not generally be understood. For the same reason much of the common conversation of the South is foreign to a native of New York. Whoever employs the language of a locality limits his circle of readers to that locality. To write for all he must use the language of all; he must avoid provincialisms. Technical and Bookish Words. Like words that are used by a small region are words which are understood by a clique of persons. Scholars are inclined to use a scholarly vocabulary. The biologist has one; the chemist another; the philosopher a third. This technical vocabulary may be a necessity at times; but when a specialist addresses the public, his words must be the words which an average cultured man can understand. Such words can be found if the writer will look for them; if he does not, his work can scarcely be called literature. Technical words and bookish terms are not words of national use. The following by Josiah Royce illustrates how clearly a most abstruse topic can be handled by a man willing to take the trouble:[50]-- "If you ask what sort of thing this substance is, the first answer is, that it is something eternal; and that means, not that it lasts a good while, but that no possible temporal view of it could exhaust its nature. All things that happen result from the one substance. This surely means that what happens now and what happened millions of years ago are, for the substance, equally present and necessary results. To illustrate once more in my own way: A spider creeping back and forth across a circle could, if she were geometrically disposed, measure out in temporal succession first this diameter, and then that. Crawling first over one diameter, she would say, 'I now find this so long.' Afterwards examining another diameter, she would say, 'It has now happened that what I have just measured proves to be precisely as long as what I measured some time since, and no longer.' The toil of such a spider might last many hours, and be full of such successive measurements, each marked by a spun thread of web. But the true circle itself within which the web was spun, the circle in actual space as the geometer knows it, would its nature be thus a series of events, a mere succession of spun threads? No, the true circle would be timeless, a truth founded in the nature of space, outlasting, preceding, determining all the weary web-spinning of this time-worn spider. Even so we, spinning our web of experience in all its dreary complications in the midst of the eternal nature of the world-embracing substance, imagine that our lives somehow contain true novelty, discover for the substance what it never knew before, invent new forms of being. We fancy our past wholly past, and our future wholly unmade. We think that where we have yet spun no web, there is nothing, and that what we long ago spun has vanished, broken by the winds of time into nothingness. It is not so. For the eternal substance there is no before and after; all truth is truth. 'Far and forgot to me is near,' it says. In the unvarying precision of its mathematical universe, all is eternally written. 'Not all your piety nor wit Can lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out one word of it.'" Foreign Words. Words and phrases from a foreign language should be used only as a last resort. _Bon mot, sine qua non,_ and _dolce far niente_ are all very apt, and to a person like Mr. Lowell, who was intimately acquainted with many languages, they may come as soon as their English equivalents. In the case of such a person, the reason why they should not be used is that the reader cannot understand them. But when a young smatterer uses them to advertise his calling acquaintance with a language, he is but proclaiming his own lack of good taste. In his composition they are as ineffective to make it respectable as a large diamond on a gamester's finger to make him an honored gentleman. Use the English language when writing for English-speaking people. It has the fullest, richest vocabulary in the world. It will not be found unequal to the task of expressing your thoughts. Words in Present Use. Third, words should be in present use. Words may be so new that people do not know them; they may have passed out of use after years of good service. Of new words, but little can be said. The language constantly changes. New discoveries and inventions demand new words. What ones will be more than temporary cannot be prophesied. "Blizzard" and "mugwump" were new but a short time ago: the latter is dying from disuse, the former has come to stay. In this uncertainty one thing can be said, however. No word which has not secured recognition should be used by a young person, if by reputable words already in the language he can express his meaning. And just as he should not be the first to take up an untried word, so the young writer should not be the last to drop a dead one. There is at present a sort of fad for old English. A large number of words that have been resting quietly in their graves for centuries have been called forth. Some may enjoy a second life; most of them will feel only the weakness of a second obsolescence. "Foreword" and "inwit" were good once; but "preface" and "conscience" mean as much and have the advantage of being alive. To be understood use the words of the present. Words in their Present Meaning. Use words in their present signification. Not only has language cast out many words; it has changed many others so that they are hardly recognized. When Chaucer wrote, "Ther may no man Mercury mortify But hit be with his brother knowleching," "mortify" meant to make dead, to kill. To-day a lady may say she was mortified to death; but that is hyperbole. In "Paradise Lost" Satan may "Through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way." But a person to-day is not justified in using "uncouth" for "unknown." The works of Shakespeare and Milton abound in words whose life has been prolonged to the present, but whose signification has been changed. The writer who seeks to use words with these old meanings is standing in his own light. Such use always attracts attention to the words themselves, and by so much subtracts attention from the thought. Words of Latin and Saxon Origin. Words that are in good use have been divided into two classes, as they have been drawn from two sources. Some differences between Anglo-Saxon and Latin words are marked. Saxon words are generally short; Latin words long. The first are the words of home and are concerned with the necessities of life; the second are the words of the court and the adornments of polite society. The former made the foundation of our language and gave to it its idiomatic strength; the latter came later, and added to the strength of the language its grace and refinement. In our speech there can be no doubt that short words are used when the purpose is to be understood quickly, even harshly, while the longer words are frequently employed for saying unpleasant things pleasantly. Euphemism, the choice of words not harsh for harsh ideas, has its uses. It is not always wrong to say, "He was taken away" for "He was killed." But when the plain truth is to be spoken, when, as in most composition, the object is to be understood, the words should be chosen which exactly express the thought, be those words Latin or Saxon. For any one to say, "Was launched into eternity" for "Was hanged," or "When the fatal noose was adjusted about the neck of the unfortunate victim of his own unbridled passions" for "When the halter was put around his neck," is a useless parade of vocabulary.[51] One knows that such phrases are made by a writer who is ignorant of the value of words, or by a penny-a-liner, willing to sacrifice every effect of language to the immediate needs of his purse. Such writing has no power. The words are dictated by too low a motive to have any force in them. Let a writer go straight to the point as directly as the hindrances of language will allow. Even then his expression will lag behind his thought. This does not mean that one is to use Saxon words always. It means that one shall use the words that say exactly what is to be said, so that the reader can get the exact thought with the least outlay of attention to the words. Latin words are as common as Saxon words. To search out a Saxon word because it is Saxon and short is as reprehensible as to use the indirection of Latin words where directness is wanted. Latin words have a place; they express the finer distinctions and gradations of thought. In the discussion of any question requiring nice precision of statement Latin words are necessary. In the following from Newman, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to substitute words of Anglo-Saxon origin for the words of Latin origin, and could it be done, the passage would not then have the clearness it now has from his use of common words, though they be Latin:-- "I mean then by the Supreme Being, one who is simply self-dependent, and the only Being who is such; moreover, that He is without beginning or Eternal, and the only Eternal; that in consequence He has lived a whole eternity by Himself; and hence that He is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessedness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the Supreme Good, or rather is the Supreme Good, or has all the attributes of good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such that what we do not know of Him is far more wonderful than what we do and can."[52] Latin words, moreover, have a fullness of sound which gives them an added weight and dignity. One would hesitate long before changing one of Milton's big-sounding phrases, even if he were not compelled to sacrifice the metre. In Webster's orations there is a dignity, a sublimity, gained by the use of full-mouthed polysyllables. Supposing he had said at the beginning of his eulogy of Adams and Jefferson, "This is a new sight" instead of "This is an unaccustomed spectacle," the whole effect of dignified utterance commensurate with the occasion would have been lost. The oration abounds in examples of reverberating cadences. Milton's sentences are a stately procession of gorgeous words: the dignified pomp of the advance is occasioned by the wealth of essential beauty and historical association in the individual words:-- "That proud honor claimed Azazel as his right, a Cherube tall: Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurl'd Th' imperial ensign, which, full high advanc't Shon like a meteor streaming to the wind, With gemms and golden lustre rich emblaz'd Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while Sonorous metall blowing martial sounds: At which the universal host up-sent A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. All in a moment through the gloom were seen Ten thousand banners rise into the air, With orient colours waving; with them rose A forrest huge of spears; and thronging helms Appear'd, and serried shields in thick array Of depth immeasurable." ("Paradise Lost.") The choice of words does not depend on whether they are of Latin or of Saxon origin. In use it will be found that short words, like short sentences, give more directness and force to the composition; while long words have a dignified elegance and refinement of discrimination not the property of monosyllables. No one should think, however, that short words cause the force or long words cause the dignity. These qualities belong to the thought; the completeness of its expression is approached by a choice in words. Choose words for their fitness to say what you think, or feel, or purpose, having no regard for their origin. General and specific. Words are also classified as general and specific. By a general word is meant a word common to or denoting a large number of ideas. By specific is meant a word that denotes or specifies a single idea. "Man," "move," "bad," are general and denote a large number of ideas; while "Whittier," "glide," "thieving," are specific, denoting but one man, one movement, one kind of badness. "Man" denotes the whole human race, while it implies a feeling, thinking, speaking, willing animal. "Whittier" denotes but a single person, but beside all the common qualities implied by the, word "man," "Whittier" suggests, among other things, a homely face, serious and kind, a poet, and an anti-slavery worker. Use Words that suggest most. As a principle in composition, it may be said that the more a word or phrase can be made to imply or suggest, while at the same time expressing all that the writer wishes to say, the more valuable does that word or phrase become. Yet it should be remembered that words may be so specific that they do not include all that the author wishes to include. For instance, if instead of "Blessed are the peacemakers," the beatitude should be made to read "Blessed are the Quakers," though this organized body of persons labor for the blessings of peace, yet the meaning would be restricted by the limited denotation of the term. It does not include enough. So in almost all of Emerson's writing, it would not be possible to express his entire thought with more specific words. Therefore regard must always be had for the thought,--that it may be expressed in its perfect fullness and entirety. Keeping this full expression in view, those words are strongest, truest, richest, which suggest most. To say of a person that he is a bad man is one thing; that he is a traitor is quite another; but when one writes that he is a veritable Judas, words fail to keep pace with suggestions, and reason yields to emotion. Specific words, if they denote the whole idea, are as much better than general terms as their suggestion exceeds the suggestion of general terms. Synecdoche, Metonymy. Much of the force of figures of speech is derived from the suggestive quality of the specific words employed. When a man calls another a dog, he has used a metaphor. He has availed himself of a term that gathers up all the snarling qualities of the worst of the dog species. The figure has high suggestive power. Synecdoche, too, that figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, employs a term of higher suggestive power for one of lower connoting force. "All hands took hold" is better than "All persons went to work." Metonymy is the substitution of the name of one thing for that of another to which the former bears a known and close relation. The most common of these known and close relations are those of cause and its effects, of container and the thing contained, and of sign and the thing signified. "He has read Shakespeare," "He was addicted to the use of the bottle," "All patriots fight for the flag," are examples of metonymy. All these figures depend in large degree for their power upon the greater suggestiveness of specific words; and their use gives to composition an efficiency and directness commensurate with the greater connoting value of the specific words. Care in Choice of Specific Words. A writer should keep in mind the fact that the same word may mean widely different things to two persons. For this reason the specific word that appeals to him most may be of no value in addressing others. "Free silver" means to one set of men the withdrawal of money from investment, consequent stagnation in business, followed by the closing of factories and penury among laborers. To others it means three dollars a day for unskilled labor, fire, clothes, and something to eat. Again, if one wished to present the horrors of devastating disease, in the South he would mention yellow fever, in the North smallpox; but to a lady who saw six little brothers and sisters dead from it in one week, three carried to the graveyard on the hillside one chill November morning, all the terrors of contagious disease are suggested by the word "diphtheria." Words are weighted with our experiences. They are laden with what we have lived into them. As persons have different experiences, each word carries to each person a different meaning. The wise writer chooses those specific words which suggest most to the men he addresses,--in general, to the average man. There are many words that carry some of the same suggestions to all. These words are connected with the common things of life: such words as "home," "death," "mother," and the many more that have been with all people from childhood. They are simple little words crowded with experiences. Such words carry a weight of suggestion not found in strange new words. It is for this reason that simple language goes straight to the heart; it is so loaded with life. Of two expressions that convey the thought with equal accuracy, always choose the simpler. The following poems--one by Tennyson,[53] steeped in pain, perfect in its phrasing; the other by Kipling, rising to a conception of a true artist's work, never before so simply expressed--are both written in home words, little words, but words all know, words that carry to all a common meaning:-- "Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean: Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more. "Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld; Sad as the last which reddens over one That sinks with all we love below the verge; So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. "Ah! sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds To dying ears, when unto dying eyes The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. "Dear as remembered kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more!" L'ENVOI.[54] "When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried, When the oldest colors have faded, and the youngest critic has died, We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it-- lie down for an æon or two, Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew! "And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair; They shall find real saints to draw from-- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul; They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all! "And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame; And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame; But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!" Avoid Hackneyed Phrases. Much like general terms, which mean something or nothing, are expressions that have become trite and hackneyed. At some time they were accurate phrases, saying just what was needed. By being used for all sorts of purposes, they have lost the original thought of which they were the accurate expression. They have no freshness. The sounding phrases repeated in the pulpit, or the equally empty phrases of the scientist, however good they were at their inception, are, in the writing of many persons, but theological and scientific cant relied upon by ignorant people to cover up the vacuity of their thought. One's own expression, even though it be not so elegant and graceful, is better than any worn-out, hackneyed phrase. Think for yourself; then say what you have thought in the best language you can find yourself. "Fine Writing." "Fine writing," the subjection of noble words to ignoble service, is to be avoided. Mr. Micawber was addicted to this pomposity of language; and Dickens, by the creation of this character, has done literature a real service, by showing how absurd it is, how valueless for anything more than humor. "'Under the impression,' said Mr. Micawber, 'that your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road--in short,' said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of confidence, 'that you might lose yourself--I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.'" Here are great words in profusion to dress out a little thought. "Fine writing" is as much out of taste as over-dressing. When the thought calls for noble expression, then all one's energies should be bent to finding noble phrases; but for common things common expressions are the only ones in good taste. In Prose avoid Poetical Words. Much like "fine writing" is the use of poetical words in prose. _Enow, erstwhile, besprent, methinks, agone,_ and _thine_ are examples of a large class of words which, though in perfectly good taste in poetry, are in extremely poor taste in prose. They are out of place; and so attract attention to themselves, not to the thought they express. When writing prose, avoid poetical words. All of this comes at last to one rule: be exact, be accurate in the choice of words. Not a word that half expresses the thought, not even one that is pretty near, but the only word that exactly expresses the meaning, that word must be used. It is not a question of long or short, of Latin or Saxon, of general or specific; it is a question of accuracy or inaccuracy, the whole or a part, the whole or too much, of just right or about right. No one would entirely misunderstand the following sentence; and just as certainly no one would derive from these words the impression the author had when he wrote it. He has phrased it as follows: "Another direction in which free education is most valuable to society, is the way in which it removes the gulf affixed between the rich and poor." The boy wanted the opening sentence to sound big, and forgot that the first use of words is accurately to express the thought. In this sentence are the commonest errors in the choice of words. "Most valuable" says more than truth; "direction" says less than truth; and "affixed" does not say anything. Had the boy studied the dictionary, had he been familiar with the Bible, had he carefully considered the figure he introduced with the word "gulf," he would not have written this incongruous sentence; he would not have been inaccurate. Spare no pains in your effort to be exact. Search through the words of your own vocabulary; if these fall short, find others in the dictionary. Get the word that exactly expresses the thought. Let no fine-sounding or high-born word trick you into saying what you do not mean. Be master of your words; never let fine expressions enslave you. In a word, be accurate. Such painstaking labor has its reward not alone in the increased power of expression; there is also a corresponding growth in the ability to observe accurately and to think clearly. No man can write such descriptions as Ruskin and Stevenson have written without seeing accurately; nor can a man speak with the definite certainty of Burke without thinking clearly. The desire to be accurate in expression drives a writer to be accurate in thinking. To think is the highest that man can hope from education. Anything that contributes to this highest attainment should be undertaken with joy. Whether planning a story or constructing an argument; whether excluding irrelevant matter or including what contributes to the perfection of the whole; whether massing the material so that all the parts shall receive their due emphasis; whether relating the parts so that the thought advances steadily and there can be no misunderstanding,--in all this the student will find arduous labor. Yet after all this is done,--when the theme, the paragraphs, and the sentences contain exactly what is needed, are properly massed, and are set in perfect order,--then comes the long labor of revision, which does not stop until the exact word is hunted out. For upon words, at last, we are dependent for the expression of our observation and thought. He is most entirely master of his thoughts who can accurately express them: clearly, that he cannot be misunderstood; forcefully, that he will not be unread; and elegantly, that he give the reader joy. And this mastery he evinces in a finely discriminating choice of words. * * * * * CHAPTER X FIGURES OF SPEECH Figurative Language. There is a generally accepted division of language into literal and figurative. Language that is literal uses words in their accepted and accurate meaning. Figurative language employs words with meanings not strictly literal, but varying from their ordinary definitions. Much of our language is figurative. When a person says, "He is a bright boy," he has used the word "bright" in a sense that is not literal; the use is figurative. In the following there is hardly a sentence that has not some variation from literal language. "Down by the river there is, as yet, little sign of spring. Its bed is all choked with last year's reeds, trampled about like a manger. Yet its running seems to have caught a happier note, and here and there along its banks flash silvery wands of palm. Right down among the shabby burnt-out underwood moves the sordid figure of a man. His hat is battered, and he wears no collar. I don't like staring at his face, for he has been unfortunate. Yet a glimpse tells me that he is far down the hill of life, old and drink-corroded at fifty." (Le Gallienne.) In the second sentence there are at least three figurative expressions. "Bed," "choked," and "trampled like a manger" are not literal. So, too, in the next sentence there are two beautiful variations from literal expression. Going on through the selection the reader will find frequently some happy change from literalness,--sometimes just a word, sometimes a phrase. Figurative language is of great value. It adds clearness to our speech; it gives it more force; or it imparts to literature beauty. The last use is the most common; indeed, it is so common that sometimes the other uses are overlooked. However, when such a sentence as the following is read, the comparison is of value in giving _clearness_ to the thought, although it does not state the literal truth. "In the early history of our planet, the moon was flung off into space, as mud is thrown from a turning wagon wheel." _Force_ is often gained by the use of figurative language. The following is a good illustration:-- "Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dextrous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by these people [Americans]; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." The next is an illustration of a figure used for _beauty:--_ "Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return." _A figure of speech is any use of words with a sense varying from their literal definition, to secure clearness, force, or beauty of expression._ Figures add so much to the attractiveness of literature, that every one would like to use them. Yet figures should never be sought for. When they come of themselves, when they insist on being used, and are a part of the thought itself, and seem to be its only adequate expression, then they should be used. In most cases figures are ornaments of literature; it must be remembered that ornament is always secondary, and that no ornament is good unless it is in entire harmony with the thing it is to beautify. (See Preface, p. viii.) When a figure suggests itself, it must be so clearly seen that there can be no mixing of images. Some people are determined to use figures, and they force them into every possible place. The result is that there is often a confusion of comparisons. The following is bad: "His name went resounding in golden letters through the corridors of time." Just how a name could resound "in golden letters" is a difficult question. Longfellow used the last phrase beautifully:-- "Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of time." Of the two hundred or more figures of speech which have been named and defined, only a few need be mentioned here. And the purpose is not that you shall use them more, but that you may recognize them when you meet them in literature. Figures based upon Likeness. There is a large group of figures of speech based upon likeness. One thing is so much like another that it is spoken of as like it, or, more frequently, one is said to be the other. Yet if the things compared are very much alike, there is no figure. To say that a cat is like a panther is not considered figurative. It is when in objects essentially different we detect and name some likeness that we say there is a figure of speech. There is at first thought no likeness between hope and a nurse; yet were it not for hope most persons would die. Thackeray was right when he said that "Hope is the nurse of life." The principal figures based upon likeness are metaphor, epithet, personification, apostrophe, allegory, and simile. _A metaphor is an implied comparison between things essentially different, but having some common quality._ Metaphor is by far the most common figure of speech; indeed, so common is it that figurative language is often called metaphorical. "Tombs are the clothes of the dead; a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered." "Let me choose; For as I am, I live upon the rack." "The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep." Only a little removed from metaphor is epithet. _An epithet is a word, generally a descriptive adjective or a noun, used, not to give information, but to impart strength or ornament to diction._ It is like a shortened metaphor. It is very often found in impassioned prose or verse. Notice that in each epithet there is a comparison; that the figure is based on likeness. "Here are sever'd lips Parted with _sugar_ breath." "Base _dog!_ why shouldst thou stand here?" _Personification is a figure that ascribes to inanimate things, abstract ideas, and the lower animals the attributes of human beings._ It is plain that there must be some resemblance of the lower to the higher, else this figure could not be used. Personification, like the epithet, is a modification of the metaphor. Indeed, in every personification there is also a metaphor. "When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees And they did make no noise." "But ever heaves and moans the restless Deep." _Apostrophe is an address to the dead as if living; to abstract ideas or inanimate objects as if they were persons._ It is a variety of personification. "O Caledonia! stern and wild, Meet nurse for a poetic child!" "Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower, Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem." "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." _Allegory is a narrative in which material things and circumstances are used to illustrate and enforce high spiritual truths._ It is a continued personification. Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and Spenser's "Faerie Queene" are good examples of allegory. All these figures are varieties of metaphor. In them there is always an implied, not an expressed, comparison. _A simile is an expressed comparison between unlike things that have some common quality._ This comparison is usually indicated by _like_ or _as._ "Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody countenances, and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of the cottage." (Does this figure change to another in its course?) "How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." Of retired Dutch valleys, Irving wrote:-- "They are like those little nooks of still water which border a rapid stream; where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current." Figures based upon Sentence Structure. There are a number of figures that express emotion by simply changing the normal order of the sentence. Among these are inversion, exclamation, interrogation, climax, and irony. _Inversion is a figure intended to give emphasis to the thought by a change from the natural order of the words in a sentence._ "_Thine_ be the glory!" "_Few_ were the words they said." "He saved others; _himself_ he cannot save." _Exclamation is an expression of strong emotion in abrupt, inverted, or elliptical phrases._ It is among sentences what the interjection is among words. "How far that little candle throws its beams!" "Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!" _Interrogation is a figure in which a question is asked, not to get an answer, but for the sake of emphasis._ "Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?" "Fear ye foes who kill for hire? Will ye to your homes retire?" "Am I a coward?" _Climax is a figure in which the intensity of the thought and emotion gradually increases with the successive groups of words or phrases._ (See p. 211.) "Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood than they [the American colonists] spread from families to communities, from villages to nations." _Irony is a figure in which one thing is said and the opposite is meant._ "And Job answered and said, No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." "O Jew, an upright judge, a learned judge!" Four other figures should be mentioned: metonymy, synecdoche, allusion, and hyperbole. _Metonymy calls one thing by the name of another which is closely related to the first._ The most common relations are cause and effect, container and thing contained, and sign and the thing signified. "From the cradle to the grave is but a day." "I did dream of money-bags to-night." _Synecdoche is that figure of speech in which a part is put for the whole, or the whole for a part._ "Fifty sail came into harbor." "The redcoats are marching." _Allusion is a reference to something in history or literature with which every one is supposed to be acquainted._ "A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!" Men still sigh for the flesh pots of Egypt; still worship the golden calf. There is no "Open Sesame" to the treasures of learning; they must be acquired by hard study. Milton and Shakespeare are full of allusions to the classic literature of Greece and Rome. _Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement made for effect._ "He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together." "And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart!" Exercises in Figures. Name the following figures. Of those that are based upon likeness, tell in what the similarity consists. In many of the selections more than one figure will be found.[55] 1. "The long, hard winter of his youth had ended; the spring-time of his manhood was turning green like the woods." 2. A pig came up to a horse and said, "Your feet are crooked, and your hair is worth nothing." 3. "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, but they were drawn swords." 4. "The lily maid of Astolat." 5. "O Truth! O Freedom! how are ye still born In the rude stable, in the manger nursed!" 6. "The birch, most shy and ladylike of trees, Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves, And hints at her foregone gentilities With some saved relics of her wealth of leaves." 7. "O friend, never strike sail to a fear! Come into port grandly, or sail with God the seas!" 8. "Primroses smile and daisies cannot frown." 9. "How deeply and warmly and spotlessly Earth's nakedness is clothed!--the 'wool' of the Psalmist nearly two feet deep. And as far as warmth and protection are concerned, there is a good deal of the virtue of wool in such a snow-fall. It is a veritable fleece, beneath which the shivering earth ('the frozen hills ached with pain,' says one of our young poets) is restored to warmth." 10. "We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon and Alfred and other founders of States. Our fathers have filled them." 11. "I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and diadem. "I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. "I was father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not I searched out. "And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth." 12. "His head and his heart were so well combined that he could not avoid becoming a power in his community." Spenser, writing of honor, says:-- 13. "In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell, And will be found with peril and with pain; Nor can the man that moulds an idle cell Unto her happy mansion attain: Before her gate high God did Sweat ordain, And wakeful watches ever to abide; But easy is the way and passage plain To pleasure's palace: it may soon be spied, And day and night her doors to all stand open wide." 14. "Over the vast green sea of the wilderness, the moon swung her silvery lamp." 15. "The peace of the golden sunshine was supreme. Even a tiny cloudlet anchored in the limitless sky would not sail to-day." 16. "A short way further along, I come across a boy gathering palm. He is a town boy, and has come all the way from Whitechapel thus early. He has already gathered a great bundle--worth five shillings to him, he says. This same palm will to-morrow be distributed over London, and those who buy sprigs of it by the Bank will know nothing of the blue-eyed boy who gathered it, and the murmuring river by which it grew. And the lad, once more lost in some squalid court, will be a sort of Sir John Mandeville to his companions--a Sir John Mandeville of the fields, with their water-rats, their birds' eggs, and many other wonders. And one can imagine him saying, 'And the sparrows there fly right up into the sun, and sing like angels.' But he won't get his comrades to believe _that._" 17. "We wandered to the Pine Forest That skirts the Ocean's foam; The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies Which scattered from above the sun The light of Paradise. "We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced,-- And soothed by every azure breath That under heaven is blown, To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own: Now all the tree-tops lay asleep Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean woods may be." 18. "When a bee brings pollen into the hive, he advances to the cell in which it is to be deposited and kicks it off as one might his overalls or rubber boots, making one foot help the other; then he walks off without ever looking behind him; another bee, one of the indoor hands, comes along and rams it down with his head and packs it in the cell as the dairy-maid packs butter into a firkin." 19. "For thy desires Are wolfish, bloody, starved, and ravenous." 20. "What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" 21. "And in her cheeks the vermeil red did shew Like roses in a bed of lilies shed." 22. He betrayed his friend with a Judas kiss. 23. "A true poet is not one whom they can hire by money and flattery to be a minister of their pleasures, their writer of occasional verses, their purveyor of table wit; he cannot be their menial, he cannot even be their partisan. At the peril of both parties let no such union be attempted. Will a Courser of the Sun work softly in the harness of a Dray-horse? His hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the heavens, bringing light to all lands; will he lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for earthly appetites from door to door?" 24. "Hath a dog money? is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats?" 25. "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood." 26. They sleep together,--the gray and the blue. 27. "Have not the Indians been kindly and justly treated? Have not the temporal things--the vain baubles and filthy lucre of this world--which were apt to engage their worldly and selfish thoughts, been benevolently taken from them? And have they not, instead thereof, been taught to set their affections on things above?" (Quoted from Meiklejohn's "The Art of Writing English.") 28. "Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes." 29. "His words were shed softer than leaves from the pine, And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the brine, That mingle their softness and quiet in one With the shaggy unrest they float down upon." 30. Too much red tape caused a great amount of suffering in the beginning of the war. 31. "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain." 32. "The old Mountain has thrown a stone at us for fear we should forget him. He sometimes nods his head, and threatens to come down." 33. "But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white--then melts for ever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm." * * * * * CHAPTER XI VERSE FORMS[56] Preparer's note: In this chapter, the rhythms of the sample poetry lines were indicated with musical notes and rests. In this text version, an eighth note is indicated by e, a quarter note by q, and an eighth rest by r. No pupil has passed through the graded schools without being told that he should not sing verses, though no one is inclined to sing prose. One can scarcely help singing verse, and one cannot well sing prose. What is there about the form that leads a person to sing verses of poetry? For example, when a person reads the first lines of "The Lady of the Lake," he falls naturally into a sing-song which can be represented by musical notation as follows:-- | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e q | e q | e q | e q | "The stag at eve had drunk his fill, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e q | e q | e q | e q | Where danced the moon on Mon an's rill, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e q | e q | e q | e q | And deep his mid night lair had made | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e q | e q | e q | e q | In lone Glenart ney's ha zel shade." The second, fourth, sixth, and eighth syllables in each of these lines are naturally accented in reading, while the other syllables are read without stress. The eight syllables of each line fall naturally into groups of two, an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable, just as in the musical notation given, an unaccented eighth note is followed by an accented quarter. In "Hiawatha" the accented syllable comes first, and the unaccented follows it. | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q e | "By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q e | By the shining Big-Sea-Water, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q e | Stood the wigwam of No komis, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q e | Daughter of the Moon, No komis." So, too, there are groups in which there are three syllables. The accent may fall on any one of the three. In the following stanza from "The Bridge of Sighs," the accent falls on the first syllable of each group. | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | "Touch her not scornfully; | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | Think of her mournfully, | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | Gently and humanly, | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | Not of the stains of her; | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | All that re mains of her | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | Now is pure womanly." The accent may be upon the second syllable of the group. This is not common. The following is from "The Three Fishers." | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | e e e | e q | "Three fishers went sailing out into the West, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | e q | e q | Out into the West as the sun went down; | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | e e e | e q | Each thought on the woman that loved him the best; | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | [e] e e e | e e e | e e e | e q | [And] the children stood watching them out of the town." Or the accent may be upon the last syllable of the group. This form is very common. It is found in the poem entitled "Annabel Lee." | ^ | ^ | ^ ^| | | e e e |e e e |e e e |e q | "It was man y and man y a year ago, | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e q | e q | In a king dom by the sea, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e |e e e | e q | e q | That a maid en there lived whom you may know | ^ | ^| ^ | | e e e | e q| e e e | By the name of An nabel Lee; | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e |e e e | e q | e e e | And this maid en she lived with no other thought | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e |e q | Than to love and be loved by me." Poetic Feet. If all these verses be observed carefully, it will be seen that in each group of syllables there is one accented syllable combined with one or two unaccented. Such a group of syllables is called a foot. The foot is the basis of the verse; and from the prevailing kind of foot that is found in any verse, the verse derives its name. _A foot is a group of syllables composed of one accented syllable combined with one or more unaccented._ It will be noticed further that if musical notation be used, all of these forms are but variations of the one form, represented by the standard measure 3/8. They are:-- | ^ | | ^ | | ^ | | ^ | | ^ | | e q |; | q e |; | e e e |; | e e e |; and | e e e |. Accordingly there are five forms of poetic feet made of this musical rhythm. Of these, four are in common use. _An Iambus is a two-syllable foot accented on the last syllable. Verse made of this kind of feet is called iambic._ It is the most common form found in English poetry. Example:-- "The stag at eve had drunk his fill." _A Trochee is a two-syllable foot accented on the first syllable. Verse made of this kind of feet is called trochaic._ Example:-- "Stood the wigwam of Nokomis." _A Dactyl is a three-syllable foot accented on the first syllable. Such verse is called dactylic._ Example:-- "Touch her not scornfully." _An Amphibrach is a three-syllable foot accented on the middle syllable._ It is uncommon. Example:-- "Three fishers went sailing out into the West." _An Anapest is a three-syllable foot accented on the last syllable._ Example:-- "It was many and many a year ago." A Spondee is a very uncommon foot in English. It consists of two long syllables accented about equally. It occurs as an occasional foot in a four-syllable rhythm. No English poem is entirely spondaic. The four-syllable foot and the spondee are so uncommon that there is little use in the pupil's knowing more than that there are such things. The example below is quoted from Lanier's "The Science of English Verse." | ^ | ^ | ^ ^ | | e e e e | q e e | q q | "Ah, the autumn days fade out, and the nights grow chill | ^ | ^ | ^ ^ | | e e e e | e e e e | q q | And we walk no more to gether as we used of yore When the rose was new in blossom and the sun was on the hill, And the eves were sweetly vocal with the happy whippoorwill, And the land-breeze piped its sweetest by the ocean shore." Kinds of Metre. _A verse is a single line of poetry._ It may contain from one foot to eight feet. _A line made of one foot is called monometer._ It is never used throughout a poem, except as a joke, but it sometimes occurs as an occasional verse in a poem that is made of longer lines. The two lines which follow are from the song of "Winter" in Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost." The last is monometer. "Then nightly sings the staring owl Tu-whit." _A line containing two feet is called dimeter._ It also is uncommon; but it does sometimes make up a whole poem; as, "The Bridge of Sighs," already mentioned. Another example is:-- ^ ^ "I'm wearing awa', Jean, ^ ^ Like snaw when it's thaw, Jean, ^ ^ I'm wearing awa' ^ ^ To the land o' the leal." It is frequently met as an occasional line in a poem. Wordsworth's "Daisy" shows it. "Bright _Flower!_ for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet, silent creature! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature!" _A line containing three feet is called trimeter._ Example:-- ^ ^ ^ "The snow had begun in the gloaming, ^ ^ ^ And busily all the night ^ ^ ^ Had been heaping field and highway ^ ^ ^ With a silence deep and white." _A line containing four feet is called tetrameter._ "Marmion" is written in tetrameters. See the extract on p. 276. _A line containing five feet is called pentameter._ This line is very common in English poetry. It gives room enough for the poet to say something, and is not so long that it breaks down with its own weight. Shakespeare's Plays, Milton's "Paradise Lost," Tennyson's "Idylls of the King,"--indeed, most of the great, serious work of the master-poets has been done in this verse. _A line containing six feet is called hexameter._ This is the form adopted in the Iliad and the Odyssey of the Greeks, and the �neid of the Romans; it has been used sometimes by English writers in treating dignified subjects. "The Courtship of Miles Standish" and "Evangeline" are written in hexameter. Verses of seven and eight feet are rare; they are called heptameter and octameter, respectively. The heptameter is usually divided into a tetrameter and a trimeter; the octameter, into two tetrameters. Poe's "Raven" and Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" are in octameters, and Bryant's "The Death of the Flowers" is in heptameters. A verse is named from its prevailing kind of foot and the number of feet. For example, "The Merchant of Venice" is in iambic pentameter, and "The Courtship of Miles Standish" is in dactylic hexameter. Stanzas. A stanza is a group of verses, but these verses are not necessarily of the same length. Monometer, dimeter, and trimeter are not often used for a whole stanza; but they are frequently found in a stanza, introducing variety into it. A stanza made up of tetrameter alternating with trimeter is very common. The stanzas from "Annabel Lee" and "The Village Blacksmith," found on pages 278 and 279, are excellent examples. Scansion. _Scansion is the separation of a verse of poetry into its component feet._ Poetry was originally sung or chanted by bards and troubadours. The accompaniment was a simple strumming on a harp of very few strings, and was hardly more than the beating of time. The chanting must have been much like the sing-song that some people fall into when reading verses now. The first thing in scanning a line of poetry is to drop into its rhythm,--to let it sing itself. When the regular accent is felt, the lines can easily be separated into their metrical feet. Read these lines from "Marmion," and mark only the accented syllables. ^ ^ ^ ^ "And there she stood so calm and pale, ^ ^ ^ ^ That but her breathing did not fail, And motion slight of eyes and head, And of her bosom, warranted That neither sense nor pulse she lacks, You might have thought a form of wax Wrought to the very life was there; So still she was, so pale, so fair." The marked verses have an accented syllable preceded by an unaccented syllable. Such a foot is iambic. There are four feet in each verse; so the poem is written in iambic tetrameter. In the same way, one decides that "The Song of Hiawatha" is written in trochaic tetrameter. Variations in Metres. In music the bar or measure is not always filled with exactly the same kind of notes arranged in the same order. If the signature reads 3/8, the measure may be filled by any notes that added together equal three eighth notes. It may be a quarter and an eighth, an eighth and a quarter, a dotted quarter, or three eighth notes. So, in poetry the verses are not always as regular as in "Marmion" and "Hiawatha," although poetry is more regular than music and there are usually few variations of metre in any one poem. A knowledge of the most common forms of variation is necessary to correct scansion. The commonest variation in verse is the substitution of three eighths for the quarter and the eighth, or the eighth and the quarter. And the very opposite of this often occurs; that is, the substitution of the two-syllable foot for the three-syllable foot. The following, from "The Burial of Sir John Moore," illustrates what is done. Notice, however, that the beat is quite regular, and the lines lilt along as if there were no change. | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | e e e | e q | e e e |e e e | "Not a drum was heard, not a fun eral note, | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | e e e [e] | As his corse to the ram part we hur[ried]; | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e | e q | e q | Not a sol dier discharged his fare well shot | ^ | ^| ^ | | e e e | e e e| e e e [e] | O'er the grave where our he ro we bur[ied]." In reading this the first time, a person is not likely to notice that there are three feet in it containing but two syllables. The rhythm is perfectly smooth, and cannot be called irregular. The accent remains on the last syllable of the foot. In the following selection from "Evangeline," trochees are substituted for dactyls, yet there is no break in the rhythm. It does not seem in the least irregular. | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | e e e | q e | "Be hind them followed the watch-dog, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | q e | e e e| e e e | e e e | e e e | q e | Patient, full of im portance, and grand in the pride of his instinct, Walking from side to side with a lordly air, and superbly Waving his bushy tail, and urging forward the stragglers." These examples are enough to illustrate the fact that one kind of foot may be substituted for another and not make the rhythm feel irregular. So long as the accent is not changed from the first syllable to the last, or from the last to the first, there is no jar in the flow of the lines. _The trochee and the dactyl are interchangeable; and the iambus and the anapest are interchangeable._ We may take a step further. There are many times when some sudden change of thought, some strong emotion forces a poet to break the smooth rhythm, that the verses may harmonize with his feeling. Such a variation is like an exclamation or a dash thrown into prose. The following is taken from "Annabel Lee." The regular foot has the accent on the last syllable. It is anapestic, in tetrameters and trimeters. But note the shudder in the third line when the accent is changed on the word "chilling." The music and the thought are in perfect harmony. "And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | |e q | e q |e e e | q e | A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea." Another beautiful example is found in the last stanza of the same poem. It is in the first two feet of the fifth line. Here the regular accent has yielded to an accent on the middle syllable and there are two amphibrachs. Notice, too, how it is almost impossible to tell in the next foot whether the accent goes upon the second or upon the third syllable. It is hovering between the form of the first two feet and the anapest of the last foot. "For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; | ^ | ^ | ^ ^ | ^ | | e e e | e e e |e e e | e e e | And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea In her tomb by the sounding sea." As has already been said, the iambus is the common foot of English verse. It is made of a short and a long syllable. At the beginning of a poem an unaccented syllable seems weak; and so very frequently the first foot of a poem is trochaic; often the first two or three feet are of this kind. At such a place the irregularity does not strike one. The following is an illustration:-- | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e |e q | e q | e q | "Under a spread ing chest nut tree | ^ | ^ | ^ | | e q | e q |e q | The vil lage smith y stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands." In this stanza the prevailing foot is iambic, but the first foot is trochaic. In the following beautiful lines by Ben Jonson, there is the same thing:-- | ^ | ^| ^ | ^ | | q e |e q|e q | e q | "Drink to me on ly with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove's nectar sup, I would not change for thine." A similar substitution may occur in any other verse of the stanza; but we feel the change more than when it is found in the first verse. The second stanza of Jonson's song furnishes an example of the substitution of a trochee for an iambus:-- "I sent thee late a rosy wreath, | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | e q |e e e | Not so much hon oring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not withered be, But thou thereon didst only breathe And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee." Of all the great poets, but few have been such masters of the art of making musical verse as Spenser. The following stanza is from "The Faerie Queene;" and the delicate changes from one foot to another are so skillfully made that one has to look twice before he finds them. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ "A little lowly hermitage it was, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Far from resort of people that did pass ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ In travel to and fro; a little wide ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ There was a holy chapel edified, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Wherein a hermit duly wont to say ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ His holy things each morn and eventide; ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Thereby a crystal stream did gently play, ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ Which from a sacred fountain welléd forth alway." First and Last Foot. From the lines on "The Burial of Sir John Moore," another fact about metres may be derived. The second and fourth lines apparently have one too many syllables. _This may occur when the accent is upon the last syllable of the foot;_ that is, when the foot is an iambus or an anapest. Again, the last foot of each line may be one syllable short. _This may occur when the accent is on the first syllable of a foot;_ that is, when the foot is trochaic or dactylic. The scheme is like this: | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q e | "Tell me not in mournful numbers | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | q e | q r | Life is but an empty dream." The last foot of a verse of poetry, then, may have more or fewer syllables than the regular number; still the foot takes up the regular time and cannot be deemed unrhythmical. The first foot of a line, too, may contain an extra syllable; a good example has been given in the lines on page 273, beginning,-- "Ah, the autumn days fade out, and the nights grow chill." And the first foot of a line may lack a syllable, as in the first line of "Break, Break, Break," by Tennyson. In a line like the following, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether the syllable is omitted from the first or the last foot. If from the first, the verse is iambic, and is scanned like this:-- | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | r q | e q |e q | e e e | "Proud and low ly, beg gar and lord." If the last foot is not full, the line is trochaic. | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | | q e | q e | e e e | q r | "Proud and low ly, beg gar and lord." Now if the whole of "London Bridge," from which this line is quoted, be read, there will be found several lines that are trochaic beyond question; and the last line of the chorus is iambic. The majority of trochaic lines leads us to decide that the verse is trochaic. From this example one learns to appreciate how nearly alike are trochaic and iambic verses. Both are composed of alternating accented and unaccented syllables; and the kind of metre depends upon which comes first in the foot. In Blake's "Tiger, Tiger," there is not a line that clearly shows what kind of verse the poet used. If the unaccented syllable is supplied at the beginning the poem is iambic; if at the end, it is trochaic. "Tiger, Tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Framed thy fearful symmetry?" Silences may occur in the middle of a verse of poetry as well as at the beginning or the end. In the following nursery rhyme it is clear that the prevailing foot is anapestic, though several feet are iambic, and in the first two lines and the last line a single syllable makes a foot. Silences are introduced here as rests are in music. | r q | r q | r q | "Three blind mice! | r q | r q | e q | See how they run! | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | Hurrah, hurrah for the farm er's wife! | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | She cut off their tails with a carv ing knife! | ^ | ^ | ^ | ^ | Did you ev er see such a sight in your life |e q | r q | r q | As three blind mice!" Like this is the scansion of Tennyson's "Break, Break, Break." | r q | r q | r q | "Break, break, break! On thy cold gray stones, O sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me." In scanning, then, it is necessary-- _First._ To determine by reading a number of verses the kind of foot that predominates, and to make this the basis of the metrical scheme. _Second._ To remember that one kind of foot may be substituted for another, at the will of the poet, introducing into the poem a delicate variety of rhythm. _Third._ To keep in mind that the first foot of a verse and the last foot may have more or fewer syllables than the regular foot of the poem. _Fourth._ That silences, like rests in music, may be introduced into a verse and give to it a perfect smoothness of rhythm. Kinds of Poetry. It is a difficult thing to give a definition of poetry. Many have done so, yet no one has been fortunate enough to have his definition go without criticism. In general, it may be said that poetry deals with serious subjects, that it appeals to the feelings rather than to the reason, that it employs beautiful language, and that it is written in some metrical form. Poetry has been divided into three great classes: narrative, lyric, and dramatic. Narrative poetry deals with events, real or imaginary. It includes, among other varieties, the epic, the metrical romance, the tale, and the ballad. _The epic is a narrative poem of elevated character telling generally of the exploits of heroes._ The "Iliad" of the Greeks, the "�neid" of the Romans, the "Nibelungen Lied" of the Germans, "Beowulf" of the Anglo-Saxons, and "Paradise Lost" are good examples of the epic. _The metrical romance is any fictitious narrative of heroic, marvelous, or supernatural incidents derived from history or legend, and told at considerable length._ "The Idylls of the King" are romances. The tale is but little different from the romance. It leaves the field of legend and occupies the place in poetry that a story or a novel does in prose. "Marmion" and "Enoch Arden" are tales. _A ballad is a short narrative poem, generally rehearsing but one incident._ It is usually vigorous in style, and gives but little thought to elegance. "Sir Patrick Spens," "The Battle of Otterburne," and "Chevy Chase" are examples. Lyric poetry finds its source in the author's feelings and emotions. In this it differs from narrative poems, which find their material in external events and circumstances. Epic poetry is written in a grand style, generally in pentameter, or hexameter; while the lyric adopts any verse that suits the emotion. The principal classes of lyric poetry are the song, the ode, the elegy, and the sonnet. _The song is a short poem intended to be sung._ It has great variety of metres and is generally divided into stanzas. "Sweet and Low," "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," "John Anderson, My Jo, John," are songs. _An ode is a lyric expressing exalted emotion; it usually has a complex and irregular metrical form._ Collins's "The Passions," Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," and Lowell's "Commemoration Ode," are well known. _An elegy is a serious poem pervaded by a feeling of melancholy._ It is generally written to commemorate the death of some friend. Milton's "Lycidas" and Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" are examples of this form of lyric. _A sonnet is a lyric that deals with a single thought, idea, or sentiment in a fixed metrical form. The sonnet always contains fourteen lines._ It has, too, a very definite rhyme scheme. Some of the best English sonnets have been written by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Browning. Dramatic poetry presents a course of human events, and is generally designed to be spoken on the stage. Because such poetry presents human character in action, the term "dramatic" has come to be applied to any poetry having this quality. Many of Browning's poems are dramatic in this sense. In the first sense of the word, dramatic poetry includes tragedy and comedy. _Tragedy is a drama in which the diction is dignified, the movement impressive, and the ending unhappy._ _Comedy is a drama of a light and amusing character, with a happy conclusion to its plot._ Exercises in Metres. Enough of each poem is given below so that the kind of metre can be determined. Always name the verse form and write the verse scheme. Some hard work will be necessary to work out the irregular lines, but it is only by work on these that any ability in scanning can be gained. Always read a stanza two or three times to get the swing of the rhythm. Remember the silences, and the substitutions that may be made. 1. "I stood on the bridge at midnight As the clocks were striking the hour, And the moon rose over the city, Behind the dark church tower. "Among the long black rafters The wavering shadows lay, And the current that came from the ocean Seemed to lift and bear them away." 2. "All things are new;--the buds, the leaves, That gild the elm-tree's nodding crest, And even the nest beneath the eaves;-- There are no birds in last year's nest!" 3. "Meanwhile we did our nightly chores,-- Brought in the wood from out of doors, Littered the stalls, and from the mows Raked down the herd's-grass for the cows; Heard the horse whinnying for his corn; And, sharply clashing horn on horn, Impatient down the stanchion rows The cattle shake their walnut bows; While, peering from his early perch Upon the scaffold's pole of birch, The cock his crested helmet bent And down his querulous challenge sent." 4. "You know, we French stormed Ratisbon: A mile or so away, On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms locked behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive with its mind." 5. "Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. "Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. "For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. "Read from some humbler poet Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; "Who through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of the wonderful melodies." 6. "Hickory, dickery, dock, The mouse ran up the clock; The clock struck one, And the mouse ran down; Hickory, dickery, dock." 7. "Two brothers had the maiden, and she thought, Within herself: 'I would I were like them; For then I might go forth alone, to trace The mighty rivers downward to the sea, And upward to the brooks that, through the year, Prattle to the cool valleys. I would know What races drink their waters; how their chiefs Bear rule, and how men worship there, and how They build, and to what quaint device they frame, Where sea and river meet, their stately ships; What flowers are in their gardens, and what trees Bear fruit within their orchards; in what garb Their bowmen meet on holidays, and how Their maidens bind the waist and braid the hair.'" (In this quotation we have blank verse; that is, verse that does not rhyme. It is iambic pentameter,--the most common verse in great English poetry. What poems are you familiar with that use this verse-form?) 8. "A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast And fills the rustling sails And bends the gallant mast; And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While like the eagle free Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee. "O for a soft and gentle wind; I heard a fair one cry; But give to me the snoring breeze And white waves heaving high; And white waves heaving high, my lads, The good ship tight and free-- The world of waters is our home, And merry men are we. "There's tempest in yon horned moon, And lightning in yon cloud; But hark the music, mariners! The wind is piping loud; The wind is piping loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free-- While the hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea." 9. "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door-- ''T is some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door-- Only this, and nothing more.'" 10. "Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat, Across its antique portico Tall poplar trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all,-- 'Forever--never! Never--forever!'" 11. "Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year." 12. "Sweet and low, sweet and low, Wind of the western sea, Low, low, breathe and blow, Wind of the western sea! Over the rolling waters go, Come from the dying moon, and blow, Blow him again to me; While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. "Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, Father will come to thee soon; Rest, rest, on mother's breast, Father will come to thee soon; Father will come to his babe in the nest-- Silver sails all out of the west Under the silver moon: Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep." 13. "See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle of design!" (If the pupils have Palgrave's "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics," they have a great fund of excellent material illustrating all varieties of metrical variation. There are very few pieces of literature that illustrate so many varieties of metre as Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.") * * * * * APPENDIX A. SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS. The Course of Study on pages xx-xxvi contemplates five days a week for the study of English. The text which is to be the subject of the term's work should first be studied for a few weeks. After it has been mastered, three days of each week should be given to literature and two to composition. In practice I have found it best to have the study of literature occupy three consecutive days,--for example, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This arrangement leaves Monday and Friday for composition. Friday is used for the study of the text-book and for general criticism and suggestion. On Monday the compositions should be written in the classroom. To have them so written is, at least during the first year, distinctly better. The first draft of the composition should be brought to class ready for amendment and copying. During the writing the teacher should be among the pupils offering assistance, and insisting upon good penmanship. Care at the beginning will form a habit of neatness, and keep the penmanship up to a high standard. The arrangement suggested is only one plan. This works well. Many others may be adopted. But no plan should be accepted which makes the number of essays fewer than one a week; nor should the number of days given to literature be smaller than three a week. During the second year, if the instructor thinks it can be done without loss, the compositions may be written outside of school hours and brought to class on a definite day. A pupil should not be allowed to put off the writing of a composition any more than a lesson in geometry. On Monday of each week a composition should be handed in; irregularity only makes the work displeasing and leads to shirking. Writing out of school gives more time for criticism and study of composition, and during the second year this extra time is much needed. By the third year the pupils certainly can do the work out of school. As the compositions increase in length, more time will be necessary for their preparation. The teacher should, however, know exactly what progress has been made each week; and by individual criticisms and by wise suggestions she should help the pupil to meet the difficulties of his special case. In order that the instructor may have time for individual criticism, she should have two periods each day vacant in which to meet pupils for consultation. To make this clear, suppose that a teacher of English has one hundred pupils in her classes. She should have no more, for one hundred essays a week are enough for any person to correct. If there be six recitation periods daily, place twenty-five pupils in each of four sections for the study of literature, composition, and general criticism. This leaves two periods each day to meet individuals, giving ten pupils for each period. These should come on scheduled days, with the same regularity as for class recitation. The pupil's work should have been handed in on the second day before he comes up for consultation, in order that the teacher may be competent to give criticisms of any value. The inspiration of the first reading cannot be depended upon to suggest any help, nor is there time for such a reading during the recitation. There will be need of class recitation in argument. Ten days or two weeks are all that is necessary for text-book work. This should be done before pupils read the "Conciliation." In the reading constantly keep before the pupils the methods of the author. Every teacher should be able to do what she asks of the pupils. No person would dare to offer herself as a teacher of Latin or algebra until she could write all the translations of the one and solve all the problems of the other. Yet there are persons who have the audacity to offer their services as teachers of English, when they cannot write a letter correctly, to say nothing of a more formal piece of composition. If an instructor in physics, who had asked his pupils to solve a problem in electricity, should say to each unfortunate person as he handed in his solution, "No, that isn't right; you'll have to try again," without offering any help or suggestion, and should continue this discouraging process until some bright pupil worked it out, or perhaps some one guessed it, we should say that such a person was no instructor at all. We might go so far as to question his intellectual competency. We certainly should think him quite deserving of dismissal. Still many teachers of English do nothing more than say, "It isn't right. Make it so." If the teacher does not know how to do the thing she asks the pupils to do, she should not be teaching. And even when she can do it, she will often benefit herself and the pupils by actually writing the composition. In this way not only does she gain command of her own powers of expression, but she finds out the difficulties with which the pupils have to contend. Every teacher of English composition should be able to do some creditable work in English; and every teacher of English should put this talent into actual use. Numerous examples of correct paragraphs, well-made sentences, and apt words have not been included in the text. They have been omitted because they can be found in the literature study. It is better for pupils to find these for themselves. It will put them in the way of reading with the senses always alert for something good; and all good paragraphs and sentences lose something of their beautiful adaptation when torn from the place of their birth and growth. So, too, there are no long lists of errors. One hundred pupils in a term make enough to fill a volume. When a teacher knows that Sentences is to be her next subject she should begin three months in advance to get a good collection of specimens. These should be classified so that they may be most usable. By the time the class comes to the study of Sentences some new, live material will be on hand for illustration. In the pupils' exercises each week those errors should be singled out and dwelt upon which are the special subject of text-book work. If the pupils are studying Coherence in sentence structure, select all violations of this principle in the week's exercises, and by means of them nail that one principle down instead of trying to lay down the whole set of principles given in the chapter on Sentences. Alongside of this collection of mistakes in Coherence of sentences show the pupils the best examples of tight-jointed sentences to be found in the literature they are studying. Point out how these sentences have been made to hold together, and how their own shambling creations can be corrected. Some teachers will fear the amount of literature required. It may seem large, especially in the first two years. It certainly would be quite impossible to read aloud in class all of this. However, that is not intended. There would be but sorry progress either in the course of study or in the power to analyze literature if the class time were taken up with oral reading of narration and description. The whole of a short story or one or two chapters of a novel are not too much for a lesson. The discussion of the meaning and the method of the author should take up the largest part of the time. Then such portions should be read aloud as are especially suited to an exercise in oral reading. In this way the apparently large list will be easily covered within the time. Moreover, there is distinct gain in reading much. If only three or four pages be given for a lesson, the study of literature degenerates into a study of words. A study of words is necessary, but it is only a part of the study of literature. Such a method of study gives the pupil no sense of values. He does not get out into the wide spaces of the author's thought, but is eternally hedged about by the dwarfing barriers of etymology and grammar. B. THE FORM OF A COMPOSITION. THE MARGIN. It is the custom to leave a margin of about an inch at the left side of the page. In this margin the corrections should be written, not in the composition. There should be no margin at the right. The device of writing incomplete lines, or of making each sentence a paragraph, is sometimes adopted by young persons in the hope of deceiving the teacher as to the length of the composition. Remember that pages do not count for literature any more than yards of hideous advertising boards count as art. Write a full page with a straight-lined margin at the left. INDENTION. To designate the beginning of a new paragraph, it is customary to have the first line begin an inch farther in than the other lines. This indention of the margin and the incomplete line at the end mark the visible limits of the paragraph. THE HEADING. The heading or title of the composition should be written about an inch and a half from the top of the page, and well placed in the middle from left to right. There should be a blank line between the title and the beginning of the composition. Some persons prefer, in addition to the title, the name of the writer and the date of writing,--an unnecessary addition, it seems to me. If they are to appear, the name should be at the left and the date at the right, both on one line. The title will be on the next line below. Jay Phillips. Jan. 27, 1900. The Circus-Man's Story. "There was once an old man whom they called a wizard, and who lived in a great cave by the sea and raised dragons. Now when I was a very little boy, I had read a great deal about this old man and felt as if he were quite a friend of mine. I had planned for a long time to pay him a visit, although I had not decided just when I should start. But the day Jim White's father brought him that camel, I was crazy to be after my dragon at once. "When bedtime came, I had made all my plans; and scarcely had Nurse turned her back when I was on my way. It was really very far, but I traveled so swiftly that I arrived in a remarkably short time at the wizard's house. When I rapped, he opened the door and asked me in. "'I came to see if you had any dragons left,' I told him. 'I should like a very good, gentle dragon,' I added, 'that would not scare Nurse; and if it is isn't too much trouble, I should want one that I could ride.'" THE INDORSEMENT. When the composition is finished, it should be folded but once up and down the middle of the page. The indorsement upon the back is generally written toward the edges of the leaves, not toward the folded edge. I prefer the other way, however; and for this reason. If in a bunch of essays a teacher is searching for a particular one, she generally holds them in the left hand and with the fingers of the right lifts one essay after another. Indorsing toward the folded edge insures lifting a whole essay every time; while if the edges of the leaves be toward the right hand, too many or too few may be lifted. The indorsement should contain: first, the name of the writer; second, the term and period of his recitation; third, the title of the essay; and fourth, the date. In describing the class and period, it is well to use a Roman numeral for the term, counting two terms in each year, and an Arabic numeral to denote the period of his recitation. ||============================= || | || Jay Phillips. | || | || II, 3. | || | || The Circus-Man's Story. | || | || Jan. 27, 1900. | | | - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PENMANSHIP. The penmanship should be neat and legible. Not all persons can write elegantly; but all can write so that their work can be easily read, and all can make a clean page. Scribbling is due to carelessness. A scribbled page points to a scribbling mind; clean-cut handwriting, perhaps not Spencerian, but a clear, legible handwriting is not only an indication of clear-cut thinking but a means and promoter of accurate thought. Moreover, as a business proposition, one cannot afford to become a slovenly penman. Every composition should be a lesson in penmanship, and by so much improve one's chances in the business world. And last, the teacher who has to read and correct the compositions of from one hundred to two hundred persons each week demands some consideration. No one but a teacher knows the drudgery of this work; it can be much lightened if each pupil writes so that the composition can be read without difficulty. By doing this, the pupil is sure of better criticism; for the teacher can give all her attention to the composition, none being demanded for the penmanship. C. MARKS FOR CORRECTION OF COMPOSITIONS. In correcting compositions certain abbreviations will save a teacher much time. Some of the common ones are given below. Underscore the element that needs correcting, and put the abbreviation in the margin. In case the whole paragraph needs remodeling, draw a line at its side and note the correction in the margin. Cap. Use a capital letter. l. c. Use a small letter. D. See the dictionary for the correct use of the word. Sp. Spelling. Gr. A mistake in grammatical use of language. Cnst. The construction of the sentence is awkward or unidiomatic. Cl. Not clear. The remedy may be suggested by reference to certain pages of the text. W. Weak. As above, point out the trouble by a page reference. Rep. Repetition is monotonous; or it may be necessary for clearness. p. Punctuation. Cond. Condense. Exp. Expand. Tr. Transpose. ? Some fault not designated. It is well to use page reference. ¶ Make a new paragraph. No ¶ Unite into one paragraph. [Greek lower-case delta] Cut out. ^ There is something omitted. In addition to the above very common corrections, many others should be made. Instead of abbreviations, it will be better to refer the pupil to the page of the book which treats of the special fault. For instance, if there be an unexpected change of construction, underscore it, and write in the margin "226;" on this page is found "parallel construction" of sentences. It may be well to use the letters U., C., and M., in connection with the page numbers to indicate that the fault is in the unity, coherence, or mass of the element to be corrected. The constant reference to the fuller statement of the principles violated will serve to fix them in the mind. D. PUNCTUATION. Punctuation seeks to do for written composition what inflections and pauses accomplish in vocal expression. It makes clear what kind of an expression the whole sentence is: whether declarative, exclamatory, or interrogative. And it assists in indicating the relations of the different parts within a sentence. While there is practically uniformity in the method of punctuation at the end of a sentence, within a sentence punctuation shows much variety of method. Where one person uses a comma, another inserts a semicolon; and where one finds a semicolon sufficient, another requires a colon. It should be remembered that the parts of a sentence have not equal rank; and that the difference in rank should, as far as possible, be indicated by the marks of punctuation. Keeping in mind, also, the fact that the internal marks of punctuation,--the colon, the semicolon, and the comma,--have a rank in the order mentioned, from the greatest to the least, a writer will use the stronger marks when the rank of the parts of a sentence demands them, and the weaker marks to separate the lesser elements of the sentence. The sentences below illustrate the variety which may be practiced, and the use of punctuation to show the relation and rank of the elements of a sentence. 1. Internal punctuation is largely a matter of taste but there are definite rules for final punctuation. 2. Internal punctuation is largely a matter of taste; there are, however, definite rules for final punctuation. 3. Internal punctuation, the purpose of which is to group phrases and clauses which belong together and to separate those which do not belong together, and to indicate the relative rank of the parts separated, is, to a great extent, a matter of taste: on the other hand, there are definite rules for final punctuation, the object of which is to separate sentences, and also to assist in telling what kind of a sentence precedes it; that is, whether it be declarative, interrogative, or exclamatory. Looking at the first sentence, we find two elements of equal rank separated by a comma. Some authors would prefer no punctuation at all in a sentence as short as this. Again, if one wished to make the two elements very independent, he would use a semicolon. There would be but little difference in meaning between no punctuation and a comma; but there is a wide difference in meaning between no punctuation and a semicolon. The independence caused by the use of the semicolon is felt in the second sentence, where the words are the same except one. In this sentence a colon might be used; and one might go so far as to make two sentences of it. Notice that in these two sentences the question is how independent you wish the elements to be, and it is also a question of taste. In the third sentence, there are elements of different rank. To indicate the rank, punctuation of different value must be introduced. The two independent elements are separated by a colon. A semicolon might be used, if a semicolon were not used within the second independent element. This renders the greater mark necessary. Look at the commas in the first independent element. The assertion is that "internal punctuation is a matter of taste." This is too sweeping. It is modified by an explanatory phrase, "to a large extent;" and this phrase is inclosed by commas. Moreover, the long clause indicating the purpose of internal punctuation is inclosed by commas. The use of a semicolon in the second part falls under the third rule for the semicolon. If one should substitute for this semicolon a comma and a dash, he could use a semicolon instead of a colon for separating the two main divisions of the sentence. However, the method in which they are first punctuated is in accord with the rules generally accepted. The simplest of these rules are given below but one must never be surprised to find a piece of literature in which the internal punctuation is at variance with these rules. CAPITAL LETTERS. 1. A capital letter begins every new sentence. 2. A capital letter begins every line of poetry. 3. All names of Deity begin with a capital letter. 4. All proper names begin with capital letters. 5. All adjectives derived from proper nouns begin with capital letters. 6. The first word of every direct quotation begins with a capital letter. 7. Most abbreviations use capital letters. COMMAS. 8. A series of words or a series of phrases, performing similar functions in a sentence, are separated from each other by commas, unless all the connectives are expressed. "Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low,--an excellent thing in woman." "Good my lord, You have begot me, bred me, loved me: I Return those duties back as are right fit, Obey you, love you, and most honor you." But, "shining and tall and fair and straight," because all the connectives are expressed. 9. Words out of their natural order are separated from the rest of the sentence by commas. "To the unlearned, punctuation is a matter of chance." 10. Words and phrases, either explanatory or slightly parenthetical, are separated from the rest of the sentence by commas. "Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love 's More richer than my tongue." However when phrases and clauses are quite parenthetic, they are separated from the remainder of the sentence by parentheses, or by commas and dashes. The comma and dash is more common, and generally indicates a lesser independence of the inclosed element. "Then Miss Gunns smiled stiffly, and thought what a pity it was that these rich country people, who could afford to buy such good clothes (really Miss Nancy's lace and silk were very costly), should be brought up in utter ignorance and vulgarity." 11. The nominative of direct address, and phrases in the nominative absolute construction are cut off by commas. "Goneril, Our eldest born, speak first." "The ridges being taken, the troops advanced a thousand yards." 12. Appositive words and phrases are separated from the remainder of the sentence by commas. "In the early years of this century, such a linen weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his vocation, in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit." 13. When words are omitted, the omission is indicated by the use of a comma. "Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despis'd!" 14. A comma is used before a short and informal quotation. "In the bitterness of his wounded spirit, he said to himself, '_She_ will cast me off too.'" 15. A comma is used to separate the independent clauses of a compound sentence sufficiently involved to necessitate some mark of punctuation, and yet not involved enough to require marks of different ranks. "But about the Christmas of the fifteenth year a second great change came over Marner's life, and his history became blent in a singular manner with the life of his neighbors." 6. Small groups of more closely related words are inclosed by commas to indicate their near relation and to separate them from words they might otherwise be thought to modify. "In this strange world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense nature, have sat weaving, weaving--looking towards the end of his pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had come to mark off his weaving into periods, and the money not only grew, but it remained with him." SEMICOLONS. 17. A semicolon is used to separate the parts of a compound sentence if they are involved, or contain commas. It is also used to give independence to the members of a compound sentence when not very complex. "The meadow was searched in vain; and he got over the stile into the next field, looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shallowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud." "As for the child, he would see that it was cared for; he would never forsake it; he would do everything but own it." 18. Semicolons are used to separate a series of clauses in much the same way as commas are used to separate a series of words. "I love you more than words can wield the matter; Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty; Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare; No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honor; As much as child e'er loved, or father found; A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable; Beyond all manner of so much I love thee." 19. A semicolon is generally used to introduce a clause of repetition, a clause stating the obverse, and a clause stating an inference. (Many examples of the last two rules will be found in the discussion of compound sentences on pages 202, 203.) COLONS. 20. A colon is used to introduce a formal quotation. It is frequently followed by a dash. "Under date of November 28, 1860, she wrote to a friend:-- "'I am engaged now in writing a story--the idea of which came to me after our arrival in this house, and which has thrust itself between me and the other book I was meditating. It is Silas Manner, the Weaver of Raveloe.'" "On the last day of the same year she wrote: 'I am writing a story which came across my other plans by a sudden inspiration, etc.'" 21. A colon is used to introduce a series of particulars, either appositional or explanatory, which the reader has been led to expect by the first clause of the sentence. These particulars are separated from each other by semicolons. "The study of the principles of composition should include the following subjects: a study of words as to their origin and meaning; a study of the structure of the sentence and of the larger elements of discourse--in other words, of concrete logic; a study of the principles of effective literary composition, as illustrated in the various divisions of literature; and also a study of the æsthetics of literature." "What John Morley once said of literature as a whole is even more accurate when applied to fiction alone: its purpose is 'to bring sunshine into our hearts and to drive moonshine out of our heads.'" 22. A colon is used to separate the major parts of a very complex and involved sentence, if the major parts, or either of them, contain within themselves semicolons. "For four years he had thought of Nancy Lammeter, and wooed her with a tacit patient worship, as the woman who made him think of the future with joy: she would be his wife, and would make home lovely to him, as his father's home had never been; and it would be easy, when she was always near, to shake off those foolish habits that were no pleasures, but only a feverish way of annulling vacancy." 23. A colon is sometimes used to mark a strong independence in the parts of a compound sentence. "He didn't want to give Godfrey that pleasure: he preferred that Master Godfrey should be vexed." THE DASH. 24. A dash is frequently used with a colon to introduce a formal quotation. The quotation then begins a new paragraph. (Example under colon.) 25. A dash is used alone or with a comma to inclose a phrase or clause which is parenthetic or explanatory. "'But as for being ugly, look at me, child, in this silver-colored silk--I told you how it 'ud be--I look as yallow as a daffadil.'" (Example under comma.) 26. A dash is used to denote a sudden turn of the thought. "I've no opinion of the men, Miss Gunn--I don't know what _you_ have." "'It does make her look funny, though--partly like a short-necked bottle wi' a long quill in it." 27. A dash is frequently used when the composition should be interrupted to indicate the intensity of the emotion. "No--no--I can't part with it, I can't let it go,' said Silas abruptly. 'It's come to me--I've a right to keep it.'" "And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!-- Pray you, undo this button:--thank you, sir.-- Do you see this? Look on her,--look,--her lips,-- Look there, look there!"-- 28. A dash is sometimes used alone before an appositive phrase or clause. "For the first time he determined to try the coal-hole--a small closet near the hearth." PERIOD, EXCLAMATION POINT, INTERROGATION MARK. 29. A period closes every declarative sentence. 30. A period is used after abbreviations. 31. An exclamation point follows an expression of strong emotion. 32. An interrogation mark follows a direct question. 33. An interrogation mark is sometimes used in the body of a sentence, when the writer wishes to make the assertion forceful and uses a rhetorical question for the purpose. "The shepherd's dog barked fiercely when one of these alien-looking men appeared on the upland, dark against the early winter sunset; for what dog likes a figure bent under a heavy bag?--and these pale men rarely stirred abroad without that mysterious burden." 34. Quotation marks inclose every quotation of the exact words of another. When one quotation is made within another, the inner or secondary quotation is inclosed with single marks, the main or outer quotation is included within the double marks. (Examples of both may be found above.) SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING PUNCTUATION. At the time the pupils are studying the rules for punctuation they are reading Hawthorne or some other author equally careful of his punctuation. In his writing they will find numerous examples of the rules for punctuation. Let them take five rules for the comma, finding all the examples in five pages of text. In the same way furnish semicolons, colons, and dashes. When the rules have all been learned, they should be able to give the reason for every mark they find in literature. Next place upon the board paragraphs not punctuated, and have the pupils punctuate them. Remember that there is not absolute uniformity in the use of the comma, semicolon, and colon; though in each author there is a general adherence to the principles he adopts. Punctuation should be consistent. Insist that the pupil punctuate his written work consistently. E. SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF LITERATURE.[57] HAWTHORNE . . . . . . . A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys. TENNYSON. . . . . . . . Enoch Arden. LONGFELLOW. . . . . . . Tales of a Wayside Inn. WHITTIER. . . . . . . . The Tent on the Beach. MACAULAY. . . . . . . . Lays of Ancient Rome. DICKENS . . . . . . . . A Christmas Carol. KIPLING . . . . . . . . Wee Willie Winkie, and Other Stories. KIPLING . . . . . . . . The Jungle Books. HAWTHORNE . . . . . . . Twice-Told Tales. HAWTHORNE . . . . . . . Mosses from an Old Manse. DICKENS . . . . . . . . The Cricket on the Hearth. BROWN . . . . . . . . . Rab and his Friends. OUIDA . . . . . . . . . A Dog of Flanders. HALE. . . . . . . . . . The Man without a Country. DEFOE . . . . . . . . . Robinson Crusoe. POE . . . . . . . . . . The Gold-Bug. SCOTT . . . . . . . . . Marmion. SCOTT . . . . . . . . . The Lady of the Lake. BROWNING. . . . . . . . Hervé Riel, an Incident of the French Camp, and other Narrative Poems. FRANKLIN. . . . . . . . Autobiography. COOPER. . . . . . . . . The Last of the Mohicans. LONGFELLOW. . . . . . . Evangeline. LONGFELLOW. . . . . . . Miles Standish. DAVIS . . . . . . . . . Gallegher, and Other Stories. MAUPASSANT. . . . . . . Number Thirteen. MISS WILKINS. . . . . . Short Stories. MISS JEWETT . . . . . . Short Stories. POPE. . . . . . . . . . The Iliad. ALDRICH . . . . . . . . Marjorie Daw. LOWELL. . . . . . . . . The Vision of Sir Launfal, and Other Poems. IRVING. . . . . . . . . Tales of a Traveller. IRVING. . . . . . . . . The Sketch Book. POE . . . . . . . . . . The Fall of the House of Usher. WHITTIER. . . . . . . . Snow-Bound. BURROUGHS . . . . . . . Sharp Eyes; Birds and Bees; Pepacton. GOLDSMITH . . . . . . . The Deserted Village. SCOTT . . . . . . . . . Ivanhoe. DICKENS . . . . . . . . David Copperfield. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . Julius Cæsar. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . The Merchant of Venice. IRVING. . . . . . . . . Rip Van Winkle. IRVING. . . . . . . . . The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. BRYANT. . . . . . . . . Selected Poems. GRAY. . . . . . . . . . An Elegy in a Country Churchyard. TENNYSON. . . . . . . . The Princess; Idylls of the King. DICKENS . . . . . . . . The Pickwick Papers. BURNS . . . . . . . . . Selected Poems. DRYDEN. . . . . . . . . Alexander's Feast. BYRON . . . . . . . . . Childe Harold. GEORGE ELIOT. . . . . . Silas Marner. COLERIDGE . . . . . . . The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. MACAULAY. . . . . . . . Essay on Milton. RUSKIN. . . . . . . . . Sesame and Lilies. EMERSON . . . . . . . . Friendship; Self-Reliance; Fortune of the Republic; The American Scholar. ARNOLD. . . . . . . . . On the Study of Poetry; Wordsworth and Keats. LOWELL. . . . . . . . . Emerson, the Lecturer; Milton; Books and Libraries. HOLMES. . . . . . . . . The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. ADDISON . . . . . . . . The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. WORDSWORTH. . . . . . . Intimations of Immortality, and Other Poems. KEATS . . . . . . . . . Selected Poems. SHELLEY . . . . . . . . Selected Poems. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . Macbeth. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . A Midsummer Night's Dream. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . As You Like It. WEBSTER . . . . . . . . Bunker Hill Monument Oration; Adams and Jefferson. GOLDSMITH . . . . . . . The Vicar of Wakefield. MILTON. . . . . . . . . L'Allegro; Il Penseroso; Comus; Lycidas. DE QUINCEY. . . . . . . Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and Other Papers. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN . . . Selected Essays. THACKERAY . . . . . . . Henry Esmond. STEVENSON . . . . . . . Virginibus Puerisque. STEVENSON . . . . . . . Memories and Portraits. SCHURZ. . . . . . . . . Abraham Lincoln. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS . Selected Addresses. CHARLES LAMB. . . . . . Essays of Elia. STEVENSON . . . . . . . Travels with a Donkey. STEVENSON . . . . . . . An Inland Voyage. BURKE . . . . . . . . . Conciliation with the Colonies. LINCOLN . . . . . . . . Cooper Union Address; Gettysburg Speech. CHAUCER . . . . . . . . Prologue, and Two Canterbury Tales. MILTON. . . . . . . . . Paradise Lost, and Sonnets. CARLYLE . . . . . . . . Essay on Burns. TENNYSON. . . . . . . . In Memoriam, and Lyrics. BROWNING. . . . . . . . Rabbi Ben Ezra; Saul; A Grammarian's Funeral. THOREAU . . . . . . . . Walden. AUSTEN. . . . . . . . . Pride and Prejudice. GEORGE ELIOT. . . . . . Romola. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . King Lear. SHAKESPEARE . . . . . . Hamlet. MACAULAY. . . . . . . . Essay on Johnson. THACKERAY . . . . . . . Vanity Fair. LOWELL. . . . . . . . . Democracy; Lincoln. STEVENSON . . . . . . . Lantern Bearers; A Humble Remonstrance; Gossip about Romance. * * * * * INDEX Abstract vs. concrete, 89, 90. "Adams and Jefferson," Webster's, quotation from, 176. Adjectives, 78. "Alice in Wonderland," a story without facts, 25. Allegory, 261. Allusion, 263. Amphibrach, 273. Analogy, use of, 137. Anapest, defined, 273; interchangeable with iambus, 278. "And," use of, 192. Andersen, Hans Christian, his "Tannenbaum," 12. Anecdotes in exposition, 97. "Annabel Lee," quotations from, 271, 278, 279. Anti-climax, 210. Antithesis, 227. "Apologia," Newman's, quotation from, 160. Apostrophe, 261. Argument, 4, 128-137; from cause, 133; sign, 133-137; example, 137. Arnold, Matthew, quotation from, 159; quotation to illustrate repetition, 167; to illustrate sentence structure, 222. Arrangement, in narration, 29-32; description, 74, 75; exposition, 108-114; argument, 138-141; sentence, 222, 223. Association of ideas, 103. "Autumn Effect, An," quotation from, 17. "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," its purpose, 7; beginning, 29; length of sentences in, 33; time for the action, 36. Balanced sentences, 227, 228. Ballad, defined, 285. "Barbara Frietchie," a narrative poem, 4. Bates, Arlo, quoted, 35. Beauty, gained by use of figurative language, 258. Beginning of a story, 29. Bellamy, Edward, his "Looking Backward," 7. "Biglow Papers," quotation from, 51. "Birthmark," Hawthorne's, 24. Blake, William, "Tiger, Tiger," quoted, 282, 283. "Bonnie Brier Bush, Beside the," 25. Bookish words, 242. "Break, Break, Break," quotation from, 283. "Bridge of Sighs, The," quotation from, 270. Brief in argument, 138, 139. Browning, Robert, vivid narration of, 23. "Burial of Sir John Moore, The," quotation from, 277. Burke, Edmund, quotation from his speech on "Conciliation with the Colonies," 116; that speech analyzed, 142-147; quotations to illustrate paragraph structure, 171, 175, 177, 188; quotations to show sentence structure, 200, 209, 214, 226. Burroughs, John, his knowledge of his field, 9; quotations from, 158, 160. "But," use of, 192. Capital letters, 303. Cause and effect, 133-136. Characters, number of, 35. Chaucer, Geoffrey, quotation from, 245. Choice of subject, 8-12. Choice of words, 78-80, 239-255. "Cinderella," 12. Clearness and coherence, 180-193, 224, 225. Clearness gained by use of figurative language, 258. Climax, 139-141, 211, 218; defined, 262. Coherence, 20; in narration, 31, 32; in description, 74, 75; in exposition, 116-118; in paragraphs, 180-193; in sentences, 224, 225. Colons, 306, 307. Comedy, 286. Commas, 303, 304. Comparisons, use of, 77, 98; paragraph of, 165; confusion of, 259. Composition, 1; oral and written, 2; conventions of, 2. "Conciliation with the Colonies," Burke's speech on, quoted, 116, 171, 175, 177, 188, 214, 226; analyzed, 142-147. Conclusion of a story, 23. Concrete facts, use of, 89, 90. Conjunctions, use of, 190, 191. Connectives in sentences, 228, 229. Consistency, 25. Cooke, Josiah P., his essay on "Fire," 8. "Copyright," quotations from Macaulay's speech on, 159, 172. Correction, marks for, 300. Curtis, George William, quoted, 111. Dactyl, defined, 272; interchangeable with trochee, 278. "Daisy, The," Wordsworth's quotation from, 274. "Darkness and Dawn," 8. Dash, 307, 308. "David Copperfield," description quoted from, 65. "David Harum," its construction criticised, 22. Davis, Richard Harding, small number of characters in his books, 35; simple plot in his "Gallegher," 36. Deduction, 129. Definition, a, 91-94. Description, 4, 49-80; an aid to narration, 34; and exposition, 91. Description and painting, 50. Details, in narration, 22-25; paragraph of, 163. Dickens, Charles, his "Nicholas Nickleby" as an exposition, 5; description from his "David Copperfield" quoted, 65; quotations from Mr. Micawber's conversation, 253. Dictionary, use of, 237. Differentia, 92, 93. Digression, 22. Dimeter, 274. Discourse, forms of, 3-7. "Discussions and Arguments," Newman's, quotation from, 97. Dramatic poetry, 286. Dynamic point of sentence, 221. Elegy, the, 285. Eliot, George, her "Silas Marner," 13; quotation from, 152-156. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, primarily an essayist, 9. Emotional statement, 115. Emphasis, how secured, 110-112, 115, 116, 217-219. End of a paragraph, 175-179; of a sentence, 208-212. "English Composition," Wendell's, quotation from, 94. Enthymeme, 130. Enumeration _vs._ suggestion, 52. Enumerative description, 54. Epic, the, 284. Epithet, 260. "Evangeline," quotation from, 277, 278. Events, order of, 29, 30. Everett, Edward, description from, quoted, 71. Examples, paragraph of, 171. Exclamation, 262. Exclamation point, 308. Exclusion of details, 22, 23, 26. Exposition, 4, 89-120; and description, 91. Facts in stories, 25. "Faerie Queene, The," quotation from, 281. "Fall of the House of Usher, The," descriptions in, 34; quotation from, 69, 71. Familiar images, 76. Farrar, Canon, as a writer of sermons, 8. "Feathertop," 13. Figurative language, 257; value of, 258. Figures of speech, 77, 250, 257-268. Fine writing, 253. "First Snow-Fall, The," quotation from, 274. Fiske, John, his "History of the United States," 25. Foot, a, in poetry, 272; one kind may be substituted for another, 277-281; first and last foot of a verse may be irregular, 281, 282. Force, gained by use of figurative language, 258. Foreign words, 243. Francis I. quoted, 113. "Function of Criticism at the Present Time," Arnold's, quotation from, 222. "Gallegher," simple plot of, 36. General terms, 89, 248-252. Genung, J. F., on paragraph structure, 162. Genus and differentia, 92, 93. "Gold Bug," length of sentences in, 33. Good usage, 222, 223, 239-245. Grant, U. S., his "Memoirs" have no plot, 16. Hackneyed phrases, 253. Haggard, Rider, 12. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, a story writer, 9; his "Feathertop," 13; his descriptions in "The Marble Faun," 34; quoted, 50; quotations from, about "The Old Manse," 58, 59; descriptions from his "House of the Seven Gables" quoted, 66; from "The Old Apple Dealer," 67. Heading of essay, 297. Heptameter, 275. "Hervé Riel" as a piece of narrative, 23. Hexameter, 275. "Hiawatha," quotation from, 270. "Historical Sketches," Newman's, quotation from, 52-54. Hood, Thomas, "The Bridge of Sighs" quoted, 270. "House of the Seven Gables," descriptions quoted from, 66. Hugo, Victor, his description of Waterloo quoted, 67. Huxley, Thomas, example of his use of comparison, 98; quotation from, to illustrate paragraph structure, 161. Hyperbole, 263. Iambus, defined, 272; the common foot of English verse, 272, 279; interchangeable with anapest, 278. "Idea of a University," quotations from, 95, 171, 193, 203, 210, 247. Illustrations, their value, 97. "Impressions de Théâtre," quotation from, 63. "Incident of a French Camp, An," as an example of a short story, 23. Incident, the main, 20, 21. Incidents, order of, 29, 30. Inclusion of material, 24. Indention of paragraph, 297. Individual arrangement of paragraph, 181-188. Individuality of author, 8. Indorsement of essay, 298. Induction, 128, 132. Interest, 11, 12. Interrogation, 262. Interrogation point, 308. Introduction of story, 23. Inversion, 262. Irony, 262. Irrelevant matter, 22, 23. Irving, Washington, as a story writer in the third person, 27; description from, quoted, 54; short characterization quoted, 70; description of a coachman quoted, 75; quotations to illustrate paragraph structure, 164, 183; to illustrate sentence construction, 202, 203, 219, 220, 229. Jonson, Ben, quotation from, 280. "Jungle Books," 12; quotation from, 78. "Kidnapped," quotations from, 15, 165; its unity, 27. "King Lear," its plot, 16; quotation from, 60. Kingsley, Charles, "The Three Fishers" quoted, 271. Kipling, Rudyard, his "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep," 7; his "Jungle Books," 12; his use of climax, 21; as a story-teller, 22, 27; small number of characters in his stories, 35; quotation from his "Light that Failed," 60; description quoted from his "Jungle Books," 78; quotation to illustrate sentence construction, 201; his "L'Envoi" quoted, 252. "Lady of the Lake, The," quotation from, 269. Language _vs._ painting, 49-52. Lanier, Sidney, "The Science of English Verse," cited, 269; quoted, 273. Latin words, 245-248. Le Gallienne, Richard, his essay on pigs, 10; quoted, 257. "Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The," 27, 29; description in, 34; quotation from to show paragraph structure, 163, 183; to show sentence structure, 202, 219. Lemaître, Jules, criticism of Zola quoted, 63. Length, of a description, 63, 64; of a paragraph, 151-156; of a sentence, 178, 179, 204, 205. "L'Envoi" to "The Seven Seas," quoted, 252. "Les Misérables," its intricate plot, 16; quotation from, 67. "Light that Failed, The," quotation from, 60. "Little Dorrit," large number of characters in, 35. "Little Red Riding Hood," 12. Logical definition, 91. "London Bridge," quotation from, 282. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, "Hiawatha" quoted, 270; "Evangeline" quoted, 277, 278; "The Village Blacksmith" quoted, 279, 280. "Looking Backward," as a novel with a purpose, 7. Loose sentences, 212, 214, 215. Lovelace, Richard, quoted, 112. Lowell, James Russell, his "Sir Launfal," 13; quotation from "Biglow Papers," 51; from a "Song," 52; from "To W. L. Garrison," 89; from "The First Snow-Fall," 274. Lyric poetry, 285. Lytton, Lord, quotation from, 241. Macaulay, Lord, quotation on Milton from, 96; quotation to illustrate comparison, 98; his essay on "Milton" analyzed, 106; last sentence of that essay quoted, 111; that essay as an example of proportion in treatment, 114; his denunciation of Charles I. quoted, 115; further quotations from his "Milton," 117; his speeches on "Copyright" and the "Reform Bill" quoted, 159, 172, 193; quotations from the "Milton" to illustrate paragraph structure, 164, 166, 168, 178, 182, 184. "Macbeth," 13. Maclaren, Ian, 25. Main incident, 20-26. Major term, 129. "Marble Faun, The," description in, 34. Margin of composition, 296. "Marmion," 27, 29; quoted, 276. Mass, 20; in description, 64-75; in exposition, 108-114; in paragraphs, 174-178; in sentences, 207-212. Masson, David, 104. Maupassant, Guy de, quotation from his "Pierre et Jean," 56; from his "Odd Number," 156. Meredith, George, quotation from, to illustrate paragraph structure, 161; sentence structure, 205. Metaphor, 77, 260. Metonymy, 250, 263. Metre, kinds of, 273-275; variations in, 276. Metrical romance, the, 284. Middle term, 130. "Milton," Macaulay's essay on, quotations from, 96, 98, 111, 115, 117, 119, 164, 166-168, 178, 184; analyzed, 106. Milton, John, quotations from, 241, 245, 248. Minor term, 129. Monometer, 273. Mood in description, 59-62, 67-69. "Mosses from an Old Manse," quotation from, 50. Movement of story, 32, 33. Narration, 4, 13-37. Narrative poetry, 284. National usage, 242. "New Testament," quotation from, 241. Newman, Cardinal, quotation from, about Athens, 52; quotation on theology, 95; quotation to illustrate the use of specific instances in exposition, 97; to illustrate paragraph structure, 160, 171, 177, 193; to show sentence construction, 203, 210; to show use of words, 247. "Nicholas Nickleby," as an exposition of school abuses, 5. Nouns, 78. Number of characters, 35. Observation, its value, 55. Obverse statement, 95, 96; paragraph of, 169-171. Octameter, 275. "Odd Number, The," quotation from, 156. Ode, defined, 285. "OEnone," quotation from, 51. "Old Apple Dealer, The," quotation from, 67. Omniscience of an author, 27. Order of events in stories, 29; of words in sentences, 217-219. Outline, use of, 32, 109, 110, 138, 139, 174. Palmer, Professor G. H., quotations from, on composition writing, 101, 112. "Paradise Lost," quotations from, 241, 245, 248. Paragraphs, 151-195. Parallel construction, 192-194, 226, 227. Particulars in exposition, 96; paragraph of, 163. Penmanship, 300. Pentameter, 274. "Pepacton," 9; quotations from, 158, 160. Period, 308. Periodic sentences, 212-216. Personification, 77, 260. Persuasion, 4. Philippians iv. 8, 241. "Physical Basis of Life," Huxley's, quotations from, 98, 161. "Pierre et Jean," quotation from, 55. "Pilgrim's Progress," 13. Place of a story, 29. Plot, 15-20, 36. Poe, Edgar Allan, his sentences, 33; his use of description in "The Fall of the House of Usher," 34; quotations from that work, 68, 71; "Annabel Lee" quoted, 271, 278, 279. Poetic feet, 272. Poetical words, 254. Poetry, kinds of, 284-286. Point of view, 56-59; change of, 58; mental, 59. Position of words in sentences, 217. "Præterita," Ruskin's, quotations from, 169. Premises, 129; false, 131. "Present Position of Catholics in England," Newman's, quotation from, 177. Present usage of words, 244, 245. "Prince Otto," quotations from, 72, 73. "Princess, The," quotation from, 251. Pronouns, use of, 188, 189. Proportion in description, 73; in exposition, 104-108, 114; in paragraphs, 179. "Prose Fancies," 10. Provincialisms, 242. Purpose, of an author, 6, 7; in description, 59-62. Quotation marks, 308. "Quo Vadis," 7. Rapidity of movement, 32. "Reform Bill," quotation from Macaulay's speech on, 193. Refutation in argument, 141. Repetition, its value, 94; paragraph of, 167. Reputable words, 239-241. "Richard Feverel," quotations from, 161, 205. "Richelieu," quotation from, 241. "Robinson Crusoe," has little plot, 16. Royce, Josiah, quotation from, 242. Ruskin, John, 49; quotation to illustrate building up a paragraph, 169; his "Sesame and Lilies," 239. Saxon words, 245-248. Scale of treatment, 104-108. Scansion, 275-284; requisites for scanning, 283, 284. "Science of English Verse, The," quotation from, 273. Scott, Sir Walter, as a story-teller in the third person, 27; his dull introductory chapters, 31; "The Lady of the Lake" quoted, 269; "Marmion" quoted, 276. Selection of material in narration, 21-28; in description, 56-62; in exposition, 102-104; in argument, 138. "Self-Cultivation in English," quotation from, 101, 112. Semicolons, 202, 203, 305, 306. Sentences, 200-230; simple and compound, 200, 201; long or short, 204, 205. Sequence of events, 29, 30. Serial arrangement of paragraph, 181-188. "Sesame and Lilies," 239. Sienkiewicz, Henry, his "Quo Vadis," 7. "Silas Marner," written for a purpose, 13; example of a plot, 20; time consumed in the story, 36; quotation to show paragraph length, 152-156. Simile, 77, 261. Sing-song, natural tendency toward, 269, 276. Slang, 240. Slowness of movement, 33. "Snow-Bound," narrative or descriptive?, 4. Song defined, 285. Sonnet defined, 285. Specific words, 248-252. Spencer, Herbert, on the philosophy of the periodic sentence, 212. Spenser, Edmund, "The Faerie Queene" quoted, 281. "Spirit of Modern Philosophy," Royce's, quotation from, 242. Spondee, 273. Stanza, 275. Stedman, E. C., an authority on literature, 9. Stevenson, Robert Louis, his "Treasure Island" and "Travels with a Donkey" as narratives, 4; quotation from "Kidnapped," 15; his "An Autumn Effect" quoted, 17; unity in his stories, 27; descriptions from, quoted, 62, 72; examples of personification from, 77; his unusual use of words, 79; quotation to show paragraph structure, 165. Subdual of subordinate parts, 219. Subject, 8-12; common, 11; interesting, 11; in exposition, 99, 100. Suggestion _vs._ enumeration, 52. Suggestions to teachers, 257-260. Suggestive description, 55. Summary, a, 119. Superlatives, 80. Syllogism, 129-132. Synecdoche, 250, 263. "Tannenbaum," 12. Technical words, 242. Tennyson, Lord, quotations from, 51, 251, 283. Terms of syllogism, 129, 130. Testimony, 136. Tetrameter, 274. Thackeray, W. M., quotation from, 157. Theme in exposition, 100, 101. "Three Fishers, The," quotation from, 271. "Tiger, Tiger," quotation from, 283. Time of story, 35. Title in exposition, 102. "To W. L. Garrison," quotation from, 89. Topic-sentence, 157; its position, 157-161. Tragedy, 286. Transitions, 118, 119. "Travels with a Donkey," narrative or descriptive? 4; absence of plot, 17; quotations from, 62, 65, 157. "Treasure Island," a narrative, 4; plot simple, 16. Trimeter, 274. Trochee, defined, 272; interchangeable with dactyl, 278. Type-form of paragraph, 162. "Ugly Duckling, The," 25. Undistributed middle, 131. Unity, 20; in narration, 21, 22; in description, 56-64; in exposition, 102, 103; in argument, 138; in paragraphs, 173; in sentences, 205. "Uses of Astronomy, The," quotation from, 72. Value of observation, 55. "Vanity Fair," example of a plot, 19; quotation from, 157. Variations in metre, 276-284. Verbs in description, 79. Verne, Jules, 12. Verse, a, definition of, 273; how named, 275. Verse forms, 269-291. "Village Blacksmith, The," quotation from, 279, 280. "Vision of Sir Launfal, The," 13; quotation from, 67. Vocabulary, need of, 236. Vulgarisms, 240. "Wake Robin," 9. Webster, Daniel, quotation from, to illustrate paragraph structure, 176; his use of words, 247. "Wee Willie Winkie," its climax, 21. Wendell, Barrett, quotation on printed words from, 94. Whittier, John G., his "Barbara Frietchie" and "Snow-Bound" as narratives, 4. Wilkins, Miss, small number of characters in her books, 35. Wolfe, Charles, "The Burial of Sir John Moore" quoted, 277. Words, 235-256; choice of, 78, 79, 80, 254-260; reputable, 240, 241; national, 242; in present use, 244, 245; Latin and Saxon, 245-248; general and specific, 248-252. "Wordsworth," Arnold's essay on, quotations from, 158, 167; "The Daisy" quoted, 274. * * * * * FOOTNOTES 1. See pp. 13, 14, of the Report of Committee on College Entrance Requirements. 2. See the first essay in _Prose Fancies._ 3. Unless otherwise stated, all page references are to the Riverside Literature Series. 4. _Biglow Papers,_ No. X. 5. Tennyson's _OEnone._ 6. _Historical Sketches,_ by Cardinal Newman. 7. _Pierre et Jean,_ by Maupassant. Quoted from Bates's _Talks on Writing English._ 8. _Impressions de Théâtre,_ by Jules Lemaître. 9. _The Marble Faun,_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 10. _Travels with a Donkey,_ by R. L. Stevenson. 11. _Les Misérables,_ by Victor Hugo. 12. _The Stage Coach,_ in Irving's _Sketch Book._ 13. _The Jungle Book,_ by Rudyard Kipling. 14. _To W. L. Garrison,_ by J. R. Lowell. 15. _Idea of a University,_ by Cardinal Newman. 16. _Essay on Milton,_ by Lord Macaulay. 17. _Discussions and Arguments._ 18. _Essay on Milton._ 19. _The Physical Basis of Life,_ by T. H. Huxley. 20. _Self-Cultivation in English,_ by Professor G. H. Palmer. 21. Speech on _Conciliation with the Colonies,_ by Burke. 22. A text-book on Logic, such as Jevons's, should be used to illustrate the kinds of argument more fully. 23. _Silas Marner,_ by George Eliot. 24. _The Odd Number,_ by Guy de Maupassant. 25. _Vanity Fair,_ by W. M. Thackeray. 26. _Idyl of the Honey-Bee,_ from Burroughs's _Pepacton._ 27. _Essay on Wordsworth,_ by Matthew Arnold. 28. Speech on _Copyright,_ by Lord Macaulay. 29. _Idyl of the Honey-Bee,_ from Burroughs's _Pepacton._ 30. _The Physical Basis of Life,_ by T. H. Huxley. 31. See Scott and Denney's _Composition-Rhetoric._ 32. _Legend of Sleepy Hollow,_ by W. Irving. 33. _Essay on Milton,_ by Lord Macaulay. 34. _Kidnapped,_ by R. L. Stevenson. 35. _Præterita,_ by John Ruskin. 36. Speech on _Conciliation with the Colonies,_ by Burke. 37. Barrett Wendell's _English Composition._ 38. Oration on _Adams and Jefferson,_ by Daniel Webster. 39. _Present Position of Catholics in England,_ by Cardinal Newman. 40. Speech on _Conciliation with the Colonies,_ by Burke. 41. Speech on the _Reform Bill of 1832,_ by Lord Macaulay. 42. _Idea of a University,_ by Cardinal Newman. 43. _Legend of Sleepy Hollow,_ by W. Irving. 44. _Idea of a University,_ by Cardinal Newman. 45. _Idea of a University,_ by Cardinal Newman. 46. _Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,_ by Burke. 47. _Legend of Sleepy Hollow,_ by W. Irving. 48. _Function of Criticism at the Present Time,_ by Matthew Arnold. 49. _Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies,_ by Burke. 50. _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy,_ by Josiah Royce. 51. See Lowell's _Biglow Papers,_ Introduction to Second Series. 52. _Idea of a University,_ by Cardinal Newman. 53. From _The Princess: a Medley,_ Part IV. 54. From _The Seven Seas,_ published by D. Appleton & Co., New York. Copyright, 1896, by Rudyard Kipling. 55. In any piece of literature there are many figures. The following should be used only to make pupils familiar with varieties of figures. They will find many more in the literature they read. 56. The treatment of this subject is based upon Lanier's _The Science of English Verse._ 57. See p. xix. 
12025	----	Proofreaders ENGLISH PROSE A SERIES OF RELATED ESSAYS FOR THE DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE OF THE ART OF WRITING SELECTED AND EDITED BY FREDERICK WILLIAM ROE, PH.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND GEORGE ROY ELLIOTT, PH.D. OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE 1913 PREFACE The selections in the present volume, designed primarily for the discussion and practice in college classes of the art of composition, have been arranged under a scheme which the editors believe to be new. There are nine related groups. Each successive group represents a different phase of life, beginning with character and personality, and concluding with art and literature. The whole together, as the table of contents will show, thus presents a body of ideas that includes practically all the great departments of human thought and interest. It is evident that certain ideals of teaching composition underlie the scheme. The editors believe heartily with Pater that "the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a full, rich, complex matter to grapple with". Instruction in writing, it is to be feared, too often neglects this sound doctrine and places an emphasis upon formal matters that seems disproportionate, especially when form is made to appear as a thing apart. Form and content go together and one must not suffer at the expense of the other. But a sustained interest in the ways and means of correct expression is aroused only when the student feels that he has something to express. Instructors often contend indeed that the ideas of undergraduates are far to seek, and that most of the time in the class-room is therefore best spent upon formal exercises and drill. The editors do not share this view. They believe that there is no class of people more responsive to new ideas and impressions than college students, and none more eager, when normally stimulated, to express themselves in writing. They have therefore aimed to present a series of related selections that would arouse thought and provoke oral discussion in the class-room, as well as furnish suitable models of style. In most cases the pieces are too long to be adequately handled in one class hour. A live topic may well be discussed for several hours, until its various sides have been examined and students are awakened to the many questions at issue. The editors have aimed, also, to supply selections so rich and vital in content that instructors themselves will feel challenged to add to the class discussion from their own knowledge and experience, and so turn a stream of fresh ideas upon "stock notions". Thus English composition, which in many courses in our larger institutions is now almost the only non-special study, can be made a direct means of liberalization in the meaning and art of life, as well as an instrument for correct and effective writing. The present volume therefore differs from others in the same field. Many recent collections contain pieces too short and unrelated to satisfy the ideals suggested above--ideals which, the editors feel sure, are held by an increasing number of teachers. And older and newer collections alike have been constructed primarily with the purpose of illustrating the conventional categories,--description, narration, exposition. Teachers of composition everywhere are becoming distrustful of an arrangement which is frankly at variance with the actual practice of writing, and are of the opinion that it is better to set the student to the task of composition without confining him too narrowly to one form of discourse. The editors have deliberately avoided, however, the other extreme, which is reflected in one or two recent volumes, of choosing pieces of one type to the exclusion of all others. In collections of this kind variety in form and subject-matter is fully as important as richness of content. Instructors who believe in the use of the types of discourse as the most practicable means of instruction, will find all the types liberally represented in the present volume. And in order to meet their requirements even more adequately, the editors have included two short stories at the end, as examples of narration with a plot. Much attention has been given to the suggestions at the end of the volume with the aim of making them practically serviceable and, at the same time, as free as possible from duplication of class work. This aim, the editors came to believe, could best be attained by providing for each group of selections definite suggestions of theme-subjects to be derived by the student from supplementary readings closely related to that group. F.W.R. G.R.E. MADISON, WISCONSIN, May, 1913. CONTENTS I. THE PERSONAL LIFE. 1. Self-Reliance...............RALPH WALDO EMERSON 2. Early Education at Herne Hill.............JOHN RUSKIN 3. A Crisis in My Mental History............JOHN STUART MILL 4. Old China...................CHARLES LAMB II. EDUCATION. 5. What is Education?..........THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 6. Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning .....JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 7. Literature and Science......MATTHEW ARNOLD 8. How to Read.................FREDERIC HARRISON III. RECREATION AND TRAVELS. 9. On Going a Journey..........WILLIAM HAZLITT 10. Regrets of a Mountaineer....LESLIE STEPHEN IV. SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS. 11. Behavior....................RALPH WALDO EMERSON 12. Manners and Fashion.........HERBERT SPENCER 13. Talk and Talkers............ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON V. PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 14. The Social Value of the College-bred.......WILLIAM JAMES 15. The Law of Human Progress............HENRY GEORGE 16. The Morals of Trade.........HERBERT SPENCER VI. SCIENCE. 17. The Physical Basis of Life...................THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 18. Mental Powers of Men and Animals...........CHARLES DARWIN 19. The Importance of Dust......ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE VII. NATURE. 20. The Battle of the Ants......HENRY DAVID THOREAU 21. A Windstorm in the Forests............JOHN MUIR 22. Walden Pond.................HENRY DAVID THOREAU 23. Extracts from Modern Painters...........JOHN RUSKIN VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE. 24. The Stoics.. .............WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY 25. Enthusiasm of Humanity......JOHN ROBERT SEELEY 26. Loyalty and Insight.........JOSIAH ROYCE IX. LITERATURE AND ART. 27. Poetry for Poetry's Sake.... A.C. BRADLEY 28. Greek Tragedy................G. LOWES DICKINSON 29. Shakespeare..................THOMAS CARLYLE 30. Charles Lamb.................WALTER PATER 31. Dr. Heidegger's Experiment...NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 32. Markheim.....................ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS. With some topics for Discussion and Composition. ENGLISH PROSE SELF-RELIANCE[1] RALPH WALDO EMERSON I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. Always the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost--and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. It is not without preestablished harmony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine man to exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and the Dark. What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes. That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room who spoke so clear and emphatic? Good Heaven! it is he! it is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm which for weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by, and now rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary. The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. How is a boy the master of society!--independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him; he does not court you. But the man is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with éclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutral, godlike independence! Who can thus lose all pledge and, having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable, must always engage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an immortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men and put them in fear. These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont to importune me with the deaf old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,--"But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, "Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, _Whim_. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they _my_ poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousandfold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold. Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man _and_ his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world,--as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers,--under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four: so that every word they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable sensation; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave young man will suffer twice. For non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause,--disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza;--read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment. Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of when seen at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness always appeals to the future. If I can be great enough now to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. There they all stand and shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person. I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all events. You are constrained to accept his standard. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent--put all means into the shade. This: all great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his thought;--and posterity seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome;" and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons. Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book has an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seems to say like that, "Who are you, sir?" Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane--owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds himself a true prince. Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work: but the things of life are the same to both: the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them, by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the Law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man. The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceedeth. We first share the life by which things exist and afterward see them as appearances in nature and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that inspiration of man which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes--all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions. And to his involuntary perceptions: he knows a perfect respect is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. All my wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;--the most trivial reverie, the faintest native emotion, are domestic and divine. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time all mankind,--although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun. The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the center of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine wisdom, then old things pass away,--means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it,--one thing as much as another. All things are dissolved to their center by their cause, and in the universal miracle petty and particular miracles disappear. This is and must be. If therefore a man claims to know and speak of God and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old moldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming. Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,--painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterward, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good when occasion comes. So was it with us, so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn. And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far off remembering of the intuition: That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this: When good is near you, when you have life in yourself,--it is not by any known or appointed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;--the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude all other being. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers. There shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. It asks nothing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion. It seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay that former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present and will always all circumstances, and what is called life and what is called death. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: From Essays, First Series, 1841; the second half of the essay has here been omitted.] EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL[2] JOHN RUSKIN When I was about four years old my father found himself able to buy the lease of a house on Herne Hill, a rustic eminence four miles south of the "Standard in Cornhill"; of which the leafy seclusion remains, in all essential points of character, unchanged to this day: certain Gothic splendours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours, being the only serious innovations; and these are so graciously concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the passing viator remains unappalled by them; and I can still walk up and down the piece of road between the Fox tavern and the Herne Hill station, imagining myself four years old. Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground is for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand), on the dome of Mont Blanc; presently falling, however, in what may be, in the London clay formation, considered a precipitous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dulwich) on the east; and with a softer descent into Cold Harbor lane on the west: on the south, no less beautifully declining to the dale of the Effra, (doubtless shortened from Effrena, signifying the "Unbridled" river; recently, I regret to say, bricked over for the convenience of Mr. Biffin, chemist, and others); while on the north, prolonged indeed with slight depression some half mile or so, and receiving, in the parish of Lambeth, the chivalric title of "Champion Hill," it plunges down at last to efface itself in the plains of Peckham, and the rural barbarism of Goose Green. The group, of which our house was the quarter, consisted of two precisely similar partner-couples of houses, gardens and all to match; still the two highest blocks of buildings seen from Norwood on the crest of the ridge; so that the house itself, three-storied, with garrets above, commanded, in those comparatively smokeless days, a very notable view from its garret windows, of the Norwood hills on one side, and the winter sunrise over them; and of the valley of the Thames on the other, with Windsor telescopically clear in the distance, and Harrow, conspicuous always in fine weather to open vision against the summer sunset. It had front and back garden in sufficient proportion to its size; the front, richly set with old evergreens, and well-grown lilac and laburnum; the back, seventy yards long by twenty wide, renowned over all the hill for its pears and apples, which had been chosen with extreme care by our predecessor, (shame on me to forget the name of a man to whom I owe so much!)--and possessing also a strong old mulberry tree, a tall white-heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an almost unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and currant bush; decked, in due season, (for the ground was wholly beneficent), with magical splendour of abundant fruit: fresh green, soft amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendent ruby joyfully discoverable under the large leaves that looked like vine. The differences of primal importance which I observed between the nature of this garden, and that of Eden, as I had imagined it, were, that, in this one, _all_ the fruit was forbidden; and there were no companionable beasts: in other respects the little domain answered every purpose of paradise to me; and the climate, in that cycle of our years, allowed me to pass most of my life in it. My mother never gave me more to learn than she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set myself honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. She never allowed anything to disturb me when my task was set; if it was not said rightly by twelve o'clock, I was kept in till I knew it, and in general, even when Latin Grammar came to supplement the Psalms, I was my own master for at least an hour before half-past one dinner, and for the rest of the afternoon. My mother, herself finding her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, was often planting, or pruning beside me, at least if I chose to stay beside _her_. I never thought of doing anything behind her back which I would not have done before her face; and her presence was therefore no restraint to me; but, also, no particular pleasure, for, from having always been left so much alone, I had generally my own little affairs to see after; and, on the whole, by the time I was seven years old, was already getting too independent, mentally, even of my father and mother; and, having nobody else to be dependent upon, began to lead a very small, perky, contented, conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort of life, in the central point which it appeared to me, (as it must naturally appear to geometrical animals), that I occupied in the universe. This was partly the fault of my father's modesty; and partly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my mother's judgment as to such matters than in his own, that he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the conduct of my education; on the other hand, in the fixed purpose of making an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with the superfinest of manners, and access to the highest circles of fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, where I entirely loved my aunt, and young baker-cousins, became rarer and more rare: the society of our neighbours on the hill could not be had without breaking up our regular and sweetly selfish manner of living; and on the whole, I had nothing animate to care for, in a childish way, but myself, some nests of ants, which the gardener would never leave undisturbed for me, and a sociable bird or two; though I never had the sense or perseverance to make one really tame. But that was partly because, if ever I managed to bring one to be the least trustful of me, the cats got it. Under these circumstances, what powers of imagination I possessed, either fastened themselves on inanimate things,--the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, observable within the walls of Eden,--or caught at any opportunity of flight into regions of romance, compatible with the objective realities of existence in the nineteenth century, within a mile and a quarter of Camberwell Green. Herein my father, happily, though with no definite intention other than of pleasing me, when he found he could do so without infringing any of my mother's rules, became my guide. I was particularly fond of watching him shave; and was always allowed to come into his room in the morning (under the one in which I am now writing), to be the motionless witness of that operation. Over his dressing-table hung one of his own water-colour drawings, made under the teaching of the elder Nasmyth; I believe, at the High School of Edinburgh. It was done in the early manner of tinting, which, just about the time when my father was at the High School, Dr. Munro was teaching Turner; namely, in gray under-tints of Prussian blue and British ink, washed with warm colour afterwards on the lights. It represented Conway Castle, with its Frith, and, in the foreground, a cottage, a fisherman, and a boat at the water's edge. When my father had finished shaving, he always told me a story about this picture. The custom began without any initial purpose of his, in consequence of my troublesome curiosity whether the fisherman lived in the cottage, and where he was going to in the boat. It being settled, for peace' sake, that he _did_ live in the cottage, and was going in the boat to fish near the castle, the plot of the drama afterwards gradually thickened; and became, I believe, involved with that of the tragedy of Douglas, and of the Castle Specter, in both of which pieces my father had performed in private theatricals, before my mother, and a select Edinburgh audience, when he was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave twenty, a model housekeeper, and very scornful and religiously suspicious of theatricals. But she was never weary of telling me, in later years, how beautiful my father looked in his Highland dress, with the high black feathers. In the afternoons, when my father returned (always punctually) from his business, he dined, at half-past four, in the front parlour, my mother sitting beside him to hear the events of the day, and give counsel and encouragement with respect to the same;--chiefly the last, for my father was apt to be vexed if orders for sherry fell the least short of their due standard, even for a day or two. I was never present at this time, however, and only avouch what I relate by hearsay and probable conjecture; for between four and six it would have been a grave misdemeanour in me if I so much as approached the parlour door. After that, in summer time, we were all in the garden as long as the day lasted; tea under the white-heart cherry tree; or in winter and rough weather, at six o'clock in the drawing-room,--I having my cup of milk, and slice of bread-and-butter, in a little recess, with a table in front of it, wholly sacred to me; and in which I remained in the evenings as an Idol in a niche, while my mother knitted, and my father read to her,--and to me, so far as I chose to listen. The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing towards its close, was still the chief source of delight in all households caring for literature; and I can no more recollect the time when I did not know them than when I did not know the Bible; but I have still a vivid remembrance of my father's intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw down Count Robert of Paris, after reading three or four pages; and knew that the life of Scott was ended: the scorn being a very complex and bitter feeling in him,--partly, indeed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches who were tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and not a little, deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had essentially caused the ruin. My father never could forgive Scott his concealment of the Ballantyne partnership. Such being the salutary pleasures of Herne Hill, I have next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owe to my mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar to my ear in habitual music,--yet in that familiarity reverenced, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all conduct. This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It might be beyond me altogether; that she did not care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end. In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and went straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began again at Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation,--if the chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience,--if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants allowed,--none from visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs,--and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling), I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known; and, with the chapters thus gradually possessed from the first word to the last, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of my ear in sound. It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive--the 119th Psalm--has now become of all the most precious to me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern preachers of what they imagine to be His gospel. But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise,--toil on both sides equal,--by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one--try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the "of" in the lines "Shall any following spring revive The ashes of the urn?"-- I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and their contents), on reciting it with an accented _of_. It was not, I say, till after three weeks' labor, that my mother got the accent lightened on the "of" and laid on the "ashes," to her mind. But had it taken three years she would have done it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, had she not done it,--well, there's no knowing what would have happened; but I'm very thankful she _did_. I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible,--a small, closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers, to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32d Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost me much pains. My mother's list of the chapters with which, thus learned, she established my soul in life, has just fallen out of it. I will take what indulgence the incurious reader can give me, for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent: Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th. 2 Samuel, " 1st, from 17th verse to end. 1 Kings, " 8th. Psalms, " 23d, 32d, 90th, 91st, 103d, 112th, 119th, 139th. Proverbs, " 2d, 3d, 8th, 12th. Isaiah, " 58th. Matthew, " 5th, 6th, 7th. Acts, " 26th. 1 Corinthians, " 13th, 15th. James, " 4th. Revelation, " 5th, 6th. And, truly, though I have picked up the elements of a little further knowledge--in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after life,--and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this maternal installation of my mind in that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most precious, and, on the whole, the one _essential_ part of all my education. And it is perhaps already time to mark what advantage and mischief, by the chances of life up to seven years old, had been irrevocably determined for me. I will first count my blessings (as a not unwise friend once recommended me to do, continually; whereas I have a bad trick of always numbering the thorns in my fingers and not the bones in them). And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with each other; nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or offended, glance in the eyes of either. I had never heard a servant scolded; nor even suddenly, passionately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had never seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter; nor anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due time. I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety; my father's occasional vexation in the afternoons, when he had only got an order for twelve butts after expecting one for fifteen, as I have just stated, was never manifested to _me_; and itself related only to the question whether his name would be a step higher or lower in the year's list of sherry exporters; for he never spent more than half his income, and therefore found himself little incommoded by occasional variations in the total of it. I had never done any wrong that I knew of--beyond occasionally delaying the commitment to heart of some improving sentence, that I might watch a wasp on the window pane, or a bird in the cherry tree; and I had never seen any grief. Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm; not only without idea of resistance, but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith was soon complete: nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true. Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind--on which I will not further enlarge at this moment, this being the main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini to say of me, in conversation authentically reported, a year or two before his death, that I had "the most analytic mind in Europe." An opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted with Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur. Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comfits, or, except in carefulest restriction, fruit; and by fine preparation of what food was given me. Such I esteem the main blessings of my childhood;--next, let me count the equally dominant calamities. First, that I had nothing to love. My parents were--in a sort--visible powers of nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the moon: only I should have been annoyed and puzzled if either of them had gone out; (how much, now, when both are darkened!)--still less did I love God; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear of Him; but simply found what people told me was His service, disagreeable; and what people told me was His book, not entertaining. I had no companions to quarrel with, neither; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything for me, but what it was their duty to do; and why should I have been grateful to the cook for cooking, or the gardener for gardening,--when the one dared not give me a baked potato without asking leave, and the other would not let my ants' nests alone, because they made the walks untidy? The evil consequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps have been expected, that I grew up selfish or unaffectionate; but that, when affection did come, it came with violence utterly rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who never before had anything to manage. For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to endure. Danger or pain of any kind I knew not: my strength was never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage never fortified. Not that I was ever afraid of anything,--either ghosts, thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest approaches to insubordination which I was ever tempted into as a child, was in passionate effort to get leave to play with the lion's cubs in Wombwell's menagerie. Thirdly, I was taught no precision nor etiquette of manners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I remained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shyness: but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social discipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accomplishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behaviour. Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and wrong, and powers of independent action, were left entirely undeveloped; because the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. Children should have their times of being off duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, is certain, the little creature should be very early put for periods of practice in complete command of itself; set on the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over my youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, unable for some time to do more than drift with its vortices. My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenor of my education at that time, must be, that it was at once too formal and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not disciplined; and only by protection innocent, instead of by practice virtuous. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: From "Praeterita," _1885, Vol. I, Chapter II_.] A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY[3] JOHN STUART MILL From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which I enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable and distant, in which some progress might be always making, while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment. This did very well for several years, during which the general improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself as engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed enough to fill up an interesting and animated existence. But the time came when I awakened from this as from a dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I was in a dull state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to; unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement; one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think, in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten by their first "conviction of sin." In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realised; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for. At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself; but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker and thicker. The lines in Coleridge's "Dejection"--I was not then acquainted with them--exactly describe my case: "A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief In word, or sigh, or tear." In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling _minus_ all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was not an interesting, or in any way respectable distress. There was nothing in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known where to seek it, would have been most precious. The words of Macbeth to the physician often occurred to my thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build the faintest hope of such assistance. My father, to whom it would have been natural to me to have recourse in any practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such a case as this, I looked for help. Everything convinced me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as I was suffering from, and that even if he could be made to understand it, he was not the physician who could heal it. My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of _his_ remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared. My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things, from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied themselves but superficially with the means of forming and keeping up these salutary associations. They seemed to have trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments, praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I did not doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unremittingly, intense associations of pain and pleasure, especially of pain, might be created, and might produce desires and aversions capable of lasting undiminished to the end of life. But there must always be something artificial and casual in associations thus produced. The pains and pleasures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected with them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought, essential to the durability of these associations, that they should have become so intense and inveterate as to be practically indissoluble, before the habitual exercise of the power of analysis had commenced. For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity--that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives. The very excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends to weaken and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually clung together: and no associations whatever could ultimately resist this dissolving force, were it not that we owe to analysis our clearest knowledge of the permanent sequences in nature; the real connections between Things, not dependent on our will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of which, in many cases, one thing is inseparable from another in fact; which laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and imaginatively realised, cause our ideas of things which are always joined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely in our thoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen the associations between causes and effects, means and ends, but tend altogether to weaken those which are, to speak familiarly, a _mere_ matter of feeling. They are therefore (I thought) favourable to prudence and clear-sightedness, but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all desires, and all pleasures, which are the effects of association, that is, according to the theory I held, all except the purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency of which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger conviction than I had. These were the laws of human nature, by which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my present state. All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling. My education, I thought, had failed to create these feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultivation had made precocious and premature analysis the inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself, left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good, but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me, as completely as those of benevolence. I had had (as I reflected) some gratification of vanity at too early an age: I had obtained some distinction, and felt myself of some importance, before the desire of distinction and of importance had grown into a passion: and little as it was which I had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had made me _blasé_ and indifferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the objects of human desire. These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-7. During this time I was not incapable of my usual occupations. I went on with them mechanically, by the mere force of habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit had gone out of it. I even composed and spoke several speeches at the debating society, how, or with what degree of success, I know not. Of four years' continual speaking at that society, this is the only year of which I remember next to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone of all writers I have found a true description of what I felt, were often in my thoughts, not at this time (for I had never read them), but in a later period of the same mental malady: "Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live." In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed through a similar state; but the idiosyncrasies of my education had given to the general phenomenon a special character, which made it seem the natural effect of causes that it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not more than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's "Memoires," and came to the passage which relates his father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them--would supply the place of all that they had lost. A vivid conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever present sense of irremediable wretchedness, I gradually found that the ordinary incidents of life could again give me some pleasure; that I could again find enjoyment, not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine and sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and that there was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and for the public good. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I again enjoyed life: and though I had several relapses, some of which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable as I had been. The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never, indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now thought that this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken _en passant_, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinising examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. And I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of mankind. The other important change which my opinions at this: time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper place, among the prime necessities of human well-being, to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to attach almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward circumstances, and the training of the human being for speculation and for action. I had now learnt by experience that the passive susceptibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capacities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or undervalue, that part of the truth which I had seen before; I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed. And my thoughts and inclinations turned in an increasing degree towards whatever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object. I now began to find meaning in the things which I had read or heard about the importance of poetry and art as instruments of human culture. But it was some time longer before I began to know this by personal experience. The only one of the imaginative arts in which I had from childhood taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which (and in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those feelings of an elevated kind which are already in the character, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a fervour, which, though transitory at its utmost height, is precious for sustaining them at other times. This effect of music I had often experienced; but like all my pleasurable susceptibilities it was suspended during the gloomy period. I had sought relief again and again from this quarter, but found none. After the tide had turned, and I was in process of recovery, I had been helped forward by music, but in a much less elevated manner. I at this time first became acquainted with Weber's Oberon, and the extreme pleasure which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good, by showing me a source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible as ever. The good, however, was much impaired by the thought, that the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity, and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these, it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts and Webers, to strike out, as these had done, entirely new and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This source of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be burnt out. It was, however, connected with the best feature in my character, and the only good point to be found in my very unromantic and in no way honourable distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at, could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny of mankind in general was ever in my thoughts, and could not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, whether, if the reformers of society and government could succeed in their objects, and every person in the community were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation, would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that unless I could see my way to some better hope than this for human happiness in general my dejection must continue; but that if I could see such an outlet, I should then look on the world with pleasure; content as far as I was myself concerned, with any fair share of the general lot. This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of my reading Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn of 1828), an important event in my life. I took up the collection of his poems from curiosity, with no expectation of mental relief from it, though I had before resorted to poetry with that hope. In the worst period of my depression, I had read through the whole of Byron (then new to me), to try whether a poet, whose peculiar department was supposed to be that of the intenser feelings, could rouse any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no good from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of mind was too like my own. His was the lament of a man who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think that life, to all who possess the good things of it, must necessarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing which I found it. His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours, or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was exactly what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly what did. I had looked into the Excursion two or three years before, and found little in it; and I should probably have found as little, had I read it at this time. But the miscellaneous poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815 (to which little of value was added in the latter part of the author's life), proved to be the precise thing for my mental wants at that particular juncture. In the first place, these poems addressed themselves powerfully to one of the strongest of my pleasurable susceptibilities, the love of rural objects and natural scenery; to which I had been indebted not only for much of the pleasure of my life, but quite recently for relief from one of my longest relapses into depression. In this power of rural beauty over me, there was a foundation laid for taking pleasure in Wordsworth's poetry; the more so, as his scenery lies mostly among mountains, which, owing to my early Pyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty. But Wordsworth would never have had any great effect on me, if he had merely placed before me beautiful pictures of natural scenery. Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasures, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connection with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence. There have certainly been, even in our own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at that time what his did. I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And the delight which these poems gave me, proved that with culture of this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most confirmed habit of analysis. At the conclusion of the Poems came the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic, "Intimations of Immortality:" in which, along with more than his usual sweetness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages of grand imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I found that he too had had similar experience to mine; that he also had felt that the first freshness of youthful enjoyment of life was not lasting; but that he had sought for compensation, and found it, in the way in which he was now teaching me to find it. The result was that I gradually, but completely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was never again subject to it. I long continued to value Wordsworth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: From Chapter V of the Autobiography, 1874.] OLD CHINA[4] CHARLES LAMB I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination. I had no repugnance then--why should I now have?--to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that, under the notion of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element in that world before perspective--a china tea-cup. I like to see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish, figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on _terra firma_ still--for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver--two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another--for likeness is identity on tea-cups--is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead--a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream! Further on--if far or near can be predicated of their world--see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.[5] Here--a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive--so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some of these _speciosa miracula_[6] upon a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort--when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. "I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state,"--so she was pleased to ramble on,--"in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, oh! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the _for_ and _against_, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so threadbare--and all because of that folio _Beaumont and Fletcher_, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too late--and when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures--and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome--and when you presented it to me--and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till daybreak--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you flaunted it about in that overworn suit--your old corbeau--for four or five weeks longer than you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen--or sixteen shillings was it?--a great affair we thought it then--which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. "When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo which we christened the 'Lady Blanch'; when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money--and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? "Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday--holidays and all other fun are gone now we are rich--and the little handbasket in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad--and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in and produce our store--only paying for the ale that you must call for--and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a tablecloth--and wish for such another honest hostess as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing--and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us--but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator[7] his Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover, we _ride_ part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense, which, after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. "You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the _Battle of Hexham_, and the _Surrender of Calais_, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the _Children in the Wood_--when we squeezed out our shilling apiece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery--where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me--and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me--and the pleasure was the better for a little shame--and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially; that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going; that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on on the stage, because a word lost would have been a chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then, and I appeal to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad enough,--but there was still a law of civility to woman recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever found in the other passages--and how a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterward! Now we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough then--but sight, and all, I think, is gone with our poverty. "There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common--in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear--to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now--that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat--when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises, and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now--what I mean by the word--we never _do_ make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. "I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet,--and much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of December to account for our exceedings--many a long face did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had spent so much--or that we had not spent so much--or that it was impossible we should spend so much next year--and still we found our slender capital decreasing--but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and compromises of one sort or another and talk of curtailing this charge, and doing without that for the future--and the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with 'lusty brimmers' (as you used to quote it out of _hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton_[8], as you called him), we used to welcome in the 'coming guest.' Now we have no reckoning at all at the end of the old year; no flattering promises about the new year doing better for us." Bridget is so sparing of her speech, on most occasions, that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had conjured up out of a clear income of poor ---- hundred pounds a year. "It is true we were happier when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves. That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and knit our compact closer. We could never have been what we have been to each other, if we had always had the sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power, those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circumstances can not straiten--with us are long since passed away. Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked: live better and lie softer--and shall be wise to do so--than we had means to do in those good old days you speak of. Yet could those days return, could you and I once more walk our thirty miles a day, could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young, and you and I be young to see them, could the good old one shilling gallery days return--they are dreams, my cousin, now, but could you and I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa--be once more struggling up those inconvenient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers--could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the delicious _Thank God, we are safe_, which always followed, when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us--I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R---- is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in that very blue summer-house." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: From "Last Essays of Elia," 1833.] [Footnote 5: The hays: an old English dance.] [Footnote 6: Speciosa miracula: beautiful marvels.] [Footnote 7: Piscator: The Angler--the author's spokesman in Walton's "The Complete Angler."] [Footnote 8: Charles Cotton, a humorist of the seventeenth century.] WHAT IS EDUCATION?[9] THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY What is education? Above all things, what is our ideal of a thoroughly liberal education?--of that education which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves--of that education which, if we could mould the fates to our own will, we would give our children? Well, I know not what may be your conceptions upon this matter, but I will tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not very discrepant. Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and fortune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn, upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn from a knight? Yet it is a very plain and elementary truth, that the life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated--without haste, but without remorse. My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing for love, as we say, and would rather lose than win--and I should accept it as an image of human life. Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game. In other words, education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side. It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigour of his faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is said to have been, and then left to do as he best might. How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes. Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear, the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that; and by slow degrees the man would receive an education which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and very few accomplishments. And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or, better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes, compared with which all others might seem but faint shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness and sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors, pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be shaped by the observation of the natural consequences of actions; or, in other words, by the laws of the nature of man. To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new as to Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible of any other modes of instruction, Nature took us in hand, and every minute of waking life brought its educational influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may. For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient education of us in that great university, the universe, of which we are all members--Nature having no Test-Acts. Those who take honours in Nature's university, who learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them, are the really great and successful men in this world. The great mass of mankind are the "Poll,"[10] who pick up just enough to get through without much discredit. Those who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination. Thus the question of compulsory education is settled so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience--incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ears are boxed. The object of what we commonly call education--that education in which man intervenes and which I shall distinguish as artificial education--is to make good these defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to receive Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor with wilful disobedience; and to understand the preliminary symptoms of her pleasure, without waiting for the box on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards, which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties. That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations; one who, no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in harmony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious self, her minister and interpreter. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: From "A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It," 1868.] [Footnote 10: Poll (a slang term used at Cambridge University): those who take a degree without honours.] KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO LEARNING[11] JOHN HENRY NEWMAN It were well if the English, like the Greek language, possessed some definite word to express, simply and generally, intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as "health," as used with reference to the animal frame, and "virtue," with reference to our moral nature. I am not able to find such a term;--talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to the raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to that excellence which is the result of exercise and training. When we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of intellectual perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong, for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of the intellect, considered in itself. Wisdom, again, is certainly a more comprehensive word than any other, but it has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowledge, indeed, and science express purely intellectual ideas but still not a state or quality of the intellect; for knowledge, in its ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denoting a possession or a habit; and science has been appropriated to the subject-matter of the intellect, instead of belonging in English, as it ought to do, to the intellect itself. The consequence is that, on an occasion like this, many words are necessary, in order, first, to bring out and convey what surely is no difficult idea in itself,--that of the cultivation of the intellect as an end; next, in order to recommend what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to describe and make the mind realise the particular perfection in which that object consists. Every one knows practically what are the constituents of health or of virtue; and every one recognises health and virtue as ends to be pursued; it is otherwise with intellectual excellence, and this must be my excuse, if I seem to anyone to be bestowing a good deal of labour on a preliminary matter. In default of a recognised term, I have called the perfection or virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy, philosophical knowledge, enlargement of mind, or illumination, terms which are not uncommonly given to it by writers of this day: but, whatever name we bestow on it, it is, I believe, as a matter of history, the business of a university to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ itself in the education of the intellect,--just as the work of a hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a riding or fencing school, or of a gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of an almshouse, in aiding and solacing the old, of an orphanage, in protecting innocence, of a penitentiary, in restoring the guilty. I say, a university, taken in its bare idea, and before we view it as an instrument of the church, has this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it. This, I said in my foregoing discourse, was the object of a university, viewed in itself, and apart from the Catholic Church, or from the state, or from any other power which may use it; and I illustrated this in various ways. I said that the intellect must have an excellence of its own, for there was nothing which had not its specific good; that the word "educate" would not be used of intellectual culture, as it is used, had not the intellect had an end of its own; that, had it not such an end, there would be no meaning in calling certain intellectual exercises "liberal," in contrast with "useful," as is commonly done; that the very notion of a philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon research and system as ends in themselves, distinct from effects and works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme of knowledge, or system of sciences, could not, from the nature of the case, issue in any one definite art or pursuit, as its end; and that, on the other hand, the discovery and contemplation of truth, to which research and systematising led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond them were added, and that they had ever been accounted sufficient by mankind. Here then I take up the subject; and having determined that the cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and sufficient in itself, and that, so far as words go, it is an enlargement or illumination. I proceed to inquire what this mental breadth, or power, or light, or philosophy consists in. A hospital heals a broken limb or cures a fever: what does an institution effect, which professes the health, not of the body, not of the soul, but of the intellect? What is this good, which in former times, as well as our own, has been found worth the notice, the appropriation of the Catholic Church? I have then to investigate, in the discourses which follow, those qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which its cultivation issues or rather consists; and, with a view of assisting myself in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain questions which have already been touched upon. These questions are three: viz. the relation of intellectual culture, first, to _mere_ knowledge; secondly, to _professional_ knowledge; and thirdly, to _religious_ knowledge. In other words, are _acquirements_ and _attainments_ the scope of a university education? or _expertness in particular arts_ and _pursuits_? or _moral and religious proficiency_? or something besides these three? These questions I shall examine in succession, with the purpose I have mentioned; and I hope to be excused, if, in this anxious undertaking, I am led to repeat what, either in these discourses or elsewhere, I have already put upon paper. And first, of _mere knowledge_, or learning, and its connection with intellectual illumination or philosophy. I suppose the _prima-facie_[12] view which the public at large would take of a university, considering it as a place of education, is nothing more or less than a place for acquiring a great deal of knowledge on a great many subjects. Memory is one of the first developed of the mental faculties; a boy's business when he goes to school is to learn, that is, to store up things in his memory. For some years his intellect is little more than an instrument for taking in facts, or a receptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as fast as they come to him; he lives on what is without; he has his eyes ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility of impressions; he imbibes information of every kind; and little does he make his own in a true sense of the word, living rather upon his neighbours all around him. He has opinions, religious, political and literary, and, for a boy, is very positive in them and sure about them; but he gets them from his schoolfellows, or his masters, or his parents, as the case may be. Such as he is in his other relations, such also is he in his school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, retentive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge. I say this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy. Geography, chronology, history, language, natural history, he heaps up the matter of these studies as treasures for a future day. It is the seven years of plenty with him: he gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without counting; and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his argumentative powers in the elements of mathematics, and for his taste in the poets and orators, still, while at school, or at least, till quite the last years of his time, he acquires, and little more; and when he is leaving for the university, he is mainly the creature of foreign influences and circumstances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, as the case may be. Moreover, the moral habits, which are a boy's praise, encourage and assist this result; that is, diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, persevering application; for these are the direct conditions of acquisition, and naturally lead to it. Acquirements, again, are emphatically producible, and at a moment; they are a something to show, both for master and scholar; an audience, even though ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can comprehend when questions are answered and when they are not. Here again is a reason why mental culture is in the minds of men identified with the acquisition of knowledge. The same notion possesses the public mind, when it passes on from the thought of a school to that of a university: and with the best of reasons so far as this, that there is no true culture without acquirements, and that philosophy presupposes knowledge. It requires a great deal of reading, or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle, to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any useful result or any trustworthy conclusion. There are indeed persons who profess a different view of the matter, and even act upon it. Every now and then you will find a person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own resources, despises all former authors, and gives the world, with the utmost fearlessness, his views upon religion, or history, or any other popular subject. And his works may sell for a while; he may get a name in his day; but this will be all. His readers are sure to find on the long run that his doctrines are mere theories, and not the expression of facts, that they are chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity drops as suddenly as it rose. Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expansion of mind, and the instrument of attaining to it; this cannot be denied, it is ever to be insisted on; I begin with it as a first principle; however, the very truth of it carries men too far, and confirms to them the notion that it is the whole of the matter. A narrow mind is thought to be that which contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that which holds a great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond dispute is, the fact of the great number of studies which are pursued in a university, by its very profession. Lectures are given on every kind of subject; examinations are held; prizes awarded. There are moral, metaphysical, physical professors; professors of languages, of history, of mathematics, of experimental science. Lists of questions are published, wonderful for their range and depth, variety and difficulty; treatises are written, which carry upon their very face the evidence of extensive reading or multifarious information; what then is wanting for mental culture to a person of large reading and scientific attainments? what is grasp of mind but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be found, but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual possessions? And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and my present business is to show that it is one, and that the end of a liberal education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge considered in its _matter_; and I shall best attain my object, by actually setting down some cases, which will be generally granted to be instances of the process of enlightenment or enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and thus, by the comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves, gentlemen, whether knowledge, that is, acquirement, is after all the real principle of the enlargement or whether that principle is not rather something beyond it. For instance, let a person, whose experience has hitherto been confined to the more calm and unpretending scenery of these islands, whether here or in England, go for the first time into parts where physical nature puts on her wilder and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived in a quiet village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,--then I suppose he will have a sensation which perhaps he never had before. He has a feeling not in addition or increase of former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which he was before a stranger. Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens upon us, if allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost whirl it round and make it dizzy. It brings in a flood of ideas, and is rightly called an intellectual enlargement, whatever is meant by the term. And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign animals, their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the term) of their forms and gestures and habits, and their variety and independence of each other, throw us out of ourselves into another creation, and as if under another Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may come on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free. Hence physical science generally, in all its departments, as bringing before us the exuberant riches and resources, yet the orderly course, of the universe, elevates and excites the student, and at first, I may say, almost takes away his breath, while in time it exercises a tranquillising influence upon him. Again the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten the mind, and why? because, as I conceive, it gives it a power of judging of passing events and of all events, and a conscious superiority over them, which before it did not possess. And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,--gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake, be it good or be it bad, and is popularly called its enlargement. And then again, the first time the mind comes across the arguments and speculations of unbelievers, and feels what a novel light they cast upon what he has hitherto accounted sacred; and still more, if it gives in to them and embraces them, and throws off as so much prejudice what it has hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, begins to realise to its imagination that there is now no such thing as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a phantom, and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to enjoy the world and the flesh; and still further, when it does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold just what it will, that "the world is all before it where to choose," and what system to build up as its own private persuasion; when this torrent of wilful thoughts rushes over and inundates it, who will deny that the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge, has made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and elevation,--an intoxication in reality, still, so far as the subjective state of the mind goes, an illumination? Hence the fanaticism of individuals or nations, who suddenly cast off their Maker. Their eyes are opened; and, like the judgment-stricken king in the tragedy, they see two suns, and a magic universe, out of which they look back upon their former state of faith and innocence with a sort of contempt and indignation, as if they were then but fools, and the dupes of imposture. On the other hand, religion has its own enlargement, and an enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace. It is often remarked of uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought little of the unseen world, that, on their turning to God, looking into themselves, regulating their hearts, reforming their conduct, and meditating on death and judgment, heaven and hell, they seem to become, in point of intellect, different beings from what they were. Before, they took things as they came, and thought no more of one thing than another. But now every event has a meaning; they have their own estimate of whatever happens to them; they are mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present with the past; and the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various and complicated drama, with parts and an object, and an awful moral. Now from these instances, to which many more might be added, it is plain, first, that the communication of knowledge certainly is either a condition or the means of that sense of enlargement or enlightenment, of which at this day we hear so much in certain quarters: this cannot be denied; but next, it is equally plain, that such communication is not the whole of the process. The enlargement consists, not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the matter of our acquirements; it is a making the objects of our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar word, it is a digestion of what we receive, into the substance of our previous state of thought; and without this no enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement, unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another, as they come before the mind, and a systematising of them. We feel our minds to be growing and expanding _then_, when we not only learn, but refer what we learn to what we know already. It is not the mere addition to our knowledge that is the illumination; but the locomotion, the movement onwards, of that mental centre, to which both what we know, and what we are learning, the accumulating mass of our acquirements, gravitates. And therefore a truly great intellect, and recognised to be such by the common opinion of mankind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St. Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely take instances within and without the Catholic pale, when I would speak of the intellect as such), is one which takes a connected view of old and new, past and present, far and near, and which has an insight into the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge, not merely considered as acquirement but as philosophy. Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonising process is away, the mind experiences no enlargement, and is not reckoned as enlightened or comprehensive, whatever it may add to its knowledge. For instance, a great memory, as I have already said, does not make a philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a grammar. There are men who embrace in their minds a vast multitude of ideas, but with little sensibility about their real relations towards each other. These may be antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in the law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most useful in their own place; I should shrink from speaking disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in such attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of mind. If they are nothing more than well-read men, or men of information, they have not what specially deserves the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type of liberal education. In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalise, nothing, and have no observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information in detail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained to any great culture of intellect or to philosophy. The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons in question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in foreign countries, and they receive, in a passive, otiose, unfruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of commerce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze on Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of a show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs; but one thing is much the same to him as another, or, if he is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is right to admire, or to ridicule or to disapprove, while conscious that some expression of opinion is expected from him; for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling it philosophy. Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the conclusion I have already drawn from those which preceded them. That only is true enlargement of mind which is the power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of referring them severally to their true place in the universal system, of understanding their respective values, and determining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of universal knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion spoken, set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind never views any part of the extended subject-matter of knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part, or without the associations which spring from this recollection. It makes everything in some sort lead to everything else; it would communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, everywhere pervading and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the body, as the word "creation" suggests the Creator, and "subjects" a sovereign, so, in the mind of the philosopher as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one with correlative functions, and as gradually by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre. To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire, in the way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences of chance and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettlement, and superstition, which is the lot of the many. Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object, take exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in the pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens to fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those on the other hand who have no object or principle whatever to hold by, lose their way every step they take. They are thrown out, and do not know what to think or say, at every fresh juncture; they have no view of persons, or occurrences, or facts, which come suddenly upon them, and they hang upon the opinion of others for want of internal resources. But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfection of its powers, which knows, and thinks while it knows, which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and events with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically calm, because it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin in every end, the law in every interruption, the limit in each delay; because it ever knows where it stands, and how its path lies from one point to another. It is the [Greek: tetragonos][13] of the Peripatetic, and has the _nil admirari_[14] of the Stoic,-- Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.[15] There are men who, when in difficulties, originate at the moment vast ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the influence of excitement, are able to cast a light, almost as if from inspiration, on a subject or course of action which comes before them; who have a sudden presence of mind equal to any emergency, rising with the occasion, and an undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keenness which is but made intense by opposition. This is genius, this is heroism; it is the exhibition of a natural gift, which no culture can teach, at which no institution can aim: here, on the contrary, we are concerned, not with mere nature, but with training and teaching. That perfection of the intellect, which is the result of education, and its _beau ideal_, to be imparted to individuals in their respective measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres. And now, if I may take for granted that the true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a university is not learning or acquirement, but rather, is thought or reason exercised upon knowledge, or what may be called philosophy, I shall be in a position to explain the various mistakes which at the present day beset the subject of university education. I say then, if we would improve the intellect, first of all, we must ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge on a level; we must generalise, we must reduce to method, we must have a grasp of principles, and group and shape our acquisitions by means of them. It matters not whether our field of operation be wide or limited; in every case, to command it, is to mount above it. Who has not felt the irritation of mind and impatience created by a deep, rich country, visited for the first time, with winding lanes, and high hedges, and green steeps, and tangled woods, and every thing smiling indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes upon us in a strange city, when we have no map of its streets. Hence you hear of practised travellers, when they first come into a place, mounting some high hill or church tower, by way of reconnoitering its neighbourhood. In like manner, you must be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you; and the more you have of it, the greater will be the load. The learning of a Salmasius or a Burman, unless you are its master, will be your tyrant. _Imperat aut servit_;[16] if you can wield it with a strong arm, it is a great weapon; otherwise, Vis consili expers Mole ruit suâ.[17] You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the heavy wealth which you have exacted from tributary generations. Instances abound; there are authors who are as pointless as they are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They measure knowledge by bulk, as it lies in the rude block, without symmetry, without design. How many commentators are there on the classics, how many on Holy Scripture, from whom we rise up, wondering at the learning which has passed before us, and wondering why it passed! How many writers are there of Ecclesiastical history, such as Mosheim or Du Pin, who, breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts! The sermons, again, of the English divines in the seventeenth century, how often are they mere repertories of miscellaneous and officious learning! Of course Catholics also may read without thinking; and in their case, equally as with Protestants, it holds good, that such knowledge is unworthy of the name, knowledge which they have not thought through, and thought out. Such readers are only possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it; nay, in matter of fact they are often even carried away by it, without any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can tyrannise, as well as the imagination. Derangement, I believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is henceforth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had experience of men of studious habits, but must recognise the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those who have over-stimulated the memory. In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever, they have no power of self-control; they passively endure the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea to another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer, or wandering from it in endless digression in spite of his remonstrances. Now, if, as is very certain, no one would envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of barren facts, of random intrusions from without, though not of morbid imaginations from within? And in thus speaking, I am not denying that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real treasure; I am not disparaging a well-stored mind, though it be nothing besides, provided it be sober, any more than I would despise a bookseller's shop:--it is of great value to others, even when not so to the owner. Nor am I banishing, far from it, the possessors of deep and multifarious learning from my ideal University; they adorn it in the eyes of men; I do but say that they constitute no type of the results at which it aims; that it is no great gain to the intellect to have enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties which are indisputably higher. Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any great danger, at least in this day, of over-education; the danger is on the other side. I will tell you, gentlemen, what has been the practical error of the last twenty years,--not to load the memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all. It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness, which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not; of considering an acquaintance with the learned names of things and persons and the possession of clever duodecimos, and attendance on eloquent lecturers, and membership with scientific institutions, and the sight of the experiments of a platform and the specimens of a museum, that all this was not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things now are to be learned at once, not first one thing, then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without toil; without grounding, without advance, without finishing. There is to be nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth, is the wonder of the age. What the steam engine does with matter, the printing press is to do with the mind; it is to act mechanically, and the population is to be passively, almost unconsciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes. Whether it be the school boy, or the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have been the victims in one way or other of this most preposterous and pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience, to humour a spirit which they could not withstand, and make temporising concessions at which they could not but inwardly smile. It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, therefore I have some sort of fear of the education of the people: on the contrary, the more education they have, the better, so that it is really education. Nor am I an enemy to the cheap publication of scientific and literary works, which is now in vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great advantage, convenience, and gain; that is, to those to whom education has given a capacity for using them. Further, I consider such innocent recreations as science and literature are able to furnish will be a very fit occupation of the thoughts and the leisure of young persons, and may be made the means of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions. Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with chemistry, and geology, and astronomy, and political economy, and modern history, and biography, and other branches of knowledge, which periodical literature and occasional lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and a suitable, nay, in this day a necessary accomplishment, in the case of educated men. Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or discouraging the thorough acquisition of any one of these studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such thorough acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I say is, call things by their right names, and do not confuse together ideas which are essentially different. A thorough knowledge of one science and a superficial acquaintance with many, are not the same thing; a smattering of a hundred things or a memory for detail, is not a philosophical or comprehensive view. Recreations are not education; accomplishments are not education. Do not say, the people must be educated, when, after all, you only mean amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good humour, or kept from vicious excesses. I do not say that such amusements, such occupations of mind, are not a great gain; but they are not education. You may as well call drawing and fencing education as a general knowledge of botany or conchology. Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education; it does not form or cultivate the intellect. Education is a high word; it is the preparation for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation. We require intellectual eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need both objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain them without setting about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep, or by haphazard. The best telescope does not dispense with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room will assist us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual designation, an alma mater, knowing her children one by one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill. I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between a so-called university, which dispensed with residence and tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any person who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects, and a university which had no professors or examinations at all, but merely brought a number of young men together for three or four years, and then sent them away as the University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the better discipline of the intellect,--mind, I do not say which is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief,--but if I must determine which of the two courses was the more successful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which produced better public men, men of the world, men whose names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation in giving the preference to that university which did nothing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this may seem, still if results be the test of systems, the influence of the public schools and colleges of England, in the course of the last century, at least will bear out one side of the contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other hand, of the ideal systems of education which have fascinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take effect, and whether they would not produce a generation frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually considered, is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain, that the universities and scholastic establishments, to which I refer, and which did little more than bring together first boys and then youths in large numbers, these institutions, with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of ethics,--I say, at least they can boast of a succession of heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers, of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment, for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made England what it is,--able to subdue the earth, able to domineer over Catholics. How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. An infant has to learn the meaning of the information which its senses convey to it, and this seems to be its employment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it to be close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and thus by practice does it ascertain the relations and uses of those first elements of knowledge which are necessary for its animal existence. A parallel teaching is necessary for our social being, and it is secured by a large school or a college; and this effect may be fairly called in its own department an enlargement of mind. It is seeing the world on a small field with little trouble; for the pupils or students come from very different places, and with widely different notions, and there is much to generalise, much to adjust, much to eliminate, there are inter-relations to be defined, and conventional rules to be established, in the process, by which the whole assemblage is moulded together, and gains one tone and one character. Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not taking into account moral or religious considerations; I am but saying that that youthful community will constitute a whole, it will embody a specific idea, it will represent a doctrine, it will administer a code of conduct, and it will furnish principles of thought and action. It will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a _genius loci_,[18] as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and which imbues and forms more or less, and one by one, every individual who is successively brought under its shadow. Thus it is that, independent of direct instruction on the part of superiors, there is a sort of self-education in the academic institutions of Protestant England; a characteristic tone of thought, a recognised standard of judgment is found in them, which, as developed in the individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold source of strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses on his mind, and from the bond of union which it creates between him and others,--effects which are shared by the authorities of the place, for they themselves have been educated in it, and at all times are exposed to the influence of its ethical atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching, whatever be its standards and principles, true or false; and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intellect; it at least recognises that knowledge is something more than a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a something, and it does a something, which never will issue from the most strenuous efforts of a set of teachers with no mutual sympathies and no intercommunion, of a set of examiners with no opinions which they dare profess, and with no common principles, who are teaching or questioning a set of youths who do not know them, and do not know each other, on a large number of subjects, different in kind, and connected by no wide philosophy, three times a week, or three times a year, or once in three years, in chill lecture-rooms or on a pompous anniversary. Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your college gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him back upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind; he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel. Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus and support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great minds are to be found), who will not, from such unassisted attempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances to the attainment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks, deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small truths which fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable and ever accumulating; they may be unable to converse, they may argue perversely, they may pride themselves on their worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full of their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of others;--but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon their heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest but ill-used persons who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour premise and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious labours, except perhaps the habit of application. Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambitious system which has of late years been making way among us: for its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory still; they leave their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects, which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their shallowness. How much better, I say, it is for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking down books as they meet him, and pursuing the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with the exiled prince to find "tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks!" How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem[19]--a poem, whether in conception or execution, one of the most touching in our language--who, not in the wide world, but ranging day by day around his widowed mother's home, "a dextrous gleaner" in a narrow field and with only such slender outfit as the village school and books a few Supplied, contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his own! But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits. Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and postpone any summing up of my argument, should that be necessary, to another day. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 11: Discourse VI in "The Idea of a University," 1852.] [Footnote 12: Prima-facie: based on one's first impression.] [Footnote 13: Four-square.] [Footnote 14: To be moved by nothing.] [Footnote 15: Happy is he who has come to know the sequences of things, and is thus above all fear and the dread march of fate and the roar of greedy Acheron.] [Footnote 16: It rules or it serves.] [Footnote 17: Brute force without intelligence falls by its own weight.] [Footnote 18: Genius loci: spirit of the place.] [Footnote 19: Crabbe's _Tales of the Hall_. This poem, let me say, I read on its first publication, above thirty years ago, with extreme delight, and have never lost my love of it; and on taking it up lately, found I was even more touched by it than heretofore. A work which can please in youth and age, seems to fulfil (in logical language) the _accidental definition_ of a classic. (A further course of twenty years has passed, and I bear the same witness in favour of this poem.)] LITERATURE AND SCIENCE[20] MATTHEW ARNOLD Practical people talk with a smile of Plato and of his absolute ideas; and it is impossible to deny that Plato's ideas do often seem unpractical and impracticable, and especially when one views them in connection with the life of a great workaday world like the United States. The necessary staple of the life of such a world Plato regards with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working professions he regards with disdain; but what becomes of the life of an industrial modern community if you take handicraft and trade and the working professions out of it? The base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about a natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a man, so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in him, but nurses them, and cannot understand fostering any other. Those who exercise such arts and trades, as they have their bodies, he says, marred by their vulgar businesses, so they have their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And if one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self-culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald little tinker, who has scraped together money, and has got his release from service, and has had a bath, and bought a new coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to marry the daughter of his master who has fallen into poor and helpless estate. Nor do the working professions fare any better than trade at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an inimitable picture of the working lawyer, and of his life of bondage; he shows how this bondage from his youth up has stunted and warped him, and made him small and crooked of soul, encompassing him with difficulties which he is not man enough to rely on justice and truth as means to encounter, but has recourse, for help out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so, says Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and grows up from boy to man without a particle of soundness in him, although exceedingly smart and clever in his own esteem. One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws these pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas show the influence of a primitive and obsolete order of things, when the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone in honour, and the humble work of the world was done by slaves. We have now changed all that; the modern majority consists in work, as Emerson declares; and in work, we may add, principally of such plain and dusty kind as the work of cultivators of the ground, handicraftsmen, men of trade and business, men of the working professions. Above all is this true in a great industrious community such as that of the United States. Now education, many people go on to say, is still mainly governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who lived when the warrior caste and the priestly or philosophical class were alone in honour, and the really useful part of the community were slaves. It is an education fitted for persons of leisure in such a community. This education passed from Greece and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where also the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held in honour, and where the really useful and working part of the community, though not nominally slaves as in the pagan world, were practically not much better off than slaves, and not more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is, people end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious modern community, where very few indeed are persons of leisure, and the mass to be considered has not leisure, but is bound, for its own great good, and for the great good of the world at large, to plain labour and to industrial pursuits, and the education in question tends necessarily to make men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for them! That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, as to plead that his view of education and studies is in the general, as it seems to me, sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and conditions of men, whatever their pursuits may be. "An intelligent man," says Plato, "will prize those studies which result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom, and will less value the others." I cannot consider _that_ a bad description of the aim of education, and of the motives which should govern us in the choice of studies, whether we are preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat in the English House of Lords or for the pork trade in Chicago. Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that his scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he had no conception of a great industrial community such as that of the United States, and that such a community must and will shape its education to suit its own needs. If the usual education handed down to it from the past does not suit it, it will certainly before long drop this and try another. The usual education in the past has been mainly literary. The question is whether the studies which were long supposed to be the best for all of us are practically the best now; whether others are not better. The tyranny of the past, many think, weighs on us injuriously in the predominance given to letters in education. The question is raised whether, to meet the needs of our modern life, the predominance ought not now to pass from letters to science; and naturally the question is nowhere raised with more energy than here in the United States. The design of abasing what is called "mere literary instruction and education," and of exalting what is called "sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge," is, in this intensely modern world of the United States, even more perhaps than in Europe, a very popular design, and makes great and rapid progress. I am going to ask whether the present movement for ousting letters from their old predominance in education, and for transferring the predominance in education to the natural sciences; whether this brisk and flourishing movement ought to prevail, and whether it is likely that in the end it really will prevail. An objection may be raised which I will anticipate. My own studies have been almost wholly in letters, and my visits to the field of the natural sciences have been very slight and inadequate, although those sciences have always strongly moved my curiosity. A man of letters, it will perhaps be said, is not competent to discuss the comparative merits of letters and natural science as means of education. To this objection I reply, first of all, that his incompetence if he attempts the discussion but is really incompetent for it, will be abundantly visible; nobody will be taken in; he will have plenty of sharp observers and critics to save mankind from that danger. But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon discover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it may be followed without failure even by one who for a more ambitious line of discussion would be quite incompetent. Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine which has been the object of a good deal of comment; an observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim being _to know ourselves and the world_, we have, as the means to this end, _to know the best which has been thought and said in the world._ A man of science, who is also an excellent writer and the very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a discourse at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's College at Birmingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by quoting some more words of mine, which are these: "The civilised world is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a common result; and whose members have for their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special local and temporary advantages being put out of account, that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries out this programme." Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxley remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned knowledge as enabling us to know ourselves and the world, I assert _literature_ to contain the materials which suffice for thus making us know ourselves and the world. But it is not by any means clear, says he, that after having learned all which ancient and modern literatures have to tell us, we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation for that criticism of life, that knowledge of ourselves and the world, which constitutes culture. On the contrary, Professor Huxley declares that he finds himself "wholly unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, if their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical science. An army without weapons of precision, and with no particular base of operations, might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life." This shows how needful it is for those who are to discuss any matter together, to have a common understanding as to the sense of the terms they employ,--how needful, and how difficult. What Professor Huxley says, implies just the reproach which is so often brought against the study of _belles lettres_, as they are called: that the study is an elegant one, but slight and ineffectual; a smattering of Greek and Latin and other ornamental things, of little use for any one whose object is to get at truth, and to be a practical man. So, too, M. Renan talks of the "superficial humanism" of a school course which treats us as if we were all going to be poets, writers, preachers, orators, and he opposes this humanism to positive science, or the critical search after truth. And there is always a tendency in those who are remonstrating against the predominance of letters in education, to understand by letters _belles lettres_, and by _belles lettres_ a superficial humanism, the opposite of science or true knowledge. But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, for instance, which is the knowledge people have called the humanities, I for my part mean a knowledge which is something more than a superficial humanism, mainly decorative. "I call all teaching _scientific_," says Wolf, the critic of Homer, "which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources. For example: a knowledge of classical antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity are correctly studied in the original languages." There can be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; that all learning is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is scientific. When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity, therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek and Latin languages; I mean knowing the Greeks and Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its value: That, at least, is the ideal; and when we talk of endeavouring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavouring so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much we may still fall short of it. The same also as to knowing our own and other modern nations, with the like aim of getting to understand ourselves and the world. To know the best that has been thought and said by the modern nations, is to know, says Professor Huxley, "only what modern _literatures_ have to tell us; it is the criticism of life contained in modern literature." And yet "the distinctive character of our times," he urges, "lies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore, can a man, devoid of knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, enter hopefully upon a criticism of modern life? Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the terms we are using. I talk of knowing the best which has been thought and uttered in the world; Professor Huxley says this means knowing _literature_. Literature is a large word; it may mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. Euclid's _Elements_ and Newton's _Principia_ are thus literature. All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature. But by literature Professor Huxley means _belles lettres_. He means to make me say, that knowing the best which has been thought and said by the modern nations is knowing their _belles lettres_ and no more. And this is no sufficient equipment, he argues, for a criticism of modern life. But as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, knowing merely more or less of Latin _belles lettres_, and taking no account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason and to scientific method, and the founder of our mathematics and physics and astronomy and biology,--I understand knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing certain Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches,--so as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By knowing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their _belles lettres_, but knowing also what has been done by such men as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. "Our ancestors learned," says Professor Huxley, "that the earth is the centre of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and more especially was it inculcated that the course of nature has no fixed order, but that it could be, and constantly was, altered." But for us now, continues Professor Huxley, "the notions of the beginning and the end of the world entertained by our forefathers are no longer credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the chief body in the material universe, and that the world is not subordinated to man's use. It is even more certain that nature is the expression of a definite order, with which nothing interferes." "And yet," he cries, "the purely classical education advocated by the representatives of the humanists in our day gives no inkling of all this!" In due place and time I will just touch upon that vexed question of classical education; but at present the question is as to what is meant by knowing the best which modern nations have thought and said. It is not knowing their _belles lettres_ merely which is meant. To know Italian _belles lettres_ is not to know Italy, and to know English _belles lettres_ is not to know England. Into knowing Italy and England there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton amongst it. The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a tincture of _belles lettres_, may attach rightly enough to some other disciplines; but to the particular discipline recommended when I proposed knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world, it does not apply. In that best I certainly include what in modern times has been thought and said by the great observers and knowers of nature. There is, therefore, really no question between Professor Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great results of the modern scientific study of nature is not required as a part of our culture, as well as knowing the products of literature and art. But to follow the processes by which those results are reached, ought, say the friends of physical science, to be made the staple of education for the bulk of mankind. And here there does arise a question between those whom Professor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm "the Levites of culture," and those whom the poor humanist is sometimes apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars. The great results of the scientific investigation of nature we are agreed upon knowing, but how much of our study are we bound to give to the processes by which those results are reached? The results have their visible bearing on human life. But all the processes, too, all the items of fact by which those results are reached and established, are interesting. All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge of nature is interesting to all men. It is very interesting to know, that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, bones, blood, and feathers; while, from the fatty yolk of the egg, it gets the heat and energy which enable it at length to break its shell and begin the world. It is less interesting, perhaps, but still it is interesting, to know that when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. Moreover, it is quite true that the habit of dealing with facts, which is given by the study of nature, is, as the friends of physical science praise it for being, an excellent discipline. The appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observation and experiment; not only is it said that the thing is so, but we can be made to see that it is so. Not only does a man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he likes, that Charon is punting his ferry boat on the river Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Gladstone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does actually happen. This reality of natural knowledge it is, which makes the friends of physical science contrast it, as a knowledge of things, with the humanist's knowledge, which is, they say, a knowledge of words. And hence Professor Huxley is moved to lay it down that, "for the purpose of attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at least as effectual as an exclusively literary education." And a certain President of the Section for Mechanical Science in the British Association is, in Scripture phrase, "very bold," and declares that if a man, in his mental training, "has substituted literature and history for natural science, he has chosen the less useful alternative." But whether we go these lengths or not, we must all admit that in natural science the habit gained of dealing with facts is a most valuable discipline, and that every one should have some experience of it. More than this, however, is demanded by the reformers. It is proposed to make the training in natural science the main part of education, for the great majority of mankind at any rate. And here, I confess, I part company with the friends of physical science, with whom up to this point I have been agreeing. In differing from them, however, I wish to proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence. The smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of doing these disciplines an injustice. The ability and pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative inquiry, which befits a being of dim faculties and bounded knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one important thing out of their account: the constitution of human nature. But I put this forward on the strength of some facts not at all recondite, very far from it; facts capable of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, and to which, if I so state them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing to allow their due weight. Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. He can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to enumerate the powers which go to the building up of human life, and say that they are the power of conduct, the power of intellect and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social life and manners--he can hardly deny that this scheme, though drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and not pretending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly true representation of the matter. Human nature is built up by these powers; we have the need for them all. When we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them all, we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness and righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident enough, and the friends of physical science would admit it. But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed another thing: namely, that the several powers just mentioned are not isolated, but there is, in the generality of mankind, a perpetual tendency to relate them one to another in divers ways. With one such way of relating them I am particularly concerned now. Following our instinct for intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of knowledge; and presently, in the generality of men, there arises the desire to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct, to our sense for beauty,--and there is weariness and dissatisfaction if the desire is balked. Now in this desire lies, I think, the strength of that hold which letters have upon us. All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting; and even items of knowledge which from the nature of the case cannot well be related, but must stand isolated in our thoughts, have their interest. Even lists of exceptions have their interest. If we are studying Greek accents, it is interesting to know that _pais_ and _pas_, and some other monosyllables of the same form of declension, do not take the circumflex upon the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in this respect, from the common rule. If we are studying physiology, it is interesting to know that the pulmonary artery carries dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries bright blood, departing in this respect from the common rule, for the division of labour between the veins and the arteries. But every one knows how we seek naturally to combine the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them under general rules, to relate them to principles; and how unsatisfactory and tiresome it would be to go on forever learning lists of exceptions, or accumulating items of fact which must stand isolated. Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, which operates here within the sphere of our knowledge itself, we shall find operating, also, outside that sphere. We experience, as we go on learning and knowing,--the vast majority of us experience,--the need of relating what we have learned and known to the sense which we have in us for conduct, to the sense which we have in us for beauty. A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arcadia, Diotima by name, once explained to the philosopher Socrates that love, and impulse, and bent of all kinds, is, in fact, nothing else but the desire in men that good should forever be present to them. This desire for good, Diotima assured Socrates, is our fundamental desire, of which fundamental desire every impulse in us is only some one particular form. And therefore this fundamental desire it is, I suppose,--this desire in men that good should be forever present to them,--which acts in us when we feel the impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. And the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and human nature is preserved by our following the lead of its innocent instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify this instinct in question, we are following the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be made to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot be directly related to the sense for beauty, to the sense for conduct. These are instrument-knowledges; they lead on to other knowledges, which can. A man who passes his life in instrument-knowledges is a specialist. They may be invaluable as instruments to something beyond, for those who have the gift thus to employ them; and they may be disciplines in themselves wherein it is useful for every one to have some schooling. But it is inconceivable that the generality of men should pass all their mental life with Greek accents or with formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester, who is one of the first mathematicians in the world, holds transcendental doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but those doctrines are not for common men. In the very Senate House and heart of our English Cambridge I once ventured, though not without an apology for my profaneness, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of mankind a little of mathematics, even, goes a long way. Of course this is quite consistent with their being of immense importance as an instrument to something else; but it is the few who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the bulk of mankind. The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the same footing with these instrument-knowledges. Experience shows us that the generality of men will find more interest in learning that, when a taper burns, the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water, or in learning the explanation of the phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circulation of the blood is carried on, than they find in learning that the genitive plural of _pais_ and _pas_ does not take the circumflex on the termination. And one piece of natural knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that, and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr. Darwin's famous proposition that "our ancestor was a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions of such reach and magnitude as those which Professor Huxley delivers, when he says that the notions of our forefathers about the beginning and the end of the world were all wrong and that nature is the expression of a definite order with which nothing interferes. Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, important they are, and we should all of us be acquainted with them. But what I now wish you to mark is, that we are still, when they are propounded to us and we receive them, we are still in the sphere of intellect and knowledge. And for the generality of men there will be found, I say, to arise, when they have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor was "a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," there will be found to arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition to the sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us for beauty. But this the men of science will not do for us, and will hardly even profess to do. They will give us other pieces of knowledge, other facts, about other animals and their ancestors, or about plants, or about stones, or about stars; and they may finally bring us to those great "general conceptions of the universe, which are forced upon us all," says Professor Huxley, "by the progress of physical science." But still it will be _knowledge_ only which they give us; knowledge not put for us into relation with our sense for conduct, our sense for beauty, and touched with emotion by being so put; not thus put for us, and therefore, to the majority of mankind, after a certain while, unsatisfying, wearying. Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do we mean by a born naturalist? We mean a man in whom the zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly strong and eminent, that it marks him off from the bulk of mankind. Such a man will pass his life happily in collecting natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and will ask for nothing, or hardly anything, more. I have heard it said that the sagacious and admirable naturalist whom we lost not very long ago, Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his part he did not experience the necessity for two things which most men find so necessary to them,--religion and poetry; science and the domestic affections, he thought, were enough. To a born naturalist, I can well understand that this should seem so. So absorbing is his occupation with nature, so strong his love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time or inclination for thinking about getting it related to the desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for beauty. He relates it to them for himself as he goes along, so far as he feels the need; and he draws from the domestic affections all the additional solace necessary. But then Darwins are extremely rare. Another great and admirable master of natural knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That is to say, he related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of that respectable Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman. And so strong, in general, is the demand of religion and poetry to have their share in a man, to associate themselves with his knowing, and to relieve and rejoice it, that probably, for one man amongst us with the disposition to do as Darwin did in this respect, there are at least fifty with the disposition to do as Faraday. Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying this demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn mediaeval education, with its neglect of the knowledge of nature, its poverty even of literary studies, its formal logic devoted to "showing how and why that which the Church said was true must be true." But the great mediaeval universities were not brought into being, we may be sure, by the zeal for giving a jejune and contemptible education. Kings have been their nursing fathers, and queens have been their nursing mothers, but not for this. The mediaeval universities came into being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered by Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men's hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating itself to their desire for conduct, their desire for beauty. All other knowledge was dominated by this supposed knowledge and was subordinated to it, because of the surpassing strength of the hold which it gained upon the affections of men, by allying itself profoundly with their sense for conduct, their sense for beauty. But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers have been forced upon us by physical science. Grant to him that they are thus fatal, that the new conceptions must and will soon become current everywhere, and that every one will finally perceive them to be fatal to the beliefs of our forefathers. The need of humane letters, as they are truly called, because they serve the paramount desire in men that good should be forever present to them,--the need of humane letters to establish a relation between the new conceptions, and our instinct for beauty, our instinct for conduct, is only the more visible. The middle age could do without humane letters, as it could do without the study of nature, because its supposed knowledge was made to engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant that the supposed knowledge disappears, its power of being made to engage the emotions will of course disappear along with it,--but the emotions themselves, and their claim to be engaged and satisfied, will remain. Now if we find by experience that humane letters have an undeniable power of engaging the emotions, the importance of humane letters in a man's training becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to the success of modern science in extirpating what it calls "mediaeval thinking." Have humane letters, then, have poetry and eloquence, the power here attributed to them of engaging the emotions, and do they exercise it? And if they have it and exercise it, _how_ do they exercise it, so as to exert an influence upon man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? Finally, even if they both can and do exert an influence upon the senses in question, how are they to relate to them the results,--the modern results,--of natural science? All these questions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence the power of calling out the emotions? The appeal is to experience. Experience shows that for the vast majority of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next, do they exercise it? They do. But then, _how_ do they exercise it so as to affect man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? And this is perhaps a case for applying the Preacher's words: "Though a man labor to seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, further, though a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it."[21] Why should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say, "Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer, [Greek: tlaeton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthropoisin--[22]] "for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to the children of men"? Why should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with philosopher Spinoza, _Felicitas in eo consistit quod homo suum esse conservare potest_--"Man's happiness consists in his being able to preserve his own essence," and quite another thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to say with the Gospel, "What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, forfeit himself?" How does this difference of effect arise? I cannot tell, and I am not much concerned to know; the important thing is that it does arise, and that we can profit by it. But how, finally, are poetry and eloquence to exercise the power of relating the modern results of natural science to man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? And here again I answer that I do not know _how_ they will exercise it, but that they can and will exercise it I am sure. I do not mean that modern philosophical poets and modern philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in express terms, the results of modern scientific research to our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty. But I mean that we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we know the best that has been thought and uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence of men who lived, perhaps, long ago, who had the most limited natural knowledge, who had the most erroneous conceptions about many important matters, we shall find that this art, and poetry, and eloquence, have in fact not only the power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also the power,--such is the strength and worth, in essentials, of their authors' criticism of life,--they have a fortifying, and elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power, capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of modern science to our need for conduct, our need for beauty. Homer's conceptions of the physical universe were, I imagine, grotesque; but really, under the shock of hearing from modern science that "the world is not subordinated to man's use, and that man is not the cynosure of things terrestrial," I could, for my own part, desire no better comfort than Homer's line which I quoted just now, [Greek: tlaeton gar Moirai thumon thesan anthropoisin--] "for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to the children of men!" And the more that men's minds are cleared, the more that the results of science are frankly accepted, the more that poetry and eloquence come to be received and studied as what in truth they really are,--the criticism of life by gifted men, alive and active with extraordinary power at an unusual number of points;--so much the more will the value of humane letters, and of art also, which is an utterance having a like kind of power with theirs, be felt and acknowledged, and their place in education be secured. Let us therefore, all of us, avoid indeed as much as possible any invidious comparison between the merits of humane letters, as means of education, and the merits of the natural sciences. But when some President of a Section for Mechanical Science insists on making the comparison, and tells us that "he who in his training has substituted literature and history for natural science has chosen the less useful alternative," let us make answer to him that the student of humane letters only, will, at least, know also the great general conceptions brought in by modern physical science; for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them upon us all. But the student of the natural sciences only, will, by our very hypothesis, know nothing of humane letters; not to mention that in setting himself to be perpetually accumulating natural knowledge, he sets himself to do what only specialists have in general the gift for doing genially. And so he will probably be unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete, and even more incomplete than the student of humane letters only. I once mentioned in a school report, how a young man in one of our English training colleges having to paraphrase the passage in _Macbeth_ beginning, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? turned this line into, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" And I remarked what a curious state of things it would be, if every pupil of our national schools knew, let us say, that the moon is two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in diameter, and thought at the same time that a good paraphrase for Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? was, "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one is driven to choose, I think I would rather have a young person ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware that "Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" is bad, than a young person whose education had been such as to manage things the other way. Or to go higher than the pupils of our national schools. I have in my mind's eye a member of our British Parliament who comes to travel here in America, who afterwards relates his travels, and who shows a really masterly knowledge of the geology of this great country and of its mining capabilities, but who ends by gravely suggesting that the United States should borrow a prince from our Royal Family, and should make him their king, and should create a House of Lords of great landed proprietors after the pattern of ours; and then America, he thinks, would have her future happily and perfectly secured. Surely, in this case, the President of the Section for Mechanical Science would himself hardly say that our member of Parliament, by concentrating himself upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and not attending to literature and history, had "chosen the more useful alternative." If then there is to be separation and option between humane letters on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other, the great majority of mankind, all who have not exceptional and overpowering aptitudes for the study of nature, would do well, I cannot but think, to choose to be educated in humane letters rather than in the natural sciences. Letters will call out their being at more points, will make them live more. I said that before I ended I would just touch on the question of classical education, and I will keep my word. Even if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly have to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes of these gentlemen. The attackers of the established course of study think that against Greek, at any rate, they have irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be needed in education, they say; but why on earth should it be Greek literature? Why not French or German? Nay, "has not an Englishman models in his own literature of every kind of excellence?" As before, it is not on any weak pleadings of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsayers; it is on the constitution of human nature itself, and on the instinct of self-preservation in humanity. The instinct for beauty is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowledge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is served by no other literature and art, we may trust to the instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek as part of our culture. We may trust to it for even making the study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek will come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally than at present; but it will be increasingly studied as men increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, and how powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this need. Women will again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey did; I believe that in that chain of forts, with which the fair host of the Amazons are now engirdling our English universities,--I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State of New York, and in the happy families of the mixed universities out West,--they are studying it already. _Defuit una mihi symmetria prisca_,--"The antique symmetry was the one thing wanting to me," said Leonardo da Vinci; and he was an Italian. I will not presume to speak for the Americans, but I am sure that, in the Englishman, the want of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thousand times more great and crying than in any Italian. The results of the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in our architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all our art. _Fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result nobly conceived_; that is just the beautiful _symmetria prisca_ of the Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where all our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-executed details we have; but that high symmetry which, with satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at Athens did not come from single fine things stuck about on that hill, a statue here, a gateway there;--no, it arose from all things being perfectly combined for a supreme total effect. What must not an Englishman feel about our deficiencies in this respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this symmetry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire for Greece and its _symmetria prisca_, when the scales drop from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees such a lesson in meanness as the Strand, for instance, in its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for he is its very sufficient guardian. And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favor of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, which seemed against them when we started. The "hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more: we seem finally to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek. And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really think that humane letters are in much actual danger of being thrust out from their leading place in education, in spite of the array of authorities against them at this moment. So long as human nature is what it is, their attractions will remain irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters generally: they will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more rationally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen will rather be that there will be crowded into education other matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps, a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency; but letters will not in the end lose their leading place. If they lose it for a time, they will get it back again. We shall be brought back to them by our wants and aspirations. And a poor humanist may possess his soul in patience, neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the partisans of physical science, and their present favor with the public, to be far greater than his own, and still have a happy faith that the nature of things works silently on behalf of the studies which he loves, and that, while we shall all have to acquaint ourselves with the great results reached by modern science, and to give ourselves as much training in its disciplines as we can conveniently carry, yet the majority of men will always require humane letters; and so much the more, as they have the more and the greater results of science to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the need in him for beauty. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 20: From "Discourses in America," 1885.] [Footnote 21: From Ecclesiastes, viii. 17.] [Footnote 22: From the "Iliad," xxiv. 49.] HOW TO READ[23] FREDERIC HARRISON It is the fashion for those who have any connection with letters to expatiate on the infinite blessings of literature, and the miraculous achievements of the press: to extol, as a gift above price, the taste for study and the love of reading. Far be it from me to gainsay the inestimable value of good books, or to discourage any man from reading the best; but I often think that we forget that other side to this glorious view of literature--the misuse of books, the debilitating waste of brain in aimless, promiscuous, vapid reading, or even, it may be, in the poisonous inhalation of mere literary garbage and bad men's worst thoughts. For what can a book be more than the man who wrote it? The brightest genius seldom puts the best of his own soul into his printed page; and some famous men have certainly put the worst of theirs. Yet are all men desirable companions, much less teachers, able to give us advice, even of those who get reputation and command a hearing? To put out of the question that writing which is positively bad, are we not, amidst the multiplicity of books and of writers, in continual danger of being drawn off by what is stimulating rather than solid, by curiosity after something accidentally notorious, by what has no intelligible thing to recommend it, except that it is new? Now, to stuff our minds with what is simply trivial, simply curious, or that which at best has but a low nutritive power, this is to close our minds to what is solid and enlarging, and spiritually sustaining. Whether our neglect of the great books comes from our not reading at all, or from an incorrigible habit of reading the little books, it ends in just the same thing. And that thing is ignorance of all the greater literature of the world. To neglect all the abiding parts of knowledge for the sake of the evanescent parts is really to know nothing worth knowing. It is in the end the same, whether we do not use our minds for serious study at all, or whether we exhaust them by an impotent voracity for desultory "information"--a thing as fruitful as whistling. Of the two evils I prefer the former. At least, in that case, the mind is healthy and open. It is not gorged and enfeebled by excess in that which cannot nourish, much less enlarge and beautify our nature. But there is much more than this. Even to those who resolutely avoid the idleness of reading what is trivial, a difficulty is presented--a difficulty every day increasing by virtue even of our abundance of books. What are the subjects, what are the class of books we are to read, in what order, with what connection, to what ultimate use or object? Even those who are resolved to read the better books are embarrassed by a field of choice practically boundless. The longest life, the greatest industry, joined to the most powerful memory, would not suffice to make us profit from a hundredth part of the world of books before us. If the great Newton said that he seemed to have been all his life gathering a few shells on the shore, whilst a boundless ocean of truth still lay beyond and unknown to him, how much more to each of us must the sea of literature be a pathless immensity beyond our powers of vision or of reach--an immensity in which industry itself is useless without judgment, method, discipline; where it is of infinite importance what we can learn and remember, and of utterly no importance what we may have once looked at or heard of. Alas! the most of our reading leaves as little mark even in our own education as the foam that gathers round the keel of a passing boat! For myself, I am inclined to think the most useful help to reading is to know what we should not read, what we can keep out from that small cleared spot in the overgrown jungle of "information," the corner which we can call our ordered patch of fruit-bearing knowledge. The incessant accumulation of fresh books must hinder any real knowledge of the old; for the multiplicity of volumes becomes a bar upon our use of any. In literature especially does it hold--that we cannot see the wood for the trees. How shall we choose our books? Which are the best, the eternal, indispensable books? To all to whom reading is something more than a refined idleness these questions recur, bringing with them the sense of bewilderment; and a still, small voice within us is for ever crying out for some guide across the Slough of Despond of an illimitable and ever-swelling literature. How many a man stands beside it, as uncertain of his pathway as the Pilgrim, when he who dreamed the immortal dream heard him "break out with a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do?" And this, which comes home to all of us at times, presses hardest upon those who have lost the opportunity of systematic education, who have to educate themselves, or who seek to guide the education of their young people. Systematic reading is but little in favour even amongst studious men; in a true sense it is hardly possible for women. A comprehensive course of home study, and a guide to books, fit for the highest education of women, is yet a blank page remaining to be filled. Generations of men of culture have laboured to organise a system of reading and materials appropriate for the methodical education of men in academic lines. Teaching equal in mental calibre to any that is open to men in universities, yet modified for the needs of those who must study at home, remains in the dim pages of that melancholy volume entitled _Libri valde desiderati._[24] I do not aspire to fill one of those blank pages; but I long to speak a word or two, as the Pilgrim did to Neighbour Pliable, upon the glories that await those who will pass through the narrow wicket-gate. On this, if one can find anything useful to say, it may be chiefly from the memory of the waste labour and pitiful stumbling in the dark which fill up so much of the travail that one is fain to call one's own education. We who have wandered in the wastes so long, and lost so much of our lives in our wandering, may at least offer warnings to younger wayfarers, as men who in thorny paths have borne the heat and burden of the day might give a clue to their journey to those who have yet a morning and a noon. As I look back and think of those cataracts of printed stuff which honest compositors set up, meaning, let us trust, no harm, and which at least found them in daily bread,--printed stuff which I and the rest of us, to our infinitely small profit, have consumed with our eyes, not even making an honest living of it, but much impairing our substance,--I could almost reckon the printing press as amongst the scourges of mankind. I am grown a wiser and a sadder man, importunate, like that Ancient Mariner, to tell each blithe wedding guest the tale of his shipwreck on the infinite sea of printers' ink, as one escaped by mercy and grace from the region where there is water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. A man of power, who has got more from books than most of his contemporaries, once said: "Form a habit of reading, do not mind what you read; the reading of better books will come when you have a habit of reading the inferior." We need not accept this _obiter dictum_[25] of Lord Sherbrooke. A habit of reading idly debilitates and corrupts the mind for all wholesome reading; the habit of reading wisely is one of the most difficult habits to acquire, needing strong resolution and infinite pains; and reading for mere reading's sake, instead of for the sake of the good we gain from reading, is one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome habits we have. And so our inimitable humorist has made delightful fun of the solid books,--which no gentleman's library should be without,--the Humes, Gibbons, Adam Smiths, which, he says, are not books at all, and prefers some "kindhearted play-book," or at times the _Town and County Magazine_. Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical dungheaps. Be it jest or earnest, I have little patience with the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of literature--literature, I mean, in the gross, which includes about equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meritorious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we can get from them? Why do we pride ourselves on our powers of absorbing print, as our grandfathers did on their gifts in imbibing port, when we know that there is a mode of absorbing print which makes it impossible that we can ever learn anything good out of books? Our stately Milton said in a passage which is one of the watchwords of the English race, "as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book." But has he not also said that he would "have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves, as well as men; and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors"?... Yes! they do kill the good book who deliver up their few and precious hours of reading to the trivial book; they make it dead for them; they do what lies in them to destroy "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, imbalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life;" they "spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Bookes." For in the wilderness of books most men, certainly all busy men, _must_ strictly choose. If they saturate their minds with the idler books, the "good book," which Milton calls "an immortality rather than a life," is dead to them: it is a book sealed up and buried. It is most right that in the great republic of letters there should be freedom of intercourse and a spirit of equality. Every reader who holds a book in his hand is free of the inmost minds of men past and present; their lives both within and without the pale of their uttered thoughts are unveiled to him; he needs no introduction to the greatest; he stands on no ceremony with them; he may, if he be so minded, scribble "doggrel" on his Shelley, or he may kick Lord Byron, if he please, into a corner. He hears Burke perorate, and Johnson dogmatise, and Scott tell his border tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside, without the leave of any man, or the payment of any toll. In the republic of letters there are no privileged orders or places reserved. Every man who has written a book, even the diligent Mr. Whitaker, is in one sense an author; "a book's a book although there's nothing in't;" and every man who can decipher a penny journal is in one sense a reader. And your "general reader," like the grave-digger in Hamlet, is hail-fellow with all the mighty dead; he pats the skull of the jester; batters the cheek of lord, lady, or courtier; and uses "imperious Caesar" to teach boys the Latin declensions. But this noble equality of all writers--of all writers and of all readers--has a perilous side to it. It is apt to make us indiscriminate in the books we read, and somewhat contemptuous of the mighty men of the past. Men who are most observant as to the friends they make, or the conversation they share, are carelessness itself as to the books to whom they entrust themselves, and the printed language with which they saturate their minds. Yet can any friendship or society be more important to us than that of the books which form so large a part of our minds and even of our characters? Do we in real life take any pleasant fellow to our homes and chat with some agreeable rascal by our firesides, we who will take up any pleasant fellow's printed memoirs, we who delight in the agreeable rascal when he is cut up into pages and bound in calf? If any person given to reading were honestly to keep a register of all the printed stuff that he or she consumes in a year--all the idle tales of which the very names and the story are forgotten in a week, the bookmaker's prattle about nothing at so much a sheet, the fugitive trifling about silly things and empty people, the memoirs of the unmemorable, and lives of those who never really lived at all--of what a mountain of rubbish would it be the catalogue: Exercises for the eye and the memory, as mechanical as if we set ourselves to learn the names, ages, and family histories of every one who lives in our own street, the flirtations of their maiden aunts, and the circumstances surrounding the birth of their grandmother's first baby. It is impossible to give any method to our reading till we get nerve enough to reject. The most exclusive and careful amongst us will (in literature) take boon companions out of the street, as easily as an idler in a tavern. "I came across such and such a book that I never heard mentioned," says one, "and found it curious, though entirely worthless." "I strayed on a volume by I know not whom, on a subject for which I never cared." And so on. There are curious and worthless creatures enough in any pot-house all day long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus, train, or street by we know not whom, about we care not what. Yet if a printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this gabble as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it straightway is literature, and in due time it becomes "curious." I have no intention to moralise or to indulge in a homily against the reading of what is deliberately evil. There is not so much need for this now, and I am not discoursing on the whole duty of man. I take that part of our reading which by itself is no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently instructive. But of this enormous mass of literature how much deserves to be chosen out, to be preferred to all the great books of the world, to be set apart for those precious hours which are all that the most of us can give to solid reading? The vast proportion of books are books that we shall never be able to read. A serious percentage of books are not worth reading at all. The really vital books for us we also know to be a very trifling portion of the whole. And yet we act as if every book were as good as any other, as if it were merely a question of order which we take up first, as if any book were good enough for us, and as if all were alike honourable, precious, and satisfying. Alas! books cannot be more than the men who write them; and as a fair proportion of the human race now write books, with motives and objects as various as human activity, books, as books, are entitled _à priori_, until their value is proved, to the same attention and respect as houses, steam-engines, pictures, fiddles, bonnets, and other products of human industry. In the shelves of those libraries which are our pride, libraries public or private, circulating or very stationary, are to be found those great books of the world _rari nantes in gurgite vasto_,[26] those books which are truly "the precious life-blood of a master-spirit." But the very familiarity which their mighty fame has bred in us makes us indifferent; we grow weary of what every one is supposed to have read; and we take down something which looks a little eccentric, some worthless book, on the mere ground that we never heard of it before. Thus the difficulties of literature are in their way as great as those of the world, the obstacles to finding the right friends are as great, the peril is as great of being lost in a Babel of voices and an ever-changing mass of beings. Books are not wiser than men, the true books are not easier to find than the true men, the bad books or the vulgar books are not less obtrusive and not less ubiquitous than the bad or vulgar men are everywhere; the art of right reading is as long and difficult to learn as the art of right living. Those who are on good terms with the first author they meet, run as much risk as men who surrender their time to the first passer in the street; for to be open to every book is for the most part to gain as little as possible from any. A man aimlessly wandering about in a crowded city is of all men the most lonely; so he who takes up only the books that he "comes across" is pretty certain to meet but few that are worth knowing. Now this danger is one to which we are specially exposed in this age. Our high-pressure life of emergencies, our whirling industrial organisation or disorganisation have brought us in this (as in most things) their peculiar difficulties and drawbacks. In almost everything vast opportunities and gigantic means of multiplying our products bring with them new perils and troubles which are often at first neglected. Our huge cities, where wealth is piled up and the requirements and appliances of life extended beyond the dreams of our forefathers, seem to breed in themselves new forms of squalor, disease, blights, or risks to life such as we are yet unable to master. So the enormous multiplicity of modern books is not altogether favourable to the knowing of the best. I listen with mixed satisfaction to the paeans that they chant over the works which issue from the press each day: how the books poured forth from Paternoster Row might in a few years be built into a pyramid that would fill the dome of St. Paul's. How in this mountain of literature am I to find the really useful book? How, when I have found it, and found its value, am I to get others to read it? How am I to keep my head clear in the torrent and din of works, all of which distract my attention, most of which promise me something, whilst so few fulfil that promise? The Nile is the source of the Egyptian's bread, and without it he perishes of hunger. But the Nile may be rather too liberal in his flood, and then the Egyptian runs imminent risk of drowning. And thus there never was a time, at least during the last two hundred years, when the difficulties in the way of making an efficient use of books were greater than they are to-day, when the obstacles were more real between readers and the right books to read, when it was practically so troublesome to find out that which it is of vital importance to know; and that not by the dearth, but by the plethora of printed matter. For it comes to nearly the same thing whether we are actually debarred by physical impossibility, from getting the right book into our hand, or whether we are choked off from the right book by the obtrusive crowd of the wrong books; so that it needs a strong character and a resolute system of reading to keep the head cool in the storm of literature around us. We read nowadays in the market-place--I would rather say in some large steam factory of letter-press, where damp sheets of new print whirl round us perpetually--if it be not rather some noisy book-fair where literary showmen tempt us with performing dolls, and the gongs of rival booths are stunning our ears from morn till night. Contrast with this pandemonium of Leipsic and Paternoster Row the sublime picture of our Milton in his early retirement at Horton, when, musing over his coming flight to the epic heaven, practising his pinions, as he tells Diodati, he consumed five years of solitude in reading the ancient writers--"_Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri_."[27] Who now reads the ancient writers? Who systematically reads the great writers, be they ancient or modern, whom the consent of ages has marked out as classics: typical, immortal, peculiar teachers of our race? Alas! the _Paradise Lost_ is lost again to us beneath an inundation of graceful academic verse, sugary stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and ceaseless explanations in more or less readable prose of what John Milton meant or did not mean, or what he saw or did not see, who married his great-aunt, and why Adam or Satan is like that, or unlike the other. We read a perfect library about the _Paradise Lost_, but the _Paradise Lost_ itself we do not read. I am not presumptuous enough to assert that the larger part of modern literature is not worth reading in itself, that the prose is not readable, entertaining, one may say highly instructive. Nor do I pretend that the verses which we read so zealously in place of Milton's are not good verses. On the contrary, I think them sweetly conceived, as musical and as graceful as the verse of any age in our history. A great deal of our modern literature is such that it is exceedingly difficult to resist it, and it is undeniable that it gives us real information. It seems perhaps unreasonable to many to assert that a decent readable book which gives us actual instruction can be otherwise than a useful companion and a solid gain. Possibly many people are ready to cry out upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt a genial confidence in all literature simply as such. But the question, which weighs upon me with such really crushing urgency is this: What are the books that in our little remnant of reading time it is most vital for us to know? For the true use of books is of such sacred value to us that to be simply entertained is to cease to be taught, elevated, inspired by books; merely to gather information of a chance kind is to close the mind to knowledge of the urgent kind. Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose--every bit of stray information which we cram into our heads without any sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds. It is so certain that information, i.e., the knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of mankind, is now grown to proportions so utterly incalculable and prodigious, that even the learned whose lives are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom active life leaves with but a few cramped hours of study can hardly come to know the very vastness of the field before them, or how infinitesimally small is the corner they can traverse at the best. We know all is not of equal value. We know that books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand on the seashore, as much as our living friend differs from a dead rat. We know that much in the myriad-peopled world of books--very much in all kinds--is trivial, enervating, inane, even noxious. And thus, where we have infinite opportunities of wasting our efforts to no end, of fatiguing our minds without enriching them, of clogging the spirit without satisfying it, there, I cannot but think, the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the actual power of using them. And thus I come often, in my less hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily literature which thunders over the remnants of the past, as if it were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in the way of systematic knowledge and consistent powers of thought, as if it were destined one day to overwhelm the great inheritance of mankind in prose and verse. I remember, when I was a very young man at college, that a youth, in no spirit of paradox, but out of plenary conviction, undertook to maintain before a body of serious students, the astounding proposition that the invention of printing had been one of the greatest misfortunes that had ever befallen mankind. He argued that exclusive reliance on printed matter had destroyed the higher method of oral teaching, the dissemination of thought by the spoken word to the attentive ear. He insisted that the formation of a vast literary class looking to the making of books as a means of making money, rather than as a social duty, had multiplied books for the sake of the writers rather than for the sake of the readers; that the reliance on books as a cheap and common resource had done much to weaken the powers of memory; that it destroyed the craving for a general culture of taste, and the need of artistic expression in all the surroundings of life. And he argued, lastly, that the sudden multiplication of all kinds of printed matter had been fatal to the orderly arrangement of thought, and had hindered a system of knowledge and a scheme of education. I am far from sharing this immature view. Of course I hold the invention of printing to have been one of the most momentous facts in the whole history of man. Without it universal social progress, true democratic enlightenment, and the education of the people would have been impossible, or very slow, even if the cultured few, as is likely, could have advanced the knowledge of mankind without it. We place Gutenberg amongst the small list of the unique and special benefactors of mankind, in the sacred choir of those whose work transformed the conditions of life, whose work, once done, could never be repeated. And no doubt the things which our ardent friend regarded as so fatal a disturbance of society were all inevitable and necessary, part of the great revolution of mind through which men grew out of the mediaeval incompleteness to a richer conception of life and of the world. Yet there is a sense in which this boyish anathema against printing may become true to us by our own fault. We may create for ourselves these very evils. For the art of printing has not been a gift wholly unmixed with evils; it must be used wisely if it is to be a boon to man at all; it entails on us heavy responsibilities, resolution to use it with judgment and self-control, and the will to resist its temptations and its perils. Indeed, we may easily so act that we may make it a clog on the progress of the human mind, a real curse and not a boon. The power of flying at will through space would probably extinguish civilisation and society, for it would release us from the wholesome bondage of place and rest. The power of hearing every word that had ever been uttered on this planet would annihilate thought, as the power of knowing all recorded facts by the process of turning a handle would annihilate true science. Our human faculties and our mental forces are not enlarged simply by multiplying our materials of knowledge and our facilities for communication. Telephones, microphones, pantoscopes, steam-presses, and ubiquity-engines in general may, after all, leave the poor human brain panting and throbbing under the strain of its appliances, no bigger and no stronger than the brains of the men who heard Moses speak, and saw Aristotle and Archimedes pondering over a few worn rolls of crabbed manuscript. Until some new Gutenberg or Watt can invent a machine for magnifying the human mind, every fresh apparatus for multiplying its work is a fresh strain on the mind, a new realm for it to order and to rule. And so, I say it most confidently, the first intellectual task of our age is rightly to order and make serviceable the vast realm of printed material which four centuries have swept across our path. To organise our knowledge, to systematise our reading, to save, out of the relentless cataract of ink, the immortal thoughts of the greatest--this is a necessity, unless the productive ingenuity of man is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless chaos. To know anything that turns up is, in the infinity of knowledge, to know nothing. To read the first book we come across, in the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. To turn over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to be practically indifferent to all that is good. But this warns me that I am entering on a subject which is far too big and solemn. It is plain that to organise our knowledge, even to systematise our reading, to make a working selection of books for general study, really implies a complete scheme of education. A scheme of education ultimately implies a system of philosophy, a view of man's duty and powers as a moral and social being--a religion. Before a problem so great as this, on which readers have such different ideas and wants, and differ so profoundly on the very premises from which we start, before such a problem as a general theory of education, I prefer to pause. I will keep silence even from good words. I have chosen my own part, and adopted my own teacher. But to ask men to adopt the education of Auguste Comte, is almost to ask them to adopt Positivism itself. Nor will I enlarge on the matter for thought, for foreboding, almost for despair, that is presented to us by the fact of our familiar literary ways and our recognised literary profession. That things infinitely trifling in themselves: men, events, societies, phenomena, in no way otherwise more valuable than the myriad other things which flit around us like the sparrows on the housetop, should be glorified, magnified, and perpetuated, set under a literary microscope and focussed in the blaze of a literary magic-lantern--not for what they are in themselves, but solely to amuse and excite the world by showing how it can be done--all this is to me so amazing, so heart-breaking, that I forbear now to treat it, as I cannot say all that I would. The Choice of Books is really the choice of our education, of a moral and intellectual ideal, of the whole duty of man. But though I shrink from any so high a theme, a few words are needed to indicate my general point of view in the matter. In the first place, when we speak about books, let us avoid the extravagance of expecting too much from books, the pedant's habit of extolling books as synonymous with education. Books are no more education than laws are virtue; and just as profligacy is easy within the strict limits of law, a boundless knowledge of books may be found with a narrow education. A man may be, as the poet saith, "deep vers'd in books, and shallow in himself." We need to know in order that we may feel rightly and act wisely. The thirst after truth itself may be pushed to a degree where indulgence enfeebles our sympathies and unnerves us in action. Of all men perhaps the book-lover needs most to be reminded that man's business here is to know for the sake of living, not to live for the sake of knowing. A healthy mode of reading would follow the lines of a sound education. And the first canon of a sound education is to make it the instrument to perfect the whole nature and character. Its aims are comprehensive, not special; they regard life as a whole, not mental curiosity; they have to give us, not so much materials, as capacities. So that, however moderate and limited the opportunity for education, in its way it should be always more or less symmetrical and balanced, appealing equally in turn to the three grand intellectual elements--imagination, memory, reflection: and so having something to give us in poetry, in history, in science, and in philosophy. And thus our reading will be sadly one-sided, however voluminous it be, if it entirely close to us any of the great types and ideals which the creative instinct of man has produced, if it shut out from us either the ancient world, or other European poetry, as important almost as our own. When our reading, however deep, runs wholly into "pockets," and exhausts itself in the literature of one age, one country, one type, then we may be sure that it is tending to narrow or deform our minds. And the more it leads us into curious byways and nurtures us into indifference for the beaten highways of the world, the sooner we shall end, if we be not specialists and students by profession, in ceasing to treat our books as the companions and solace of our lifetime, and in using them as the instruments of a refined sort of self-indulgence. A wise education, and so judicious reading, should leave no great type of thought, no dominant phase of human nature, wholly a blank. Whether our reading be great or small, so far as it goes, it should be general. If our lives admit of but a short space for reading, all the more reason that, so far as may be, it should remind us of the vast expanse of human thought, and the wonderful variety of human nature. To read, and yet so to read that we see nothing but a corner of literature, the loose fringe, or flats and wastes of letters, and by reading only deepen our natural belief that this island is the hub of the universe, and the nineteenth century the only age worth notice, all this is really to call in the aid of books to thicken and harden our untaught prejudices. Be it imagination, memory, or reflection that we address--that is, in poetry, history, science, or philosophy, our first duty is to aim at knowing something at least of the best, at getting some definite idea of the mighty realm whose outer rim we are permitted to approach. But how are we to know the best; how are we to gain this definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who appear to suppose that the "best" are known only to experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips." There are no "tips" in literature; the "best" authors are never dark horses; we need no "crammers" and "coaches" to thrust us into the presence of the great writers of all time. "Crammers" will only lead us wrong. It is a thing far easier and more common than many imagine, to discover the best. It needs no research, no learning, and is only misguided by recondite information. The world has long ago closed the great assize of letters and judged the first places everywhere. In such a matter the judgment of the world, guided and informed by a long succession of accomplished critics, is almost unerring. When some Zoilus finds blemishes in Homer, and prefers, it may be, the work of some Apollonius of his own discovering, we only laugh. There may be doubts about the third and fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit now and then some new and chosen modern. But the company of the masters of those who know, and in especial degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete, and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together. Hence we may find it a useful maxim that, if our reading be utterly closed to the great poems of the world, there is something amiss with our reading. If you find Milton, Dante, Calderon, Goethe, so much "Hebrew-Greek" to you; if your Homer and Virgil, your Molière and Scott, rest year after year undisturbed on their shelves beside your school trigonometry and your old college text-books; if you have never opened the _Cid, the Nibelungen, Crusoe_, and _Don Quixote_ since you were a boy, and are wont to leave the Bible and the Imitation for some wet Sunday afternoon--know, friend, that your reading can do you little real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly out of order. No doubt, to thousands of intelligent educated men who call themselves readers, the reading through a Canto of _The Purgatorio_, or a Book of the _Paradise Lost_, is a task as irksome as it would be to decipher an ill-written manuscript in a language that is almost forgotten. But, although we are not to be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the mood for slighter things, to be absolutely unable to read Milton or Dante with enjoyment, is to be in a very bad way. Aristophanes, Theocritus, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Molière are often as light as the driven foam; but they are not light enough for the general reader. Their humour is too bright and lovely for the groundlings. They are, alas! "classics," somewhat apart from our everyday ways; they are not banal enough for us; and so for us they slumber "unknown in a long night," just _because_ they are immortal poets, and are not scribblers of to-day. When will men understand that the reading of great books is a faculty to be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not to those who are spoiled by our current education and habits of life? _Ceci tuera cela_,[28] the last great poet might have said of the first circulating library. An insatiable appetite for new novels makes it as hard to read a masterpiece as it seems to a Parisian boulevardier to live in a quiet country. Until a man can truly enjoy a draft of clear water bubbling from a mountain side, his taste is in an unwholesome state. And so he who finds the Heliconian spring insipid should look to the state of his nerves. Putting aside the iced air of the difficult mountain tops of epic, tragedy, or psalm, there are some simple pieces which may serve as an unerring test of a healthy or a vicious taste for imaginative work. If the _Cid_, the _Vita Nuova_, the _Canterbury Tales_, Shakespeare's _Sonnets_, and _Lycidas_ pall on a man; if he care not for Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and the _Red Cross Knight_; if he thinks _Crusoe_ and the _Vicar_ books for the young; if he thrill not with _The Ode to the West Wind_, and _The Ode to a Grecian Urn_; if he have no stomach for _Christabel_ or the lines written on _The Wye above Tintern Abbey_, he should fall on his knees and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit. The intellectual system of most of us in these days needs "to purge and to live cleanly." Only by a course of treatment shall we bring our minds to feel at peace with the grand pure works of the world. Something we ought all to know of the masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations of Europe. To understand a great national poet, such as Dante, Calderon, Corneille, or Goethe, is to know other types of human civilisation in ways which a library of histories does not sufficiently teach. The great masterpieces of the world are thus, quite apart from the charm and solace they give us, the master instruments of a solid education. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 23: From "The Choice of Books," 1891. Printed here by permission of The Macmillan Company.] [Footnote 24: Books intensely desired.] [Footnote 25: Thing said in passing.] [Footnote 26: Floating scattered on the vast abyss.] [Footnote 27: "And here my books--my life--absorb me whole," Cowper's translation of Milton's Latin Epistle to Diodati.] [Footnote 28: This will destroy that.] ON GOING A JOURNEY[29] WILLIAM HAZLITT One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. I am then never less alone than when alone. "The fields his study, nature was his book." I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer encumbrances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude; nor do I ask for ------"a friend in my retreat, Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet." The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation "May plume her feathers and let grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd," that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with, and vary the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner--and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sunburnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things, like "sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, arguments, and analysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!" I have just now other business in hand, which would seem idle to you, but is with me "very stuff of the conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment? Does not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald. Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon such half-faced fellowship," say I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's that "he thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation by fits and starts. "Let me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, "were it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is beautifully said: but in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid: if you have to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature, without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others. I am for the synthetical method on a journey, in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I have no objection to argue a point with any one for twenty miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a beanfield crossing the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but the effect of which you are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill humour. Now I never quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circumstances that present themselves before you--these may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend C----, however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a summer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. "He talked far above singing." If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had "that fine madness in them which our first poets had;" and if they could have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains as the following. ------"Here be woods as green As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many As the young spring gives, and as choice as any; Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine, caves and dells; Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing, Or gather rushes to make many a ring For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love, How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies; How she convey'd him softly in a sleep, His temples bound with poppy, to the steep Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night, Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, To kiss her sweetest."------ FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS. Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot:--I must have time to collect myself.-- In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects: it should be reserved for Table-talk. L---- is for this reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of doors; because he is the best within. I grant, there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom; and then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place affords, to "take one's ease at one's inn!" These eventful moments in our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy. I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea, "The cups that cheer, but not inebriate," and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what we shall have for supper--eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet! Sancho[30] in such a situation once fixed upon cow-heel; and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be disparaged. Then in the intervals of pictured scenery and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir in the kitchen--_Procul, O procul este profani!_[31] These hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue and character from the time and place; he is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to sympathise with him, and he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with my travelling companion but present objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene. He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character. Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or from having some one with you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world: but your "unhoused free condition is put into circumscription and confine." The _incognito_ of an inn is one of its striking privileges--"lord of one's self, uncumber'd with a name." Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour_! One may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable and negatively rightworshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world: an inn restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat between me and the twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the tenth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_[32], to crown the evening with. It was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either side, with "green upland swells that echo to the bleat of flocks" below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this time "glittered green with sunny showers," and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems! But besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE; which have since faded into the light of common day, or mock my idle gaze. "The beautiful is vanished, and returns not." Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot; but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been broken and defaced! I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that separates me from what I then was. I was at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named. Where is he now? Not only I myself have changed; the world, which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert; and thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the waters of life freely! There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness or capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With change of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again; but we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it: the horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise the country. "Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Fopling Flutter, "all is a desert." All that part of the map that we do not see before us is a blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an image voluminous and vast;--the mind can form no larger idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and population, known by the name of China, to us? An inch of paste-board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange! Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a distance are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence; we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly lived and with which we have intimate associations, every one must have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression: we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names, that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all the rest of the world is forgotten! To return to the question I have quitted above. I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always is where we shall go to; in taking a solitary ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. "The mind is its own place;" nor are we anxious to arrive at the end of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no mean _éclat_--showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance, "With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd"-- descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges--was at home in the Bodleian; and at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered Ciceroni that attended us, and that pointed, in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in matchless pictures.--As another exception to the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a foreign country without a companion. I should want at intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen: there must be allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the utterance of speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so opposite to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by one's self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with instant fellowship and support.--Yet I did not feel this want or craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air of general humanity. I walked over "the vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," erect and satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of painting was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade. Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing remains but the Bourbons and the French people!--There is undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere else: but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of existence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of our old transports revive very keenly, we must "jump" all our present comforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character is not to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and in one sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of our substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, "Out of my country and myself I go." Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them: but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could any where borrow another life to spend afterwards at home! FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 29: From "Table-Talk," 1821-2.] [Footnote 30: Sancho Panza, a character in Cervantes' romance, "Don Quixote."] [Footnote 31: Aloof, O keep aloof, ye uninitiated!] [Footnote 32: A titbit.] THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER[33] LESLIE STEPHEN I have often felt a sympathy, which almost rises to the pathetic, when looking on at a cricket-match or boat-race. Something of the emotion with which Gray regarded the "distant spires and antique towers" rises within me. It is not, indeed, that I feel very deeply for the fine ingenuous lads who, as somebody says, are about to be degraded into tricky, selfish Members of Parliament. I have seen too much of them. They are very fine animals; but they are rather too exclusively animal. The soul is apt to be in too embryonic a state within these cases of well-strung bone and muscle. It is impossible for a mere athletic machine, however finely constructed, to appeal very deeply to one's finer sentiments. I can scarcely look forward with even an affectation of sorrow for the time when, if more sophisticated, it will at least have made a nearer approach to the dignity of an intellectual being. It is not the boys who make me feel a touch of sadness; their approaching elevation to the dignity of manhood will raise them on the whole in the scale of humanity; it is the older spectators whose aspect has in it something affecting. The shaky old gentleman, who played in the days when it was decidedly less dangerous to stand up to bowling than to a cannon-ball, and who now hobbles about on rheumatic joints, by the help of a stick; the corpulent elder, who rowed when boats had gangways down their middle, and did not require as delicate a balance as an acrobat's at the top of a living pyramid--these are the persons whom I cannot see without an occasional sigh. They are really conscious that they have lost something which they can never regain; or, if they momentarily forget it, it is even more forcibly impressed upon the spectators. To see a respectable old gentleman of sixty, weighing some fifteen stone, suddenly forget a third of his weight and two-thirds of his years, and attempt to caper like a boy, is indeed a startling phenomenon. To the thoughtless, it may be simply comic; but, without being a Jaques, one may contrive also to suck some melancholy out of it. Now, as I have never caught a cricket-ball, and, on the contrary, have caught numerous crabs in my life, the sympathy which I feel for these declining athletes is not due to any great personal interest in the matter. But I have long anticipated that a similar day would come for me, when I should no longer be able to pursue my favourite sport of mountaineering. Some day I should find that the ascent of a zigzag was as bad as a performance on the treadmill; that I could not look over a precipice without a swimming in the head; and that I could no more jump a crevasse than the Thames at Westminster. None of these things have come to pass. So far as I know, my physical powers are still equal to the ascent of Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau. But I am no less effectually debarred--it matters not how--from mountaineering. I wander at the foot of the gigantic Alps, and look up longingly to the summits, which are apparently so near, and yet know that they are divided from me by an impassable gulf. In some missionary work I have read that certain South Sea Islanders believed in a future paradise where the good should go on eating for ever with insatiable appetites at an inexhaustible banquet. They were to continue their eternal dinner in a house with open wickerwork sides; and it was to be the punishment of the damned to crawl outside in perpetual hunger and look in through the chinks as little boys look in through the windows of a London cookshop. With similar feelings I lately watched through a telescope the small black dots, which were really men, creeping up the high flanks of Mont Blanc or Monte Rosa. The eternal snows represented for me the Elysian fields, into which entrance was sternly forbidden, and I lingered about the spot with a mixture of pleasure and pain, in the envious contemplation of my more fortunate companions. I know there are those who will receive these assertions with civil incredulity. Some persons assume that every pleasure with which they cannot sympathise is necessarily affectation, and hold, as a particular case of that doctrine, that Alpine travellers risk their lives merely from fashion or desire of notoriety. Others are kind enough to admit that there is something genuine in the passion, but put it on a level with the passion for climbing greased poles. They think it derogatory to the due dignity of Mont Blanc that he should be used as a greased pole, and assure us that the true pleasures of the Alps are those which are within reach of the old and the invalids, who can only creep about villages and along high-roads. I cannot well argue with such detractors from what I consider a noble sport. As for the first class, it is reduced almost to a question of veracity. I say that I enjoy being on the top of a mountain, or, indeed, halfway up a mountain; that climbing is a pleasure to me, and would be so if no one else climbed and no one ever heard of my climbing. They reply that they don't believe it. No more argument is possible than if I were to say that I liked eating olives, and some one asserted that I really eat them only out of affectation. My reply would be simply to go on eating olives; and I hope the reply of mountaineers will be to go on climbing Alps. The other assault is more intelligible. Our critics admit that we have a pleasure; but assert that it is a puerile pleasure--that it leads to an irreverent view of mountain beauty, and to oversight of that which should really most impress a refined and noble mind. To this I shall only make such an indirect reply as may result from a frank confession of my own regrets at giving up the climbing business--perhaps for ever. I am sinking, so to speak, from the butterfly to the caterpillar stage, and, if the creeping thing is really the highest of the two, it will appear that there is something in the substance of my lamentations unworthy of an intellectual being. Let me try. By way of preface, however, I admit that mountaineering, in my sense of the word, is a sport. It is a sport which, like fishing or shooting, brings one into contact with the sublimest aspects of nature; and, without setting their enjoyment before one as an ultimate end or aim, helps one indirectly to absorb and be penetrated by their influence. Still it is strictly a sport--as strictly as cricket, or rowing, or knurr and spell--and I have no wish to place it on a different footing. The game is won when a mountain-top is reached in spite of difficulties; it is lost when one is forced to retreat; and, whether won or lost, it calls into play a great variety of physical and intellectual energies, and gives the pleasure which always accompanies an energetic use of our faculties. Still it suffers in some degree from this undeniable characteristic, and especially from the tinge which has consequently been communicated to narratives of mountain adventures. There are two ways which have been appropriated to the description of all sporting exploits. One is to indulge in fine writing about them, to burst out in sentences which swell to paragraphs, and in paragraphs which spread over pages; to plunge into ecstasies about infinite abysses and overpowering splendours, to compare mountains to archangels lying down in eternal winding-sheets of snow, and to convert them into allegories about man's highest destinies and aspirations. This is good when it is well done. Mr. Ruskin has covered the Matterhorn, for example, with a whole web of poetical associations, in language which, to a severe taste, is perhaps a trifle too fine, though he has done it with an eloquence which his bitterest antagonists must freely acknowledge. Yet most humble writers will feel that if they try to imitate Mr. Ruskin's eloquence they will pay the penalty of becoming ridiculous. It is not every one who can with impunity compare Alps to archangels. Tall talk is luckily an object of suspicion to Englishmen, and consequently most writers, and especially those who frankly adopt the sporting view of the mountains, adopt the opposite scheme: they affect something like cynicism; they mix descriptions of scenery with allusions to fleas or to bitter beer; they shrink with the prevailing dread of Englishmen from the danger of overstepping the limits of the sublime into its proverbial opposite; and they humbly try to amuse us because they can't strike us with awe. This, too, if I may venture to say so, is good in its way and place; and it seems rather hard to these luckless writers when people assume that, because they make jokes on a mountain, they are necessarily insensible to its awful sublimities. A sense of humour is not incompatible with imaginative sensibility; and even Wordsworth might have been an equally powerful prophet of nature if he could sometimes have descended from his stilts. In short, a man may worship mountains, and yet have a quiet joke with them when he is wandering all day in their tremendous solitudes. Joking, however, is, it must be admitted, a dangerous habit. I freely avow that, in my humble contributions to Alpine literature, I have myself made some very poor and very unseasonable witticisms. I confess my error, and only wish that I had no worse errors to confess. Still I think that the poor little jokes in which we mountaineers sometimes indulge have been made liable to rather harsh constructions. We are accused, in downright earnest, not merely of being flippant, but of an arrogant contempt for all persons whose legs are not as strong as our own. We are supposed seriously to wrap ourselves in our own conceit, and to brag intolerably of our exploits. Now I will not say that no mountaineer ever swaggers: the quality called by the vulgar "bounce" is unluckily confined to no profession. Certainly I have seen a man intolerably vain because he could raise a hundred-weight with his little finger; and I dare say that the "champion bill-poster," whose name is advertised on the walls of this metropolis, thinks excellence in bill-posting the highest virtue of a citizen. So some men may be silly enough to brag in all seriousness about mountain exploits. However, most lads of twenty learn that it is silly to give themselves airs about mere muscular eminence; and especially is this true of Alpine exploits--first, because they require less physical prowess than almost any other sport, and secondly, because a good amateur still feels himself the hopeless inferior of half the Alpine peasants whom he sees. You cannot be very conceited about a game in which the first clodhopper you meet can give you ten minutes' start in an hour. Still a man writing in a humorous vein naturally adopts a certain bumptious tone, just as our friend "Punch" ostentatiously declares himself to be omniscient and infallible. Nobody takes him at his word, or supposes that the editor of "Punch" is really the most conceited man in all England. But we poor mountaineers are occasionally fixed with our own careless talk by some outsider who is not in the secret. We know ourselves to be a small sect, and to be often laughed at; we reply by: assuming that we are the salt of the earth, and that our amusement is the first and noblest of all amusements. Our only retort to the good-humoured ridicule with which we are occasionally treated is to adopt an affected strut, and to carry it off as if we were the finest fellows in the world. We make a boast of our shame, and say, if you laugh we must crow. But we don't really mean anything: if we did, the only word which the English language would afford wherewith to describe us would be the very unpleasant antithesis to wise men, and certainly I hold that we have the average amount of common sense. When, therefore, I see us taken to task for swaggering, I think it a trifle hard that this merely playful affectation of superiority should be made a serious fault. For the future I would promise to be careful, if it were worth avoiding the misunderstanding of men who won't take a joke. Meanwhile, I can only state that when Alpine travellers indulge in a little swagger about their own performances and other people's incapacity, they don't mean more than an infinitesimal fraction of what they say, and that they know perfectly well that when history comes to pronounce a final judgment upon the men of the time, it won't put mountain-climbing on a level with patriotism, or even with excellence in the fine arts. The reproach of real _bonâ fide_ arrogance is, so far as I know, very little true of Alpine travellers. With the exception of the necessary fringe hanging on to every set of human beings--consisting of persons whose heads are weaker than their legs--the mountaineer, so far as my experience has gone, is generally modest enough. Perhaps he sometimes flaunts his ice-axes and ropes a little too much before the public eye at Chamonix, as a yachtsman occasionally flourishes his nautical costume at Cowes; but the fault may be pardoned by those not inexorable to human weaknesses. This opinion, I know, cuts at the root of the most popular theory as to our ruling passion. If we do not climb the Alps to gain notoriety, for what purpose can we possibly climb them? That same unlucky trick of joking is taken to indicate that we don't care much about the scenery; for who, with a really susceptible soul, could be facetious under the cliffs of Jungfrau or the ghastly precipices of the Matterhorn? Hence people who kindly excuse us from the blame of notoriety-hunting generally accept the "greased-pole" theory. We are, it seems, overgrown schoolboys, who, like other schoolboys, enjoy being in dirt, and danger, and mischief, and have as much sensibility for natural beauty as the mountain mules. And against this, as a more serious complaint, I wish to make my feeble protest, in order that my lamentations on quitting the profession may not seem unworthy of a thinking being. Let me try to recall some of the impressions which mountaineering has left with me, and see whether they throw any light upon the subject. As I gaze at the huge cliffs where I may no longer wander, I find innumerable recollections arise--some of them dim, as though belonging to a past existence; and some so brilliant that I can scarcely realise my exclusion from the scenes to which they belong. I am standing at the foot of what, to my mind, is the most glorious of all Alpine wonders--the huge Oberland precipice, on the slopes of the Faulhorn or the Wengern Alp. Innumerable tourists have done all that tourists can do to cocknify (if that is the right derivative from cockney) the scenery; but, like the Pyramids or a Gothic cathedral, it throws off the taint of vulgarity by its imperishable majesty. Even on turf strewn with sandwich-papers and empty bottles, even in the presence of hideous peasant-women singing "Stand-er auf" for five centimes, we cannot but feel the influence of Alpine beauty. When the sunlight is dying off the snows, or the full moon lighting them up with ethereal tints, even sandwich-papers and singing women may be forgotten. How does the memory of scrambles along snow arêtes, of plunges--luckily not too deep--into crevasses, of toil through long snowfields, towards a refuge that seemed to recede as we advanced--where, to quote Tennyson with due alteration, to the traveller toiling in immeasurable snow-- Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill The châlet sparkles like a grain of salt;-- how do such memories as these harmonise with the sense of superlative sublimity? One element of mountain beauty is, we shall all admit, their vast size and steepness. That a mountain is very big, and is faced by perpendicular walls of rock, is the first thing which strikes everybody, and is the whole essence and outcome of a vast quantity of poetical description. Hence the first condition towards a due appreciation of mountain scenery is that these qualities should be impressed upon the imagination. The mere dry statement that a mountain is so many feet in vertical height above the sea, and contains so many tons of granite, is nothing. Mont Blanc, is about three miles high. What of that? Three miles is an hour's walk for a lady--an eighteen-penny cab-fare--the distance from Hyde Park Corner to the Bank--an express train could do it in three minutes, or a racehorse in five. It is a measure which we have learnt to despise, looking at it from a horizontal point of view; and accordingly most persons, on seeing the Alps for the first time, guess them to be higher, as measured in feet, than they really are. What, indeed, is the use of giving measures in feet to any but the scientific mind? Who cares whether the moon is 250,000 or 2,500,000 miles distant? Mathematicians try to impress upon us that the distance of the fixed stars is only expressible by a row of figures which stretches across a page; suppose it stretched across two or across a dozen pages, should we be any the wiser, or have, in the least degree, a clearer notion of the superlative distances? We civilly say, "Dear me!" when the astronomer looks to us for the appropriate stare, but we only say it with the mouth; internally our remark is, "You might as well have multiplied by a few more millions whilst you were about it." Even astronomers, though not a specially imaginative race, feel the impotence of figures, and try to give us some measure which the mind can grasp a little more conveniently. They tell us about the cannon-ball which might have been flying ever since the time of Adam, and not yet have reached the heavenly body, or about the stars which may not yet have become visible, though the light has been flying to us at a rate inconceivable by the mind for an inconceivable number of years; and they succeed in producing a bewildering and giddy sensation, although the numbers are too vast to admit of any accurate apprehension. We feel a similar need in the case of mountains. Besides the bare statement of figures, it is necessary to have some means for grasping the meaning of the figures. The bare tens and thousands must be clothed with some concrete images. The statement that a mountain is 15,000 feet high is, by itself, little more impressive, than that it is 3,000; we want something more before we can mentally compare Mont Blanc and Snowdon. Indeed, the same people who guess of a mountain's height at a number of feet much exceeding the reality, show, when they are cross-examined, that they fail to appreciate in any tolerable degree the real meaning of the figures. An old lady one day, about 11 A.M., proposed to walk from the Aeggischhorn to the Jungfrau-Joch, and to return for luncheon--the distance being a good twelve hours' journey for trained mountaineers. Every detail of which the huge mass is composed is certain to be underestimated. A gentleman the other day pointed out to me a grand ice-cliff at the end of a hanging glacier, which must have been at least 100 feet high, and asked me whether that snow was three feet deep. Nothing is more common than for tourists to mistake some huge pinnacle of rock, as big as a church tower, for a traveller. The rocks of the Grands Mulets, in one corner of which the châlet is hidden, are often identified with a party ascending Mont Blanc; and I have seen boulders as big as a house pointed out confidently as chamois. People who make these blunders must evidently see the mountains as mere toys, however many feet they may give them at a random guess. Huge overhanging cliffs are to them steps within the reach of human legs; yawning crevasses are ditches to be jumped; and foaming waterfalls are like streams from penny squirts. Everyone knows the avalanches on the Jungfrau, and the curiously disproportionate appearance of the little puffs of white smoke, which are said to be the cause of the thunder; but the disproportion ceases to an eye that has learnt really to measure distance, and to know that these smoke-puffs, represent a cataract of crashing blocks of ice. Now the first merit of mountaineering is that it enables one to have what theologians would call an experimental faith in the size of mountains--to substitute a real living belief for a dead intellectual assent. It enables one, first, to assign something like its true magnitude to a rock or snow-slope; and, secondly, to measure that magnitude in terms of muscular exertion instead of bare mathematical units. Suppose that we are standing upon the Wengern Alp; between the Mönch and the Eiger there stretches a round white bank, with a curved outline, which we may roughly compare to the back of one of Sir E. Landseer's lions. The ordinary tourists--the old man, the woman, or the cripple, who are supposed to appreciate the real beauties of Alpine scenery--may look at it comfortably from their hotel. They may see its graceful curve, the long straight lines that are ruled in delicate shading down its sides, and the contrast of the blinding white snow with the dark blue sky above; but they will probably guess it to be a mere bank--a snowdrift, perhaps, which has been piled by the last storm. If you pointed out to them one of the great rocky teeth that projected from its summit, and said that it was a guide, they would probably remark that he looked very small, and would fancy that he could jump over the bank with an effort. Now a mountaineer knows, to begin with, that it is a massive rocky rib, covered with snow, lying at a sharp angle, and varying perhaps from 500 to 1,000 feet in height. So far he might be accompanied by men of less soaring ambition; by an engineer who had been mapping the country, or an artist who had been carefully observing the mountains from their bases. They might learn in time to interpret correctly the real meaning of shapes at which the uninitiated guess at random. But the mountaineer can go a step further, and it is the next step which gives the real significance to those delicate curves and lines. He can translate the 500 or 1,000 feet of snow-slope into a more tangible unit of measurement. To him, perhaps, they recall the memory of a toilsome ascent, the sun beating on his head for five or six hours, the snow returning the glare with still more parching effect; a stalwart guide toiling all the weary time, cutting steps in hard blue ice, the fragments hissing and spinning down the long straight grooves in the frozen snow till they lost themselves in the yawning chasm below; and step after step taken along the slippery staircase, till at length he triumphantly sprang upon the summit of the tremendous wall that no human foot had scaled before. The little black knobs that rise above the edge represent for him huge impassable rocks, sinking on one side in scarped slippery surfaces towards the snow-field, and on the other stooping in one tremendous cliff to a distorted glacier thousands of feet below. The faint blue line across the upper névé, scarcely distinguishable to the eye, represents to one observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a second, perhaps, knows that it means a crevasse; the mountaineer remembers that it is the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across, and perhaps ten times as deep, with perpendicular sides of glimmering blue ice, and fringed by thick rows of enormous pendent icicles. The marks that are scored in delicate lines, such as might be ruled by a diamond on glass, have been cut by innumerable streams trickling in hot weather from the everlasting snow, or ploughed by succeeding avalanches that have slipped from the huge upper snowfields above. In short, there is no insignificant line or mark that has not its memory or its indication of the strange phenomena of the upper world. True, the same picture is painted upon the retina of all classes of observers; and so Porson and a schoolboy and a peasant might receive the same physical impression from a set of black and white marks on the page of a Greek play; but to one they would be an incoherent conglomeration of unmeaning and capricious lines, to another they would represent certain sounds more or less corresponding to some English words; whilst to the scholar they would reveal some of the noblest poetry in the world, and all the associations of successful intellectual labour. I do not say that the difference is quite so great in the case of the mountains; still I am certain that no one can decipher the natural writing on the face of a snow-slope or a precipice who has not wandered amongst their recesses, and learnt by slow experience what is indicated by marks which an ignorant observer would scarcely notice. True, even one who sees a mountain for the first time may know that, as a matter of fact, a scar on the face of a cliff means, for example, a recent fall of a rock; but between the bare knowledge and the acquaintance with all which that knowledge implies--the thunder of the fall, the crash of the smaller fragments, the bounding energy of the descending mass--there is almost as much difference as between hearing that a battle has been fought and being present at it yourself. We have all read descriptions of Waterloo till we are sick of the subject; but I imagine that our emotions on seeing the shattered well of Hougomont are very inferior to those of one of the Guard who should revisit the place where he held out for a long day against the assaults of the French army. Now to an old mountaineer the Oberland cliffs are full of memories; and, more than this, he has learnt the language spoken by every crag and every wave of glacier. It is strange if they do not affect him rather more powerfully than the casual visitor who has never been initiated by practical experience into their difficulties. To him, the huge buttress which runs down from the Mönch is something more than an irregular pyramid, purple with white patches at the bottom and pure white at the top. He fills up the bare outline supplied by the senses with a thousand lively images. He sees tier above tier of rock, rising in a gradually ascending scale of difficulty, covered at first by long lines of the débris that have been splintered by frost from the higher wall, and afterwards rising bare and black and threatening. He knows instinctively which of the ledges has a dangerous look--where such a bold mountaineer as John Lauener might slip on the polished surface, or be in danger of an avalanche from above. He sees the little shell-like swelling at the foot of the glacier crawling down the steep slope above, and knows that it means an almost inaccessible wall of ice; and the steep snowfields that rise towards the summit are suggestive of something very different from the picture which might have existed in the mind of a German student, who once asked me whether it was possible to make the ascent on a mule. Hence, if mountains owe their influence upon the imagination in a great degree to their size and steepness, and apparent inaccessibility--as no one can doubt that they do, whatever may be the explanation of the fact that people like to look at big, steep, inaccessible objects--the advantages of the mountaineer are obvious. He can measure those qualities on a very different scale from the ordinary traveler. He measures the size, not by the vague abstract term of so many thousand feet, but by the hours of labour, divided into minutes--each separately felt--of strenuous muscular exertion. The steepness is not expressed in degrees, but by the memory of the sensation produced when a snow-slope seems to be rising up and smiting you in the face; when, far away from all human help, you are clinging like a fly to the slippery side of a mighty pinnacle in mid air. And as for the inaccessibility, no one can measure the difficulty of climbing a hill who has not wearied his muscles and brain in struggling against the opposing obstacles. Alpine travellers, it is said, have removed the romance from the mountains by climbing them. What they have really done is to prove that there exists a narrow line by which a way may be found to the top of any given mountain; but the clue leads through innumerable inaccessibilities; true, you can follow one path, but to right and left are cliffs which no human foot will ever tread, and whose terrors can only be realised when you are in their immediate neighbourhood. The cliffs of the Matterhorn do not bar the way to the top effectually, but it is only by forcing a passage through them that you can really appreciate their terrible significance. Hence I say that the qualities which strike every sensitive observer are impressed upon the mountaineer with tenfold force and intensity. If he is as accessible to poetical influences as his neighbours--and I don't know why he should be less so--he has opened new avenues of access between the scenery and his mind. He has learnt a language which is but partially revealed to ordinary men. An artist is superior to an unlearned picture-seer, not merely because he has greater natural sensibility, but because he has improved it by methodical experience; because his senses have been sharpened by constant practice, till he can catch finer shades of colouring, and more delicate inflexions of line; because, also, the lines and colours have acquired new significance, and been associated with a thousand thoughts with which the mass of mankind has never cared to connect them. The mountaineer is improved by a similar process. But I know some sceptical critics will ask, does not the way in which he is accustomed to regard mountains rather deaden their poetical influence? Doesn't he come to look at them as mere instruments of sport, and overlook their more spiritual teaching? Does not all the excitement of personal adventure and the noisy apparatus of guides, and ropes, and axes, and tobacco, and the fun of climbing, rather dull his perceptions and incapacitate him from perceiving The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills? Well, I have known some stupid and unpoetical mountaineers; and, since I have been dismounted from my favourite hobby, I think I have met some similar specimens among the humbler class of tourists. There are persons, I fancy, who "do" the Alps; who look upon the Lake of Lucerne as one more task ticked off from their memorandum book, and count up the list of summits visible from the Görnergrat without being penetrated with any keen sense of sublimity. And there are mountaineers who are capable of making a pun on the top of Mont Blanc--and capable of nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they are perhaps too shamefaced to utter. The fact is that that which gives its inexpressible charm to mountaineering is the incessant series of exquisite natural scenes, which are for the most part enjoyed by the mountaineer alone. This is, I am aware, a round assertion; but I will try to support it by a few of the visions which are recalled to me by these Oberland cliffs, and which I have seen profoundly enjoyed by men who perhaps never mentioned them again, and probably in describing their adventures scrupulously avoided the danger of being sentimental. Thus every traveller has occasionally done a sunrise, and a more lamentable proceeding than the ordinary view of a sunrise can hardly be imagined. You are cold, miserable, breakfastless; have risen shivering from a warm bed, and in your heart long only to creep into bed again. To the mountaineer all this is changed. He is beginning a day full of the anticipation of a pleasant excitement. He has, perhaps, been waiting anxiously for fine weather, to try conclusions with some huge giant not yet scaled. He moves out with something of the feeling with which a soldier goes to the assault of a fortress, but without the same probability of coming home in fragments; the danger is trifling enough to be merely exhilatory, and to give a pleasant tension to the nerves; his muscles feel firm and springy, and his stomach--no small advantage to the enjoyment of scenery--is in excellent order. He looks at the sparkling stars with keen satisfaction, prepared to enjoy a fine sunrise with all his faculties at their best, and with the added pleasure of a good omen for his day's work. Then a huge dark mass begins to mould itself slowly out of the darkness, the sky begins to form a background of deep purple, against which the outline becomes gradually more definite; one by one, the peaks catch the exquisite Alpine glow, lighting up in rapid succession, like a vast illumination; and when at last the steady sunlight settles upon them, and shows every rock and glacier, without even a delicate film of mist to obscure them, he feels his heart bound, and steps out gaily to the assault--just as the people on the Rigi are giving thanks that the show is over and that they may go to bed. Still grander is the sight when the mountaineer has already reached some lofty ridge, and, as the sun rises, stands between the day and the night--the valley still in deep sleep, with the mists lying between the folds of the hills, and the snow-peaks standing out clear and pale white just before the sun reaches them, whilst a broad band of orange light runs all round the vast horizon. The glory of sunsets is equally increased in the thin upper air. The grandest of all such sights that live in my memory is that of a sunset from the Aiguille du Goûté. The snow at our feet was glowing with rich light, and the shadows in our footsteps a vivid green by the contrast. Beneath us was a vast horizontal floor of thin level mists suspended in mid air, spread like a canopy over the whole boundless landscape, and tinged with every hue of sunset. Through its rents and gaps we could see the lower mountains, the distant plains, and a fragment of the Lake of Geneva lying in a more sober purple. Above us rose the solemn mass of Mont Blanc in the richest glow of an Alpine sunset. The sense of lonely sublimity was almost oppressive, and although half our party was suffering from sickness, I believe even the guides were moved to a sense of solemn beauty. These grand scenic effects are occasionally seen by ordinary travellers, though the ordinary traveller is for the most part out of temper at 3 A.M. The mountaineer can enjoy them, both because his frame of mind is properly trained to receive the natural beauty, and because he alone sees them with their best accessories, amidst the silence of the eternal snow, and the vast panoramas visible from the loftier summits. And he has a similar advantage in most of the great natural phenomena of the cloud and the sunshine. No sight in the Alps is more impressive than the huge rocks of a black precipice suddenly frowning out through the chasms of a storm-cloud. But grand as such a sight may be from the safe verandahs of the inn at Grindelwald, it is far grander in the silence of the Central Alps amongst the savage wilderness of rock and snow. Another characteristic effect of the High Alps often presents itself when one has been climbing for two or three hours, with nothing in sight but the varying wreaths of mist that chased each other monotonously along the rocky ribs up whose snow-covered backbone we were laboriously fighting our way. Suddenly there is a puff of wind, and looking round we find that we have in an instant pierced the clouds, and emerged, as it were, on the surface of the ocean of vapour. Beneath us stretches for hundreds of miles the level fleecy floor, and above us shines out clear in the eternal sunshine every mountain, from Mont Blanc to Monte Rosa and the Jungfrau. What, again, in the lower regions, can equal the mysterious charm of gazing from the edge of a torn rocky parapet into an apparently fathomless abyss, where nothing but what an Alpine traveller calls a "strange formless wreathing of vapour" indicates the storm-wind that is raging below us? I might go on indefinitely recalling the strangely impressive scenes that frequently startle the traveller in the waste upper world; but language is feeble indeed to convey even a glimmering of what is to be seen to those who have not seen it for themselves, whilst to them it can be little more than a peg upon which to hang their own recollections. These glories, in which the mountain Spirit reveals himself to his true worshippers, are only to be gained by the appropriate service of climbing--at some risk, though a very trifling risk, if he is approached with due form and ceremony--into the furthest recesses of his shrines. And without seeing them, I maintain that no man has really seen the Alps. The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric school of mountaineers may be indicated by their different view of glaciers. At Grindelwald, for example, it is the fashion to go and "see the glaciers"--heaven save the mark! Ladies in costumes, heavy German professors, Americans doing the Alps at a gallop, Cook's tourists, and other varieties of a well-known genus, go off in shoals and see--what? A gigantic mass of ice, strangely torn with a few of the exquisite blue crevasses, but denied and prostrate in dirt and ruins. A stream foul with mud oozes out from the base; the whole mass seems to be melting fast away; the summer sun has evidently got the best of it in these lower regions, and nothing can resist him but the great mounds of decaying rock that strew the surface in confused lumps. It is as much like the glacier of the upper regions as the melting fragments of snow in a London street are like the surface of the fresh snow that has just fallen in a country field. And by way of improving its attractions a perpetual picnic is going on, and the ingenious natives have hewed a tunnel into the ice, for admission to which they charge certain centimes. The unlucky glacier reminds me at his latter end of a wretched whale stranded on a beach, dissolving into masses of blubber, and hacked by remorseless fishermen, instead of plunging at his ease in the deep blue water. Far above, where the glacier begins his course, he is seen only by the true mountaineer. There are vast amphitheatres of pure snow, of which the glacier known to tourists is merely the insignificant drainage, but whose very existence they do not generally suspect. They are utterly ignorant that from the top of the icefall which they visit you may walk for hours on the eternal ice. After a long climb you come to the region where the glacier is truly at its noblest; where the surface is a spotless white; where the crevasses are enormous rents sinking to profound depths, with walls of the purest blue; where the glacier is torn and shattered by the energetic forces which mould it, but has an expression of superabundant power, like a full stream fretting against its banks and plunging through the vast gorges that it has hewn for itself in the course of centuries. The bases of the mountains are immersed in a deluge of cockneyism--fortunately a shallow deluge--whilst their summits rise high into the bracing air, where everything is pure and poetical. The difference which I have thus endeavoured to indicate is more or less traceable in a wider sense. The mountains are exquisitely beautiful, indeed, from whatever points of view we contemplate them; and the mountaineer would lose much if he never saw the beauties of the lower valleys, of pasturages deep in flowers, and dark pine-forests with the summits shining from far off between the stems. Only, as it seems to me, he has the exclusive prerogative of thoroughly enjoying one--and that the most characteristic, though by no means only, element of the scenery. There may be a very good dinner spread before twenty people; but if nineteen of them were teetotalers, and the twentieth drank his wine like a man, he would be the only one to do it full justice; the others might praise the meat or the fruits, but he would alone enjoy the champagne; and in the great feast which Nature spreads before us (a stock metaphor, which emboldens me to make the comparison), the high mountain scenery acts the part of the champagne. Unluckily, too, the teetotalers are very apt, in this case also, to sit in judgment upon their more adventurous neighbours. Especially are they pleased to carp at the views from high summits. I have been constantly asked, with a covert sneer, "Did it repay you?"--a question which involves the assumption that one wants to be repaid, as though the labour were not itself part of the pleasure, and which implies a doubt that the view is really enjoyable. People are always demonstrating that the lower views are the most beautiful; and at the same time complaining that mountaineers frequently turn back without looking at the view from the top, as though that would necessarily imply that they cared nothing for scenery. In opposition to which I must first remark that, as a rule, every step of an ascent has a beauty of its own, which one is quietly absorbing even when one is not directly making it a subject of contemplation, and that the view from the top is generally the crowning glory of the whole. It will be enough if I conclude with an attempt to illustrate this last assertion: and I will do it by still referring to the Oberland. Every visitor with a soul for the beautiful admires the noble form of the Wetterhorn--the lofty snow-crowned pyramid rising in such light and yet massive lines from its huge basement of perpendicular cliffs. The Wetterhorn has, however, a further merit. To my mind--and I believe most connoisseurs of mountain tops agree with me--it is one of the most impressive summits in the Alps. It is not a sharp pinnacle like the Weisshorn, or a cupola like Mont Blanc, or a grand rocky tooth like the Monte Rosa, but a long and nearly horizontal knife-edge, which, as seen from either end, has of course the appearance of a sharp-pointed cone. It is when balanced upon this ridge--sitting astride of the knife-edge on which one can hardly stand without giddiness--that one fully appreciates an Alpine precipice. Mr. Justice Wills has admirably described the first ascent, and the impression it made upon him, in a paper which has become classical for succeeding adventurers. Behind you the snow-slope sinks with perilous steepness towards the wilderness of glacier and rock through which the ascent has lain. But in front the ice sinks with even greater steepness for a few feet or yards. Then it curves over and disappears, and the next thing that the eye catches is the meadowland of Grindelwald, some 9,000 feet below. I have looked down many precipices, where the eye can trace the course of every pebble that bounds down the awful slopes, and where I have shuddered as some dislodged fragment of rock showed the course which, in case of accident, fragments of my own body would follow. A precipice is always, for obvious reasons, far more terrible from above than from below. The creeping, tingling sensation which passes through one's limbs--even when one knows oneself to be in perfect safety--testifies to the thrilling influence of the sight. But I have never so realised the terrors of a terrific cliff as when I could not see it. The awful gulf which intervened between me and the green meadows struck the imagination by its invisibility. It was like the view which may be seen from the ridge of a cathedral roof, where the eaves have for their immediate background the pavement of the streets below; only this cathedral was 9,000 feet high. Now, any one standing at the foot of the Wetterhorn may admire their stupendous massiveness and steepness; but, to feel their influence enter in the very marrow of one's bones, it is necessary to stand at the summit, and to fancy the one little slide down the short ice-slope, to be followed apparently by a bound into clear air and a fall down to the houses, from heights where only the eagle ventures to soar. This is one of the Alpine beauties, which, of course, is: beyond the power of art to imitate, and which people are therefore apt to ignore. But it is not the only one to be seen on the high summits. It is often said that these views are not "beautiful"--apparently because they won't go into a picture, or, to put it more fairly, because no picture: can in the faintest degree imitate them. But without quarrelling about words, I think that, even if "beautiful" be not the most correct epithet, they have a marvellously stimulating effect upon the imagination. Let us look round from this wonderful pinnacle in mid air, and note one or two of the most striking elements of the scenery. You are, in the first place, perched on a cliff, whose presence is the more felt because it is unseen. Then you are in a region over which eternal silence is brooding. Not a sound ever comes there, except the occasional fall of a splintered fragment of rock, or a layer of snow; no stream is heard trickling, and the sounds of animal life are left thousands of feet below. The most that you can hear is some mysterious noise made by the wind eddying round the gigantic rocks; sometimes a strange flapping sound, as if an unearthly flag were shaking its invisible folds in the air. The enormous tract of country over which your view extends--most of it dim and almost dissolved into air by distance--intensifies the strange influence of the silence. You feel the force of the line I have quoted from Wordsworth-- The sleep that is among the lonely hills. None of the travellers whom you can see crawling at your feet has the least conception of what is meant by the silent solitudes of the High Alps. To you, it is like a return to the stir of active life, when, after hours of lonely wandering, you return to hear the tinkling of the cow-bells below; to them the same sound is the ultimate limit of the habitable world. Whilst your mind is properly toned by these influences, you become conscious of another fact, to which the common variety of tourists is necessarily insensible. You begin to find out for the first time what the mountains really are. On one side, you look back upon the huge reservoirs from which the Oberland glaciers descend. You see the vast stores from which the great rivers of Europe are replenished, the monstrous crawling masses that are carving the mountains into shape, and the gigantic bulwarks that separate two great quarters of the world. From below these wild regions are half invisible; they are masked by the outer line of mountains; and it is not till you are able to command them from some lofty point that you can appreciate the grandeur of the huge barriers, and the snow that is piled within their folds. There is another half of the view equally striking. Looking towards the north, the whole of Switzerland is couched at your feet; the Jura and the Black Forest lie on the far horizon. And then you know what is the nature of a really mountainous country. From below everything is seen in a kind of distorted perspective. The people of the valley naturally think that the valley is everything--that the country resembles old-fashioned maps, where a few sporadic lumps are distributed amongst towns and plains. The true proportions reveal themselves as you ascend. The valleys, you can now see, are nothing but narrow trenches scooped out amidst a tossing waste of mountain, just to carry off the drainage. The great ridges run hither and thither, having it all their own way, wild and untamable regions of rock or open grass or forest, at whose feet the valleys exist on sufferance. Creeping about amongst the roots of the hills, you half miss the hills themselves; you quite fail to understand the massiveness of the mountain chains, and, therefore, the wonderful energy of the forces that have heaved the surface of the world into these distorted shapes. And it is to a half-conscious sense of the powers that must have been at work that a great part of the influence of mountain scenery is due. Geologists tell us that a theory of catastrophes is unphilosophical; but, whatever may be the scientific truth, our minds are impressed as though we were witnessing the results of some incredible convulsion. At Stonehenge we ask what human beings could have erected these strange grey monuments, and in the mountains we instinctively ask what force can have carved out the Matterhorn, and placed the Wetterhorn on its gigantic pedestal. Now, it is not till we reach some commanding point that we realise the amazing extent of country over which the solid ground has been shaking and heaving itself in irresistible tumult. Something, it is true, of this last effect may be seen from such mountains as the Rigi or the Faulhorn. There, too, one seems to be at the centre of a vast sphere, the earth bending up in a cup-like form to meet the sky, and the blue vault above stretching in an arch majestical by its enormous extent. There you seem to see a sensible fraction of the world at your feet. But the effect is far less striking when other mountains obviously look down upon you; when, as it were, you are looking at the waves of the great ocean of hills merely from the crest of one of the waves themselves, and not from some lighthouse that rises far over their heads; for the Wetterhorn, like the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, owes one great beauty to the fact that it is on the edge of the lower country, and stands between the real giants and the crowd of inferior, though still enormous, masses in attendance upon them. And, in the next place, your mind is far better adapted to receive impressions of sublimity when you are alone, in a silent region, with a black sky above and giant cliffs all round; with a sense still in your mind, if not of actual danger, still of danger that would become real with the slightest relaxation of caution, and with the world divided from you by hours of snow and rock. I will go no further, not because I have no more to say, but because descriptions of scenery soon become wearisome, and because I have, I hope, said enough to show that the mountaineer may boast of some intellectual pleasures; that he is not a mere scrambler, but that he looks for poetical impressions, as well as for such small glory as his achievements may gain in a very small circle. Something of what he gains fortunately sticks by him: he does not quite forget the mountain language; his eye still recognises the space and the height and the glory of the lofty mountains. And yet there is some pain in wandering ghostlike among the scenes of his earlier pleasures. For my part, I try in vain to hug myself in a sense of comfort. I turn over in bed when I hear the stamping of heavily nailed shoes along the passage of an inn about 2 A.M. I feel the skin of my nose complacently when I see others returning with a glistening tight aspect about that unluckily prominent feature, and know that in a day or two it will be raw and blistered and burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the miseries of those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or on hard boards of châlets, at once cold and stuffy and haunted by innumerable fleas. I congratulate myself on having a whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small danger of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet I secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is little use to avoid early rising and discomfort, and even fleas, if one also loses the pleasures to which they were the sauce--rather too _piquante_ a sauce occasionally, it must be admitted. The philosophy is all very well which recommends moderate enjoyment, regular exercise, and a careful avoidance of risk and over-excitement. That is, it is all very well so long as risk and excitement and immoderate enjoyment are out of your power; but it does not stand the test of looking on and seeing them just beyond your reach. In time, no doubt, a man may grow calm; he may learn to enjoy the pleasures and the exquisite beauties of the lower regions--though they, too, are most fully enjoyed when they have a contrast with beauties of a different, and pleasures of a keener excitement. When first debarred, at any rate, one feels like a balloon full of gas, and fixed by immovable ropes to the prosaic ground. It is pleasant to lie on one's back in a bed of rhododendrons, and look up to a mountain top peering at one from above a bank of cloud; but it is pleasantest when one has qualified oneself for repose by climbing the peak the day before and becoming familiar with its terrors and its beauties. In time, doubtless, one may get reconciled to anything; one may settle down to be a caterpillar, even after one has known the pleasures of being a butterfly; one may become philosophical, and have one's clothes let out; and even in time, perhaps--though it is almost too terrible to contemplate--be content with a mule or a carriage, or that lowest depth to which human beings can sink, and for which the English language happily affords no name, a _chaise à porteurs:_ and even in such degradation the memory of better times may be pleasant; for I doubt much whether it is truth the poet sings-- That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. Certainly, to a philosophical mind, the sentiment is doubtful. For my part, the fate which has cut me off, if I may use the expression, in the flower of my youth, and doomed me to be a non-climbing animal in future, is one which ought to exclude grumbling. I cannot indicate it more plainly, for I might so make even the grumbling in which I have already indulged look like a sin. I can only say that there are some very delightful things in which it is possible to discover an infinitesimal drop of bitterness, and that the mountaineer who undertakes to cut himself off from his favourite pastime, even for reasons which he will admit in his wildest moods to be more than amply sufficient, must expect at times to feel certain pangs of regret, however quickly they may be smothered. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 33: From "The Playground of Europe," 1871.] BEHAVIOR[34] RALPH WALDO EMERSON The soul which animates nature is not less significantly published in the figure, movement, and gesture of animated bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. This silent and subtle language is Manners; not _what_, but _how_. Life expresses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none. Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature tells every secret once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the face, and by the whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the individual, as resulting from his organization and his will combined, we call manners. What are they but thought entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior? There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love,--now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned. If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very communicable: men catch them from each other. Consuelo, in the romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in manners, on the stage: and, in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode. The power of manners is incessant,--an element as unconcealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in a republic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There are certain manners which are learned in good society, of that force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning them; they solicit him to enter and possess. We send girls of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to the riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can come into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of their own sex; where they might learn address, and see it near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront her, and recover their self-possession. Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature or of culture. Your manners are always under examination, and by committees little suspected,--a police in citizen's clothes,--but are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you least think of it. We talk much of utilities,--but 'tis our manners that associate us. In hours of business, we go to him who knows, or has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our taste or feeling stand in the way. But this activity over, we return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at ease with; those who will go where we go, whose manners do not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they recommend, prepare, and draw people together; how, in all clubs, manners make the members; how manners make the fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what secrets; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character they convey; and what divination is required in us, for the reading of this fine telegraph; we see what range the subject has, and what relations to convenience, power, and beauty. Their first service is very low,--when they are the minor morals; but 'tis the beginning of civility,--to make us, I mean, endurable to each other. We prize them for their rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of the quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set up on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel them to be clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach them to stifle the base, and choose the generous expression, and make them know how much happier the generous behaviors are. Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is invested with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey upon the rest, and whom a public opinion concentrated into good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach;--the contradictors and railers at public and private tables, who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the house by barking him out of sight;--I have seen men who neigh like a horse when you contradict them, or say something which they do not understand;--then the overbold, who make their own invitation to your hearth; the persevering talker, who gives you his society in large, saturating doses; the pitiers of themselves,--a perilous class; the frivolous Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity;--these are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the restraining force of custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of behavior impressed on young people in their school-days. In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they print, or used to print, among the rules of the house, that "No gentleman can be permitted to come to the public table without his coat;" and in the same country, in the pews of the churches, little placards plead with the worshipper against the fury of expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrificingly undertook the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable particulars. I think the lesson was not quite lost; that it held bad manners up, so that the churls could see the deformity. Unhappily, the book had its own deformities. It ought not to need to print in a reading room a caution to strangers not to speak loud; nor to persons who look over fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs and butterflies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble statues, that they shall not smite them with canes. But, even in the perfect civilization of this city, such cautions are not quite needless in the Athenaeum and City Library. Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstances as well as out of character. If you look at the pictures of patricians and of peasants, of different periods and countries, you will see how well they match the same classes in our towns. The modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home of dignitaries in Japan. Broad lands and great interests not only arrive to such heads as can manage them, but form manners of power. A keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see in the manners the degree of homage the party is wont to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day to be courted and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of receiving and replying to this homage. There are always exceptional people and modes. English grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and, under the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, hides the terror of his war. But Nature and Destiny are honest, and never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and for every quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole secret when he has learned that disengaged manners are commanding. Don't be deceived by a facile exterior. Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his voice would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed, it piped;--little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation. When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: but underneath all this irritability was a puissant will, firm and advancing, and a memory in which lay in order and method, like geologic strata, every fact of his history, and under the control of his will. Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be capacity for culture in the blood. Else all culture is vain. The obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the base of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the old world, has some reason in common experience. Every man,--mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant,--looks with confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which he would not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. The Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. "Take a thorn-bush," said the emir Abdel-Kader, "and sprinkle it for a whole year with water, it will yield nothing but thorns. Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will always produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is a bush of thorns." A main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful expressiveness of the human body. If it were made of glass, or of air, and the thoughts were written on steel tablets within, it could not publish more truly its meaning than now. Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement. They carry the liquor of life flowing up and down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to the curious how it is with them. The face and eyes reveal what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or through how many forms it has already ascended. It almost violates the proprieties, if we say above the breath here what the confessing eyes do not hesitate to utter to every street passenger. Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imperfect. In Siberia, a late traveller found men who could see the satellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In some respects the animals excel us. The birds have a longer sight, beside the advantage by their wings of a higher observatory. A cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, probably of the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself. The jockeys say of certain horses, that "they look over the whole ground." The outdoor life, and hunting, and labor, give equal vigor to the human eye. A farmer looks out at you as strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy. The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a distance; in enumerating the names of persons or of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An artist," said Michael Angelo, "must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye;" and there is no end to the catalogue of its performances, whether in indolent vision (that of health and beauty) or in strained vision (that of art and labor). Eyes are bold as lions,--roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you, in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them! The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there. The revelations are sometimes terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is there made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence and simplicity. 'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that appears at the windows of the house does at once invest himself in a new form of his own to the mind of the beholder. The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over. When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practised man relies on the language of the first. If the man is off his center, the eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion, whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not confess it. There is a look by which a man shows he is going to say a good thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain and forgotten are all the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if there is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive inclinations avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the lips! One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily happen, he has said nothing, and no important remark has been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the society he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a stream of life has been flowing into him, and out from him, through the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more admission into the man than blue-berries. Others are liquid and deep,--wells that a man might fall into;--others are aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police, take all too much notice, and require crowded Broadways, and the security of millions, to protect individuals against them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling under clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedaemon; 'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate,--some of good, and some of sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It must be a victory achieved in the will before it can be signified in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence. Whoever looked on him would consent to his will, being certified that his aims were generous and universal. The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye. If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other features have their own. A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants. The sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express strength or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest "the terrors of the beak." What refinement, and what limitations, the teeth betray! "Beware you don't laugh," said the wise mother, "for then you show all your faults." Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called "_Théorie de la démarche_,"[35] in which he says: "The look, the voice, the respiration, and the attitude or walk, are identical. But, as it has not been given to man, the power to stand guard, at once, over these four different simultaneous expressions of his thought, watch that one which speaks out the truth, and you will know the whole man." Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners, which, in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them, are raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is, that manner is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and an encyclopaedia of _Mémoires_, will instruct you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. Thus, it is a point of pride with kings to remember faces and names. It is reported of one prince, that his head had the air of leaning downwards, in order not to humble the crowd. There are people who come in ever like a child with a piece of good news. It was said of the late Lord Holland, that he always came down to breakfast with the air of a man who had just met with some signal good-fortune. In _Notre Dame_, the grandee took his place on the dais, with the look of one who is thinking of something else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop at palace-doors. Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others. A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may not. The enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars in society, and is chilled and silenced by finding himself not in their element. They all have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems, ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the scholar has no defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they must fight the battle out on their private strengths. What is the talent of that character so common,--the successful man of the world,--in all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms? Manners: mariners of power; sense to see his advantage, and manners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows that troops behave as they are handled at first;--that is his cheap secret; just what happens to every two persons who meet on any affair,--one instantly perceives that he has the key of the situation, that his will comprehends the other's will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has only to use courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons to his victim to cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into resistance. The theater in which this science of manners has a formal importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein, after the close of the day's business, men and women meet at leisure, for mutual entertainment, in ornamented drawing-rooms. Of course, it has every variety of attraction and merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A well-dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to amuse the other,--yet the high-born Turk who came hither fancied that every woman seemed to be suffering for a chair; that all the talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated air; it spoiled the best persons: it put all on stilts. Yet here are the secret biographies written and read. The aspect of that man is repulsive; I do not wish to deal with him. The other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks humble and manly: I choose him. Look on this woman. There is not beauty, nor brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power, to serve you; but all see her gladly; her whole air and impression are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are creep-mouse manners, and thievish manners. "Look at Northcote," said Fuseli; "he looks like a rat that has seen a cat." In the shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, here is the columnar Bernard: the Alleghanies do not express more repose than his behavior. Here are the sweet following eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she demanded the heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has better manners than she; for the movements of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to express every thought by instant action. Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers at you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the party attacked; the second is still more effective, but is not to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not easily found. People grow up and grow old under this infliction, and never suspect the truth, ascribing the solitude which acts on them very injuriously to any cause but the right one. The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the law of all who are not self-possessed. Those who are not self-possessed, obtrude, and pain us. Some men appear to feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they bend and apologize, and walk through life with a timid step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he suffered from some mortifying circumstance. The hero should find himself at home, wherever he is; should impart comfort by his own security and good-nature to all beholders. The hero is suffered to be himself. A person of strong mind comes to perceive that for him an immunity is secured so long as he renders to society that service which is native and proper to him,--an immunity from all the observances, yea, and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank and file of its members. "Euripides," says Aspasia, "has not the fine manners of Sophocles; but,"--she adds good-humoredly, "the movers and masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures they have animated."[36] Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste. Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command. Here comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. Tis a great destitution to both that this should not be entertained with large leisures, but, contrariwise, should be balked by importunate affairs. But through this lustrous varnish the reality is ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep the _what_ from breaking through this pretty painting of the _how_. The core will come to the surface. Strong will and keen perception overpower old manners and create new; and the thought of the present moment has a greater value than all the past. In persons of character, we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness. We are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch the way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recognize the great style which runs through the actions of such. People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, offices, and connections, as academic or civil presidents, or senators, or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At least, it is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in Paris the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many diamonded pretenders shrink and make themselves as inconspicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they pass. "I had received," said a sybil, "I had received at birth the fatal gift of penetration:"--and these Cassandras are always born. Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented expression, which everybody reads. And you cannot rightly train one to an air and manner, except by making him the kind of man of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature for ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, is seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be done for love. A man inspires affection and honor, because he was not lying in wait for these. The things of a man for which we visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. A little integrity is better than any career. So deep are the sources of this surface-action, that even the size of your companion seems to vary with his freedom of thought. Not only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous, but everything around him becomes variable with expression. No carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into the house: if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 'tis of no importance how large his house, how beautiful his grounds,--you quickly come to the end of all; but if the man is self-possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded, indefinitely large and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest person in plain clothes sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable, like the Egyptian colossi. Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Champollion has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect, older than Sanscrit; but they who cannot yet read English, can read this. Men take each other's measure when they meet for the first time,--and every time they meet. How do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of each other's power and dispositions? One would say, that the persuasion of their speech is not in what they say,--or, that men do not convince by their argument,--but by their personality, by who they are, and what they said and did heretofore. A man already strong is listened to, and everything he says is applauded. Another opposes him with sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until by-and-by it gets into the mind of some weighty person; then it begins to tell on the community. Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty that the powers are not squandered in too much demonstration. In this country, where school education is universal, we have a superficial culture, and a profusion of reading and writing and expression. We parade our nobilities in poems and orations, instead of working them up into happiness. There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand it,--"Whatever is known to thyself alone, has always very great value." There is some reason to believe, that, when a man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical about them except their verses. Jacobi said that, "when a man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less possession of it." One would say, the rule is,--What a man is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In explaining his thought to others, he explains it to himself: but when he opens it for show, it corrupts him. Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treats this part of life more worthily. The novels used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The novels used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the boy and girl they described. The boy was to be raised from a humble to a high position. He was in want of a wife and a castle, and the object of the story was to supply him with one or both. We watched sympathetically, step by step, his climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, the wedding day is fixed, and we follow the gala procession home to the castle, when the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor reader is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea, or a virtuous impulse. But the victories of character are instant, and victories for all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are fortified by every heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, that the best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people. 'Tis a French definition of friendship, _rien que s'entendre_, good understanding. The highest compact we can make with our fellow is,--"Let there be truth between us two for evermore." That is the charm in all good novels, as it is the charm in all good histories, that the heroes mutually understand, from the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound trust in each other. It is sublime to feel and say of another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance: I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or thus, I know it was right. In all the superior people I have met, I notice directness, truth spoken more truly, as if everything of obstruction, of malformation, had been trained away. What have they to conceal? What have they to exhibit? Between simple and noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence: they recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than the talents and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on sincerity and uprightness. For, it is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man that stands by himself, the universe stands by him also. It is related of the monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell; but, such was the eloquence and good-humor of the monk, that, wherever he went, he was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels: and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted his manners: and even good angels came from far to see him, and take up their abode with him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment for him, attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such was the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to praise in every place and company, though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could be found that would burn him; for that, in whatever condition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the latter was King of Spain, and complained that he missed in Napoleon's letters the affectionate tone which had marked their childish correspondence. "I am sorry," replies Napoleon, "you think you shall find your brother again only in the Elysian Fields. It is natural that at forty he should not feel towards you as he did at twelve. But his feelings towards you have greater truth and strength. His friendship has the features of his mind." How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them! Here is a lesson which I brought along with me in boyhood from the Latin School, and which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he had excited the allies to take arms against the Republic. But he, full of firmness and gravity, defended himself in this manner: "Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited the allies to arms: Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, denies it. There is no witness. Which do you believe, Romans?" "_Utri creditis, Quirites?_" When he had said these words, he was absolved by the assembly of the people. I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show self-control: you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging. 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought, and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light. Special precepts are not to be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains them all. Every hour will show a duty as paramount as that of my whim just now; and yet I will write it,--that there is one topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans. Come out in the azure. Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape. The oldest and the most deserving person should come very modestly into any newly awaked company, respecting the divine communications, out of which all must be presumed to have newly come. An old man who added an elevating culture to a large experience of life, said to me, "When you come into the room, I think I will study how to make humanity beautiful to you." As respects the delicate question of culture, I do not think that any other than negative rules can be laid down. For positive rules, for suggestion, nature alone inspires it. Who dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners?--the golden mean is so delicate, difficult,--say frankly unattainable. What finest hands would not be clumsy to sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's demeanor? The chances seem infinite against success; and yet success is continually attained. There must not be secondariness, and 'tis a thousand to one that her air and manner will at once betray that she is not primary, but that there is some other one or many of her class, to whom she habitually postpones herself. But nature lifts her easily, and without knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are continually surprised with graces and felicities not only unteachable, but undescribable. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 34: Chapter V of "The Conduct of Life," 1860.] [Footnote 35: Theory of gait and demeanor.] [Footnote 36: From Landor's "Pericles and Aspasia."] MANNERS AND FASHION[37] HERBERT SPENCER Some who shun drawing-rooms do so from inability to bear the restraints prescribed by a genuine refinement, and they would be greatly improved by being kept under these restraints. But it is not less true that, by adding to the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience and a regard for others, a host of factitious restraints based only on convention, the refining discipline, which would else have been borne with benefit, is rendered unbearable, and so misses its end. Excess of government invariably defeats itself by driving away those to be governed. And if over all who desert its entertainments in disgust either at their emptiness or their formality, society thus loses its salutary influence--if such not only fail to receive that moral culture which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated, would give them, but, in default of other relaxation, are driven into habits and companionships which often end in gambling and drunkenness; must we not say that here, too, is an evil not to be passed over as insignificant? Then consider what a blighting effect these multitudinous preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve. Who, on calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save those dictated by good nature! How pleasant the little unpretended gatherings of book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known to each other! Then, indeed, we may see that "a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Cheeks flush, and eyes sparkle. The witty grow brilliant, and even the dull are excited into saying good things. There is an overflow of topics; and the right thought, and the right words to put it in, spring up unsought. Grave alternates with gay: now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes, and playful raillery. Everyone's best nature is shown, everyone's best feelings are in pleasurable activity; and, for the time, life seems well worth having. Go now and dress for some half-past eight dinner, or some ten o'clock "at home;" and present yourself in spotless attire, with every hair arranged to perfection. How great the difference! The enjoyment seems in the inverse ratio of the preparation. These figures, got up with such finish and precision, appear but half alive. They have frozen each other by their primness; and your faculties feel the numbing effects of the atmosphere the moment you enter it. All those thoughts, so nimble and so apt awhile since, have disappeared--have suddenly acquired a preternatural power of eluding you. If you venture a remark to your neighbour, there comes a trite rejoinder, and there it ends. No subject you can hit upon outlives half a dozen sentences. Nothing that is said excites any real interest in you; and you feel that all you say is listened to with apathy. By some strange magic, things that usually give pleasure seem to have lost all charm. You have a taste for art. Weary of frivolous talk, you turn to the table, and find that the book of engravings and the portfolio of photographs are as flat as the conversation. You are fond of music. Yet the singing, good as it is, you hear with utter indifference; and say "Thank you" with a sense of being a profound hypocrite. Wholly at ease though you could be, for your own part, you find that your sympathies will not let you. You see young gentlemen feeling whether their ties are properly adjusted, looking vacantly round, and considering what they shall do next. You see ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you will you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling are alike asphyxiated. And when, at length, yielding to your disgust, you rush away, how great is the relief when you get into the fresh air, and see the stars! How you "Thank God, that's over!" and half resolve to avoid all such boredom for the future! What, now, is the secret of this perpetual miscarriage and disappointment? Does not the fault lie with all these needless adjuncts--these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these expensive preparations, these many devices and arrangements that imply trouble and raise expectation? Who that has lived thirty years in the world has not discovered that Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued, but must be caught unawares? An air from a street-piano, heard while at work, will often gratify more than the choicest music played at a concert by the most accomplished musicians. A single good picture seen in a dealer's window, may give keener enjoyment than a whole exhibition gone through with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the happiness is gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these receivers, garnished with compliments, and fenced round with etiquette. The more we multiply and complicate appliances, the more certain are we to drive it away. The reason is patent enough. These higher emotions to which social intercourse ministers, are of extremely complex nature; they consequently depend for their production upon very numerous conditions; the more numerous the conditions, the greater the liability that one or other of them will be disturbed, and the emotions consequently prevented. It takes a considerable misfortune to destroy appetite; but cordial sympathy with those around may be extinguished by a look or a word. Hence it follows, that the more multiplied the _unnecessary_ requirements with which social intercourse is surrounded, the less likely are its pleasures to be achieved. It is difficult enough to fulfil continuously all the _essentials_ to a pleasurable communion with others: how much more difficult, then, must it be continuously to fulfil a host of _non-essentials_ also! It is, indeed, impossible. The attempt inevitably ends in the sacrifice of the first to the last--the essentials to the non-essentials. What chance is there of getting any genuine response from the lady who is thinking of your stupidity in taking her in to dinner on the wrong arm? How are you likely to have agreeable converse with the gentleman who is fuming internally because he is not placed next to the hostess? Formalities, familiar as they may become, necessarily occupy attention--necessarily multiply the occasions for mistake, misunderstanding, and jealousy, on the part of one or other--necessarily distract all minds from the thoughts and feelings that should occupy them--necessarily, therefore, subvert those conditions under which only any sterling intercourse is to be had. And this indeed is the fatal mischief which these conventions entail--a mischief to which every other is secondary. They destroy those highest of our pleasures which they profess to subserve. All institutions are alike in this, that however useful, and needful even, they originally were, they not only in the end cease to be so, but become detrimental. While humanity is growing, they continue fixed; daily get more mechanical and unvital; and by and by tend to strangle what they before preserved. It is not simply that they become corrupt and fail to act; they become obstructions. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. Old creeds end in being dead formulas, which no longer aid but distort and arrest the general mind; while the State-churches administering them, come to be instruments for subsidising conservatism and repressing progress. Old schemes of education, incarnated in public schools and colleges, continue filling the heads of new generations with what has become relatively useless knowledge, and, by consequence, excluding knowledge which is useful. Not an organisation of any kind--political, religious, literary, philanthropic--but what, by its ever-multiplying regulations, its accumulating wealth, its yearly addition of officers, and the creeping into it of patronage and party feeling, eventually loses its original spirit, and sinks into a mere lifeless mechanism, worked with a view to private ends--a mechanism which not merely fails of its first purpose, but is a positive hindrance to it. Thus is it, too, with social usages. We read of the Chinese that they have "ponderous ceremonies transmitted from time immemorial," which make social intercourse a burden. The court forms prescribed by monarchs for their own exaltation, have, in all times and places, ended in consuming the comfort of their lives. And so the artificial observances of the dining-room and saloon, in proportion as they are many and strict, extinguish that agreeable communion which they were originally intended to secure. The dislike with which people commonly speak of society that is "formal," and "stiff," and "ceremonious," implies the general recognition of this fact; and this recognition, logically developed, involves that all usages of behaviour which are not based on natural requirements, are injurious. That these conventions defeat their own ends is no new assertion. Swift, criticising the manners of his day, says--"Wise men are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these refiners than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants and mechanics." But it is not only in these details that the self-defeating action of our arrangements is traceable: it is traceable in the very substance and nature of them. Our social intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere semblance of the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and feelings--converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of meaning--converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own emotions by adding another's to them. Who is there that has not, from time to time, felt how cold and flat is all this talk about politics and science, and the new books and the new men, and how a genuine utterance of fellow-feeling outweighs the whole of it? Mark the words of Bacon:--"For a crowd is not a company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love." If this be true, then it is only after acquaintance has grown into intimacy, and intimacy has ripened into friendship, that the real communion which men need becomes possible. A rationally-formed circle must consist almost wholly of those on terms of familiarity and regard, with but one or two strangers. What folly, then, underlies the whole system of our grand dinners, our "at homes," our evening parties--assemblages made up of many who never met before, many others who just bow to each other, many others who though familiar feel mutual indifference, with just a few real friends lost in the general mass! You need, but look round at the artificial expression of face, to see at once how it is. All have their disguises on; and how can there be sympathy between masks? No wonder that in private every one exclaims against the stupidity of these gatherings. No wonder that hostesses get them up rather because they must than because they wish. No wonder that the invited go less from the expectation of pleasure than from fear of giving offence. The whole thing is a gigantic mistake--an organised disappointment. And then note, lastly, that in this case, as in all others, when an organisation has become effete and inoperative for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other ones--quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? "I admit that they are stupid and frivolous enough," replies every man to your criticisms; "but then, you know, one must keep up one's connections." And could you get from his wife a sincere answer, it would be--"Like you, I am sick of these frivolities; but then, we must get our daughters married." The one knows that there is a profession to push, a practice to gain, a business to extend: or parliamentary influence, or county patronage, or votes, or office, to be got: position, berths, favours, profit. The other's thoughts run upon husbands and settlements, wives and dowries. Worthless for their ostensible purpose of daily bringing human beings into pleasurable relations with each other, these cumbrous appliances of our social intercourse are now perseveringly kept in action with a view to the pecuniary and matrimonial results which they indirectly produce. Who then shall say that the reform of our system of observances is unimportant? When we see how this system induces fashionable extravagance, with its entailed bankruptcy and ruin--when we mark how greatly it limits the amount of social intercourse among the less wealthy classes--when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by mixing with the refined are driven away by it, and led into dangerous and often fatal courses--when we count up the many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costliness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to health indicated in the faces of its devotees at the close of the London season, the mortality of milliners and the like, which its sudden exigencies yearly involve;--and when to all these we add its fatal sin, that it blights, withers up, and kills that high enjoyment it professedly ministers to--that enjoyment which is a chief end of our hard struggling in life to obtain--shall we not conclude that to reform our system of etiquette and fashion, is an aim yielding to few in urgency? There needs, then, a protestantism in social usages. Forms that have ceased to facilitate and have become obstructive--whether political, religious, or other--have ever to be swept away; and eventually are so swept away in all cases. Signs are not wanting that some change is at hand. A host of satirists, led on by Thackeray, have been for years engaged in bringing our sham-festivities, and our fashionable follies, into contempt; and in their candid moods, most men laugh at the frivolities with which they and the world in general are deluded. Ridicule has always been a revolutionary agent. That which is habitually assailed with sneers and sarcasms cannot long survive. Institutions that have lost their roots in men's respect and faith are doomed; and the day of their dissolution is not far off. The time is approaching, then, when our system of social observances must pass through some crisis, out of which it will come purified and comparatively simple. How this crisis will be brought about, no one can with any certainty say. Whether by the continuance and increase of individual protests, or whether by the union of many persons for the practice and propagation of some better system, the future alone can decide. The influence of dissentients acting without cooperation, seems, under the present state of things, inadequate. Standing severally alone, and having no well-defined views; frowned on by conformists, and expostulated with even by those who secretly sympathise with them; subject to petty persecutions, and unable to trace any benefit produced by their example; they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts as hopeless. The young convention-breaker eventually finds that he pays too heavily for his nonconformity. Hating, for example, everything that bears about it any remnant of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his independence, that he will uncover to no one. But what he means simply as a general protest, he finds that ladies interpret into a personal disrespect. Though he sees that, from the days of chivalry downwards, these marks of supreme consideration paid to the other sex have been but a hypocritical counterpart to the actual subjection in which men have held them--a pretended submission to compensate for a real domination; and though he sees that when the true dignity of women is recognised, the mock dignities given to them will be abolished, yet he does not like to be thus misunderstood, and so hesitates in his practice. In other cases, again, his courage fails him. Such of his unconventionalities as can be attributed only to eccentricity, he has no qualms about: for, on the whole, he feels rather complimented than otherwise in being considered a disregarder of public opinion. But when they are liable to be put down to ignorance, to ill-breeding, or to poverty, he becomes a coward. However clearly the recent innovation of eating some kinds of fish with knife and fork proves the fork-and-bread practice to have had little but caprice for its basis, yet he dares not wholly ignore that practice while fashion partially maintains it. Though he thinks that a silk handkerchief is quite as appropriate for drawing-room use as a white cambric one, he is not altogether at ease in acting out his opinion. Then, too, be begins to perceive that his resistance to prescription brings round disadvantageous results which he had not calculated upon. He had expected that it would save him from a great deal of social intercourse of a frivolous kind--that it would offend the fools, but not the sensible people; and so would serve as a self-acting test by which those worth knowing would be separated from those not worth knowing. But the fools prove to be so greatly in the majority that, by offending them, he closes against himself nearly all the avenues through which the sensible people are to be reached. Thus he finds that his nonconformity is frequently misinterpreted; that there are but few directions in which he dares to carry it consistently out; that the annoyances and disadvantages which it brings upon him are greater than he anticipated; and that the chances of his doing any good are very remote. Hence he gradually loses resolution, and lapses, step by step, into the ordinary routine of observances. Abortive as individual protests thus generally turn out, it may possibly be that nothing effectual will be done until there arises some organised resistance to this invisible despotism, by which our modes and habits are dictated. It may happen, that the government of Manners and Fashion will be rendered less tyrannical, as the political and religious governments have been, by some antagonistic union. Alike in Church and State, men's first emancipations from excess of restriction were achieved by numbers, bound together by a common creed, or a common political faith. What remained undone while there were but individual schismatics or rebels, was effected when there came to be many acting in concert. It is tolerably clear that these earliest instalments of freedom could not have been obtained in any other way; for so long as the feeling of personal independence was weak and the rule strong, there could never have been a sufficient number of separate dissentients to produce the desired results. Only in these later times, during which the secular and spiritual controls have been growing less coercive, and the tendency towards individual liberty greater, has it become possible for smaller and smaller sects and parties to fight against established creeds and laws; until now men may safely stand even alone in their antagonism. The failure of individual nonconformity to customs, as above illustrated, suggests that an analogous series of changes may have to be gone through in this case also. It is true that the _lex non scripta_ differs from the _lex scripta_ in this, that, being unwritten, it is more readily altered; and that it has, from time to time, been quietly ameliorated. Nevertheless, we shall find that the analogy holds substantially good. For in this case, as in the others, the essential revolution is not the substituting of any one set of restraints for any other, but the limiting or abolishing the authority which prescribes restraints. Just as the fundamental change inaugurated by the Reformation, was not a superseding of one creed by another, but an ignoring of the arbiter who before dictated creeds--just as the fundamental change which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the freedom of all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought out in this supplementary government of which we are treating, is not the replacing of absurd usages by sensible ones, but the dethronement of that secret, irresponsible power which now imposes our usages, and the assertion of the right of all individuals to choose their own usages. In rules of living, a West-end clique is our Pope; and we are all papists, with but a mere sprinkling of heretics. On all who decisively rebel, comes down the penalty of excommunication, with its long catalogue of disagreeable and, indeed, serious consequences. The liberty of the subject asserted in our constitution, and ever on the increase, has yet to be wrested from this subtler tyranny. The right of private judgment, which our ancestors wrung from the church, remains to be claimed from this dictator of our habits. Or, as before said, to free us from these idolatries and superstitious conformities, there has still to come a protestantism in social usages. Parallel, therefore, as is the change to be wrought out, it seems not improbable that it may be wrought out in an analogous way. That influence which solitary dissentients fail to gain, and that perseverance which they lack, may come into existence when they unite. That persecution which the world now visits upon them from mistaking their nonconformity for ignorance or disrespect, may diminish when it is seen to result from principle. The penalty which exclusion now entails may disappear when they become numerous enough to form visiting circles of their own. And when a successful stand has been made, and the brunt of the opposition has passed, that large amount of secret dislike to our observances which now pervades society, may manifest itself with sufficient power to effect the desired emancipation. Whether such will be the process, time alone can decide. That community of origin, growth, supremacy, and decadence which we have found among all kinds of government, suggests a community in modes of change also. On the other hand, Nature often performs substantially similar operations, in ways apparently different. Hence these details can never be foretold. Society, in all its developments, undergoes the process of exuviation. These old forms which it successively throws off, have all been once vitally united with it--have severally served as the protective envelopes within which a higher humanity was being evolved. They are cast aside only when they become hindrances--only when some inner and better envelope has been formed; and they bequeath to us all that there was in them of good. The periodical abolitions of tyrannical laws have left the administration of justice not only uninjured, but purified. Dead and buried creeds have not carried with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of justice and kindness and beauty, embodied in our cumbrous forms of etiquette, will live perennially when the forms themselves have been forgotten. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 37: From "Illustrations of Universal Progress," 1864.] TALK AND TALKERS[38] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON "Sir, we had a good talk."--JOHNSON. "As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence."--FRANKLIN. There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to every subject; and not only to cheer the flight of time among our intimates, but bear our part in that great international congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, public errors first corrected, and the course of public opinion shaped, day by day, a little nearer to the right. No measure comes before Parliament but it has been long ago prepared by the grand jury of the talkers; no book is written that has not been largely composed by their assistance. Literature in many of its branches is no other than the shadow of good talk; but the imitation falls far short of the original in life, freedom, and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving and taking, comparing experience and according conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually "in further search and progress;" while written words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health. The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in our lot, we must continually face some other person, eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power of character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges in the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, solitary and selfish; and every durable bond between human beings is founded in or heightened by some element of competition. Now, the relation that has the least root in matter is undoubtedly that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of relations and the sport of life. A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds, springs up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and more than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream of conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook, not dallying where he fails to "kill." He trusts implicitly to hazard; and he is rewarded by continual variety, continual pleasure, and those changing prospects of the truth that are the best of education. There is nothing in a subject, so called, that we should regard it as an idol, or follow it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are few subjects; and so far as they are truly talkable, more than the half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I, that you are you, and that there are other people dimly understood to be not quite the same as either. Wherever talk may range, it still runs half the time on these eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as on an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain for instances and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion. For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical, and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to be. So they weave for themselves with words and for a while inhabit a palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, where they fill the round of the world's dignities, and feast with the gods, exulting in Kudos.[39] And when the talk is over, each goes his way, still flushed with vanity and admiration, still trailing clouds of glory; each declines from the height of his ideal orgy, not in a moment, but by slow declension. I remember, in the _entr'acte_ of an afternoon performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful green, gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat and smoked, the music moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate _The Flying Dutchman_ (for it was that I had been hearing) with a wonderful sense of life, warmth, well-being, and pride; and the noises of the city, voices, bells and marching feet, fell together in my ears like a symphonious orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of a good talk lives for a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot within you, the brain still simmering, and the physical earth swimming around you with the colours of the sunset. Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large surface of life, rather than dig mines into geological strata. Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of mental elevation and abasement--these are the material with which talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. Talk should proceed by instances; by the apposite, not the expository. It should keep close along the lines of humanity, near the bosoms and businesses of men, at the level where history, fiction and experience intersect and illuminate each other. I am I, and You are You, with all my heart; but conceive how these lean propositions change and brighten when, instead of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the spirit housed in the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices to corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is the change when we leave off to speak of generalities--the bad, the good, the miser, and all the characters of Theophrastus--and call up other men, by anecdote or instance, in their very trick and feature; or trading on a common knowledge, toss each other famous names, still glowing with the hues of life. Communication is no longer by words, but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they can leave generalities and begin at once to speak by figures. Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most frequently and that embrace the widest range of facts. A few pleasures bear discussion for their own sake, but only those which are most social or most radically human; and even these can only be discussed among their devotees. A technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether in athletics, art, or law; I have heard the best kind of talk on technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both know and love their business. No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the people generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it; and it is often excitingly presented in literature. But the tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street and market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort is still in a discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of gossip; heroic in virtue of its high pretensions; but still gossip, because it turns on personalities. You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all, off moral or theological discussion. These are to all the world what law is to lawyers; they are everybody's technicalities; the medium through which all consider life, and the dialect in which they express their judgments. I knew three young men who walked together daily for some two months in a solemn and beautiful forest and in cloudless summer weather; daily they talked with unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered that whole time beyond two subjects--theology and love. And perhaps neither a court of love[40] nor an assembly of divines would have granted their premises or welcomed their conclusions. Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any more than by private thinking. That is not the profit. The profit is in the exercise, and above all in the experience; for when we reason at large on any subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to time, however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective, conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling for first utterance; and then one leaps upon the summit of that matter with a shout, and almost at the same moment the other is beside him; and behold they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is illusory, a mere cat's cradle having been wound and unwound out of words. But the sense of joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspiriting. And in the life of the talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither few nor far apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure, in the hour of mirth; and by the nature of the process, they are always worthily shared. There is a certain attitude combative at once and deferential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort Wherein pleasure lies. The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call Spring-Heel'd Jack. I say so, because I never knew any one who mingled so largely the possible ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack is that madman. I know not which is more remarkable: the insane lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence of his language, or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the required character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with the _vim_ of these impersonations, the strange scale of language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant to Major Dyngwell-- "As fast as a musician scatters sounds Out of an instrument--" the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired disorder of their combination. A talker of a different calibre, though belonging to the same school, is Burly. Burly is a man of great presence; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after Pistol has been out-Pistol'd, and the welkin rung for hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of mutual admiration. The outcry only serves to make your final union the more unexpected and precious. Throughout there has been perfect sincerity, perfect intelligence, a desire to hear although not always to listen, and an unaffected eagerness to meet concessions. You have, with Burly, none of the dangers that attend debate with Spring-Heel'd Jack; who may at any moment turn his powers of transmigration on yourself, create for you a view you never held, and then furiously fall on you for holding it. These, at least, are my two favourites, and both are loud, copious, intolerant talkers. This argues that I myself am in the same category; for if we love talking at all, we love a bright, fierce adversary, who will hold his ground, foot by foot, in much our own manner, sell his attention dearly, and give us our full measure of the dust and exertion of battle. Both these men can be beat from a position, but it takes six hours to do it; a high and hard adventure, worth attempting. With both you can pass days in an enchanted country of the mind, with people, scenery and manners of its own; live a life apart, more arduous, active and glowing than any real existence; and come forth again when the talk is over, as out of a theatre or a dream, to find the east wind still blowing and the chimney-pots of the old battered city still around you. Jack has the far finer mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the animated poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar themes; the one glances high like a meteor and makes a light in darkness; the other, with many changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; but both have the same humour and artistic interests, the same unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of talk and thunderclaps of contradiction. Cockshot[41] is a different article, but vastly entertaining, and has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The point about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I _should_ have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horseshoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would call the synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, to place your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them are right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest serve for a cock-shy--as when idle people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond and have an hour's diversion ere, it sinks. Whichever they are, serious opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with indefatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk, first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from deeper down, they smack the more personally, they have the more of fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment and humour. There are sayings of his in which he has stamped himself into the very grain of the language; you would think he must have worn the words next his skin and slept with them. Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good things that Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this unequal, division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life with humorous or grave intention, and all the while, never hurrying, nor flagging, nor taking an unfair advantage of the facts. Jack at a given moment, when arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more radiantly just to those from whom he differs; but then the tenor of his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athelred, slower to forge excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and sits over the welter of the world, vacillating but still judicial, and still faithfully contending with his doubts. Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct and religion studied in the "dry light" of prose. Indirectly and as if against his will the same elements from time to time appear in the troubled and poetic talk of Opalstein. His various and exotic knowledge, complete although unready sympathies, and fine, full, discriminative flow of language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps he is with some, not _quite_ with me--_proxime accessit_,[42] I should say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue like singing; no one is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian humours. His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for its perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a double orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance, one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is not truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and this instant war in his members sometimes divides the man's attention. He does not always, perhaps not often, frankly surrender himself in conversation. He brings into the talk other thoughts than those which he expresses; you are conscious that he keeps an eye on something else, that he does not shake off the world, nor quite forget himself. Hence arise occasional disappointments; even an occasional unfairness for his companions, who find themselves one day giving too much, and the next, when they are wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel is in another class from any I have mentioned. He is no debater, but appears in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of which I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first, he is radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly hilltop, and from that vantage-ground drops you his remarks like favours. He seems not to share in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign of interest; when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of wit, so polished that the dull do not perceive it, but so right that the sensitive are silenced. True talk should have more body and blood, should be louder, vainer and more declaratory of the man; the true talker should not hold so steady an advantage over whom he speaks with; and that is one reason out of a score why I prefer my Purcel in his second character, when he unbends into a strain of graceful gossip, singing like the fireside kettle. In these moods he has an elegant homeliness that rings of the true Queen Anne. I know another person who attains, in his moments, to the insolence of a Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as Congreve wrote; but that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls under the rubric, for there is none, alas! to give him answer. One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine conversation that the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they, should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches, round from one to another, there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity. It is for this reason that talk depends so wholly on our company. We should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk to some degree with all; but the true talk, that strikes out all the slumbering best of us, comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded as deep as love in the constitution of our being, and is a thing to relish with all our energy, while yet we have it, and to be grateful for forever. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 38: The first of two papers on this subject written in 1881-2; reprinted here, by permission of the publishers, from "Memories and Portraits" in the Biographical Edition of Stevenson's Works, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907.] [Footnote 39: Kudos (Greek): glory.] [Footnote 40: Court of love: a mediaeval institution for the discussion of questions of chivalry.] [Footnote 41: The Late Fleeming Jenkin--Author's note.] [Footnote 42: Proxime accessit: he comes very close to it.] THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED[43] WILLIAM JAMES Of what use is a college training? We who have had it seldom hear the question raised--we might be a little nonplussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of meditation has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I myself can give: The best claim that a college education can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should _help you to know a good man when you see him_. This is as true of women's as of men's colleges; but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I shall now endeavor to show. What talk do we commonly hear about the contrast between college education and the education which business or technical or professional schools confer? The college education is called higher because it is supposed to be so general and so disinterested. At the "schools" you get a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the "colleges" give you the more liberal culture, the broader outlook, the historical perspective, the philosophic atmosphere, or something which phrases of that sort try to express. You are made into an efficient instrument for doing a definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, apart from that, you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petroleum, incapable of spreading light. The universities and colleges, on the other hand, although they may leave you less efficient for this or that practical task, suffuse your whole mentality with something more important than skill. They redeem you, make you well-bred; they make "good company" of you mentally. If they find you with a naturally boorish or caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is what we hear among college-trained people when they compare their education with every other sort. Now, exactly how much does this signify? It is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade or professional training does something more for a man than to make a skillful practical tool of him--it makes him also a judge of other men's skill. Whether his trade be pleading at the bar or surgery or plastering or plumbing, it develops a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation. He understands the difference between second-rate and first-rate work in his whole branch of industry; he gets to know a good job in his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham work--these words express an identical contrast in many different departments of activity. In so far, then, even the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain small degree of power to judge of good work generally. Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who have the higher college training? Is there any broader line--since our education claims primarily not to be "narrow"--in which we also are made good judges between what is first-rate and what is second-rate only? What is especially taught in the colleges has long been known by the name of the "humanities," and these are often identified with Greek and Latin. But it is only as literatures, not as languages, that Greek and Latin have any general humanity-value; so that in a broad sense the humanities mean literature primarily, and in a still broader sense the study of masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor. Literature keeps the primacy; for it not only _consists_ of masterpieces, but is largely _about_ masterpieces, being little more than an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes, so far as it takes the form of criticism and history. You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures. The sifting of human creations!--nothing less than this is what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, not that of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as human efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part. Studying in this way, we learn what type's of activity have stood the test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent: and durable. All our arts and sciences and institutions are but so many quests of perfection on the part of men; and when we see how diverse the types of excellence may be, how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations, we gain a richer sense of what the terms "better" and "worse" may signify in general. Our critical sensibilities grow both more acute and less fanatical. We sympathize with men's mistakes even in the act of penetrating them; we feel the pathos of lost causes and misguided epochs even while we applaud what overcame them. Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate, but their meaning is unmistakable. What the colleges--teaching humanities by examples which may be special, but which must be typical and pregnant--should at least try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various disguises, _superiority_ has always signified and may still signify. The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and impermanent--this is what we call the critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better part of what men know as wisdom. Some of us are wise in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never become so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact with the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a blind prig or vulgarian, unable to scent out human excellence or to divine it amid its accidents, to know it only when ticketed and labeled and forced on us by others, this indeed should be accounted the very calamity and shipwreck of a higher education. The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be considered our line, as boring subways is the engineer's line and the surgeon's is appendicitis. Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheap-jacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world of affairs about us. Expertness in this might well atone for some of our awkwardness at accounts, for some of our ignorance of dynamos. The best claim we can make for the higher education, the best single phrase in which we can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what I said: it should enable us to _know a good man when we see him_. That the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows from the fact that if you ask in what line it is most important that a democracy like ours should have its sons and daughters skillful, you see that it is this line more than any other. "The people in their wisdom"--this is the kind of wisdom most needed by the people. Democracy is on its trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny; and the picture papers of the European continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem. The privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least preserve some taste for higher human quality and honor certain forms of refinement by their enduring traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its doubters say, nobility will form a sort of invisible church, and sincerity and refinement, stripped of honor, precedence, and favor, will have to vegetate on sufferance in private corners. They will have no general influence. They will be harmless eccentricities. Now, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be the career of democracy? Nothing future is quite secure; states enough have inwardly rotted; and democracy as a whole may undergo self-poisoning. But, on the other hand, democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. The best of us are filled with the contrary vision of a democracy stumbling through every error till its institutions glow with justice and its customs shine with beauty. Our better men _shall_ show the way and we _shall_ follow them; so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher education in helping us to know the better kind of man whenever we see him. The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs anonymously is now well known to be the silliest of absurdities. Mankind does nothing save through initiatives on the part of inventors, great or small, and imitation by the rest of us--these are the sole factors active in human progress. Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns, which common people then adopt and follow. _The rivalry of the patterns is the history of the world_. Our democratic problem thus is statable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind of men from whom our majorities shall take their cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful leaders? We and our leaders are the _x_ and the _y_ of the equation here; all other historic circumstances, be they economical, political, or intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which the living drama works itself out between us. In this very simple way does the value of our educated class define itself: we more than others should be able to divine the worthier and better leaders. The terms here are monstrously simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our bearings. In our democracy, where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae of the colleges are the only permanent presence that corresponds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have continuous traditions, as they have; our motto, too, is _noblesse oblige_; and, unlike them, we stand for ideal interests solely, for we have no corporate selfishness and wield no powers of corruption. We ought to have our own class-consciousness. "Les intellectuels!" What prouder club name could there be than this one, used ironically by the party of "red blood," the party of every stupid prejudice and passion, during the anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men in France who still retained some critical sense and judgment! Critical sense, it has to be confessed, is not an exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in processions. Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and gales of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving; and the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a relatively insignificant energy. But the affections, passions, and interests are shifting, successive, and distraught; they blow in alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast. He knows the compass, and, with all the leeways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes some headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate effects more considerable than those of much greater forces if these work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the more permanent ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice, give them but time, _must_ warp the world in their direction. This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of the college-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to help us to a wider vision of what our colleges themselves should aim at. If we are to be the yeast cake for democracy's dough, if we are to make it rise with culture's preferences, we must see to it that culture spreads broad sails. We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure that any subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept only wide enough. Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: "You think you are just making this bargain, but you are really laying down a link in the policy of mankind." Well, your technical school should enable you to make your bargain splendidly; but your college should show you just the place of that kind of bargain--a pretty poor place, possibly--in the whole policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal outlook, of perspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every subject as a college deals with it. We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that name suggests little more than a kind of sterilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's exquisite book of Chicago sketches called "Every One his Own Way," there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart--feeble caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed label gives them leave. Possibly this type of culture may exist near Cambridge and Boston, there may be specimens there, for priggishness is just like painters' colic or any other trade disease. But every good college makes its students immune against this malady, of which the microbe haunts the neighborhood-printed pages. It does so by its general tone being too hearty for the microbe's life. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains--under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior human influences that have grown regnant there, fails to catch the robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social function stops: democracy gives it a wide berth, turns toward it a deaf ear. "Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but there is no other, and this whole meditation is over questions of tone. By their tone are all things human either lost or saved. If democracy is to be saved it must catch the higher, healthier tone. If we are to impress it with our preferences, we ourselves must use the proper tone, which we, in turn, must have caught from our own teachers. It all reverts in the end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals upon each other and to the question of whose tone has the highest spreading power. As a class, we college graduates should look to it that _ours_ has spreading power. It ought to have the highest spreading power. In our essential function of indicating the better men, we now have formidable competitors outside. _McClure's Magazine,_ the _American Magazine, Collier's Weekly_, and, in its fashion, the _World's Work_, constitute together a real popular university along this very line. It would be a pity if any future historian were to have to write words like these: "By the middle of the twentieth century the higher institutions of learning had lost all influence over public opinion in the United States. But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines." Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall ever say anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite as one must leave its application, is there any other formula that describes so well the result at which our institutions _ought_ to aim? If they do that, they do the best thing conceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. It surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties and graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the great underlying purpose toward which they have always been more or less obscurely groping, great clearness would be shed over many of their problems; and, as for their influence in the midst of our social system, it would embark upon a new career of strength. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 43: First published in 1908. Reprinted by permission from _Memories and Studies_, 1911. (Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.)] THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS[44] HENRY GEORGE What, then, is the law of human progress--the law under which civilization advances? It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by vague generalities or superficial analogies, why, though mankind started presumably with the same capacities and at the same time, there now exist such wide differences in social development. It must account for the arrested civilizations and for the decayed and destroyed civilizations; for the general facts as to the rise of civilization, and for the petrifying or enervating force which the progress of civilization has heretofore always evolved. It must account for retrogression a well as for progression; for the differences in general character between Asiatic and European civilizations; for the difference between classical and modern civilizations; for the different rates at which progress goes on; and for those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress which are so marked as minor phenomena. And, thus, it must show us what are the essential conditions of progress, and what social adjustments advance and what retard it. It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but to look and we may see it. I do not pretend to give it scientific precision, but merely to point it out. The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in human nature--the desire to gratify the wants of the animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and the wants of the sympathetic nature; the desire to be, to know, and to do--desires that short of infinity can never be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on. Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by which each advance is secured and made the vantage ground for new advances. Though he may not by taking thought add a cubit to his stature, man may by taking thought extend his knowledge of the universe and his power over it, in what, so far as we can see, is an infinite degree. The narrow span of human life allows the individual to go but a short distance, but though each generation may do but little, yet generations, succeeding to the gain of their predecessors, may gradually elevate the status of mankind, as coral polyps, building one generation upon the work of the other, gradually elevate themselves from the bottom of the sea. Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power expended in progression--the mental power which is devoted to the extension of knowledge, the improvement of methods, and the betterment of social conditions. Now mental power is a fixed quantity--that is to say, there is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, as there is to the work he can do with his body; therefore, the mental power which can be devoted to progress is only what is left after what is required for non-progressive purposes. These non-progressive purposes in which mental power is consumed may be classified as maintenance and conflict. By maintenance I mean, not only the support of existence, but the keeping up of the social condition and the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I mean not merely warfare and preparation for warfare, but all expenditure of mental power in seeking the gratification of desire at the expense of others, and in resistance to such aggression. To compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force required for bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among themselves, or in pulling in different directions. Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man are required to maintain existence, and mental power is set free for higher uses only by the association of men in communities, which permits the division of labor and all the economies which come with the co-operation of, increased numbers, association is the first essential of progress. Improvement becomes possible as men come together in peaceful association, and the wider and closer the association, the greater the possibilities of improvement. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recognized, equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress. Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Association frees mental power for expenditure in improvement, and equality, or justice, or freedom--for the terms here signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law--prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles. Here is the law of progress, which will explain all diversities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions. Men tend to progress just as they come closer together, and by co-operation with each other increase the mental power that may be devoted to improvement; but just as conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of condition and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked, and finally reversed. Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that social development will go on faster or slower, will stop or turn back, according to the resistances it meets. In a general way these obstacles to improvement may, in relation to the society itself, be classed as external and internal--the first operating with greater force in the earlier stages of civilization, the latter becoming more important in the later stages. Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with his fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters the world, and the long period required for the maturity of his powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as we may observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, among the ruder than among the more cultivated peoples. The first societies are families, expanding into tribes, still holding a mutual blood relationship, and even when they have become great nations claiming a common descent. Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such diversified surface and climate as this, and it is evident that, even with equal capacity, and an equal start, social development must be very different. The first limit or resistance to association will come from the conditions of physical nature, and as these greatly vary with locality, corresponding differences in social progress must show themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the closeness with which men, as they increase, can keep together, will, in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance for subsistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains, deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; association, and the power of improvement which it evolves, can at first go but a little way. But on the rich plains of warm climates, where human existence can be maintained with a smaller expenditure of force, and from a much smaller area, men can keep closer together, and the mental power which can at first be devoted to improvement is much greater. Hence civilization naturally first arises in the great valleys and table-lands where we find its earliest monuments. But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely thus directly produce diversities in social development, but, by producing diversities in social development, bring out in man himself an obstacle, or rather an active counterforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to operate between them, and differences arise in language, custom, tradition, religion--in short, in the whole social web which each community, however small or large, constantly spins. With these differences, prejudices grow, animosities spring up, contact easily produces quarrels, aggression begets aggression, and wrong kindles revenge.[45] And so between these separate social aggregates arises the feeling of Ishmael and the spirit of Cain, warfare becomes the chronic and seemingly natural relation of societies to each other, and the powers of men are expended in attack or defense, in mutual slaughter and mutual destruction of wealth, or in warlike preparations. How long this hostility persists, the protective tariffs and the standing armies of the civilized world to-day bear witness; how difficult it is to get over the idea that it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the difficulty in procuring an international copyright act will show. Can we wonder at the perpetual hostilities of tribes and clans? Can we wonder that when each community was isolated from the others--when each, uninfluenced by the others, was spinning its separate web of social environment, which no individual can escape, that war should have been the rule and peace the exception? "They were even as we are." Now, warfare is the negation of association. The separation of men into diverse tribes, by increasing warfare, thus checks improvement; while in the localities where a large increase in numbers is possible without much separation; civilization gains the advantage of exemption from tribal war, even when the community as a whole is carrying on warfare beyond its borders. Thus, where the resistance of nature to the close association of men is slightest, the counterforce of warfare is likely at first to be least felt; and in the rich plains where civilization first begins, it may rise to a great height while scattered tribes are yet barbarous. And thus, when small, separated communities exist in a state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, the first step to their civilization is the advent of some conquering tribe or nation that unites these smaller communities into a larger one, in which internal peace is preserved. Where this power of peaceable association is broken up, either by external assaults or internal dissensions, the advance ceases and retrogression begins. But it is not conquest alone that has operated to promote association, and, by liberating mental power from the necessities of warfare, to promote civilization. If the diversities of climate, soil, and configuration of the earth's surface operate at first to separate mankind, they also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce, which is in itself a form of association or co-operation, operates to promote civilization, not only directly, but by building up interests which are opposed to warfare, and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile mother of prejudices and animosities. And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered men and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been the means of promoting association. A common worship has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and furnished the basis of union, while it is from the triumph of Christianity over the barbarians of Europe that modern civilization springs. Had not the Christian Church existed when the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe, destitute of any bond of association, might have fallen to a condition not much above that of the North American Indians or only received civilization with an Asiatic impress from the conquering scimiters of the invading hordes which had been welded into a mighty power by a religion which, springing up in the deserts of Arabia, had united tribes separated from time immemorial, and, thence issuing, brought into the association of a common faith a great part of the human race. Looking over what we know of the history of the world, we thus see civilization everywhere springing up where men are brought into association, and everywhere disappearing as this association is broken up. Thus the Roman civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests which insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the incursions of the northern nations that broke society again into disconnected fragments; and the progress that now goes on in our modern civilization began as the feudal system again began to associate men in larger communities, and the spiritual supremacy of Rome to bring these communities into a common relation, as her legions had done before. As the feudal bonds grew into national autonomies, and Christianity worked the amelioration of manners, brought forth the knowledge that during the dark days she had hidden, bound the threads of peaceful union in her all-pervading organization, and taught association in her religious orders, a greater progress became possible, which, as men have been brought into closer and closer association and co-operation, has gone on with greater and greater force. But we shall never understand the course of civilization, and the varied phenomena which its history presents, without a consideration of what I may term the internal resistances, or counter forces, which arise in the heart of advancing society, and which can alone explain how a civilization once fairly started should either come of itself to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians. The mental power, which is the motor of social progress, is set free by association, which is,--what, perhaps, it may be more properly called,--an integration. Society in this process becomes more complex; its individuals more dependent upon each other. Occupations and functions are specialized. Instead of wandering, population becomes fixed. Instead of each man attempting to supply all of his wants, the various trades and industries are separated--one man acquires skill in one thing, and another in another thing. So, too, of knowledge, the body of which constantly tends to become vaster than one man can grasp, and is separated into different parts, which different individuals acquire and pursue. So, too, the performance of religious ceremonies tends to pass into the hands of a body of men specially devoted to that purpose, and the preservation of order, the administration of justice, the assignment of public duties and the distribution of awards, the conduct of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organized government. In short, to use the language in which Herbert Spencer has defined evolution, the development of society is, in relation to its component individuals, the passing from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social development, the more society resembles one of those lowest of animal organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from which a part may be cut and yet live. The higher the stage of social development, the more society resembles those higher organisms in which functions and powers are specialized, and each member is vitally dependent on the others. Now, this process of integration, of the specialization of functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by virtue of what is probably one of the deepest laws of human nature, accompanied by a constant liability to inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the necessary result of social growth, but that it is the constant tendency of social growth if unaccompanied by changes in social adjustments, which, in the new conditions that growth produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to speak, that the garment of laws, customs, and political institutions, which each society weaves for itself, is constantly tending to become too tight as the society develops. I mean, so to speak, that man, as he advances, threads a labyrinth, in which, if he keeps straight ahead, he will infallibly lose his way, and through which reason and justice can alone keep him continuously in an ascending path. For, while the integration which accompanies growth tends in itself to set free mental power to work improvement, there is, both with increase of numbers and with increase in complexity of the social organization, a counter tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality, which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, brings improvement to a halt. To trace to its highest expression the law which thus operates to evolve with progress the force which stops progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the solution of a problem deeper than that of the genesis of the material universe--the problem of the genesis of evil. Let me content myself with pointing out the manner in which, as society develops, there arise tendencies which check development. There are two qualities of human nature which it will be well, however, to first call to mind. The one is the power of habit:--the tendency to continue to do things in the same way; the other is the possibility of mental and moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social development is to continue habits, customs, laws and methods, long after they have lost their original usefulness, and the effect of the other is to permit the growth of institutions and modes of thought from which the normal perceptions of men instinctively revolt. Now the growth and development of society not merely tend to make each more and more dependent upon all, and to lessen the influence of individuals, even over their own conditions, as compared with the influence of society; but the effect of association or integration is to give rise to a collective power which is distinguishable from the sum of individual powers. Analogies, or, perhaps, rather illustrations of the same law, may be found in all directions. As animal organisms increase in complexity, there arise, above the life and power of the parts, a life and power of the integrated whole; above the capability of involuntary movements, the capability of voluntary movements. The actions and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often been observed, different from those which, under the same circumstances, would be called forth in individuals. The fighting qualities of a regiment may be very different from those of the individual soldiers. But there is no need of illustrations. In our inquiries into the nature and rise of rent, we traced the very thing to which I allude. Where population is sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate together, the value of land appears and rises--a clearly distinguishable thing from the values produced by individual effort; a value which springs from association, which increases as association grows greater, and disappears as association is broken up. And the same thing is true of power in other forms than those generally expressed in terms of wealth. Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue previous, social adjustments tends to lodge this collective power, as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the community; and this unequal distribution of the wealth and power gained as society advances tends to produce greater inequality, since aggression grows by what it feeds on, and the idea of justice is blurred by the habitual toleration of injustice. In this way the patriarchal organization of society can easily grow into hereditary monarchy, in which the king is as a god on earth, and the masses of the people mere slaves of his caprice. It is natural that the father should be the directing head of the family, and that at his death the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member of the little community, should succeed to the headship. But to continue this arrangement as the family expands, is to lodge power in a particular line, and the power thus lodged necessarily continues to increase, as the common stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the community grows. The head of the family passes into the hereditary king, who comes to look upon himself and to be looked upon by others as a being of superior rights. With the growth of the collective power as compared with the power of the individual, his power to reward and to punish increases, and so increase the inducements to flatter and to fear him; until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation grovels at the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil for fifty years to prepare a tomb for one of their own mortal kind. So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one of their number, whom they follow as their bravest and most wary. But when large bodies come to act together, personal selection becomes more difficult, a blinder obedience becomes necessary and can be enforced, and from the very necessities of warfare when conducted on a large scale absolute power arises. And so of the specialization of function. There is a manifest gain in productive power when social growth has gone so far that instead of every producer being summoned from his work for fighting purposes, a regular military force can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to the concentration of power in the hands of the military class or their chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the administration of justice, the construction and care of public works, and, notably, the observances of religion, all tend in similar manner to pass into the hands of special classes, whose disposition it is to magnify their function and extend their power. But the great cause of inequality is in the natural monopoly which is given by the possession of land. The first perceptions of men seem always to be that land is common property; but the rude devices by which this is at first recognized--such as annual partitions or cultivation in common--are consistent with only a low stage of development. The idea of property, which naturally arises with reference to things of human production, is easily transferred to land, and an institution which when population is sparse merely secures to the improver and user the due reward of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense and rent arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. Not merely this, but the appropriation of rent for public purposes, which is the only way in which, with anything like a high development, land can be readily retained as common property, becomes, when political and religious power passes into the hands of a class, the ownership of the land by that class, and the rest of the community become merely tenants. And wars and conquests, which tend to the concentration of political power and to the institution of slavery, naturally result, where social growth has given land a value, in the appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who concentrate power in their hands, will likewise soon concentrate ownership of the land. To them will fall large partitions of conquered land, which the former inhabitants will till as tenants or serfs, and the public domain, or common lands, which in the natural course of social growth are left for a while in every country, and in which state the primitive system of village culture leaves pasture and woodland, are readily acquired, as we see by modern instances. And inequality once established, the ownership of land tends to concentrate as development goes on. I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact that as a social development goes on, inequality tends to establish itself, and not to point out the particular sequence, which must necessarily vary with different conditions. But this main fact makes intelligible all the phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression. The unequal distribution of the power and wealth gained by the integration of men in society tends to check, and finally to counterbalance, the force by which improvements are made and society advances. On the one side, the masses of the community are compelled to expend their mental powers in merely maintaining existence. On the other side, mental power is expended in keeping up and intensifying the system of inequality, in ostentation, luxury, and warfare. A community divided into a class that rules and a class that is ruled--into the very rich and the very poor--may "build like giants and finish like jewelers;" but it will be monuments of ruthless pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its office of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him down. Invention may for a while to some degree go on; but it will be the invention of refinements in luxury, not the inventions that relieve toil and increase power. In the arcana of temples or in the chambers of court physicians knowledge may still be sought; but it will be hidden as a secret thing, or if it dares come out to elevate common thought or brighten common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innovator. For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted to improvement, so does inequality tend to render men adverse to improvement. How strong is the disposition to adhere to old methods among the classes who are kept in ignorance by being compelled to toil for a mere existence, is too well known to require illustration, and on the other hand the conservatism of the classes to whom the existing social adjustment gives special advantages is equally apparent. This tendency to resist innovation, even though it be improvement, is observable in every special organization--in religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in trade guilds; and it becomes intense just as the organization is close. A close corporation has always an instinctive dislike of innovation and innovators, which is but the expression of an instinctive fear that change may tend to throw down the barriers which hedge it in from the common herd, and so rob it of importance and power; and it is always disposed to guard carefully its special knowledge or skill. It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress. The advance of inequality necessarily brings improvement to a halt, and as it still persists or provokes unavailing reactions, draws even upon the mental power necessary for maintenance, and retrogression begins. These principles make intelligible the history of civilization. In the localities where climate, soil, and physical conformation tended least to separate men as they increased, and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew up, the internal resistances to progress would naturally develop in a more regular and thorough manner than where smaller communities, which in their separation had developed diversities, were afterward brought together into a closer association. It is this, it seems to me, which accounts for the general characteristics of the earlier civilizations as compared with the later civilizations of Europe. Such homogeneous communities, developing from the first without the jar of conflict between different customs, laws, religions, etc., would show a much greater uniformity. The concentrating and conservative forces would all, so to speak, pull together. Rival chieftains would not counterbalance each other, nor diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly influence in check. Political and religious power, wealth and knowledge, would thus tend to concentrate in the same centres. The same causes which tended to produce the hereditary king and hereditary priest would tend to produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and to separate society into castes. The power which association sets free for progress would thus be wasted, and barriers to further progress be gradually raised. The surplus energies of the masses would be devoted to the construction of temples, palaces, and pyramids; to ministering to the pride and pampering the luxury of their rulers; and should any disposition to improvement arise among the classes of leisure it would at once be checked by the dread of innovation. Society developing in this way must at length stop in a conservatism which permits no further progress. How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon external causes, for the iron bonds of the social environment which grows up repress disintegrating forces as well as improvement. Such a community can be most easily conquered, for the masses of the people are trained to a passive acquiescence in a life of hopeless labor. If the conquerors merely take the place of the ruling class, as the Hyksos did in Egypt and the Tartars in China, everything will go on as before. If they ravage and destroy, the glory of palace and temple remains but in ruins, population becomes sparse, and knowledge and art are lost. European civilization differs in character from civilizations of the Egyptian type because it springs not from the association of a homogeneous people developing from the beginning, or at least for a long time, under the same conditions, but from the association of peoples who in separation had acquired distinctive social characteristics, and whose smaller organizations longer prevented the concentration of power and wealth in one centre. The physical conformation of the Grecian peninsula is such as to separate the people at first into a number of small communities. As those petty republics and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their energies in warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of commerce extended, the light of civilization blazed up. But the principle of association was never strong enough to save Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an end to by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which had been combated with various devices by Grecian sages and statesmen, worked its result, and Grecian valor, art, and literature became things of the past. And so in the rise and extension, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization, may be seen the working of these two principles of association and equality, from the combination of which springs progress. Springing from the association of the independent husbandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength from conquests which brought hostile nations into common relations, the Roman power hushed the world in peace. But the tendency to inequality, checking real progress from the first, increased as the Roman civilization extended. The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the homogeneous civilizations where the strong bonds of custom and superstition that held the people in subjection probably also protected them, or at any rate kept the peace between rulers and ruled: it rotted, declined and fell. Long before Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was dead at the heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. Inequality had dried up the strength and destroyed the vigor of the Roman world. Government became despotism, which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fertile districts became waste without the ravages of war--everywhere inequality produced decay, political, mental, moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the necessary product of the system which had substituted slaves and colonii for the independent husbandmen of Italy, and carved the provinces into estates of senatorial families. Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth of equality with the growth of association. Two great causes contributed to this--the splitting up of concentrated power into innumerable little centers by the influx of the Northern nations, and the influence of Christianity. Without the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were closely married and loss of external power brought no relief of internal tyranny. And but for the other there would have been barbarism without principle of association or amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords who everywhere grasped local sovereignty held each other in check. Italian cities recovered their ancient liberty, free towns were founded, village communities took root, and serfs acquired rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven of Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disorganized and disjointed fabric of society. And although society was split up into an innumerable number of separated fragments, yet the idea of closer association was always present--it existed in the recollections of a universal empire; it existed in the claims of a universal church. Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in percolating through a rotting civilization; though pagan gods were taken into her pantheon, and pagan forms into her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet her essential idea of the equality of men was never wholly destroyed. And two things happened of the utmost moment to incipient civilization--the establishment of the papacy and the celibacy of the clergy. The first prevented the spiritual power from concentrating in the same lines as the temporal power; and the latter prevented the establishment of a priestly caste, during a time when all power tended to hereditary form. In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce of God; in her monastic orders; in her councils which united nations, and her edicts which ran without regard to political boundaries; in the low-born hands in which she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her bishops who by consecration became the peers of the greatest nobles; in her "Servant of Servants," for so his official title ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed the right to arbitrate between nations, and whose stirrup was held by kings; the Church, in spite of everything, was yet a promoter of association, a witness for the natural equality of men; and by the Church herself was nurtured a spirit that, when her early work of association and emancipation was well-nigh done--when the ties she had knit had become strong, and the learning she had preserved had been given to the world--broke the chains with which she would have fettered the human mind, and in a great part of Europe rent her organization. The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast and complex a subject to be thrown into proper perspective and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its details, as in its main features, it illustrates the truth that progress goes on just as society tends toward closer association and greater equality. Civilization is co-operation. Union and liberty are its factors. The great extension of association--not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities, but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges which knit each community together and link them with other though widely separated communities; the growth of international and municipal law; the advances in security of property and of person, in individual liberty, and towards democratic government--advances, in short, towards the recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--it is these that make our modern civilization so much greater, so much higher, than any that has gone before. It is these that have set free the mental power which has rolled back the veil of ignorance which hid all but a small portion of the globe from men's knowledge; which has measured the orbits of the circling spheres and bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of water; which has opened to us the antechamber of nature's mysteries and read the secrets of a long-buried past; which has harnessed in our service physical forces beside which man's efforts are puny; and increased productive power by a thousand great inventions. In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak even of war and slavery as means of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of association, can aid progress only when it prevents further war or breaks down antisocial barriers which are themselves passive war. As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality is, from the very rudest state in which man can be imagined, the stimulus and condition of progress. Auguste Comte's idea that the institution of slavery destroyed cannibalism is as fanciful as Elia's humorous notion of the way mankind acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that a propensity that has never been found developed in man save as the result of the most unnatural conditions--the direst want or the most brutalizing superstitions[46]--is an original impulse, and that he, even in his lowest state the highest of all animals, has natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not show. And so of the idea that slavery began civilization by giving slave owners leisure for improvement. Slavery never did and never could aid improvement. Whether the community consist of a single master and a single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human power; for not only is slave labor less productive than free labor, but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and watching their slaves, and is called away from directions in which real improvement lies. From first to last, slavery, like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion as slavery plays an important part in the social organization does improvement cease. That in the classical world slavery was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why the mental activity which so polished literature and refined art never hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions which distinguish modern civilization. No slave-holding people ever were an inventive people. In a slave-holding community the upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and robs him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of invention and forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries even when made. To freedom alone is given the spell of power which summons the genii in whose keeping are the treasures of earth and the viewless forces of the air. The law of human progress, what is it but the moral law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just as they acknowledge the equality of right between man and man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advancing civilization come to a halt and recede. Political economy and social science cannot teach any lessons that are not embraced in the simple truths that were taught to poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen hundred years ago was crucified--the simple truths which, beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever striven to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 44: Chapter III, Book X, of "Progress and Poverty;" copyright, 1907, by Henry George, Richard F. George, and Anna G. de Mille. The chapter is here reprinted by permission of Mr. Henry George, Junior, and the publishers, Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company.] [Footnote 45: How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners, customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized society. In religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn-- "I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face, Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace," is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said, "Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy," while the universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies and heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And the like tendency is observable as to all other differences.--Author's note.] [Footnote 46: The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not touch. The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general origin of eating prisoners of war.--Author's note.] THE MORALS OF TRADE[47] HERBERT SPENCER On all sides we have found the result of long personal experience, to be the conviction that trade is essentially corrupt. In tones of disgust or discouragement, reprehension or derision, according to their several natures, men in business have one after another expressed or implied this belief. Omitting the highest mercantile classes, a few of the less common trades, and those exceptional cases where an entire command of the market has been obtained, the uniform testimony of competent judges is, that success is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the commercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code: neither exceeding nor falling short of it--neither being less honest nor more honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in self-defence, the civilised man becomes savage among savages; so, it seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become as little scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the law of the animal creation is--"Eat and be eaten;" and of our trading community it may be similarly said that its law is--Cheat and be cheated. A system of keen competition, carried on, as it is, without adequate moral restraint, is very much a system of commercial cannibalism. Its alternatives are--Use the same weapons as your antagonists, or be conquered and devoured. Of questions suggested by these facts, one of the most obvious is--Are not the prejudices that have ever been entertained against trade and traders, thus fully justified? do not these meannesses and dishonesties, and the moral degradation they imply, warrant the disrespect shown to men in business? A prompt affirmative answer will probably be looked for; but we very much doubt whether it should be given. We are rather of opinion that these delinquencies are products of the average English character placed under special conditions. There is no good reason for assuming that the trading classes are intrinsically worse than other classes. Men taken at random from higher and lower ranks, would, most likely, if similarly circumstanced, do much the same. Indeed the mercantile world might readily recriminate. Is it a solicitor who comments on their misdoings? They may quickly silence him by referring to the countless dark stains on the reputation of his fraternity. Is it a barrister? His frequent practice of putting in pleas which he knows are not valid; and his established habit of taking fees for work that he does not perform; make his criticism somewhat suicidal. Does the condemnation come through the press? The condemned may remind those who write, of the fact that it is not quite honest to utter a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend while slighting the good one of an enemy; and may further ask whether those who, at the dictation of an employer, write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious offence of adulterating public opinion. Moreover, traders might contend that many of their delinquencies are thrust on them by the injustice of their customers. They, and especially drapers, might point to the fact that the habitual demand for an abatement of price, is made in utter disregard of their reasonable profits; and that to protect themselves against attempts to gain by their loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they intend to take. They might also urge that the strait to which they are often brought by the non-payment of accounts due from their wealthier customers, is itself a cause of their malpractices: obliging them, as it does, to use all means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting the wherewith to meet their engagements. In proof of the wrongs inflicted on them by the non-trading classes, they might instance the well-known cases of large shopkeepers in the West-end, who have been either ruined by the unpunctuality of their customers, or have been obliged periodically to stop payment, as the only way of getting their bills settled. And then, after proving that those without excuse show this disregard of other men's claims, traders might ask whether they, who have the excuse of having to contend with a merciless competition, are alone to be blamed if they display a like disregard in other forms. Nay, even to the guardians of social rectitude--members of the legislature--they might use the _tu quoque_ argument: asking whether bribery of a customer's servant, is any worse than bribery of an elector? or whether the gaining of suffrages by claptrap hustings-speeches, containing insincere professions adapted to the taste of the constituency, is not as bad as getting an order for goods by delusive representations respecting their quality? No; it seems probable that close inquiry would show few if any classes to be free from immoralities that are as great, _relatively to the temptations_, as those which we have been exposing. Of course they will not be so petty or so gross where the circumstances do not prompt pettiness or grossness; nor so constant and organised where the class-conditions have not tended to make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifications, we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes. Another question, here naturally arising, is--"Are not these evils growing worse?" Many of the facts we have cited seem to imply that they are. And yet there are many other facts which point as distinctly the other way. In weighing the evidence, we must bear in mind, that the much greater public attention at present paid to such matters, is itself a source of error--is apt to generate the belief that evils now becoming recognised, are evils that have recently arisen; when in truth they have merely been hitherto disregarded, or less regarded. It has been clearly thus with crime, with distress, with popular ignorance; and it is very probably thus with trading-dishonesties. As it is true of individual beings, that their height in the scale of creation may be measured by the degree of their self-consciousness; so, in a sense, it is true of societies. Advanced and highly-organised societies are distinguished from lower ones by the evolution of something that stands for a _social self-consciousness_--a consciousness in each citizen, of the state of the aggregate of citizens. Among ourselves there has, happily, been of late years a remarkable growth of this social self-consciousness; and we believe that to this is chiefly ascribable the impression that commercial malpractices are increasing. Such facts as have come down to us respecting the trade of past times, confirm this view. In his "Complete English Tradesman," Defoe mentions, among other manoeuvres of retailers, the false lights which they introduced into their shops, for the purpose of giving delusive appearances to their goods. He comments on the "shop rhetorick," the "flux of falsehoods," which tradesmen habitually uttered to their customers; and quotes their defence as being that they could not live without lying. He says, too, that there was scarce a shopkeeper who had not a bag of spurious or debased coin, from which he gave change whenever he could; and that men, even the most honest, triumphed in their skill in getting rid of bad money. These facts show that the mercantile morals of that day were, at any rate, not better than ours; and if we call to mind the numerous Acts of Parliament passed in old times to prevent frauds of all kinds, we perceive the like implication. As much may, indeed, be safely inferred from the general state of society. When, reign after reign, governments debased the coinage, the moral tone of the middle classes could scarcely have been higher than now. Among generations whose sympathy with the claims of fellow-creatures was so weak, that the slave-trade was not only thought justifiable, but the initiator of it was rewarded by permission to record the feat in his coat of arms, it is hardly possible that men respected the claims of their fellow-citizens more than at present. Times characterized by an administration of justice so inefficient that there were in London nests of criminals who defied the law, and on all high roads robbers who eluded it, cannot have been distinguished by just mercantile dealings. While, conversely, an age which, like ours, has seen so many equitable social changes thrust on the legislature by public opinion, is very unlikely to be an age in which the transactions between individuals have been growing more inequitable. Yet, on the other hand, it is undeniable that many of the dishonesties we have described are of modern origin. Not a few of them have become established during the last thirty years; and others are even now arising. How are the seeming contradictions to be reconciled? We believe the reconciliation is not difficult. It lies in the fact that while the _great_ and _direct_ frauds have been diminishing, the _small_ and _indirect_ frauds have been increasing: alike in variety and in number. And this admission we take to be quite consistent with the opinion that the standard of commercial morals is higher than it was. For, if we omit, as excluded from the question, the penal restraints--religious and legal--and ask what is the ultimate moral restraint to the aggression of man on man, we find it to be--sympathy with the pain inflicted. Now the keenness of the sympathy, depending on the vividness with which this pain is realised, varies with the conditions of the case. It may be active enough to check misdeeds which will cause great suffering; and yet not be active enough to check misdeeds which will cause but slight annoyance. While sufficiently acute to prevent a man from doing that which will entail immediate injury on a given person, it may not be sufficiently acute to prevent him from doing that which will entail remote injuries on unknown persons. And we find the facts to agree with this deduction, that the moral restraint varies according to the clearness with which the evil consequences are conceived. Many a one who would shrink from picking a pocket does not scruple to adulterate his goods; and he who never dreams of passing base coin, will yet be a party to joint-stock-bank deceptions. Hence, as we say, the multiplication of the more subtle and complex forms of fraud, is consistent with a general progress in morality; provided it is accompanied with a decrease in the grosser forms of fraud. But the question which most concerns us is, not whether the morals of trade are better or worse than they have been, but rather--why are they so bad? Why in this civilised state of ours, is there so much that betrays the cunning selfishness of the savage? Why, after the careful inculcations of rectitude during education, comes there in afterlife all this knavery? Why, in spite of all the exhortations to which the commercial classes listen every Sunday, do they next morning recommence their evil deeds? What is this so potent agency which almost neutralises the discipline of education, of law, of religion? Various subsidiary causes that might be assigned, must be passed over, that we may have space to deal with the chief cause. In an exhaustive statement, something would have to be said on the credulity of consumers, which leads them to believe in representations of impossible advantages; and something, too, on their greediness, which, ever prompting them to look for more than they ought to get, encourages the sellers to offer delusive bargains. The increased difficulty of living consequent on growing pressure of population, might perhaps come in as a part cause; and that greater cost of bringing up a family, which results from the higher standard of education, might be added. But all these are relatively insignificant. The great inciter of these trading malpractices is, intense desire for wealth. And if we ask--Why this intense desire? the reply is--It results from the _indiscriminate respect paid to wealth_. To be distinguished from the common herd--to be somebody--to make a name, a position--this is the universal ambition; and to accumulate riches, is alike the surest and the easiest way of fulfilling this ambition. Very early in life all learn this. At school, the court paid to one whose parents have called in their carriage to see him, is conspicuous; while the poor boy, whose insufficient stock of clothes implies the small means of his family, soon has burnt into his memory the fact that poverty is contemptible. On entering the world, the lessons that may have been taught about the nobility of self-sacrifice, the reverence due to genius, the admirableness of high integrity, are quickly neutralised by experience: men's actions proving that these are not their standards of respect. It is soon perceived that while abundant outward marks of deference from fellow-citizens, may almost certainly be gained by directing every energy to the accumulation of property, they are but rarely to be gained in any other way; and that even in the few cases where they are otherwise gained, they are not given with entire unreserve; but are commonly joined with a more or less manifest display of patronage. When, seeing this, the young man further sees that while the acquisition of property is quite possible with his mediocre endowments, the acquirement of distinction by brilliant discoveries, or heroic acts, or high achievements in art, implies faculties and feelings which he does not possess; it is not difficult to understand why he devotes himself heart and soul to business. We do not mean to say that men act on the consciously reasoned-out conclusions thus indicated; but we mean that these conclusions are the unconsciously-formed products of their daily experience. From early childhood, the sayings and doings of all around them have generated the idea that wealth and respectability are two sides of the same thing. This idea, growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength, becomes at last almost what we may call an organic conviction. And this organic conviction it is, which prompts the expenditure of all their energies in money-making. We contend that the chief stimulus is not the desire for the wealth itself; but for the applause and position which the wealth brings. And in this belief, we find ourselves at one with various intelligent traders with whom we have talked on the matter. It is incredible that men should make the sacrifices, mental and bodily, which they do, merely to get the material benefits which money purchases. Who would undertake an extra burden of business for the purpose of getting a cellar of choice wines for his own drinking? He who does it, does it that he may have choice wines to give his guests and gain their praises. What merchant would spend an additional hour at his office daily, merely that he might move into a larger house in a better quarter? In so far as health and comfort are concerned, he knows he will be a loser by the exchange; and would never be induced to make it, were it not for the increased social consideration which the new house will bring him. Where is the man who would lie awake at nights devising means of increasing his income in the hope of being able to provide his wife with a carriage, were the use of the carriage the sole consideration? It is because of the _éclat_ which the carriage will give, that he enters on these additional anxieties. So manifest, so trite, indeed, are these truths, that we should be ashamed of insisting on them, did not our argument require it. For if the desire for that homage which wealth brings, is the chief stimulus to these strivings after wealth, then is the giving of this homage (when given, as it is, with but little discrimination) the chief cause of the dishonesties into which these strivings betray mercantile men. When the shopkeeper, on the strength of a prosperous year and favourable prospects, has yielded to his wife's persuasions, and replaced the old furniture with new, at an outlay greater than his income covers--when, instead of the hoped-for increase, the next year brings a decrease in his returns--when he finds that his expenses are out-running his revenue; then does he fall under the strongest temptation to adopt some newly-introduced adulteration or other malpractice. When, having by display gained a certain recognition, the wholesale trader begins to give dinners appropriate only to those of ten times his income, with expensive other entertainments to match--when, having for a time carried on this style at a cost greater than he can afford, he finds that he cannot discontinue it without giving up his position: then is he most strongly prompted to enter into larger transactions; to trade beyond his means; to seek undue credit; to get into that ever-complicating series of misdeeds, which ends in disgraceful bankruptcy. And if these are the facts--the undeniable facts--then is it an unavoidable conclusion that the blind admiration which society gives to mere wealth, and the display of wealth, is the chief source of these multitudinous immoralities. Yes, the evil is deeper than appears--draws its nutriment from far below the surface. This gigantic system of dishonesty, branching out into every conceivable form of fraud, has roots that run underneath our whole social fabric, and, sending fibres into every house, suck up strength from our daily sayings and doings. In every dining-room a rootlet finds food, when the conversation turns on So-and-so's successful speculations, his purchase of an estate, his probable worth--on this man's recent large legacy, and the other's advantageous match; for being thus talked about is one form of that tacit respect which men struggle for. Every drawing-room furnishes nourishment, in the admiration awarded to costliness--to silks that are "rich," that is, expensive; to dresses that contain an enormous quantity of material, that is, are expensive; to laces that are handmade, that is, expensive; to diamonds that are rare, that is, expensive; to china that is old, that is, expensive. And from scores of small remarks and minutiae of behaviour, which, in all circles, hourly imply how completely the idea of respectability involves that of costly externals, there is drawn fresh pabulum. We are all implicated. We all, whether with self-approbation or not, give expression to the established feeling. Even he who disapproves this feeling, finds himself unable to treat virtue in threadbare apparel with a cordiality as great as that which he would show to the same virtue endowed with prosperity. Scarcely a man is to be found who would not behave with more civility to a knave in broadcloth than to a knave in fustian. Though for the deference which they have shown to the vulgar rich, or the dishonestly successful, men afterwards compound with their consciences by privately venting their contempt; yet when they again come face to face with these imposing externals covering worthlessness, they do as before. And so long as imposing worthlessness gets the visible marks of respect, while the disrespect felt for it is hidden, it naturally flourishes. Hence, then, is it that men persevere in these evil practices which all condemn. They can so purchase a homage, which if not genuine, is yet, so far as appearances go, as good as the best. To one whose wealth has been gained by a life of frauds, what matters it that his name is in all circles a synonym of roguery? Has he not been conspicuously honoured by being twice elected mayor of his town? (we state a fact) and does not this, joined to the personal consideration shown him, outweigh in his estimation all that is said against him: of which he hears scarcely anything? When, not many years after the exposure of his inequitable dealing, a trader attains to the highest civic distinction which the kingdom has to offer; and that, too, through the instrumentality of those who best know his delinquency; is not the fact an encouragement to him, and to all others, to sacrifice rectitude to aggrandisement? If, after listening to a sermon that has by implication denounced the dishonesties he has been guilty of, the rich ill-doer finds, on leaving church, that his neighbours cap to him; does not this tacit approval go far to neutralise the effect of all he has heard? The truth is, that with the great majority of men, the visible expression of social opinion is far the most efficient of incentives and restraints. Let any one who wishes to estimate the strength of this control, propose to himself to walk through the streets in the dress of a dustman, or hawk vegetables from door to door. Let him feel, as he probably will, that he had rather do something morally wrong than commit such a breach of usage, and suffer the resulting derision. And he will then better estimate how powerful a curb to men is the open disapproval of their fellows; and how, conversely, the outward applause of their fellows is a stimulus surpassing all others in intensity. Fully realising which facts, he will see that the immoralities of trade are in great part traceable to an immoral public opinion. Let none infer, from what has been said, that the payment of respect to wealth rightly acquired and rightly used, is deprecated. In its original meaning, and in due degree, the feeling which prompts such respect is good. Primarily, wealth is the sign of mental power; and this is always respectable. To have honestly-acquired property, implies intelligence, energy, self-control; and these are worthy of the homage that is indirectly paid to them by admiring their results. Moreover, the good administration and increase of inherited property, also requires its virtues; and therefore demands its share of approbation. And besides being applauded for their display of faculty, men who gain and increase wealth are to be applauded as public benefactors. For he who as manufacturer or merchant, has, without injustice to others, realised a fortune, is thereby proved to have discharged his functions better than those who have been less successful. By greater skill, better judgment, or more economy than his competitors, he has afforded the public greater advantages. His extra profits are but a share of the extra produce obtained by the same expenditure: the other share going to the consumers. And similarly, the landowner who, by judicious outlay, has increased the value (that is, the productiveness) of his estate, has thereby added to the stock of national capital. By all means, then, let the right acquisition and proper use of wealth, have their due share of admiration. But that which we condemn as the chief cause of commercial dishonesty, is the _indiscriminate_ admiration of wealth--an admiration that has little or no reference to the character of the possessor. When, as very generally happens, the external signs are reverenced, where they signify no internal worthiness--nay, even where they cover internal unworthiness; then does the feeling become vicious. It is this idolatry which worships the symbol apart from the thing symbolised, that is the root of all these evils we have been exposing. So long as men pay homage to those social benefactors who have grown rich honestly, they give a wholesome stimulus to industry; but when they accord a share of their homage to those social malefactors who have grown rich dishonestly, then do they foster corruption--then do they become accomplices in all these frauds of commerce. As for remedy, it manifestly follows that there is none save a purified public opinion. When that abhorrence which society now shows to direct theft, is shown to theft of all degrees of indirectness, then will these mercantile vices disappear. When not only the trader who adulterates or gives short measure, but also the merchant who over-trades, the bank-director who countenances an exaggerated report, and the railway-director who repudiates his guarantee, come to be regarded as of the same genus as the pickpocket, and are treated with like disdain; then will the morals of trade become what they should be. We have little hope, however, that any such higher tone of public opinion will shortly be reached. The present condition of things appears to be, in great measure, a necessary accompaniment of our present phase of progress. Throughout the civilised world, especially in England, and above all in America, social activity is almost wholly expended in material development. To subjugate Nature, and bring the powers of production and distribution to their highest perfection, is the task of our age; and probably of many future ages. And as in times when national defence and conquest were the chief desiderata, military achievement was honoured above all other things; so now, when the chief desideratum is industrial growth, honour is most conspicuously given to that which generally indicates the aiding of industrial growth. The English nation at present displays what we may call the commercial diathesis; and the undue admiration for wealth appears to be its concomitant--a relation still more conspicuous in the worship of "the almighty dollar" by the Americans. And while the commercial diathesis, with its accompanying standard of distinction, continues, we fear the evils we have been delineating can be but partially cured. It seems hopeless to expect that men will distinguish between that wealth which represents personal superiority and benefits done to society, from that which does not. The symbols, the externals, have all the world through swayed the masses; and must long continue to do so. Even the cultivated, who are on their guard against the bias of associated ideas, and try to separate the real from the seeming, cannot escape the influence of current opinion. We must, therefore, content ourselves with looking for a slow amelioration. Something, however, may even now be done by vigorous protest against adoration of mere success. And it is important that it should be done, considering how this vicious sentiment is being fostered. When we have one of our leading moralists preaching, with increasing vehemence, the doctrine of sanctification by force--when we are told that while a selfishness troubled with qualms of conscience is contemptible, a selfishness intense enough to trample down every thing in the unscrupulous pursuit of its ends, is worthy of all admiration--when we find that if it be sufficiently great, power, no matter of what kind or how directed, is held up for our reverence; we may fear lest the prevalent applause of mere success, together with the commercial vices which it stimulates, should be increased rather than diminished. Not at all by this hero-worship grown into brute-worship, is society to be made better; but by exactly the opposite--by a stern criticism of the means through which success has been achieved; and by according honour to the higher and less selfish modes of activity. And happily the signs of this more moral public opinion are already showing themselves. It is becoming a tacitly-received doctrine that the rich should not, as in by-gone times, spend their lives in personal gratification; but should devote them to the general welfare. Year by year is the improvement of the people occupying a larger share of the attention of the upper classes. Year by year are they voluntarily devoting more and more energy to furthering the material and mental progress of the masses. And those among them who do not join in the discharge of these high functions, are beginning to be looked upon with more or less contempt by their own order. This latest and most hopeful fact in human history--this new and better chivalry--promises to evolve a higher standard of honour; and so to ameliorate many evils: among others those which we have detailed. When wealth obtained by illegitimate means inevitably brings nothing but disgrace--when to wealth rightly acquired is accorded only its due share of homage, while the greatest homage is given to those who consecrate their energies and their means to the noblest ends; then may we be sure that along with other accompanying benefits, the morals of trade will be greatly purified. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 47: From "Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic," 1864.] ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE[48] THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I have translated the term "Protoplasm," which is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physical basis of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel--so widely spread is the conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, "_the_ physical basis or matter of life," that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living beings? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly-coloured lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge? Again, think of the microscopic fungus--a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisible animalcules--mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the whale; or between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, _à fortiori_[49], between all four? Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere films in the hand which raises them out of their element? Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition--does pervade the whole living world. No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind. Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of mankind into the well-known epigram:-- "Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren, Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag. * * * * * Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch will."[50] In physiological language this means, that all the multifarious and complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories. Either they are immediately directed towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even those manifestions of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we class under irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their existence. I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestions of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn-field. But, in addition to these movements, and independently of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence of partial currents which take different routes; and sometimes trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are so minute that the best microscopes show only their effects, and not themselves. The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal circulation, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a great city. Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception, that contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of their existence. The protoplasm of _Algae_ and _Fungi_ becomes, under many circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations of its body, which are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation of the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty between the lowest plant and the highest, or between plants and animals. But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon the extent to which the principle of the division of labour is carried out in the living economy. In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm may successfully take on the function of feeding, moving, or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, but being useless for any other purpose. On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblances which exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference (to which I shall advert more at length presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. With such qualifications as arise out of the last-mentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions, and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its colour, a comparatively small number of colourless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the body, these colourless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvellous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of their substance, and creeping about as if they were independent organisms. The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more: in the earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which it has but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once, no more than such an aggregation. Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termed the structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and in its perfect condition, it is a multiple of such units, variously modified. But does the formula which expresses the essential structural character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colourless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of rock builders. What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves that the whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without a nucleus. Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? why call one "plant" and the other "animal"? The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant. There is a living body called _Aethalium septicum_, which appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon the surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another condition, the _Aethalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is it an animal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in favour of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's Land for all these questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's land and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, before, was single. Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that all living forms are fundamentally of one character. The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of material composition in living matter. In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs die in the act of analysis,--and upon this very obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever respecting the composition of actually living matter, from that of the dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have yielded them. One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they behave similarly towards several reagents. To this complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined with exactness, the name of Protein has been applied. And if we use this term with such caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living matter is more or less albuminoid. Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency increases every day. Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a temperature of 40°-50° Centigrade, which has been called "heat-stiffening," though Kühne's beautiful researches have proved this occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all. Enough has, perhaps, been said, to prove the existence of a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis, of life, in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts that, under all these Protean changes, is one and the same thing. And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of life? Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done? Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life-- "Debemur morti nos nostraque,"[51] with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died. In the wonderful story of the _Peau de Chagrin_, the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last handbreath of the _peau de chagrin_, disappear with the gratification of a last wish. Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable _peau de chagrin_, and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have light--so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily, the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_ differs from Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every exertion. For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_ will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal--a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in the process of cooking. But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man with no more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster. Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which, so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other animal, or some plant--the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself. Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid containing carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which offers such a Barmecide feast[52] to the animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigour, but grow and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the common matter of the universe. Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant can raise the less complex substances--carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts--to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm. Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous compounds, which certainly possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the power which animals distribute and disperse. But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic acid, water, and certain nitrogenous bodies. Withdraw any one of these three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to an end. They are as necessary to the protoplasm of the plant, as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and other elements give rise to nitrogenous salts. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various powers and activities of these substances as the properties of the matter of which they are composed. When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. At 32° Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage. Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phenomena, the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the properties of the component elements of the water. We do not assume that a something called "aquosity" entered into and took possession of the oxidated hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which they are put together. Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its appearance? It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the _modus operandi_[53] of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen? What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence in the living matter of a something which has no representative, or correlative, in the not living matter which gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should "vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the "materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney? If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living or dead, its properties. If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its molecules. But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions, you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull vital actions of a fungus, or a foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they are composed. But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena. Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if "gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to them in certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain: the one, that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to involve grave philosophical error. This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse, it appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to explain how such a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the territory of vital phenomena to the materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is possible. * * * * * Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect than a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we have a knowledge of the necessity of that succession--and hence, of necessary laws--and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from utter materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge of what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least as certain and definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with law is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, I take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity. I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a conception of the direction towards which modern physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as the product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an Archaeus[54] governing and directing blind matter within each living body, except this--that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with feeling, and with action. The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom. If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own consciousness? And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and "iron" law under which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an "iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is all we really know, and can know, about the latter phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones will fall to the ground, "a law of Nature." But when, as commonly happens, we change _will_ into _must_, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder. Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing? But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of materialism, like those of spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him gross injustice. If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor any one else, has any means of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all; I do not think he has any right to call me a sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his essays:-- "If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?_ No. _Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?_ No. Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."[55] Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of Nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition[56] counts for something as a condition of the course of events. Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols. In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of matter--each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought as we already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulae and symbols. But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides from these formulae and symbols into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with the mathematician who should mistake the x's and y's with which he works his problems, for real entities--and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 48: The substance of this paper was contained in an address which was delivered in Edinburgh in 1868. The paper was published in "Lay Sermons," 1870.] [Footnote 49: _à fortiori:_ with stronger reason.] [Footnote 50: Why does the populace rush so and make clamor? It wishes to eat, bring forth children, and feed these as well as it may.... No man can do better, strive how he will.] [Footnote 51: We and ours must die.] [Footnote 52: In one of the Arabian Nights stories, a nobleman called Barmecide set before a beggar a number of empty dishes supposed to contain a feast.] [Footnote 53: Mode of working.] [Footnote 54: Archaeus: a spirit, having essentially the same form as the body within which it resided.] [Footnote 55: Hume's Essay "Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," in the _Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding._--[Many critics of this passage seem to forget that the subject-matter of Ethics and Aesthetics consists of matters of fact and existence.--1892.]--Author's note.] [Footnote 56: Or, to speak more accurately, the physical state of which volition is the expression.--1892.--Author's note.] COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS[57] CHARLES DARWIN My object in this chapter is to show that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. Each division of the subject might have been extended into a separate essay, but must here be treated briefly. As no classification of the mental powers has been universally accepted, I shall arrange my remarks in the order most convenient for my purpose; and will select those facts which have struck me most, with the hope that they may produce some effect on the reader. As man possesses the same senses as the lower animals, his fundamental intuitions must be the same. Man has also some few instincts in common, as that of self-preservation, sexual love, the love of the mother for her new-born offspring, the desire possessed by the latter to suck, and so forth. But man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts: than those possessed by the animals which come next to him in the series. The orang in the Eastern islands and the chimpanzee in Africa build platforms on which they sleep; and as both species follow the same habit, it might be argued that this was due to instinct, but we cannot feel sure that it is not the result of both animals having similar wants and possessing similar powers of reasoning. These apes, as we may assume, avoid the many poisonous fruits of the tropics, and man has no such knowledge; but as our domestic animals, when taken to foreign lands, and when first turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous herbs, which they afterward avoid, we cannot feel sure that the apes do not learn from their own experience or from that of their parents what fruits to select. It is, however, certain, as we shall presently see, that apes have an instinctive dread of serpents, and probably of other dangerous animals. The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those of the lower animals. Cuvier maintained that instinct and intelligence stand in an inverse ratio to each other; and some have thought that the intellectual faculties of the higher animals have been gradually developed from their instincts. But Pouchet, in an interesting essay, has shown that no such inverse ratio really exists. Those insects which possess the most wonderful instincts are certainly the most intelligent. In the vertebrate series, the least intelligent members, namely fishes and amphibians, do not possess complex instincts; and among mammals the animal most remarkable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is highly intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who has read Mr. Morgan's excellent work.[58] But although, as we learn from the above-mentioned insects and the beaver, a high degree of intelligence is certainly compatible with complex instincts, and although actions, at first learned voluntarily, can soon through habit be performed with the quickness and certainty of a reflex action, yet it is not improbable that there is a certain amount of interference between the development of free intelligence and of instinct, since the latter implies some inherited modification of the brain. Little is known about the functions of the brain, but we can perceive that as the intellectual powers become highly developed the various parts of the brain must be connected by very intricate channels of the freest intercommunication; and as a consequence each separate part would perhaps tend to be less well fitted to answer to particular sensations or associations in a definite and inherited--that is, instinctive--manner. There seems even to exist some relation between a low degree of intelligence and a strong tendency to the formation of fixed, though not inherited, habits; for as a sagacious physician remarked to me, persons who are slightly imbecile tend to act in everything by routine or habit; and they are rendered much happier if this is encouraged. I have thought this digression worth giving, because we may easily underrate the mental powers of the higher animals, and especially of man, when we compare their actions founded on the memory of past events, on foresight, reason and imagination, with exactly similar actions instinctively performed by the lower animals; in this latter case the capacity of performing such actions has been gained, step by step, through the variability of the mental organs and natural selection, without any conscious intelligence on the part of the animal during each successive generation. No doubt, as Mr. Wallace has argued, much of the intelligent work done by man is due to imitation and not to reason; but there is this great difference between his actions and many of those performed by the lower animals, namely, that man cannot, on his first trial, make, for instance, a stone hatchet or a canoe, through his power of imitation. He has to learn his work by practice; a beaver, on the other hand, can make its dam or canal, and a bird its nest, as well, or nearly as well, and a spider its wonderful web quite as well, the first time it tries as when old and experienced. To return to our immediate subject: the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing together, like our own children. Even insects play together, as has been described by that excellent observer, P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each other, like so many puppies. The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. It is, I think, impossible to read the account given by Sir E. Tennent, of the behaviour of the female elephants used as decoys, without admitting that they intentionally practise deceit, and well know what they are about. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited. Every one knows how liable animals are to furious rage and how plainly they show it. Many, and probably true, anecdotes have been published on the long-delayed and artful revenge of various animals. The accurate Rengger and Brehm[59] state that the American and African monkeys which they kept tame certainly revenged themselves. Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness: At the Cape of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim. The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old writer quaintly says: "A dog is the only thing on this earth that luvs you more than he luvs himself." In the agony of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless the operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowledge, or unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. As Whewell has well asked: "Who that reads the touching instances of maternal affection, related so often of the women of all nations and of the females of all animals, can doubt that the principle of action is the same in the two cases?" We see maternal affection exhibited in the most trifling details; thus, Rengger observed an American monkey (a Cebus) carefully driving away the flies which plagued her infant; and Duvaucel saw a Hylobates washing the face of her young ones in a stream. So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by Brehm in N. Africa. Orphan monkeys were always adopted and carefully guarded by the other monkeys, both males and females. One female baboon had so capacious a heart that she not only adopted young monkeys of other species, but stole young dogs and cats, which she continually carried about. Her kindness, however, did not go so far as to share her food with her adopted offspring, at which Brehm was surprised, as his monkeys always divided everything quite fairly with their own young ones. An adopted kitten scratched this affectionate baboon, who certainly had a fine intellect, for she was much astonished at being scratched, and immediately examined the kitten's feet, and without more ado bit off the claws.[60] In the Zoological Gardens I heard from the keeper that an old baboon (C. chacma) had adopted a Rhesus monkey; but when a young drill and mandrill were placed in the cage she seemed to perceive that these monkeys, though distinct species, were her nearer relatives, for she at once rejected the Rhesus and adopted both of them. The young Rhesus, as I saw, was greatly discontented at being thus rejected, and it would, like a naughty child, annoy and attack the young drill and mandrill whenever it could do so with safety; this conduct exciting great indignation in the old baboon. Monkeys will also, according to Brehm, defend their master when attacked by any one, as well as dogs to whom they are attached, from the attacks of other dogs. But we here trench on the subjects of sympathy and fidelity to which I shall recur. Some of Brehm's monkeys took much delight in teasing a certain old dog whom they disliked, as well as other animals, in various ingenious ways. Most of the more complex emotions are common to the higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen how jealous a dog is of his master's affections if lavished on any other creature; and I have observed the same fact with monkeys. This shows that animals not only love, but have a desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel emulation. They love approbation or praise; and a dog carrying a basket for his master exhibits in a high degree self-complacency or pride. There can, I think, be no doubt that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and something very like modesty when begging too often for food. A great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and this may be called magnanimity. Several observers have stated that monkeys certainly dislike being laughed at; and they sometimes invent imaginary offenses. In the Zoological Gardens I saw a baboon who always got into a furious rage when his keeper took out a letter or book and read it aloud to him; and his rage was so violent that, as I witnessed on one occasion, he bit his own leg till the blood flowed. Dogs show what may be fairly called a sense of humour as distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same maneuver, and evidently enjoying the practical joke. We will now turn to the more intellectual emotions and faculties, which are very important, as forming the basis for the development of the higher mental powers. Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from ennui, as may be seen with dogs, and, according to Rengger, with monkeys. All animals feel _Wonder_ and many exhibit _Curiosity_. They sometimes suffer from this latter quality, as when the hunter plays antics and thus attracts them; I have witnessed this with deer, and so it is with the wary chamois, and with some kinds of wild ducks. Brehm gives a curious account of the instinctive dread, which his monkeys exhibited, for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most human fashion by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens, and the excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever beheld. Three species of Cercopithecus were the most alarmed; they dashed about their cages and uttered sharp signal cries of danger, which were understood by the other monkeys. A few young monkeys and one old Anubis baboon alone took no notice of the snake. I then placed the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected round it in a large circle, and, staring intently, presented a most ludicrous appearance. They became extremely nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were familiar as a plaything, was accidentally moved in the straw, under which it was partly hidden, they all instantly started away. These monkeys behaved very differently when a dead fish, a mouse, a living turtle, and other new objects were placed in their cages; for though at first frightened, they soon approached, handled, and examined them. I then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. One of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened the bag a little, peeped in, and instantly dashed away. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described; for monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the bottom. It would almost appear as if monkeys had some notion of zoological affinities, for those kept by Brehm exhibited a strange, although mistaken, instinctive dread of innocent lizards and frogs. An orang, also, has been known to be much alarmed at the first sight of a turtle. The principle of _Imitation_ is strong in man, and especially, as I have myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid states of the brain this tendency is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, unconsciously imitate every word which is uttered, whether in their own or a foreign language, and every gesture or action which is performed near them. Desor has remarked that no animal voluntarily imitates an action performed by man, until, in the ascending scale, we come to monkeys, which are well known to be ridiculous mockers. Animals, however, sometimes imitate each other's actions; thus two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs, learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackal, but whether this can be called voluntary imitation is another question. Birds imitate the songs of their parents, and sometimes of other birds; and parrots are notorious imitators of any sound which they often hear. Dureau de la Malle gives an account of a dog reared by a cat, who learned to imitate the well-known action of a cat licking her paws, and thus washing her ears and face; this was also witnessed by the celebrated naturalist Audouin. I have received several confirmatory accounts; in one of these, a dog had not been suckled by a cat, but had been brought up with one, together with kittens, and had thus acquired the above habit, which he ever afterward practised during his life of thirteen years. Dureau de la Malle's dog likewise learned from the kittens to play with a ball by rolling it about with his fore-paws and springing on it. A correspondent assures me that a cat in his house used to put her paws into jugs of milk having too narrow a mouth for her head. A kitten of this cat soon learned the same trick, and practised it ever afterward whenever there was an opportunity. The parents of many animals, trusting to the principle of imitation in their young, and more especially to their instinctive or inherited tendencies, may be said to educate them. We see this when a cat brings a live mouse to her kittens; and Dureau de la Malle has given a curious account (in the paper above quoted) of his observations on hawks which taught their young dexterity, as well as judgment of distances, by first dropping through the air dead mice and sparrows, which the young generally failed to catch, and then bringing them live birds and letting them loose. Hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual progress of man than _Attention_. Animals clearly manifest this power, as when a cat watches by a hole and prepares to spring on its prey. Wild animals sometimes become so absorbed when thus engaged that they may be easily approached. Mr. Bartlett has given me a curious proof of how variable this faculty is in monkeys. A man who trains monkeys to act in plays used to purchase common kinds from the Zoological Society at the price of five pounds for each; but he offered to give double the price if he might keep three or four of them for a few days in order to select one. When asked how he could possibly learn so soon whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor, he answered that it all depended on their power of attention. If when he was talking and explaining anything to a monkey its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless. If he tried by punishment to make an inattentive monkey act, it turned sulky. On the other hand, a monkey which carefully attended to him could always be trained. It is almost superfluous to state that animals have excellent _memories_ for persons and places. A baboon at the Cape of Good Hope, as I have been informed by Sir Andrew Smith, recognised him with joy after an absence of nine months. I had a dog who was savage and averse to all strangers, and I purposely tried his memory after an absence of five years and two days. I went near the stable where he lived and shouted to him in my old manner; he showed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and obeyed me exactly as if I had parted with him only half an hour before. A train of old associations, dormant during five years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in his mind. Even ants, as P. Huber has clearly shown, recognised their fellow-ants belonging to the same community after a separation of four months. Animals can certainly by some means judge of the intervals of time between recurrent events. The _Imagination_ is one of the highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he may unite former images and ideas, independently of the will, and thus create brilliant and novel results. A poet, as Jean Paul Richter remarks, "who must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes or no--to the devil with him; he is only a stupid corpse." The value of the products of our imagination depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impressions, on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them. As dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds, have vivid dreams, and this is shown by their movements and the sounds uttered, we must admit that they possess some power of imagination. There must be something special which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner called baying. All dogs do not do so; and, according to Houzeau, they do not then look at the moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. Houzeau thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the vague outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before them fantastic images; if this be so, their feelings may almost be called superstitious. Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I presume, be admitted that _Reason_ stands at the summit. Only a few persons now dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less to unlearned instincts. In future chapters we shall see that some animals extremely low in the scale apparently display a certain amount of reason. No doubt it is often difficult to distinguish between the power of reason and that of instinct. For instance, Dr. Hayes, in his work on "The Open Polar Sea," repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly distributed. This was often the first warning which the travellers received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous. Now, did the dogs act thus from the experience of each individual, or from the example of the older and wiser dogs, or from an inherited habit, that is from instinct? This instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimau dog, may have acquired an instinct impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack, when on thin ice. We can only judge by the circumstances under which actions are performed, whether they are due to instinct, or to reason, or to the mere association of ideas; this latter principle, however, is intimately connected with reason. A curious case has been given by Professor Möbius, of a pike, separated by a plate of glass from an adjoining aquarium stocked with fish, and who often dashed himself with such violence against the glass in trying to catch the other fishes, that he was sometimes completely stunned. The pike went on thus for three months, but at last learned caution, and ceased to do so. The plate of glass was then removed, but the pike would not attack these particular fishes, though he would devour others which were afterward introduced; so strongly was the idea of a violent shock associated in his feeble mind with the attempt on his former neighbours. If a savage who had never seen a large plate-glass window, were to dash himself even once against it, he would for a long time afterward associate a shock with a window-frame; but, very differently from the pike, he would probably reflect on the nature of the impediment, and be cautious under analogous circumstances. Now with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a painful or merely a disagreeable impression, from an action once performed, is sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating it. If we attribute this difference between the monkeys and the pike solely to the association of ideas being so much stronger and more persistent in the one than the other, though the pike often received much the more severe injury, can we maintain in the case of man that a similar difference implies the possession of a fundamentally different mind? Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid plain in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst, and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down the hollows to search for water. These hollows were not valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other difference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry, there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals. I have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water, which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited habit, as they would be of little use to an animal in a state of nature. Now, what is the difference between such actions, when performed by an uncultivated man, and by one of the higher animals? The savage and the dog have often found water at a low level, and the coincidence under such circumstances has become associated in their minds. A cultivated man would perhaps make some general proposition on the subject; but from all that we know of savages it is extremely doubtful whether they would do so, and a dog would certainly not. But a savage, as well as a dog, would search in the same way, though frequently disappointed, and in both it seems to be equally an act of reason, whether or not any general proposition on the subject is consciously placed before the mind. The same would apply to the elephant and the bear making currents in the air or water. The savage would certainly neither know nor care by what law the desired movements were effected; yet his act would be guided by a rude process of reasoning, as surely as would a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There would no doubt be this difference between him and one of the higher animals, that he would take notice of much slighter circumstances and conditions, and would observe any connection between them after much less experience, and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when he was about eleven months old, and before he could speak a single word, I was continually struck with the greater quickness with which all sorts of objects and sounds were associated together in his mind, compared with that of the most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher animals differ in exactly the same way in this power of association from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as in that of drawing inferences and of observation. The promptings of reason, after very short experience, are well shown by the following actions of American monkeys, which stand low in their order. Rengger, a most careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to his monkeys in Paraguay they smashed them and thus lost much of their contents; afterward they gently hit one end against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell with their fingers. After cutting themselves only once with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of sugar were often given them wrapped up in paper; and Rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had once happened they always held the packet to their ears to detect any movement within. The following cases relate to dogs. Mr. Colquhoun winged two wild ducks, which fell on the farther side of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird. Colonel Hutchinson relates that two partridges were shot at once, one being killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away and was caught by the retriever, who on her return came across the dead bird: "She stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterward brought away both together. This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game." Here we have reason, though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks. I give the above cases as resting on the evidence of two independent witnesses and because in both instances the retrievers, after deliberation, broke through a habit which is inherited by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and because they show how strong their reasoning faculty must have been to overcome a fixed habit. I will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious Humboldt. "The muleteers in South America say, 'I will not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but _la mas racional_--the one that reasons best;'" and, as he adds, "this popular expression, dictated by long experience, combats the system of animated machines better perhaps than all the arguments of speculative philosophy." Nevertheless some writers even yet deny that the higher animals possess a trace of reason; and they endeavour to explain away, by what appears to be mere verbiage, all such facts as those above given. It has, I think, now been shown that man and the higher animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common. All have the same senses, intuitions, and sensations--similar passions, affections, and emotions, even the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emulation, gratitude and magnanimity; they practise deceit and are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule, and even have a sense of humour; they feel wonder and curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation, attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the association of ideas, and reason, though in very different degrees. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 57: From Chapter III of "The Descent of Man," 1871. All except three of the author's foot-notes have been omitted.] [Footnote 58: "The American Beaver and his Works," 1868.--Author's note.] [Footnote 59: All the following statements, given on the authority of these two naturalists, are taken from Rengger's "Naturgesch. der Säugethiere von Paraguay," 1830, s. 41-57, and from Brehm's "Thierleben," B.i. s. 10-87.--Author's note.] [Footnote 60: A critic, without any grounds ("Quarterly Review," July, 1871, p. 72), disputes the possibility of this act as described by Brehm, for the sake of discrediting my work. Therefore I tried, and found that I could readily seize with my own teeth the sharp little claws of a kitten nearly five weeks old.--Author's note.] THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST: A SOURCE OF BEAUTY AND ESSENTIAL TO LIFE[61] ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE The majority of persons, if asked what were the uses of dust, would reply that they did not know it had any, but they were sure it was a great nuisance. It is true that dust, in our towns and in our houses, is often not only a nuisance but a serious source of disease: while in many countries it produces ophthalmia, often resulting in total blindness. Dust, however, as it is usually perceived by us, is, like dirt, only matter in the wrong place, and whatever injurious or disagreeable effects it produces are largely due to our own dealings with nature. So soon as we dispense with horsepower and adopt purely mechanical means of traction and conveyance, we can almost wholly abolish disease-bearing dust from our streets, and ultimately from all our highways; while another kind of dust, that caused by the imperfect combustion of coal, may be got rid of with equal facility so soon as we consider pure air, sunlight, and natural beauty to be of more importance to the population as a whole than are the prejudices or the vested interests of those who produce the smoke. But though we can thus minimize the dangers and the inconveniences arising from the grosser forms of dust, we cannot wholly abolish it; and it is, indeed, fortunate we cannot do so, since it has now been discovered that it is to the presence of dust we owe much of the beauty, and perhaps even the very habitability of the earth we live upon. Few of the fairy tales of science are more marvelous than these recent discoveries as to the varied effects and important uses of dust in the economy of nature. The question why the sky and the deep ocean are both blue did not much concern the earlier physicists. It was thought to be the natural color of pure air and water, so pale as not to be visible when small quantities were seen, and only exhibiting its true tint when we looked through great depth of atmosphere or of organic water. But this theory did not explain the familiar facts of the gorgeous tints seen at sunset and sunrise, not only in the atmosphere and on the clouds near the horizon, but also in equally resplendent hues when the invisible sun shines upon Alpine peaks and snowfields. A true theory should explain all these colors, which comprise almost every tint of the rainbow. The explanation was found through experiments on the visibility or non-visibility of air, which were made by the late Professor Tyndall about the year 1868. Everyone: has seen the floating dust in a sunbeam when sunshine enters a partially darkened room; but it is not generally known that if there was absolutely no dust in the air the path of the sunbeam would be totally black and invisible, while if only very little dust was present in very minute particles the air would be as blue as the summer sky. This was proved by passing a ray of electric light lengthways through a long glass cylinder filled with air of varying degrees of purity as regards dust. In the air of an ordinary room, however clean and well ventilated, the interior of the, cylinder appears brilliantly illuminated. But if the cylinder is exhausted and then filled with air which is passed slowly through a fine gauze of intensely heated platinum wire, so as to burn up all the floating dust particles, which are mainly organic, the light will pass through the cylinder without illuminating the interior, which, viewed laterally, will appear as if filled with a dense black cloud. If, now, more air is passed into the cylinder through the heated gauze, but so rapidly that the dust particles are not wholly consumed, a slight blue haze will begin to appear, which will gradually become a pure blue, equal to that of a summer sky. If more and more dust particles are allowed to enter, the blue becomes paler, and gradually changes to the colourless illumination of the ordinary air. The explanation of these phenomena is that the number of dust particles in ordinary air is so great that they reflect abundance of light of all wave-lengths, and thus cause the interior of the vessel containing them to appear illuminated with white light. The air which is passed slowly over white-hot platinum has had the dust particles destroyed, thus showing that they were almost wholly of organic origin, which is also indicated by their extreme lightness, causing them to float permanently in the atmosphere. The dust being thus got rid of, and pure air being entirely transparent, there is nothing in the cylinder to reflect the light, which is sent through its centre in a beam of parallel rays so that none of it strikes against the sides; hence the inside of the cylinder appears absolutely dark. But when the larger dust particles are wholly or partially burnt, so that only the very smallest fragments remain, a blue light appears, because these are so minute as to reflect chiefly the more refrangible rays, which are of shorter wave-length--those at the blue end of the spectrum--and which are thus scattered in all directions, while the red and yellow rays pass straight on as before. We have seen that the air near the earth's surface is full of rather coarse particles which reflect all the rays, and which therefore produce no one colour. But higher up the particles necessarily become smaller and smaller, since the comparatively rare atmosphere will support only the very smallest and lightest. These exist throughout a great thickness of air, perhaps from one mile to ten miles high or, even more, and blue or violet rays being reflected from the innumerable particles in this great mass of air, which is nearly uniform in all parts of the world as regards the presence of minute dust particles, produces the constant and nearly uniform tint we call sky-blue. A certain amount of white or yellow light is no doubt reflected from the coarser dust in the lower atmosphere, and slightly dilutes the blue and renders it not quite so deep and pure as it otherwise would be. This is shown by the increasing depth of the sky-colour when seen from the tops of lofty mountains, while from the still greater heights attained in balloons the sky appears of a blue-black colour, the blue reflected from the comparatively small amount of dust particles being seen against the intense black of stellar space. It is for the same reason that the "Italian skies" are of so rich a blue, because the Mediterranean Sea on one side and the snowy Alps on the other do not furnish so large a quantity of atmospheric dust in the lower strata of air as in less favorably situated countries, thus leaving the blue reflected by the more uniformly distributed fine dust of the higher strata undiluted. But these Mediterranean skies are surpassed by those of the central Pacific ocean, where, owing to the small area of land, the lower atmosphere is more free from coarse dust than in any other part of the world. If we look at the sky on a perfectly fine summer's day, we shall find that the blue colour is the most pure and intense overhead, and when looking high up in a direction opposite to the sun. Near the horizon it is always less bright, while in the region immediately around the sun it is more or less yellow. The reason of this is that near the horizon we look through a very great thickness of the lower atmosphere, which is full of the larger dust particles reflecting white light, and this dilutes the pure blue of the higher atmosphere seen beyond. And in the vicinity of the sun a good deal of the blue light is reflected back into space by the finer dust, thus giving a yellowish tinge to that which reaches us reflected chiefly from the coarse dust of the lower atmosphere. At sunset and sunrise, however, this last effect is greatly intensified, owing to the great thickness of the strata of air through which the light reaches us. The enormous amount of this dust is well shown by the fact that, then only, we can look full at the sun, even when the whole sky is free from clouds and there is no apparent mist. But the sun's rays then reach us after having passed, first, through an enormous thickness of the higher strata of the air, the minute dust of which reflects most of the blue rays away from us, leaving the complementary yellow light to pass on. Then, the somewhat coarser dust reflects the green rays, leaving a more orange coloured light to pass on; and finally some of the yellow is reflected, leaving almost pure red. But owing to the constant presence of air currents, arranging both the dust and vapour in strata of varying extent and density, and of high or low clouds, which both absorb and reflect the light in varying degrees, we see produced all those wondrous combinations of tints and those gorgeous ever-changing colours, which are a constant source of admiration and delight to all who have the advantage of an uninterrupted view to the west, and who are accustomed to watch for these not unfrequent exhibitions of nature's kaleidoscopic colour-painting. With every change in the altitude of the sun the display changes its character; and most of all when it has sunk below the horizon, and, owing to the more favourable angles, a larger quantity of the coloured light is reflected toward us. Especially is this the case when there is a certain amount of cloud. The clouds, so long as the sun is above the horizon, intercept much of the light and colour; but, when the great luminary has passed away from our direct vision, his light shines more directly on the under sides of all the clouds and air strata of different densities; a new and more brilliant light flushes the western sky, and a display of gorgeous ever-changing tints occurs which are at once the delight of the beholder and the despair of the artist. And all this unsurpassable glory we owe to--dust! A remarkable confirmation of this theory was given during the two or three years after the great eruption of Krakatoa, near Java. The volcanic débris was shot up from the crater many miles high, and the heavier portion of it fell upon the sea for several hundred miles around, and was found to be mainly composed of very thin flakes of volcanic glass. Much of this was of course ground to impalpable dust by the violence of the discharge, and was carried up to a height of many miles. Here it was caught by the return currents of air continually flowing northward and southward above the equatorial zone; and since, when these currents reach the temperate zone, where the surface rotation of the earth is less rapid, they continually flow eastward, the fine dust was thus carried at a great altitude completely around the earth. Its effects were traced some months after the eruption in the appearance of brilliant sunset glows of an exceptional character, often flushing with crimson the whole western half of the visible sky. These glows continued in diminishing splendour for about three years; they were seen all over the temperate zone; and it was calculated that, before they finally disappeared, some of this fine dust must have travelled three times round the globe. The same principle is thought to explain the exquisite blue colour of the deep seas and oceans and of many lakes and springs. Absolutely pure water, like pure air, is colourless, but all seas and lakes, however clear and translucent, contain abundance of very finely divided matter, organic or inorganic, which, as in the atmosphere, reflects the blue rays in such quantity as to overpower the white or coloured light-reflected from the fewer and more rapidly sinking particles of larger size. The oceanic dust is derived from many sources. Minute organisms are constantly dying near the surface, and their skeletons, or fragments of them, fall slowly to the bottom. The mud brought down by rivers, though it cannot be traced on the ocean floor more than about 150 miles from land, yet no doubt furnishes many particles of organic matter which are carried by surface currents to enormous distances and are ultimately dissolved before they reach the bottom. A more important source of finely divided matter is to be found in volcanic dust which, as in the case of Krakatoa, may remain for years in the atmosphere, but which must ultimately fall upon the surface of the earth and ocean. This can be traced in all the deep-sea oozes. Finally there is meteoric dust, which is continually falling to the surface of the earth, but in such minute quantities and in such a finely-divided state that it can be detected only in the oozes of the deepest oceans, where both inorganic and organic débris is almost absent. The blue of the ocean varies in different parts from a pure blue somewhat lighter than that of the sky, as seen about the northern tropic in the Atlantic, to a deep indigo tint, as seen in the north temperate portions of the same ocean: owing, probably, to differences in the nature, quantity, and distribution of the solid matter which causes the colour. The Mediterranean, and the deeper Swiss lakes, are also a blue of various tints, due also to the presence of suspended matter, which Professor Tyndall thought might be so fine that it would require ages of quiet subsidence to reach the bottom. All the evidence goes to show, therefore, that the exquisite blue tints of sky and ocean, as well as all the sunset hues of sky and cloud, of mountain peak and Alpine snows, are due to the finer particles of that very dust which, in its coarser forms, we find so annoying and even dangerous. But if this production of colour and beauty were the only useful function of dust, some persons might be disposed to dispense with it in order to escape its less agreeable effects. It has, however, been recently discovered that dust has another part to play in nature; a part so important that it is doubtful whether we could even live without it. To the presence of dust in the higher atmosphere we owe the formation of mists, clouds, and gentle beneficial rains, instead of water spouts and destructive torrents. It is barely twenty years ago since the discovery was made, first in France by Coulier and Mascart, but more thoroughly worked out by Mr. John Aitken in 1880. He found that if a jet of steam is admitted into two large glass receivers,--one filled with ordinary air, the other with air which has been filtered through cotton wool so as to keep back all particles of solid matter,--the first will be instantly filled with condensed vapour in the usual cloudy form, while the other vessel will remain quite transparent. Another experiment was made, more nearly reproducing what occurs in nature. Some water was placed in the two vessels prepared as before. When the water had evaporated sufficiently to saturate the air the vessels were slightly cooled; a dense cloud was at once formed in the one while the other remained quite clear. These experiments, and many others, show that the mere cooling of vapour in air will not condense it into mist clouds or rain, unless _particles of solid matter_ are present to form _nuclei_ upon which condensation can begin. The density of the cloud is proportionate to the number of the particles; hence the fact that the steam issuing from the safety-valve or the chimney of a locomotive forms a dense white cloud, shows that the air is really full of dust particles, most of which are microscopic but none the less serving as centres of condensation for the vapour. Hence, if there were no dust in the air, escaping steam would remain invisible; there would be no cloud in the sky; and the vapour in the atmosphere, constantly accumulating through evaporation from seas and oceans and from the earth's surface, would have to find some other means of returning to its source. One of these modes would be the deposition of dew, which is itself an illustration of the principle that vapour requires solid or liquid surfaces to condense upon; dew forms most readily and abundantly on grass, on account of the numerous centres of condensation this affords. Dew, however, is now formed only on clear cold nights after warm or moist days. The air near the surface is warm and contains much vapour, though below the point of saturation. But the innumerable points and extensive surfaces of grass radiate heat quickly, and becoming cool, lower the temperature of the adjacent air, which then reaches saturation point and condenses the contained atmosphere on the grass. Hence, if the atmosphere at the earth's surface became super-saturated with aqueous vapour, dew would be continuously deposited, especially on every form of vegetation, the result being that everything, including our clothing, would be constantly dripping wet. If there were absolutely no particles of solid matter in the upper atmosphere, all the moisture would be returned to the earth in the form of dense mists, and frequent and copious dews, which in forests would form torrents of rain by the rapid condensation on the leaves. But if we suppose that solid particles were occasionally carried higher up through violent winds or tornadoes, then on those occasions the super-saturated atmosphere would condense rapidly upon them, and while falling would gather almost all the moisture in the atmosphere in that locality, resulting in masses or sheets of water, which would be so ruinously destructive by the mere weight and impetus of their fall that it is doubtful whether they would not render the earth almost wholly uninhabitable. The chief mode of discharging the atmospheric vapour in the absence of dust would, however, be by contact with the higher slopes of all mountain ranges. Atmospheric vapour, being lighter than air, would accumulate in enormous quantities in the upper strata of the atmosphere, which would be always super-saturated and ready to condense upon any solid or liquid surfaces. But the quantity of land comprised in the upper half of all the mountains of the world is a very small fraction of the total surface of the globe, and this would lead to very disastrous results. The air in contact with the higher mountain slopes would rapidly discharge its water, which would run down the mountain sides in torrents. This condensation on every side of the mountains would leave a partial vacuum which would set up currents from every direction to restore the equilibrium, thus bringing in more super-saturated air to suffer condensation and add its supply of water, again increasing the in-draught of more air. The result would be that winds would be constantly blowing toward every mountain range from all directions, keeping up the condensation and discharging, day and night and from one year's end to another, an amount of water equal to that which falls during the heaviest tropical rains. All of the rain that now falls over the whole surface of the earth and ocean, with the exception of a few desert areas, would then fall only on rather high mountains or steep isolated hills, tearing down their sides in huge torrents, cutting deep ravines, and rendering all growth of vegetation impossible. The mountains would therefore be so devastated as to be uninhabitable, and would be equally incapable of supporting either vegetable or animal life. But this constant condensation on the mountains would probably check the deposit on the lowlands in the form of dew, because the continual up-draught toward the higher slopes would withdraw almost the whole of the vapour as it arose from the oceans, and other water-surfaces, and thus leave the lower strata over the plains almost or quite dry. And if this were the case there would be no vegetation, and therefore no animal life, on the plains and lowlands, which would thus be all arid deserts cut through by the great rivers formed by the meeting together of the innumerable torrents from the mountains. Now, although it may not be possible to determine with perfect accuracy what would happen under the supposed condition of the atmosphere, it is certain that the total absence of dust would so fundamentally change the meteorology of our globe as, not improbably, to render it uninhabitable by man, and equally unsuitable for the larger portion of its existing animal and vegetable life. Let us now briefly summarise what we owe to the universality of dust, and especially to that most finely divided portion of it which is constantly present in the atmosphere up to the height of many miles. First of all it gives us the pure blue of the sky, one of the most exquisitely beautiful colours in nature. It gives us also the glories of the sunset and the sunrise, and all those brilliant hues seen in high mountain regions. Half the beauty of the world would vanish with the absence of dust. But, what is far more important than the colour of sky and beauty of sunset, dust gives us also diffused daylight, or skylight, that most equable, and soothing, and useful, of all illuminating agencies. Without dust the sky would appear absolutely black, and the stars would be visible even at noonday. The sky itself would therefore give us no light. We should have bright glaring sunlight or intensely dark shadows, with hardly any half-tones. From this cause alone the world would be so totally different from what it is that all vegetable and animal life would probably have developed into very different forms, and even our own organisation would have been modified in order that we might enjoy life in a world of such harsh and violent contrasts. In our houses we should have little light except when the sun shone directly into them, and even then every spot out of its direct rays would be completely dark, except for light reflected from the walls. It would be necessary to have windows all around and the walls all white; and on the north side of every house a high white wall would have to be built to reflect the light and prevent that side from being in total darkness. Even then we should have to live in a perpetual glare, or shut out the sun altogether and use artificial light as being a far superior article. Much more important would be the effects of a dust-free atmosphere in banishing clouds, or mist, or the "gentle rain of heaven," and in giving us in their place perpetual sunshine, desert lowlands, and mountains devastated by unceasing floods and raging torrents, so as, apparently, to render all life on the earth impossible. There are a few other phenomena, apparently due to the same general causes, which may here be referred to. Everyone must have noticed the difference in the atmospheric effects and general character of the light in spring and autumn, at times when the days are of the same length, and consequently when the sun has the same altitude at corresponding hours. In spring we have a bluer sky and greater transparency of the atmosphere; in autumn, even on very fine days, there is always a kind of yellowish haze, resulting in a want of clearness in the air and purity of colour in the sky. These phenomena are quite intelligible when we consider that during winter less dust is formed, and more is brought down to the earth by rain and snow, resulting in the transparent atmosphere of spring, while exactly opposite conditions during summer bring about the mellow autumnal light. Again, the well-known beneficial effects of rain on vegetation, as compared with any amount of artificial watering, though, no doubt, largely due to the minute quantity of ammonia which the rain brings down with it from the air, must yet be partly derived from the organic or mineral particles which serve as the nuclei of every raindrop, and which, being so minute, are the more readily dissolved in the soil and appropriated as nourishment by the roots of plants. It will be observed that all these beneficial effects of dust are due to its presence in such quantities as are produced by natural causes, since both gentle showers as well as ample rains and deep blue skies are present throughout the vast equatorial forest districts, where dust-forming agencies seem to be at a minimum. But in all densely-populated countries there is an enormous artificial production of dust--from our ploughed fields, from our roads and streets, where dust is continually formed by the iron-shod hoofs of innumerable horses, but chiefly from our enormous combustion of fuel pouring into the air volumes of smoke charged with unconsumed particles of carbon. This superabundance of dust, probably many times greater than that which would be produced under the more natural conditions which prevailed when our country was more thinly populated, must almost certainly produce some effect on our climate; and the particular effect it seems calculated to produce is the increase of cloud and fog, but not necessarily any increase of rain. Rain depends on the supply of aqueous vapour by evaporation; on temperature, which determines the dew point; and on changes in barometric pressure, which determine the winds. There is probably always and everywhere enough atmospheric dust to serve as centres of condensation at considerable altitudes, and thus to initiate rainfall when the other conditions are favourable; but the presence of increased quantities of dust at the lower levels must lead to the formation of denser clouds, although the minute water-vesicles cannot descend as rain, because, as they pass down into warmer and dryer strata of air, they are again evaporated. Now, there is much evidence to show that there has been a considerable increase in the amount of cloud, and consequent decrease in the amount of sunshine, in all parts of our country. It is an undoubted fact that in the Middle Ages England was a wine-producing country, and this implies more sunshine than we have now. Sunshine has a double effect, in heating the surface soil and thus causing more rapid growth, besides its direct effect in ripening the fruit. This is well seen in Canada, where, notwithstanding a six months' winter of extreme severity, vines are grown as bushes in the open ground, and produce fruit equal to that of our ordinary greenhouses. Some years back one of our gardening periodicals obtained from gardeners of forty or fifty years' experience a body of facts clearly indicating a comparatively recent change of climate. It was stated that in many parts of the country, especially in the north, fruits were formerly grown successfully and of good quality in gardens where they cannot be grown now; and this occurred in places sufficiently removed from manufacturing centres to be unaffected by any direct deleterious influence of smoke. But an increase of cloud, and consequent diminution of sunshine, would produce just such a result; and this increase is almost certain to have occurred owing to the enormously increased amount of dust thrown into the atmosphere as our country has become more densely populated, and especially owing to the vast increase of our smoke-producing manufactories. It seems highly probable, therefore, that to increase the wealth of our capitalist-manufacturers we are allowing the climate of our whole country to be greatly deteriorated in a way which diminishes both its productiveness and its beauty, thus injuriously affecting the enjoyment and the health of the whole population, since sunshine is itself an essential condition of healthy life. When this fact is thoroughly realised we shall surely put a stop to such a reckless and wholly unnecessary production of injurious smoke and dust. In conclusion, we find that the much-abused and all-pervading dust, which, when too freely produced, deteriorates our climate and brings us dirt, discomfort, and even disease, is, nevertheless, under natural conditions, an essential portion of the economy of nature. It gives us much of the beauty of natural scenery, as due to varying atmospheric effects of sky, and cloud, and sunset tints, and thus renders life more enjoyable; while, as an essential condition of diffused daylight and of moderate rainfalls combined with a dry atmosphere, it appears to be absolutely necessary for our existence upon the earth, perhaps even for the very development of terrestrial, as opposed to aquatic life. The overwhelming importance of the small things, and even of the despised things, of our world has never, perhaps, been so strikingly brought home to us as in these recent investigations into the wide-spread and far-reaching beneficial influences of Atmospheric Dust. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 61: Chapter IX of "The Wonderful Century," copyright, 1898, by Dodd, Mead and Company. The chapter is here reprinted by permission of the author, Dr. Wallace, and of the publishers.] THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS[62] HENRY DAVID THOREAU One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a _duellum_, but a _bellum_, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battlefield I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or Die. In the meanwhile there came along a single red ant on the hill-side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus.[63] He saw this unequal combat from afar,--for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the reds; he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right foreleg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick,--"Fire! for God's sake, fire!"--and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least. I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddlebow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Aeneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that "'This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 62: From Chapter XII of "Walden," 1854.] [Footnote 63: Patroclus, in Homer's Iliad, was the friend whose death at the hands of the Trojans roused Achilles to action.] A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS[64] JOHN MUIR The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests, to develop their strength and beauty. However restricted the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is universal. The snow bends and trims the upper forests every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and there, while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed hole; not one is forgotten: the Mountain Pine towering with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the dells--they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly, bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result. After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems astonishing that any, save the lowest thick-set trees, could ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish themselves; or once established, that they should not sooner or later have been blown down. But when the storm is over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, towering fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what centuries of storms have fallen upon them since they were first planted: hail, to break the tender seedlings; lightning, to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and avalanches, to crush and overwhelm,--while the manifest result of all this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold: then faith in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease to deplore the violence of her most destructive gales, or of any other storm implement whatsoever. There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never blown down, so long as they continue in sound health. These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the summit peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten ledges like eagles' claws; while their lithe, cord-like branches bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds, however violent. The other alpine conifers--the Needle Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock Spruce--are never thinned out by this agent to any destructive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine, towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet, offers a fine mark to storm-winds; but it is not densely foliaged, and its long horizontal arms swing round compliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algae in a brook: while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks well together in united strength. The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently overturned than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height; while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open lanes through which storms may enter with full force. Furthermore, because it is distributed along the lower portion of the range, which was the first to be left bare on the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the glacial winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther up the range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage for the roots. While exploring the forest zones of Mount Shasta, I discovered the path of a hurricane strewn with thousands of pines of this species. Great and small had been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hurricanes capable of doing this class of work are rare in the Sierra; and when we have explored the forests from one extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the earth, however we may regard the agents that have made them so. There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the sounds of winds in the woods, which exert more or less influence over every mind, but in their varied water-like flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, especially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they rendered so extensively and impressively visible; not even by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of the giant Sequoias is indescribably impressive and sublime; but the pines seem to me the best interpreters of winds. They are mighty waving golden-rods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this noble tree-waving and tree-music will you see or hear in the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper whose girth sometimes more than equals its height, is about as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples, but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick, short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-leaved species, bow in storms with considerable scope and gracefulness. But it is only in the lower and middle zones that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all its grandeur. One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the Yuba River. The sky and the ground and the trees had been thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was intensely pure: one of those incomparable bits of California winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. For on such occasions Nature has always something rare to show us, and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof. It was still early morning when I found myself fairly adrift. Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills, lighting the tops of the pines, and setting free a steam of summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the wild tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sunlight like birds pursued. But there was not the slightest dustiness; nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen, and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes: some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked condition of the ground; others broken straight across, where some weakness caused by fire had determined the spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful study. Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried in a hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long, arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every needle thrilling and ringing and shedding off keen lances of light like a diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance as they stood in bold relief along the hilltops. The madroños in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy leaves tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire. The force of the gale was such that the most steadfast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots, with a motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it. Nature was holding high festival, and every fiber of the most rigid giants thrilled with glad excitement. I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music and motion, across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen. Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual trees--Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak--and even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way--singing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures--manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada and the Carolinas and Florida, are made up of trees that resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass, and grow close together in much the same way. Coniferous trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such as is manifest among Oaks and Elms. But the California forests are made up of a greater number of distinct species than any other in the world. And in them we find, not only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also a marked individuality in almost every tree, giving rise to storm effects indescribably glorious. Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees, to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the Aeolian music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose instep was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another was branchless to a considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about a hundred feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one; and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm-braced, like a bobolink on a reed. In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from twenty to thirty degrees; but I felt sure of its elastic temper, having seen others of the same species still more severely tried--bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows--without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest from my superb outlook. The view from here must be extremely beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain, and felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge, as the shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air. Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break one another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward in concentric curves, and disappear on some hillside, like sea waves on a shelving shore. The quantity of light reflected from the bent needles was so great as to make whole groves appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery splendor. Excepting only the shadows, there was nothing somber in all this wild sea of pines. On the contrary, notwithstanding this was the winter season, the colors were remarkably beautiful. The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale under sides of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps of manzanita, and jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the madroños; while the ground on the hillsides, appearing here and there through openings between the groves, displayed masses of pale purple and brown. The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf--all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent. The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to find advantage, so that one could recognize the different species at a distance of several miles by this means alone, as well as by their forms and colors and the way they reflected the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthusiastic greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the common meaning of the word was manifest here; no recognition of danger by any tree; no deprecation; but rather an invincible gladness, as remote from exultation as from fear. I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fragrance of the woods was less marked than that produced during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves are steeped like tea; but from the chafing of resiny branches against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And besides the fragrance from these local sources, there were traces of scents brought from afar. For this wind came first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves, then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents over many a flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains, then across the golden plains, up the purple foot-hills, and into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered by the way. Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone. Mariners detect the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-winds carry the fragrance of dulce and tangle far inland, where it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the scents of a thousand land-flowers. As an illustration of this, I may tell here that I breathed sea-air on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wisconsin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, I walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion; and while in Florida, far from the coast, my attention wholly bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about me, I suddenly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once awakened and set free a thousand dormant associations, and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all the intervening years had been annihilated. Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving summits of the High Sierra, the fact is sometimes published with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those portions of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible, even to the darkest imagination. And when we look around over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it descends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the bending pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now whirling in eddies, or escaping over the edges of the whirls, soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades, falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf, and over all the varied topography of the region with telling changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to the features of their channels. After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains to the plains, marking where they bloom white in falls, glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and foam-filled in bowlder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long, tranquil reaches--after thus learning their language and forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all together in one grand anthem, and comprehend them all in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. But even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams of air in the mountain woods. We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys; not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings--many of them not so much. When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and sauntered down through the calming woods. The storm-tones died away, and turning toward the east, I beheld the countless hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, and seemed to say, while they listened, "My peace I give unto you." As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin of the storm was forgotten; and never before did these noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 64: From "The Mountains of California," copyright 1894. Printed here by permission of the Century Company.] WALDEN POND[65] HENRY DAVID THOREAU Occasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hillside. In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the water's edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like sky-rockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home by the shore. Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me,--anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some homed pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook. The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it, or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the southeast and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord waters have two colors at least, one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue "to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid." But looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It is well-known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its "body," but a small piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, and like that of most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo. The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again. The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves, which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter. We have one other pond just like this, White Pond in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this center, I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance have drunk at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how may unremembered nations' literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain?[66] or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet. Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thickwood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this. The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint's Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond. This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least: the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds, and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch-pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the _shore_ is _shorn_, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and I have known the high blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances. Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition--the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth--that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook, these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality--Saffron Walden, for instance--one might suppose that is was called, originally, _Walled-in_ Pond. The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it. The temperature of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o'clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 65° or 70° some of the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42°, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was 45°, or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, when, besides, shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice. There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him, perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (_Leucisus pulchellus_), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds--I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here; also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds: a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones very much like a trout. The specific name _reticulatus_[67] would not apply to this; it should be _guttatus_[68] rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch, also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (_Hirundo bicolor_) skim over it, and the peetweets (_Totanus macularius_) "teter" along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now. You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen's egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers or lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom. The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my mind's eye the western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water's edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows. Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below the line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hilltop you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised--this piscine murder will out--and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug (_Gyrinus_) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo! In such a day in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh--a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush--this the light dust-cloth--which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still. A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it. The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and then and in November, usually, on a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain storm of several days' duration, when the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but the somber November colors of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all. An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared. When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or at the teacher's desk. But since I left those shores the wood-choppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down? Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with!--to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore; that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall,[69] to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the wood-choppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again to-night, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years--Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it _may_ be to me. It is the work of a brave man, surely, in whom there was no guile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you? It is no dream of mine, To ornament a line; I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven Than I live to Walden even. I am its stony shore, And the breeze that passes o'er; In the hollow of my hand Are its water and its sand, And its deepest resort Lies high in my thought. The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State-street and the engine's soot. One proposes that it be called "God's Drop." I have said that Walden has no visible inlet or outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed; and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 65: From Chapter IX of "Walden," 1854.] [Footnote 66: The Castalian Fountain on Mount Parnassus was sacred to Apollo and the Muses.] [Footnote 67: With net-like markings.] [Footnote 68: Speckled.] [Footnote 69: The hero of an old ballad.] SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN A. LEAFAGE OF TREES[70] One of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in their actual effect. For as in every group of leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms in the group; and the shadows of some, passing over the others, still farther disguise and confuse the mass until the eye can distinguish nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical association of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character and to give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group what was done in another, never enough to prevent the eye from feeling that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure of parts, what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as any other part of nature. Nor does this take place in general effect only. Break off an elm bough three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in the whole bough (provided you do not twist it about as you work) you find one form of leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even have _one_ complete. Every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful, and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not one line of it like another.... But if Nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude? The leaves then at the extremities become as fine as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. This, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities; then, under these, you get deep passages of broken irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows; the twisted stems glancing through them in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running along the lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the shadows of the upper boughs running in grey network down the glossy stems, and resting in quiet chequers upon the glittering earth; but all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless, large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 70: From "Modern Painters," Vol. I, 1843, Pt. II, Sec. VI Chapter I.] B. WATER[71] Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent, in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul. To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water, to lay on canvas as much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that water is meant, is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself; to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so cloudlike in its motion, with its variety and delicacy of colour, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below--to do this perfectly is beyond the power of man; to do it even partially has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it.... The fact is that there is hardly a road-side pond or pool which has not as much landscape _in_ it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking grass, and all manner of hues of variable pleasant light out of the sky. Nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain-bars in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky. So it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 71: From "Modern Painters," Vol. I, Pt. II, Sec. V, Chapter I.] C. THE MOUNTAIN GLORY[72] The best image which the world can give of Paradise is in the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colours on the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any given moment. For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of landscape colour by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. In an ordinary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which I will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in general. But among mountains, in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and purples passing into rose-colour of otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ in colour means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the faraway hill-purples he cannot conceive. Together with this great source of pre-eminence in _mass_ of colour, we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and enamel-work of the colour-jewellery on every stone; and that of the continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. The wood hyacinth and the wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers that the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, at its best, cannot match even the dark bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queenliness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly without similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone are, I suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and narcissus I have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis is pre-eminently a mountaineer. To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. Neither in its clearness, its colour, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any torrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. The sea seems only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sight of the ocean a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water at all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills reversed in the blue of morning,--all these things belong to those hills as their undivided inheritance. To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is possible among plains, in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of Amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, as I said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there are certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete as it is in water: for exactly as there are some expressions in the broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the Loire or Thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the element of water at all; so even in the richest parks and avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For the resources of trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. The various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession over the heavenward ridges--nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible in the folds and on the promontories of a single Alp being greater than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer _visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused in dimness of distance. Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of the nobler cloud manifestations,--the breaking of their troublous seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the going forth of the morning along their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there can be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of _sensation_. Of the grandeur or expression of the hills I have not spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, I do not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. It may make no difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectness of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the mountains in all these things to the lowland is, I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. They seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 72: From "Modern Painters," Vol. IV, 1856, Chapter XX.] D. SPLENDOURS OF SUNSET[73] We have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colours, and we repeat again that no gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these. But it is a widely different thing when Nature herself takes a colouring fit, and does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. She has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of colour are in these sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour, which would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and which give, therefore, fair field to the tone of light. There is, then, no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity, of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten mantling sea of colour and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colours for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind--things which can only be conceived while they are visible; the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all, showing here deep, and pure, and lightless; there, modulated by the filmy formless body of the transparent vapour, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold. The concurrence of circumstances necessary to produce the sunsets of which I speak does not take place above five or six times in a summer, and then only for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as the sun reaches the horizon. Considering how seldom people think of looking for a sunset at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a position from which it can be fully seen, the chances that their attention should be awake, and their position favourable, during these few flying instants of the year, are almost as nothing. What can the citizen, who can see only the red light on the canvas of the wagon at the end of the street, and the crimson colour of the bricks of his neighbour's chimney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from the horizon to the zenith? What can even the quiet inhabitant of the English lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the old elm trees, know of the mighty passages of splendour which are tossed from Alp to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign? Even granting the constant vigour of observation, and supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge, it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct image of the sources even of its most vivid impressions. What recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted us last year? We may know that they were magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct image of colour or form is retained--nothing of whose _degree_ (for the great difficulty with the memory is to retain, not facts, but _degrees_ of fact) we could be so certain as to say of anything now presented to us, that it is like it. If we did say so, we should be wrong; for we may be quite certain that the energy of an impression fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct every day; and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that the thunderstorm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the thunderstorm of last year, but with the faded and feeble recollection of it. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 73: From "Modern Painters," Vol. I, Pt. II, Sec. II, Chapter II.] THE STOICS[74] WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY The Stoics asserted two cardinal principles--that virtue was the sole legitimate object to be aspired to, and that it involved so complete an ascendancy of the reason as altogether to extinguish the affections. The Peripatetics and many other philosophers, who derived their opinions chiefly from Plato, endeavoured to soften down the exaggeration of these principles. They admitted that virtue was an object wholly distinct from interest, and that it should be the leading motive of life; but they maintained that happiness was also a good, and a certain regard for it legitimate. They admitted that virtue consisted in the supremacy of the reason over the affections, but they allowed the exercise of the latter within restricted limits. The main distinguishing features, however, of stoicism, the unselfish ideal and the controlling reason, were acquiesced in, and each represents an important side of the ancient conception of excellence which we must now proceed to examine. In the first we may easily trace the intellectual expression of the high spirit of self-sacrifice which the patriotic enthusiasm had elicited. The spirit of patriotism has this peculiar characteristic, that while it has evoked acts of heroism which are both very numerous and very sublime, it has done so without presenting any prospect of personal immortality as a reward. Of all the forms of human heroism, it is probably the most unselfish. The Spartan and the Roman died for his country because he loved it. The martyr's ecstasy of hope had no place in his dying hour. He gave up all he had, he closed his eyes, as he believed, for ever, and he asked for no reward in this world or in the next. Even the hope of posthumous fame--the most refined and supersensual of all that can be called reward--could exist only for the most conspicuous leaders. It was examples of this nature that formed the culminations or ideals of ancient systems of virtue, and they naturally led men to draw a very clear and deep distinction between the notions of interest and of duty. It may indeed be truly said, that while the conception of what constituted duty was often very imperfect in antiquity, the conviction that duty, as distinguished from every modification of selfishness, should be the supreme motive of life, was more clearly enforced among the Stoics than in any later society. The reader will probably have gathered from the last chapter that there are four distinct motives which moral teachers may propose for the purpose of leading men to virtue. They may argue that the disposition of events is such that prosperity will attend a virtuous life, and adversity a vicious one--a proposition they may prove by pointing to the normal course of affairs, and by asserting the existence of a special Providence in behalf of the good in the present world, and of rewards and punishments in the future. As far as these latter arguments are concerned, the efficacy of such teaching rests upon the firmness with which certain theological tenets are held, while the force of the first considerations will depend upon the degree and manner in which society is organised, for there are undoubtedly some conditions of society in which a perfectly upright life has not even a general tendency to prosperity. The peculiar circumstances and dispositions of individuals will also influence largely the way in which they receive such teaching, and, as Cicero observed, "what one utility has created, another will often destroy." They may argue, again, that vice is to the mind what disease is to the body, and that a state of virtue is in consequence a state of health. Just as bodily health is desired for its own sake, as being the absence of a painful or at least displeasing state, so a well-ordered and virtuous mind may be valued for its own sake, and independently of all the external good to which it may lead, as being a condition of happiness; and a mind distracted by passion and vice may be avoided, not so much because it is an obstacle in the pursuit of prosperity, as because it is in itself essentially painful and disturbing. This conception of virtue and vice as states of health or sickness, the one being in itself a good, and the other in itself an evil, was a fundamental proposition in the ethics of Plato. It was admitted, but only to a subsidiary place, by the Stoics, and has passed more or less into all the succeeding systems. It is especially favourable to large and elevating conceptions of self-culture, for it leads men to dwell much less upon isolated acts of virtue or vice than upon the habitual condition of mind from which they spring. It is possible, in the third place, to argue in favour of virtue by offering as a motive that sense of pleasure which follows the deliberate performance of a virtuous act. This emotion is a distinct and isolated gratification following a distinct action, and may therefore be easily separated from that habitual placidity of temper which results from the extinction of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory which is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy "the luxury of doing good," and though especially strong in acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy with the happiness created intensifies the feeling, this pleasure attends every kind of virtue. These three motives of action have all this common characteristic, that they point as their ultimate end to the happiness of the agent. The first seeks that happiness in external circumstances; the second and third in psychological conditions. There is, however, a fourth kind of motive which may be urged, and which is the peculiar characteristic of the intuitive school of moralists and the stumbling-block of its opponents. It is asserted that we are so constituted that the notion of duty furnishes in itself a natural motive of action of the highest order, and wholly distinct from all the refinements and modifications of self-interest. The coactive force of this motive is altogether independent of surrounding circumstances, and of all forms of belief. It is equally true for the man who believes and for the man who rejects the Christian faith, for the believer in a future world and for the believer in the mortality of the soul. It is not a question of happiness or unhappiness, of reward or punishment, but of a generically different nature. Men feel that a certain course of life is the natural end of their being, and they feel bound, even at the expense of happiness, to pursue it. They feel that certain acts are essentially good and noble, and others essentially base and vile, and this perception leads them to pursue the one and to avoid the other, irrespective of all considerations of enjoyment. The school of philosophy we are reviewing furnishes the most perfect of all historical examples of the power which the higher of these motives can exercise over the mind. The coarser forms of self-interest were in stoicism absolutely condemned. It was one of the first principles of these philosophers that all things that are not in our power should be esteemed indifferent; that the object of all mental discipline should be to withdraw the mind from all the gifts of fortune, and that prudence must in consequence be altogether excluded from the motives of virtue. To enforce these principles they continually dilated upon the vanity of human things, and upon the majesty of the independent mind, and they indulged, though scarcely more than other sects, in many exaggerations about the impassive tranquillity of the sage. In the Roman empire stoicism flourished at a period which, beyond almost any other, seemed most unfavourable to such teaching. There were reigns when, in the emphatic words of Tacitus, "virtue was a sentence of death." In no period had brute force more completely triumphed, in none was the thirst for material advantages more intense, in very few was vice more ostentatiously glorified. Yet in the midst of all these circumstances the Stoics taught a philosophy which was not a compromise, not an attempt to moderate the popular excesses, but which in its austere sanctity was the extreme antithesis of all that the prevailing examples and their own interests could dictate. And these men were no impassioned fanatics, fired with the prospect of coming glory. They were men from whose motives of action the belief in the immortality of the soul was resolutely excluded. In the scepticism that accompanied the first introduction of philosophy into Rome, in the dissolution of the old fables about Tartarus and the Styx, and the dissemination of Epicureanism among the people, this doctrine, notwithstanding the beautiful reasonings of Cicero and the religious faith of a few who clung like Plutarch to the mysteries in which it was perpetuated, had sunk very low. An interlocutor in Cicero expressed what was probably a common feeling, when he acknowledged that, with the writings of Plato before him, he could believe and realise it; but when he closed the book, the reasonings seemed to lose their power, and the world of spirits grew pale and unreal. If Ennius could elicit the plaudits of a theatre when he proclaimed that the gods took no part in human affairs, Caesar could assert in the senate, without scandal and almost without dissent, that death was the end of all things. Pliny, perhaps the greatest of all the Roman scholars, adopting the sentiment of all the school of Epicurus, describes the belief in a future life as a form of madness, a puerile and a pernicious illusion. The opinions of the Stoics were wavering and uncertain. Their first doctrine was that the soul of man has a future and independent, but not an eternal existence, that it survives until the conflagration that was to destroy the world when all finite things would be absorbed in the all-pervading soul of nature. Chrysippus, however, restricted to the best and noblest souls this future existence, which Cleanthes had awarded to all, and among the Roman Stoics even this was greatly doubted. The belief that the human soul is a detached fragment of the Deity, naturally led to the belief that after death it would be reabsorbed in the parent Spirit. The doctrine that there is no real good but virtue deprived the Stoics of the argument for a future world derived from unrequited merit and unpunished crimes, and the earnestness with which they contended that a good man should act irrespectively of reward, inclined them, as it is said to have inclined some Jewish thinkers, to the denial of the existence of the reward. Panaetius, the founder of Roman stoicism, maintained that the soul perished with the body, and his opinion was followed by Epictetus and Cornutus. Seneca contradicted himself on the subject. Marcus Aurelius never rose beyond a vague and mournful aspiration. Those who believed in a future world believed it faintly and uncertainly, and even when they accepted it as a fact, they shrank from proposing it as a motive. The whole system of stoical ethics, which carried self-sacrifice to a point that has scarcely been equalled, and exercised an influence which has rarely been surpassed, was evolved without any assistance from the doctrine of a future life. Pagan antiquity has bequeathed us few nobler treatises of morals than the "De Officiis" of Cicero, which was avowedly an expansion of a work of Panaetius. It has left us no grander example than that of Epictetus, the sickly, deformed slave of a master who was notorious for his barbarity, enfrancished late in life, but soon driven into exile by Domitian, who, while sounding the very abyss of human misery, and looking forward to death as to simple decomposition, was yet so filled with the sense of the Divine presence, that his life was one continued hymn to Providence, and his writings and his example, which appeared to his contemporaries almost the ideal of human goodness, have not lost their consoling power through all the ages and the vicissitudes they have survived. There was, however, another form of immortality which exercised a much greater influence among the Roman moralists. The desire for reputation, and especially for posthumous reputation--that "last infirmity of noble minds"--assumed an extraordinary prominence among the springs of Roman heroism, and was also the origin of that theatrical and overstrained phraseology which the greatest of ancient moralists rarely escaped. But we should be altogether in error if we inferred, as some have done, that paganism never rose to the conception of virtue concealing itself from the world, and consenting voluntarily to degradation. No characters were more highly appreciated in antiquity than those of men who, through a sense of duty, opposed the strong current of popular favour; of men like Fabius, who consented for the sake of their country to incur the reputation that is most fatal to a soldier; of men like Cato, who remained unmoved among the scoffs, the insults, and the ridicule of an angry crowd. Cicero, expounding the principles of stoicism, declared that no one has attained to true philosophy who has not learnt that all vice should be avoided, "though it were concealed from the eyes of gods and men," and that no deeds are more laudable than those which are done without ostentation, and far from the sight of men. The writings of the Stoics are crowded with sentences to the same effect. "Nothing for opinion, all for conscience." "He who wishes his virtue to be blazed abroad is not labouring for virtue but for fame." "No one is more virtuous than the man who sacrifices the reputation of a good man rather than sacrifice his conscience." "I do not shrink from praise, but I refuse to make it the end and term of right." "If you do anything to please men, you have fallen from your estate." "Even a bad reputation nobly earned is pleasing." "A great man is not the less great when he lies vanquished and prostrate in the dust." "Never forget that it is possible to be at once a divine man, yet a man unknown to all the world." "That which is beautiful is beautiful in itself; the praise of man adds nothing to its quality." Marcus Aurelius, following an example that is ascribed to Pythagoras, made it a special object of mental discipline, by continually meditating on death, and evoking, by an effort of the imagination, whole societies that had passed away, to acquire a realised sense of the vanity of posthumous fame. The younger Pliny painted faithfully the ideal of stoicism when he described one of his friends as a man "who did nothing for ostentation but all for conscience; who sought the reward of virtue in itself, and not in the praise of man." Nor were the Stoics less emphatic in distinguishing the obligation from the attraction of virtue. It was on this point that they separated from the more refined Epicureans, who were often willing to sublimate to the highest degree the kind of pleasure they proposed as an object, provided only it were admitted that pleasure is necessarily the ultimate end of our actions. But this the Stoics firmly denied. "Pleasure," they argued, "is the companion, not the guide, of our course." "We do not love virtue because it gives us pleasure, but it gives us pleasure because we love it." "The wise man will not sin, though both gods and men should overlook the deed, for it is not through the fear of punishment or of shame that he abstains from sin. It is from the desire and obligation of what is just and good." "To ask to be paid for virtue is as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking." In doing good, man "should be like the vine which has produced grapes, and asks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit." His end, according to these teachers, is not to find peace either in life or in death. It is to do his duty, and to tell the truth. The second distinguishing feature of stoicism I have noticed was the complete suppression of the affections to make way for the absolute ascendency of reason. There are two great divisions of character corresponding very nearly to the stoical and epicurean temperaments I have described--that in which the will predominates, and that in which the desires are supreme. A good man of the first class is one whose will, directed by a sense of duty, pursues the course he believes to be right, in spite of strong temptations to pursue an opposite course, arising either from his own passions and tendencies, or from the circumstances that surround him. A good man of the second class is one who is so happily constituted that his sympathies and desires instinctively tend to virtuous ends. The first character is the only one to which we can, strictly speaking, attach the idea of merit, and is also the only one which is capable of rising to high efforts of continuous and heroic self-sacrifice; but on the other hand, there is a charm in the spontaneous action of the unforced desires which disciplined virtue can perhaps never attain. The man who is consistently generous through a sense of duty, when his natural temperament impels him to avarice, and when every exercise of benevolence causes him a pang, deserves in the very highest degree our admiration; but he whose generosity costs him no effort, but is the natural gratification of his affections, attracts a far larger measure of our love. Corresponding to these two casts of character, we find two distinct theories of education, the aim of the one being chiefly to strengthen the will, and that of the other to guide the desires. The principal examples of the first are the Spartan and stoical systems of antiquity, and, with some modifications, the asceticism of the Middle Ages. The object of these systems was to enable men to endure pain, to repress manifest and acknowledged desires, to relinquish enjoyments, to establish an absolute empire over their emotions. On the other hand, there is a method of education which was never more prevalent than in the present day, which exhausts its efforts in making virtue attractive, in associating it with all the charms of imagination and of prosperity, and in thus insensibly drawing the desires in the wished for direction. As the first system is especially suited to a disturbed and military society, which requires and elicits strong efforts of the will, and is therefore the special sphere of heroic virtues, so the latter belongs naturally to a tranquil and highly organised civilisation, which is therefore very favourable to the amiable qualities, and it is probable that as civilisation advances, the heroic type will, in consequence, become more and more rare, and a kind of self-indulgent goodness more common. The circumstances of the ancient societies led them to the former type, of which the Stoics furnished the extreme expression in their doctrine that the affections are of the nature of a disease--a doctrine which they justified by the same kind of arguments as those which are now often employed by metaphysicians to prove that love, anger and the like, can only be ascribed by a figure of speech to the Deity. Perturbation, they contended, is necessarily imperfection, and none of its forms can in consequence be ascribed to a perfect being. We have a clear intuitive perception that reason is the highest, and should be the directing power of an intelligent being; but every act which is performed at the instigation of the emotions is withdrawn from the empire of reason. Hence it was inferred that while the will should be educated to act habitually in the direction of virtue, even the emotions that seem most fitted to second it should be absolutely proscribed. Thus Seneca has elaborated at length the distinction between clemency and pity, the first being one of the highest virtues, and the latter a positive vice. Clemency, he says, is an habitual disposition to gentleness in the application of punishments. It is that moderation which remits something of an incurred penalty; it is the opposite of cruelty, which is an habitual disposition to rigour. Pity, on the other hand, bears to clemency the same kind of relation as superstition to religion. It is the weakness of a feeble mind that flinches at the sight of suffering. Clemency is an act of judgment, but pity disturbs the judgment. Clemency adjudicates upon the proportion between suffering and guilt. Pity contemplates only suffering, and gives no thoughts to its cause. Clemency, in the midst of its noblest efforts, is perfectly passionless; pity is unreasoning emotion. Clemency is an essential characteristic of the sage; pity is only suited for weak women and for diseased minds. "The sage will console those who weep, but without weeping with them; he will succour the shipwrecked, give hospitality to the proscribed, and alms to the poor, ... restore the son to the mother's tears, save the captive from the arena, and even bury the criminal; but in all, his mind and his countenance will be alike untroubled. He will feel no pity. He will succour, he will do good, for he is born to assist his fellows, to labour for the welfare of mankind, and to offer each one his part. His countenance and his soul will betray no emotion as he looks upon the withered legs, the tattered rags, the bent and emaciated frame of the beggar. But he will help those who are worthy, and, like the gods, his leaning will be towards the wretched.... It is only diseased eyes that grow moist in beholding tears in other eyes, as it is no true sympathy, but only weakness of nerves, that leads some to laugh always when others laugh, or to yawn when others yawn." Cicero, in a sentence which might be adopted as the motto of stoicism, said that Homer "attributed human qualities to the gods; it would have been better to have imparted divine qualities to men." The remarkable passage I have just cited serves to show the extremes to which the Stoics pushed this imitation. And indeed, if we compare the different virtues that have flourished among Pagans and Christians, we invariably find that the prevailing type of excellence among the former is that in which the will and judgment, and among the latter, that in which the emotions are most prominent. Friendship rather than love, hospitality rather than charity, magnanimity rather than tenderness, clemency rather than sympathy, are the characteristics of ancient goodness. The Stoics, who carried the suppression of the emotions farther than any other school, laboured with great zeal to compensate the injury thus done to the benevolent side of our nature, by greatly enlarging the sphere of reasoned and passionless philanthropy. They taught, in the most emphatic language, the fraternity of all men, and the consequent duty of each man consecrating his life to the welfare of others. They developed this general doctrine in a series of detailed precepts, which, for the range, depth, and beauty of their charity, have never been surpassed. They even extended their compassion to crime, and adopting the paradox of Plato, that all guilt is ignorance, treated it as an involuntary disease, and declared that the only legitimate ground of punishment is prevention. But however fully they might recognise in theory their principles with the widest and most active benevolence, they could not wholly counteract the practical evil of a system which declared war against the whole emotional side of our being, and reduced human virtue to a kind of majestic egotism; proposing as examples such men as Anaxagoras, who when told that his son had died, simply observed, "I never supposed that I had begotten an immortal," or as Stilpo, who when his country had been ruined, his native city captured, and his daughters carried away as slaves or as concubines, boasted that he had lost nothing, for the sage is independent of circumstances. The framework or theory of benevolence might be there, but the animating spirit was absent. Men who taught that the husband or the father should look with perfect indifference on the death of his wife or his child, and that the philosopher, though he may shed tears of pretended sympathy in order to console his suffering friend, must suffer no real emotion to penetrate his breast, could never found a true or lasting religion of benevolence. Men who refused to recognise pain and sickness as evils were scarcely likely to be very eager to relieve them in others. In truth, the Stoics, who taught that all virtue was conformity to nature, were, in this respect, eminently false to their own principle. Human nature, as revealed to us by reason, is a composite thing, a constitution of many parts differing in kind and dignity, a hierarchy in which many powers are intended to co-exist, but in different positions of ascendency or subordination. To make the higher part of our nature our whole nature is not to restore but to mutilate humanity, and this mutilation has never been attempted without producing grave evils. As philanthropists, the Stoics, through their passion for unity, were led to the extirpation of those emotions which nature intended as the chief springs of benevolence. As speculative philosophers, they were entangled by the same desire in a long train of pitiable paradoxes. Their famous doctrines that all virtues are equal, or, more correctly, are the same, that all vices are equal, that nothing is an evil which does not affect our will, and that pain and bereavement are, in consequence, no ills, though partially explained away and frequently disregarded by the Roman Stoics, were yet sufficiently prominent to give their teaching something of an unnatural and affected appearance. Prizing only a single object, and developing only a single side of their nature, their minds became narrow and their views contracted. Thus, while the Epicureans, urging men to study nature in order to banish superstition, endeavoured to correct the ignorance of physical science which was one of the chief impediments to the progress of the ancient mind, the Stoics for the most part disdained a study which was other than the pursuit of virtue. While the Epicurean poet painted in magnificent language the perpetual progress of mankind, the Stoic was essentially retrospective, and exhausted his strength in vain efforts to restore the simplicity of a by-gone age. While, too, the school of Zeno produced many of the best and greatest men who have ever lived, it must be acknowledged that its records exhibit a rather unusual number of examples of high professions falsified in action, and of men who, displaying in some forms the most undoubted and transcendent virtue, fell in others far below the average of mankind. The elder Cato, who, though not a philosopher, was a model of philosophers, was conspicuous for his inhumanity to his slaves. Brutus was one of the most extortionate usurers of his time, and several citizens of Salamis died of starvation, imprisoned because they could not pay the sum he demanded. No one eulogised more eloquently the austere simplicity of life which stoicism advocated than Sallust, who in a corrupt age was notorious for his rapacity. Seneca himself was constitutionally a nervous and timid man, endeavouring, not always with success, to support himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under circumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and his death is one of the noblest antiquity records; but his life was deeply marked by the taint of flattery, and not free from the taint of avarice, and it is unhappily certain that, after its accomplishment, he lent his pen to conceal or varnish one of the worst crimes of Nero. The courage of Lucan failed signally under torture, and the flattery which he bestowed upon Nero, in his "Pharsalia," ranks with the Epigrams of Martial as probably the extreme limit of sycophancy to which Roman literature descended. While, too, the main object of the Stoics was to popularise philosophy, the high standard of self-control they exacted rendered their system exceedingly unfit for the great majority of mankind, and for the ordinary condition of affairs. Life is history, not poetry. It consists mainly of little things, rarely illumined by flashes of great heroism, rarely broken by great dangers, or demanding great exertions. A moral system, to govern society, must accommodate itself to common characters and mingled motives. It must be capable of influencing natures that can never rise to an heroic level. It must tincture, modify, and mitigate where it cannot eradicate or transform. In Christianity there are always a few persons seeking by continual and painful efforts to reverse or extinguish the ordinary feelings of humanity, but in the great majority of cases the influence of the religious principle upon the mind, though very real, is not of a nature to cause any serious strain or struggle. It is displayed in a certain acquired spontaneity of impulse. It softens the character, purifies and directs the imagination, blends insensibly with the habitual modes of thought, and, without revolutionising, gives a tone and bias to all the forms of action. But stoicism was simply a school of heroes. It recognised no gradations of virtue or vice. It condemned all emotions, all spontaneity, all mingled motives, all the principles, feelings, and impulses upon which the virtue of common men mainly depends. It was capable of acting only on moral natures that were strung to the highest tension, and it was therefore naturally rejected by the multitude. The central conception of this philosophy of self-control was the dignity of man. Pride, which looks within, making man seek his own approbation, as distinguished from vanity, which looks without, and shapes its conduct according to the opinions of others, was not only permitted in stoicism, it was its leading moral agent. The sense of virtue, as I have elsewhere observed, occupies in this system much the same place as the sense of sin in Christianity. Sin, in the conception of the ancients, was simply disease, and they deemed it the part of a wise man to correct it, but not to dwell upon its circumstances. In the many disquisitions which Epictetus and others have left us concerning the proper frame of mind in which man should approach death, repentance for past sin has absolutely no place, nor do the ancients appear to have ever realised the purifying and spiritualising influence it exercises upon the character. And while the reality of moral disease was fully recognised, while an ideal of lofty and indeed unattainable excellence was continually proposed, no one doubted the essential excellence of human nature, and very few doubted the possibility of man acquiring by his own will a high degree of virtue. The doctrine of suicide was the culminating point of Roman stoicism. The proud, self-reliant, unbending character of the philosopher, could only be sustained when he felt that he had a sure refuge against the extreme forms of suffering or of despair. Although virtue is not a mere creature of interest, no great system has ever yet flourished which did not present an ideal of happiness as well as an ideal of duty. Stoicism taught men to hope little, but to fear nothing. It did not array death in brilliant colours, as the path to positive felicity, but it endeavoured to divest it, as the end of suffering, of every terror. Life lost much of its bitterness when men had found a refuge from the storms of fate, a speedy deliverance from dotage and pain. Death ceased to be terrible when it was regarded rather as a remedy than as a sentence. Life and death in the stoical system were attuned to the same key. The deification of human virtue, the total absence of all sense of sin, the proud stubborn will that deemed humiliation the worst of stains, appeared alike in each. The type of its own kind was perfect. All the virtues and all the majesty that accompany human pride, when developed to the highest point, and directed to the noblest ends, were here displayed. All those which accompany humility and self-abasement were absent. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 74: From Chapter II, Vol. I, of "History of European Morals," 1869. The author's foot-notes have been omitted.] THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY[75] JOHN ROBERT SEELEY The first method of training this passion which Christ employed was the direct one of making it a point of duty to feel it. To love one's neighbour as oneself was, he said, the first and greatest _law_. And in the Sermon on the Mount he requires the passion to be felt in such strength as to include those whom we have most reason to hate--our enemies and those who maliciously injure us--and delivers an imperative precept, "Love your enemies." It has been shown that to do this is not, as might at first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but the further question suggests itself, Can it be done to order? Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Certainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere effort of will summon up a passion which does not arise of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. Yet if this position be really untenable, how is it possible to obey Christ's commands? The difficulty seems to admit of only one solution. We are not commanded to create by an effort of will a feeling of love in ourselves which otherwise would have had no existence; the feeling must arise naturally or it cannot arise at all. But a number of causes which are removable may interfere to prevent the feeling from arising or to stifle it as it arises, and we are commanded to remove these hindrances. It is natural to man to love his kind, and Christ commands us only to give nature play. He does not expect us to procure for ourselves hearts of some new supernatural texture, but merely the heart of flesh for the heart of stone. What, then, are the causes of this paralysis of the heart? The experience of human life furnishes us readily with the answer. It constantly happens that one whose affections were originally not less lively than those of most men is thrown into the society of persons destitute of sympathy or tenderness. In this society each person is either totally indifferent to his neighbour or secretly endeavouring to injure or overreach him. The new-comer is at first open-hearted and cordial; he presumes every one he meets to be a friend, and is disposed to serve and expects to be served by all alike. But his advances are met by some with cautious reserve, by others with icy coldness, by others with hypocritical warmth followed by treacherous injury, by others with open hostility. The heart which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a human being, under the operation of this new experience slowly becomes paralysed. There seats itself gradually in the man's mind a presumption concerning every new face that it is the face of an enemy, and a habit of gathering himself into an attitude of self-defence whenever he deals with a fellow-creature. If when this new disposition has grown confirmed and habitual, he be introduced into a society of an opposite kind and meet with people as friendly and kind as he himself was originally, he will not at first be able to believe in their sincerity, and the old kindly affections from long disuse will be slow to rouse themselves within him. Now to such a person the imperative mood of the verb to love may fairly be used. He may properly be told to make an effort, to shake off the distrust that oppresses him,--not to suffer unproved suspicions, causeless jealousies, to stifle by the mere force of prejudice and mistaken opinion the warmth of feeling natural to him. But we shall have a closer illustration if we suppose the cold-hearted society itself to be addressed by a preacher who wishes to bring them to a better mind. He too may fairly use the imperative mood of the verb to love. For he may say, "Your mutual coldness does not spring from an original want of the power of sympathy. If it did, admonitions would indeed be useless. But it springs from a habit of thought which you have formed, a maxim which has been received among you, that all men are devoted to self-interest, that kindness is but feebleness and invites injury. If you will at once and by a common act throw off this false opinion of human nature, and adopt a new plan of life for yourselves and new expectations of each other, you will find the old affections natural to all of you, weakened indeed and chilled, but existing and capable of being revived by an effort." Such a preacher might go further and say, "If but a small minority are convinced by my words, yet let that minority for itself abandon the selfish theory, let it renounce the safety which that theory affords in dealing with selfish men, let it treat the enemy as if he were indeed the friend he ought to be, let it dare to forego retaliation and even self-defence. By this means it will shame many into kindness; by despising self-interest for itself it will sometimes make it seem despicable to others; by sincerity and persistency it will gradually convert the majority to a higher law of intercourse." The world has been always more or less like this cold-hearted society; the natural kindness and fellow-feeling of men have always been more or less repressed by low-minded maxims and cynicism. But in the time of Christ, and in the last decrepitude of ethnic morality, the selfishness of human intercourse was much greater than the present age can easily understand. That system of morality, even in the times when it was powerful and in many respects beneficial, had made it almost as much a duty to hate foreigners as to love fellow-citizens. Plato congratulates the, Athenians on having shown in their relations to Persia, beyond all the other Greeks, "a pure and heartfelt hatred of the foreign nature."[76] Instead of opposing, it had sanctioned and consecrated the savage instinct which leads us to hate whatever is strange or unintelligible, to distrust those who live on the further side of a river, to suppose that those whom we hear talking together in a foreign tongue must be plotting some mischief against ourselves. The lapse of time and the fusion of races doubtless diminished this antipathy considerably, but at the utmost it could but be transformed into an icy indifference, for no cause was in operation to convert it into kindness. On the other hand, the closeness of the bond which united fellow-citizens was considerably relaxed. Common interests and common dangers had drawn it close; these in the wide security of the Roman Empire had no longer a place. It had depended upon an imagined blood-relationship; fellow-citizens could now no longer feel themselves to be united by the tie of blood. Every town was full of resident aliens and emancipated slaves, persons between whom and the citizens nature had established no connection, and whose presence in the city had originally been barely tolerated from motives of expediency. The selfishness of modern times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times it was approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined by morality. We are therefore to consider the ancient world as a society of men in whom natural humanity existed but had been, as it were, crusted or frosted over. Inveterate feuds and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out of an isolated position or differences of language and institutions, had created endless divisions between man and man. And as the special virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all that it implies, had been in a manner caused and fostered by these very divisions, they were not regarded as evils but rather cherished as essential to morality. Selfishness, therefore, was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out of the infirmity of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of moral philosophy. Humanity was cramped by a mistaken prejudice, by a perverse presumption of the intellect. In a case like this it was necessary and proper to prescribe humanity by direct authoritative precept. Such a precept would have been powerless to create the feeling, nor would it have done much to protect it from being overpowered by the opposite passion, but the opposite passion of selfishness was at this period justified by authority and claimed to be on the side of reason and law. Precept is fairly matched against precept, and what the law of love and the golden rule did for mankind was to place for the first time the love of man as man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dissipate the exclusive prejudices of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the character of sin. When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole community, it is a bold and hazardous step for a part of the community to abandon it. For in the society of selfish people selfishness is simply self-defence; to renounce it is to evacuate one's entrenched position, to surrender at discretion to the enemy. If society is to disarm, it should do so by common consent. Christ, however, though he confidently expected ultimately to gather all mankind into his society, did not expect to do so soon. Accordingly he commands his followers not to wait for this consummation but, in spite of the hazardous nature of the step, to disarm at once. They are sent forth "as sheep in the midst of wolves." Injuries they are to expect, but they are neither to shun nor to retaliate them. Harmless they are to be as _doves_. The discipline of suffering will wean them more and more from self, and make the channels of humanity freer within them; and sometimes their patience may shame the spoiler; he may grow weary of rapacity which meets with no resistance, and be induced to envy those who can forego without reluctance that which he devotes every thought to acquire. But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could not design by a mere edict, however authoritative, to give this passion of humanity strength enough to make it a living and infallible principle of morality in every man, when we consider, first, what an ardent enthusiasm he demanded from his followers, and secondly, how frail and tender a germ this passion naturally is in human nature. Widely diffused indeed it is, and seldom entirely eradicated; but for the most part, at least in the ancient world, it was crushed under a weight of predominant passions and interests; it had seldom power enough to dictate any action, but made itself felt in faint misgivings and relentings, which sometimes restrained men from extremes of cruelty. Like Enceladus under Aetna, it lay fettered at the bottom of human nature, now and then making the mass above it quake by an uneasy change of posture. To make this outraged and enslaved passion predominant, to give it, instead of a veto rarely used, the whole power of government, to train it from a dim misgiving into a clear and strong passion, required much more than a precept. The precept had its use; it could make men feel it right to be humane and desire to be so, but it could never inspire them with an enthusiasm of humanity. From what source was this inspiration to be derived? Humanity, we have already observed, is neither a love for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every human being as such interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable presumption with regard to human beings is not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle superstition of the mind, nor is it a natural instinct. It is a feeling founded on the actual observation and discovery of interesting and noble qualities in particular human beings, and it is strong or weak in proportion as the person who has the feeling has known many or few noble and amiable human beings. There are men who have, been so unfortunate as to live in the perpetual society of the mean and the base; they have never, except in a few faint glimpses, seen anything glorious or good in human nature. With these the feeling of humanity has a perpetual struggle for existence, their minds tend by a fatal gravitation to the belief that the happiness or misery of such a paltry race is wholly unimportant; they may arrive finally at a fixed condition, in which it may be said of them without qualification, that "man delights not them, nor woman neither." In this final stage they are men who, beyond the routine of life, should not be trusted, being "fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." On the other hand, there are those whose lot it has been from earliest childhood to see the fair side of humanity, who have been surrounded with clear and candid countenances, in the changes of which might be traced the working of passions strong and simple, the impress of a firm and tender nature, wearing when it looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and when it looked within the bloom of modesty. They have seen, and not once or twice, a man forget himself; they have witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, unaffected delicacy, spontaneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be that on seeing a human being surrender for another's good not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly suspected in human nature a glory connecting it with the divine. In these the passion of humanity is warm and ready to become on occasion a burning flame; their whole minds are elevated, because they are possessed with the dignity of that nature they share, and of the society in the midst of which they move. But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a man shall have seen _many_ men whom he can respect. The most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning thoroughly to believe in the virtue of _one_ man. Our estimate of human nature is in proportion to the best specimen of it we have witnessed. This then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory. Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go forth to those who had never seen a human being they could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and say, How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, whose little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired? Of this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead and a human heart beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of God nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he? And if it be answered that there was in his nature something exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by the stature of Christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. If some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ? Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he associated by preference with these meanest of the race; no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore to it. And it was because the Edict of Universal Love went forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood but possessed with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words, penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of Jove was given. Therefore also the first Christians were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man in man could simply say and feel that they loved Christ in every man. We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ proposed to himself, and the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it. His object was, instead of drawing up, after the example of previous legislators, a list of actions prescribed, allowed, and prohibited, to give his disciples a universal test by which they might discover what it was right and what it was wrong to do. Now as the difficulty of discovering what is right arises commonly from the prevalence of self-interest in our minds, and as we commonly behave rightly to anyone for whom we feel affection or sympathy, Christ considered that he who could feel sympathy for all would behave rightly to all. But how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition--that they were first bound fast to himself. He stood forth as the representative of men, he identified himself with the cause and with the interests of all human beings, he was destined, as he began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his life for them. Few of us sympathise originally and directly with this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so hard to love and venerate him who felt it. So vast a passion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some of his imitators. And as love provokes love, many have found it possible to conceive for Christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within them, that they have said, "I live no more, but Christ lives in me." Now such a feeling carries with it of necessity the feeling of love for all human beings. It matters no longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable or unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to his sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love in life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he is dear. And those who would for a moment know his heart and understand his life must begin by thinking of the whole race of man, and of each member of the race, with awful reverence and hope. Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a law-making power. "Love is _dutiful_ in thought and deed." And as the lover of his country is free from the temptation to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure from the temptation to injure any human being, whether it be himself or another. He is indeed much more than this. He is bound and he is eager to benefit and bless to the utmost of his power all that bear his Master's nature, and that not merely with the good gifts of the earth, but with whatever cherishes and trains best the Christ within them. But for the present we are concerned merely with the power of this passion to lift the man out of sin. The injuries he committed lightly when he regarded his fellow-creatures simply as animals who added to the fierceness of the brute an ingenuity and forethought that made them doubly noxious, become horrible sacrilege when he sees in them no longer the animal but the Christ. And that other class of crimes which belongs more especially to ages of civilisation, and arises out of a cynical contempt for the species, is rendered equally impossible to the man who hears with reverence the announcement, "The good deeds you did to the least of these my brethren you did to me." There are two objections which may suggest themselves at this point, the one to intellectual, the other to practical men. The intellectual man may say, "To discover what it is right to do in any given case is not the province of any feeling or passion however sublime, but requires the application of the same intellectual power which solves mathematical problems. The common acts of life may no doubt be performed correctly by unintellectual people, but this is because these constantly recurring problems have been solved long ago by clever people, and the vulgar are now in possession of the results. Whenever a new combination occurs it is a matter for casuists; the best intentions will avail little; there is doubtless a great difference between a good man and a bad one; the one will do what is right when he knows it, and the other will not; but in respect for the power of ascertaining what it is right to do, supposing their knowledge of casuistry to be equal, they are on a par. Goodness or the passion of humanity, or Christian love, may be a motive inducing men to keep the law, but it has no right to be called the law-making power. And what has Christianity added to our theoretic knowledge of morality? It may have made men practically more moral, but has it added anything to Aristotle's Ethics?" Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the provinces of the moralist or the casuist. But the difficulties which beset the discovery of the right moral course are of two kinds. There are the difficulties which arise, from the blinding and confusing effect of selfish passions, and which obscure from the view the end which should be aimed at in action; when these have been overcome there arises a new set of difficulties concerning the means by which the end should be attained. In dealing with your neighbour the first thing to be understood is that his interest is to be considered as well as your own; but when this has been settled, it remains to be considered what his interest is. The latter class of difficulties requires to be dealt with by the intellectual or calculating faculty. The former class can only be dealt with by the moral force of sympathy. Now it is true that the right action will not be performed without the operation of both these agencies. But the moral agency is the dominant one throughout; it is that without which the very conception of law is impossible; it overcomes those difficulties which in the vast majority of practical cases are the most serious. The calculating casuistical faculty is, as it were, in its employ, and it is no more improper to call it the law-making power, although it does not ultimately decide what action is to be performed, than to say that a house was built by one who did not with his own hands lay the bricks and spread the mortar. The objection which practical men take is a very important one, as the criticisms of such men always are, being founded commonly upon large observation and not perverted by theory. They say that the love of Christ does not in practice produce the nobleness and largeness of character which has been represented as its proper and natural result; that instead of inspiring those who feel it with reverence and hope for their kind, it makes them exceedingly narrow in their sympathies, disposed to deny and explain away even the most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to despair of the future destiny of the great majority of their fellow-creatures; that instead of binding them to their kind, it divides them from it by a gulf which they themselves proclaim to be impassable and eternal, and unites them only in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy with each other; that it is indeed a law-making power, but that the laws it makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of things innocent, demoralising restraints upon the freedom of joy and the healthy instincts of nature; that it favours hypocrisy, moroseness, and sometimes lunacy; that the only vice it has power to check is thoughtlessness, and its only beneficial effect is that of forcing into activity, though not always into healthy activity, the faculty of serious reflection. This may be a just picture of a large class of religious men, but it is impossible in the nature of things that such effects should be produced by a pure personal devotion to Christ. We are to remember that nothing has been subjected to such multiform and grotesque perversion as Christianity. Certainly the direct love of Christ, as it was felt by its first followers, is a rare thing among modern Christians. His character has been so much obscured by scholasticism, as to have lost in a great measure its attractive power. The prevalent feeling towards him now among religious men is an awful fear of his supernatural greatness, and a disposition to obey his commands arising partly from dread of future punishment and hope of reward, and partly from a nobler feeling of loyalty, which, however, is inspired rather by his office than his person. Beyond this we may discern in them an uneasy conviction that he requires a more personal devotion, which leads to spasmodic efforts to kindle the feeling by means of violent raptures of panegyric and by repeating over and getting by rote the ardent expressions of those who really had it. That is wanting for the most part which Christ held to be all in all, spontaneous warmth, free and generous devotion. That the fruits of a Christianity so hollow should be poor and sickly is not surprising. But that Christ's method, when rightly applied, is really of mighty force may be shown by an argument which the severest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit. Compare the ancient with the modern world: "Look on this picture and on that." One broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet "holy." In other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who besides being virtuous in their actions were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a vicious thought with horror. Probably no one will deny that in Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the time of Christ where a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of God Himself. And if this be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 75: Chapter XIV of "Ecce Homo, a Survey of the Life and work of Jesus Christ," 1865.] [Footnote 76: Plato, Menexenus.--Author's note.] LOYALTY AND INSIGHT[77] JOSIAH ROYCE Upon an occasion like this, when the children, the servants, and the friends of this institution meet for their annual festival, there is one word that best expresses the spirit of the occasion. It is the word "loyalty,"--loyalty to your College, to its ideals, to its life, and to the unity and effectiveness of this life. And amongst the ideals that inspire the life of your College, and make that life effective and united, there is one which is prominent in all your minds, whatever your special studies, your practical aims, or your hopes. It is the ideal of furthering, in all your minds, what we may call insight,--the ideal of learning to see life as it is, to know the world as we men need to know it, and to guide our purposes as we ought to guide them. It is also the ideal of teaching to others the art of just such insight. These two words, then, "loyalty" and "insight," name, one of them, the spirit in which, upon such occasions as this, we all meet; the other, the ideal that determines the studies and the researches of any modern institution of learning. Upon each day of its year of work your College says to its children and to its servants and to its community: "Let us know, let us see, let us comprehend, let us guide life by wisdom, and in turn let us discover new wisdom for the sake of winning new life." But upon a day like the present one, the work of the year being laid aside, your College asks and receives your united expression of loyalty to its cause. Perhaps some of you may feel that for just this moment you have left behind, at least temporarily, the task of winning insight. You enjoy, for the hour, the fruits of toil. Study and research cease, you may say, for to-day, while the spirit of loyalty finds its own free expression and takes content in its holiday. I agree that the holidays and the working days have a different place in our lives. But it is my purpose in this address to say something about the connections between the spirit which rules this occasion--the spirit of loyalty--and the ideal by which the year's work has to be guided,--the ideal of furthering true insight. The loyalty that now fills your minds is merely one expression of a certain spirit which ought to pervade all our lives--not only in our studies, but in our homes, in our offices, in our political and civic life--not merely upon holidays, or upon other great occasions, but upon our working days; and most of all when our tasks seem commonplace and heavy. And, on the other hand, the insight which you seek to get whenever, in the academic world, you work in the laboratory or in the field, in the library or in the classroom or alone in your study, the insight that you try both to embody in your practical life and to enrich through your researches,--just this insight, I say, is best to be furthered by a right cultivation of the spirit of loyalty. I suppose that when I utter these words, you will easily give to them a certain general assent. But I want to devote this address to making just such words mean more to you than at first they may appear to mean. First, then, let me tell you what I myself mean by the term "loyalty." Then let me deal with my principal thesis, which is that the true spirit of loyalty is not merely a proper accompaniment of all serious work, but is an especially important source of a very deep insight into the meaning of life, and, as I personally believe, into the nature of the whole universe. Three sorts of persons, I have noticed, are fond of using the term "loyalty." These are quite different types of persons; or, in any case, they use the word upon very different occasions. But these very differences are to my mind important. The first type of those who love to use the term "loyalty" consists of those who employ it to express a certain glow of enthusiastic devotion, the type of the lovers, of the students when the athletic contests are near, of the partisans in the heat of a political contest, or of the friends of an institution upon a day like this. To such persons, or at least at such moments, loyalty is conceived as something brilliantly emotional, as a passion of devotion. The second class of those who are fond of the word "loyalty" are the warriors and their admirers. To such persons loyalty means a willingness to do dangerous service, to sacrifice life, to toil long and hard for the flag that one follows. But for a third type of those who employ the word, loyalty especially means steady, often unobtrusive, fidelity to more or less formal obligations, such as the business world and the workshop impose upon us. Such persons think of loyalty as, first of all, faithfulness in obeying the law of the land, or in executing the plans of one's official superiors, or in serving one's employer or one's client or one's chief, or one's fraternity or other social union. In this sense the loyal servant may be obscure and unemotional. But he is trustworthy. Now, a word which thus so forcibly appeals to the lovers who want to express their passionate devotion, and also to the soldiers who want to name that obstinate following of the flag which makes victory possible; a word which business men also sometimes use to characterize the quietly and industriously faithful employee who obeys orders, who betrays no secrets, and who regards the firm's interest as his own;--well, such a word, I think, is not as much ambiguous as deep in its meaning. For, after all, loyal emotions, loyal sacrifice of life, loyal steadiness in obscure service, are but various symptoms of a certain spirit which lies beneath all its various expressions. This spirit is a well-known one. All the higher life of society depends upon it. It may manifest itself as enthusiasm upon an occasion like this, or as contempt for death upon the battle field, or as quiet service when the toil of life is grim, or as the cool fidelity that pursues the daily routine of office or of workshop or of kitchen with a steady persistence and with a simple acceptance of traditional duties or of the day's toil. But the spirit thus manifested is not exhausted by any of its symptoms. The appearances of loyalty are manifold. Its meaning is one. And I myself venture to state what the true spirit of loyalty is by defining the term thus: By loyalty I mean the thorough-going, the voluntary, and the practical devotion of a self to a cause. And by a cause I mean something of the nature that the true lover has in mind when he is wisely devoted to his love; that the faithful member of a family serves when the family itself is the cause dear to him; that the member of a fraternity, or the child of a college, or the devoted professional man, or the patriot, or the martyr, or the faithful workman conceives when he thinks of that to which he gives his life. As all these illustrations suggest, the cause to which one can be loyal is never a mere collection of individuals; nor is it ever a mere abstract principle. This cause, whether in the church or the army or the workshop, in the home or in the friendship, is some sort of unity whereby many persons are joined in one common life. The cause to which a loyal man is devoted is of the nature of an institution, or of a home life, or of a fraternity, wherein two or more persons aim to become one; or of a religion, wherein the unity of the spirit is sought through the communion of the faithful. Loyalty respects individuals, but aims to bring them together into one common life. Its command to the loyal is: "Be 'one undivided soul of many a soul'". It recognizes that, when apart, individuals fail; but that when they try to unite their lives into one common higher selfhood, to live as if they were the expressions, the instruments, the organs of one ideally beautiful social group, they win the only possible fulfillment of the meaning of human existence. Through loyalty to such a cause, through devotion to an ideally united social group, and only through such loyalty, can the problems of human personality be solved. By nature, and apart from some cause to which we are loyal, each of us is but a mass of caprices, a chaos of distracting passions, a longing for happiness that is never fulfilled, a seeking for success which never attains its goal. Meanwhile, no merely customary morality ever adequately guides our lives. Mere social authority never meets our needs. But a cause, some unity of many lives in one, some call upon the individual to give himself over to the service of an idealized community--this gives sense to life. This, when we feel its presence, as we do upon this occasion, we love, as the lovers love the common life of friendship that is to make them one, or as the mothers delight in the life that is to unite themselves and their children in the family, or as the devout feel that through their communion in the life of their church they become one with the Divine Spirit. For such a cause we can make sacrifices, such as the soldier makes in following the flag. For what is the fortune of any detached self as compared with the one cause of the whole country? And just such a voluntary devotion to a cause can ennoble the routine of the humblest daily business, in the office, in the household, in the school, at the desk, or in the market place, if one only finds the cause that can hold his devotion--be this cause his business firm or his profession or his household or his country or his church, or all these at once. For all these causes have their value in this: that through the business firm, or the household, or the profession, or the spiritual community, the lives of many human selves are woven into one, so that our fortunes and interests are no longer conceived as detached and private, but as a giving of ourselves in order that the social group to which we are devoted should live its own united life. With this bare indication of what I mean by loyalty, I may now say that of late years I have attempted to show in detail, in various discussions of our topic, that the spirit of loyalty, rightly understood, and practically applied, furnishes an adequate solution for all the problems of the moral life. The whole moral law can be summed up in the two commandments: first, Be loyal; and secondly, So choose, so serve, and so unify the life causes to which you yourself are loyal that, through your choice, through your service, through your example, and through your dealings with all men, you may, as far as in you lies, help other people to be loyal to their own causes; may avoid cheating them of their opportunities for loyalty; may inspire them with their own best type of loyalty, and may so best serve the one great cause of the spread of loyalty among mankind. Or, if I may borrow and adapt for a worthy end Lincoln's immortal words, the moral law is this: Let us so live, so love, and so serve, that loyalty "of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," but shall prosper and abound. The scheme of life thus suggested is, I believe, adequate. I next want to tell what bearing the spirit of loyalty has upon insight. The insight that all of us most need and desire is an insight, first, into the business of life itself, and next into the nature and meaning of the real world in which we live. Our forefathers used to center all their views of life and of the world about their religion. Many of the leading minds of to-day center their modern insight about the results of science. In consequence, what I may call the general problems of insight, and the views of life and of the world which most of us get from our studies, have come of late to appear very different from the views and the problems which our own leading countrymen a century ago regarded as most important. The result is that the great problem of the philosophy of life to-day may be defined as the effort to see whether, and how, you can cling to a genuinely ideal and spiritual interpretation of your own nature and of your duty, while abandoning superstition, and while keeping in close touch with the results of modern knowledge about man and nature. Let me briefly indicate what I mean by this problem of a modern philosophy of life. From the modern point of view great stress has been laid upon the fact that man, as we know man, appears to be subject to the laws of the natural world. Modern knowledge makes these laws appear very far-reaching, very rigid, and very much of the type that we call mechanical. We have, therefore, most of us, learned not to expect miraculous interferences with the course of nature as aids in our human conflict with destiny. We have been taught to regard ourselves as the products of a long process of natural evolution. We have come to think that man's control over nature has to take the general form which our industrial arts illustrate, and which our recent contests with disease, such as the wars with tuberculosis and with yellow fever, exemplify. Man, we have been led to say, wins his way only by studying nature and by applying his carefully won empirical knowledge to the guidance of his arts. The business of life--so we have been moved to assert--must therefore be guided simply by an union of plain common sense with the scientific study of nature. The real world, we have been disposed to say, is, on the whole, so far as we can know it, a mechanism. Therefore the best ideal of life involves simply the more or less complete control of this mechanism for useful and humane ends. Such, I say, is one very commonly accepted result to which modern knowledge seems to have led men. The practical view of life and of its business which expresses this result has been, for many of us, twofold. First, we have been led to this well-known precept: If you want to live wisely, you must, at all events, avoid superstition. That is, you must not try to guide human life by dealing with such supernatural powers, good and evil, as the mythologies of the past used to view as the controlling forces of human destiny. You must take natural laws as you find them. You must believe about the real world simply what you can confirm by the verdict of human experience. You must put no false hopes either in magic arts or in useless appeals to the gods. You must, for instance, fight tuberculosis not by prayer, but by knowing the conditions that produce it and the natural processes that tend to destroy its germs. And so, in general, in order to live well and wisely you must be a naturalist and not a supernaturalist. Or in any case you must conform your common sense not to the imagination that in the past peopled the dream world of humanity with good and evil spirits, but to the carefully won insight that has shown us that our world is one where natural law reigns unyielding, defying equally our magic arts and our prayerful desires for divine aid. But secondly, side by side with this decidedly positive advice, many of us have been brought to accept a practical attitude towards the world which has seemed to us negative and discouraging. This second attitude may be expressed in the sad precept: Hope not to find this world in any universal sense a world of ideal values. Nature is indifferent to values. Values are human, and merely human. Man can indeed give to his own life much of what he calls value, if he uses his natural knowledge for human ends. But when he sets out upon this task, he ought to know that, however sweet and ideal human companionship may be as it exists among men, humanity as a whole must fight its battle with nature and with the universe substantially alone, comfortless except for the comforts that it wins precisely as it builds its houses; namely, by using the mechanisms of nature for its own purposes. The world happens, indeed, to give man some power to control natural conditions. But even this power is due to the very fact that man also is one of nature's products,--a product possessing a certain stability, a certain natural plasticity and docility, a limited range of natural initiative. As a rock may deflect a stream, so man, himself a natural mechanism, may turn the stream of nature's energies into paths that are temporarily useful for human purposes. But from the modern point of view the ancient plaint of the Book of Job remains true, both for the rock and for the man: "The waters wear away stones, And the hope of frail man thou destroyest." In the end, our relations to the universe thus seem to remain relations to an essentially foreign power, which cares for our ideals as the stormy sea cares for the boat, and as the bacteria care for the human organism upon which they prey. If we ourselves, as products of nature, are sufficiently strong mechanisms, we may be able to win, while life lasts, many ideal goods. But just so, if the boat is well enough built, it may weather one or another passing storm. If the body is well knit, it may long remain immune to disease. Yet in the end the boat and the human body fail. And in no case, so this view asserts, does the real world essentially care for or help or encourage our ideals. Our ideals are as foreign to the real natural world as the interests of the ship's company are to the ocean that may tolerate, but also may drown them. Be free from superstition, then; and next: avoid false hopes. Such are the two theses that seem to embody for many minds the essentially modern view of things and the essential result for the philosophy of life of what we have now learned. But hereupon the question arises whether this is indeed the last word of insight; whether this outcome of modern knowledge does indeed tell the whole story of our relations to the real world. That this modern view has its own share of deeper truth we all recognize. But is this the whole truth? Have we no access whatever to any other aspect of reality than the one which this naturalistic view emphasizes? And again, the question still arises: Is there any place left for a religion that can be free from superstition, that can accept just so much of the foregoing modern results as are indeed established, and that can yet supplement them by an insight which may show the universe to be, after all, something more than a mechanism? In sum, are we merely stones that deflect the stream for a while, until the waters wear them away? Or are there spiritual hopes of humanity which the mechanism of nature cannot destroy? Is the philosophy of life capable of giving us something more than a naturalism--humanized merely by the thought that man, being, after all, a well-knit and plastic mechanism, can for a time mold nature to his ends? So much for the great problem of modern insight. Let us turn to consider the relation of the spirit of loyalty to this problem. What light can a study of the spirit of loyalty, as I just defined loyalty--what light, I say, can such a study throw upon this problem? Very little--so some of you may say; for any discussion of the spirit of loyalty can tell us nothing to make nature's mechanism more comprehensible. One who favors loyalty as a way of solving life's problems tells us about a certain ideal of human life,--an ideal which, as I have asserted, does tend to solve our personal moral problems precisely in so far as we are able to express this ideal in our practical lives. In order to be loyal you indeed have no need to believe in any of the well-known miracles of popular tradition. And equally, in order to be loyal, you have no need, first, to decide whether nature is or is not a mechanism; or whether the modern view of reality, as just summarized, is or is not adequate; or whether the gods exist; or whether man is or is not one of nature's products and temporarily well-knit and plastic machines. Our doctrine of loyalty is founded not upon a decision about nature's supposed mechanism, but upon a study of man's own inner and deeper needs. It is a doctrine about the plan and the business of human life. It seems, therefore, to be neutral as to every so-called conflict between science and religion. But now, in answer to these remarks, I have to show that the doctrine of loyalty, once rightly understood, has yet a further application. It is a doctrine that, when more fully interpreted, helps us toward a genuine insight, not only into the plan of life, but into the nature of things. The philosophy of loyalty has nothing to say against precisely so much of naturalism as is indeed an established result of common sense and of the scientific study of nature. The theory of the loyal life involves nothing superstitious--no trust in magic, no leaning upon the intervention of such spiritual agencies as the old mythologies conceived. And yet, as I shall insist, nobody can understand and practise the loyal spirit without tending thereby to get a true view of the nature of things, a genuine touch with reality, which cannot be gained without seeing that, however much of a mechanism nature may appear to be, the real world is something much more than a mechanism, and much more significant than are the waters which wear away stones. Let me indicate what I mean by repeating in brief my doctrine of loyalty--with reference to the spirit which it involves, and with reference to the view of the realities of human life which it inevitably includes. Whoever is loyal has found some cause, I have said,--a cause to which, by his inner interests, he is indeed attracted so that the cause is fascinating to his sentiments. But the cause is also one to which the loyal man is meanwhile practically and voluntarily devoted, so that his loyalty is no mere glow of enthusiasm, but is an affair of his deeds as well as of his emotions. Loyalty I therefore defined as the thorough-going and practical devotion of a self to a cause. Why loyalty is a duty; how loyalty is possible for every normal human being; how it can appear early in youth, and then grow though life; how it can be at once faithful to its own, and yet can constantly enlarge its scope; how it can become universally human in its interests without losing its concreteness, and without failing to keep in touch with the personal affections and the private concerns of the loyal person; how loyalty is a virtue for all men, however humble and however exalted they may be; how the loyal service of the tasks of a single possibly narrow life can be viewed as a service of the cause of universal loyalty, and so of the interests of all humanity; how all special duties of life can be stated in terms of a duly generalized spirit of loyalty; and how moral conflicts can be solved, and moral divisions made, in the light of the principle of loyalty; all this I have asserted, although here is indeed no time for adequate discussion. But hereupon I want to concentrate our whole attention, not upon the consequences and applications of the doctrine of loyalty, but upon the most central characteristic of the loyal spirit. This central characteristic of the loyal spirit consists in the fact that it conceives and values its cause as a reality, as an object that has a being of its own; while the type of reality which belongs to a cause is different from the type of reality which we ascribe either to a thing in the physical world or to a law of nature. A cause is never a mere mechanism. It is an essentially spiritual reality. If the loyal human being is right in the account which he gives of his cause, then the real world contains beings which are not mere natural objects, and is subject to laws which, without in the least running counter to the laws of outer nature, are the laws of an essentially spiritual realm, whose type of being is superior to that possessed by the order of nature which our industrial arts use. Either, then, loyalty is altogether a service of myths, or else the causes which the loyal serve belong to a realm of real being which is above the level of mere natural fact and natural law. In the latter case the real world is not indifferent to our human search for values. The modern naturalistic and mechanical views of reality are not, indeed, false within their own proper range, but they are inadequate to tell us the whole truth. And reality contains, further, and is characterized by, an essentially spiritual order of being. I have been speaking to persons who, as I have trusted, well know, so far as they have yet had time to learn the lessons of life, something of what loyalty means. Come, then, let us consider what is the sort of object that you have present to your mind when you are loyal to a cause. If your cause is a reality, what kind of a being is it? If causes are realities, then in what sort of a real world do you live? I have already indicated that, while loyalty always includes personal affections, while you can never be loyal to what you take to be a merely abstract principle, nevertheless, it is equally true that you can never be genuinely loyal merely to an individual human being, taken just as this detached creature. You can, indeed, love your friend, viewed just as this individual. But love for an individual is so far just a fondness for a fascinating human presence, and is essentially capricious, whether it lasts or is transient. You can be, and should be, loyal to your friendship, to the union of yourself and your friend, to that ideal comradeship which is neither of you alone, and which is not the mere doubleness that consists of you and your friend taken as two detached beings who happen to find one another's presence agreeable. Loyalty to a friendship involves your willingness actively and practically to create and maintain a life which is to be the united life of yourself and your friend--not the life of your friend alone, nor the life of yourself and your friend as you exist apart, but the common life, the life above and inclusive of your distinctions, the one life that you are to live as friends. To the tie, to the unity, to the common life, to the union of friends, you can be loyal. Without such loyalty friendship consists only of its routine of more or less attractive private sentiments and mere meetings, each one of which is one more chance experience, heaped together with other chance experiences. But with such true loyalty your friendship becomes, at least in ideal, a new life--a life that neither of you could have alone; a life that is not a mere round of separate private amusements, but that belongs to a new type of dual yet unified personality. Nor are you loyal to your friendship merely as to an abstraction. You are loyal to it as to the common better self of both of you, a self that lives its own real life. Either such a loyalty to your friendship is a belief in myths, or else such a type of higher and unified dual personality actually possesses a reality of its own,--a reality that you cannot adequately describe by reporting, as to the taker of a census, that you and your friend are two creatures, with two distinct cases of a certain sort of fondness to be noted down, and with each a separate life into which, as an incident, some such fondness enters. No; were a census of true friendship possible, the census taker should be required to report: Here are indeed two friends; but here is also the ideal and yet, in some higher sense, real life of their united personality present,--a life which belongs to neither of them alone, and which also does not exist merely as a parcel of fragments, partly in one, partly in the other of them. It is the life of their common personality. It is a new spiritual person on a higher level. Or again, you are loyal to some such union as a family or a fraternity represents. Or you are loyal to your class, your college, your community, your country, your church. In all these cases, with endless variety in the details, your loyalty has for its object each time, not merely a group of detached personalities, but some ideally significant common life; an union of many in one; a community which also has the value of a person, and which, nevertheless, cannot be found distributed about in a collection of fragments found inside the detached lives of the individual members of the family, the club, the class, the college, the country, the church. If this common life to which you are loyal is a reality, then the real human world does not consist of separate creatures alone, of the mere persons who flock in the streets and who live in the different houses. The human world, if the loyal are right, contains personality that is not merely shut up within the skin, now of this, now of that, human creature. It contains personalities that no organism confines within its bounds; that no single life, that no crowd of detached lives, comprises. Yet this higher sort of common personality, if the loyal are right, is as real as we separate creatures are real. It is no abstraction. It lives. It loves, and we love it. We enter into it. It is ours, and we belong to it. It works through us, the fellow servants of the common cause. Yet we get our worth through it,--the goal of our whole moral endeavor. For those who are not merely loyal, but also enlightened, loyalty, never losing the definiteness and the concreteness of its devotion to some near and directly fascinating cause, sees itself to be in actual spiritual unity with the common cause of all the loyal, whoever they are. The great cause for all the loyal is in reality the cause of the spread and the furtherance of the cause of the universal loyalty of all mankind: a cause which nobody can serve except by choosing his own nearer and more appreciated cause--the private cause which is directly his own--his family, his community, his friendship, his calling, and the calling of those who serve with him. Yet such personal service--your special life cause, your task, your vocation--is your way of furthering the ends of universal humanity. And if you are enlightened, you know this fact. Through your loyalty you, then, know yourself to be kin to all the loyal. You hereupon conceive the loyal as one brotherhood, one invisible church for which and in which you live. The spirit dwells in this invisible church,--the holy spirit that wills the unity of all in fidelity and in service. Hidden from you by all the natural estrangements of the present life, this common life of all the loyal, this cause which is the one cause of all the loyal, is that for which you live. In spirit you are really sundered from none of those who themselves live in the spirit. All this, I say, is what it is the faith of all the loyal to regard as the real life in which we live and move and have our being, precisely in so far as men come to understand what loyalty is. Thus, then, in general, to be loyal is to believe that there are real causes. And to be universally loyal is to believe that the one cause of loyalty itself, the invisible church of all the loyal, is a reality; something as real as we are. But causes are never detached human beings; nor are causes ever mere crowds, heaps, collections, aggregations of human beings. Causes are at once personal (if by person you mean the ordinary human individual in his natural character) and _super_-personal. Persons they are, because only where persons are found can causes be defined. Super-personal they are, because no mere individual human creature, and no mere pairs or groups or throngs of human beings, can ever constitute unified causes. You cannot be loyal to a crowd as a crowd. A crowd can shout, as at a game or a political convention. But only some sort of organized unity of social life can either do the work of an unit or hold the effective loyalty of the enlightened worker who does not merely shout with the throng. And so when you are really loyal to your country, your country does not mean to you merely the crowd, the mass of your separate fellow citizens. Still less does it mean the mere organs, or the separate servants of the country,--the custom house, the War Department, the Speaker of the House, or any other office or official. When you sing "My country, 'tis of thee," you do not mean, "My post-office, 'tis of thee," nor yet, "My fellow citizens, 'tis of you, just as the creatures who crowd the street and who overfill the railway cars," that I sing. If the poet continues in his own song to celebrate the land, the "rocks and rills," the "woods and templed hills," he is still speaking only of symbols. What he means is the country as an invisible but, in his opinion, perfectly real spiritual unity. General Nogi, in a recent Japanese publication about Bushido, expressed his own national ideal beautifully in the words: "Here the sovereign and the people are of one family and have together endured the joys and sorrows of thousands of years." It is that sort of being whereof one speaks when one expresses true loyalty to the country. The country is the spiritual entity that is none of us and all of us--none of us because it is our unity; all of us because in it we all find our patriotic unity. Such, then, is the idea that the loyal have of the real nature of the causes which they serve. I repeat, If the loyal are right, then the real world contains other beings than mechanisms and individual human and animal minds. It contains spiritual unities which are as real as we are, but which certainly do not belong to the realm of a mere nature mechanism. Does not all this put the problems of our philosophy of life in a new light? But I have no doubt that you may at once reply: All this speech about causes is after all merely more or less pleasing metaphor. As a fact, human beings are just individual natural creatures. They throng and struggle for existence, and love and hate and enjoy and sorrow and die. These causes are, after all, mere dreams, or at best entities as we have just described. The friends like to talk of being one; but there are always two or more of them, and the unity is a pretty phrase. The country is, in the concrete, the collection of the countrymen, with names, formulas, songs, and so on, attached, by way of poetical license or of convenient abbreviation or of pretty fable. The poet really meant simply that he was fond of the landscape, and was not wholly averse to a good many of his countrymen, and was in any case fond of a good song. Loyalty, like the rest of human life, is an illusion. Nature is real. The unity of the spirit is a fancy. This, I say, may be your objection. But herewith we indeed stand in the presence of a certain very deep philosophical problem concerning the true definition of what we mean by reality. Into this problem I have neither time nor wish to enter just now. But upon one matter I must, nevertheless, stoutly insist. It is a matter so simple, so significant, so neglected, that I at once need and fear to mention it to you,--need to mention it, because it puts our philosophy into a position that quite transforms the significance of that whole modern view of nature upon which I have been dwelling since the outset of this lecture; fear to mention it, because the fact that it is so commonly neglected shows how hard to be understood it has proved. That disheartening view of the foreign and mechanical nature of the real world which our sciences and our industrial arts have impressed upon the minds of so many of us; that contempt for superstition; that denial of the supernatural, which seems to the typical modern man the beginning of wisdom;--to what is all this view of reality due? To the results, and, as I believe, to the really important results, of the modern study of natural science. But what is the study of natural science? Practically considered, viewed as one of the great moral activities of mankind, _the study of science is a very beautiful and humane expression of a certain exalted form of loyalty_. Science is, practically considered, the outcome of the absolutely devoted labors of countless seekers for natural truth. But how do we human beings get at what we call natural truth? By observation--so men say--and by experience. But by whose experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the common, experience of many individuals. The possibility of science rests upon the fact that human experience may be progressively treated so as to become more and more an unity. The detached individual records the transit of a star, observes a precipitate in a test tube, stains a preparation and examines it under a microscope, collects in the field, takes notes in a hospital--and loyally contributes his little fragment of a report to the ideally unified and constantly growing totality called scientific human experience. In doing this he employs his memory, and so conceives his own personal life as an unity. But equally he aims--and herein consists his scientific loyalty--to bring his personal experience into unity with the whole course of human experience in so far as it bears upon his own science. The collection of mere data is never enough. It is in the unity of their interpretation that the achievements of science lie. This unity is conceived in the form of scientific theories; is verified by the comparative and critical conduct of experiments. But in all such work how manifold are the presuppositions which we make when we attempt such unification! Here is no place to enumerate these presuppositions. Some of them you find discussed in the textbooks of the logic of science. Some of them are instinctive, and almost never get discussed at all. But it is here enough to say that we all presuppose _that human experience has, or can by the loyal efforts of truth seekers be made to possess, a real unity, superior in its nature and significance to any detached observer's experience, more genuinely real than is the mere collection of the experiences of any set of detached observers, however large_. The student of natural science is loyal to the cause of the enlargement of this organized and criticized realm of the common human experience. Unless this unity of human experience is a genuine reality, unless all the workers are living a really common life, unless each man is, potentially at least, in a live spiritual unity with his fellows, science itself is a mere metaphor, its truth is an illusion, its results are myths. For science is conceived as true only by conceiving the experiences of countless observers as the sharing of a common realm of experience. If, as we all believe, the natural sciences do throw a real, if indeed an inadequate, light upon the nature of things, then they do so because no one man's experience is disconnected from the real whole of human experience. They do so because the cause to which the loyal study of science is devoted, the cause of the enlargement of human experience, is a cause that has a supernatural, or, as Professor Münsterberg loves to say, an over-individual, type of reality. Mankind is not a mere collection of detached individuals, or man could possess no knowledge of any unity of scientific truth. If men are really only many, and if they have no such unity of conscious experience as loyalty everywhere presupposes, then the cause of science also is a vain illusion, and we have no unified knowledge of nature, only various private fancies about nature. If we know, however ill, nature's mechanism, we do so because human experience is not merely a collection of detached observations, but forms an actual spiritual unity, whose type is not that of a mechanism, whose connections are ideally significant, whose constitution is essentially that which the ideal of unified truth requires. So, then, I insist, the dilemma is upon our hands. Either the sciences constitute a progressive, if imperfect, insight into real truth--and then the cause of the unity of human experience is a real cause that really can be served exactly as the lover means to be loyal to his friendship and the patriot to his country; and then also human life really possesses such unity as the loyal presuppose--or else none of this is so. But then loyalty and science alike deal with metaphors and with myths. In the first case the spiritual unity of the life that we lead is essentially vindicated. Causes such as the loyal serve are real. The cause of science also is real. But in that case an essentially spiritual realm, that of the rational unity of human experience, is real; and possesses a grade both of reality and of worth which is superior to the grade of reality that the phenomena of nature's mechanism exhibit to us. In the other case the sciences whose results are supposed to be discouraging and unspiritual vanish, with all their facts, into the realm of fable, together with the world that all the loyal, including the faithful followers of the sciences, believe to be real. I have here no time to discuss the paradoxes of a totally skeptical philosophy. It is enough to say that such a total skepticism is, indeed, self-refuting. The only rational view of life depends upon maintaining that what the loyal always regard as a reality, namely, their cause, is, indeed, despite all special illusions of this or of that form of imperfect loyalty, essentially a type of reality which rationally survives all criticisms and underlies all doubts. "They reckon ill who leave me out; When me thy fly, I am the wings." This is what the genuine object of loyalty, the unity of the spiritual life, always says to us when we examine it in the right spirit. But the one source of our deepest insight into this unity of the spirit which underlies all the varieties, and which leads us upward to itself past all the sunderings and doubts of existence, is the loyal spirit itself. Loyalty asserts: "My cause is real. I know that my cause liveth." But the cause, however imperfectly interpreted, is always some sort of unity of the spiritual life in which we learn to share whenever we begin to be loyal. The more we grow in loyalty and in insight into the meaning of our loyalty, the more we learn to think of some vast range of the unity of spiritual life as the reality to which all the other realities accessible to us are in one way or another subordinate, so that they express this unity, and show more or less what it means. I believe that a sound critical philosophy justifies the view that the loyal, precisely in so far as they view their cause as real, as a personal, but also as an over-individual, realm of genuine spiritual life, are comprehending, as far as they go, the deepest nature of things. Religion, in its higher sense, always involves a practical relation to a spiritual world which, in its significance, in its inclusiveness, in its unity, and in its close and comforting touch with our most intense personal concerns, fulfils in a supreme degree the requirements which loyalty makes when it seeks for a worthy cause. One may have a true religion without knowing the reason why it is true. One may also have false religious beliefs. But in any case the affiliation of the spirit of the higher religion with the spirit of loyalty has been manifest, I hope, from the outset of this discussion of loyalty. By religious insight one may very properly mean any significant and true view of an object of religious devotion which can be obtained by any reasonable means. In speaking of loyalty and insight I have also given an indication of that source of religious insight which I believe to be, after all, the surest, the most accessible, the most universal, and, in its deepest essence, the most rational. The problem of the modern philosophy of life is, we have said, the problem of keeping the spirit of religion, without falling a prey to superstition. At the outset of this lecture I told briefly why, in the modern world, we aim to avoid superstition. The true reason for this aim you now see better than at first I could state that reason. We have learned, and wisely learned, that the great cause of the study of nature by scientific methods is one of the principal special causes to which man can be devoted; for nothing serves more than the pursuit of the sciences serves to bind into unity the actual work of human civilization. To this cause of scientific study we have all learned to be, according to our lights, loyal. But the study of science makes us averse to the belief in magic arts, in supernatural interferences, in special providences. The scientific spirit turns from the legends and the superstitions that in the past have sundered men, have inflamed the religious wars, have filled the realm of imagination with good and evil spirits. Turns from these--to what? To a belief in a merely mechanical reality? To a doctrine that the real world is foreign to our ideals? To an assurance that life is vain? No; so to view the mission of the study of science is to view that mission falsely. The one great lesson of the triumph of science is the lesson of the vast significance of loyalty to the cause of science. And this loyalty depends upon acknowledging the reality of a common, a rational, a significant unity of human experience, a genuine cause which men can serve. When the sciences teach us to get rid of superstition, they do this by virtue of a loyalty to the pursuit of truth which is, as a fact, loyalty to the cause of the spiritual unity of mankind: an unity which the students of science conceive in terms of an unity of our human experience of nature, but which, after all, they more or less unconsciously interpret just as all the other loyal souls interpret their causes; namely, as a genuine living reality, a life superior in type to the individual lives which we lead--worthy of devoted service, significant, and not merely an incidental play of a natural mechanism. This unity of human experience reveals to us nature's mechanisms, but is itself no part of the mechanism which it observes. If, now, we do as our general philosophy of loyalty would require: if we take all our loyalties, in whatever forms they may appear, as more or less enlightened but always practical revelations that there is an unity of spiritual life which is above our present natural level, which is worthy of our devotion, which can give sense to life, and which consists of facts that are just as genuinely real as are the facts and the laws of outer nature--well, can we not thus see our way towards a religious insight which is free from superstition, which is indifferent to magic and to miracle, which accepts all the laws of nature just in so far as they are indeed known, but which nevertheless stoutly insists: "This world is no mere mechanism; it is full of a spiritual unity that transcends mere nature?" I believe that we can do this. I believe that what I have merely hinted to you is capable of a much richer development than I have here given to these thoughts. I believe, in brief, that in our loyalties we find our best sources of a genuinely religious insight. Men have often said, "The true source of religious insight is revelation; for these matters are above the powers of human reason." Now, I am not here to discuss or to criticize anybody's type of revelation. But this I know, and this the believers in various supposed revelations have often admitted--that unless the aid of some interior spiritual insight comes to be added to the merely external revelation, one can be left in doubt by all possible signs and wonders whereby the revelation undertakes to give us convincing external evidence. Religious faith, indeed, relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from that which is within us. And any faith which has indeed a worthy religious object is either merely a mystic ecstasy, which must then be judged, if at all, only by its fruits, or else it is a loyalty, which never exists without seeking to bear fruit in works. Now my thesis is that loyalty is essentially adoration with service, and that there is no true adoration without practical loyalty. If I am right, all of the loyal are grasping in their own ways, and according to their lights, some form and degree of religious truth. They have won religious insight; for they view something, at least, of the genuine spiritual world in its real unity, and they devote themselves to that unity, to its enlargement and enrichment. And therefore they approach more and more to the comprehension of that true spiritual life whereof, as I suppose, the real world essentially consists. Therefore I find in the growth of the spirit of loyalty which normally belongs to any loyal life the deepset source of a genuinely significant religious insight which belongs to just that individual in just his stage of development. In brief: Be loyal; grow in loyalty. Therein lies the source of a religious insight free from superstition. Therein also lies the solution of the problems of the philosophy of life. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 77: Commencement address delivered at Simmons College, Boston. Published in "William James and Other Essays," copyright, 1911. Printed here by permission of The Macmillan Company.] POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE[78] A.C. BRADLEY The words "Poetry for poetry's sake" recall the famous phrase "Art for Art." It is far from my purpose to examine the possible meanings of that phrase, or all the questions it involves. I propose to state briefly what I understand by "Poetry for poetry's sake," and then, after guarding against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to consider more fully a single problem connected with it. And I must premise, without attempting to justify them, certain explanations. We are to consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flaws which in most poems accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea of poetry the metrical form, and not to regard this as a mere accident or a mere vehicle. And, finally, poetry being poems, we are to think of a poem as it actually exists; and, without aiming here at accuracy, we may say that an actual poem is the succession of experiences--sounds, images, thoughts, emotions--through which we pass when we are reading as poetically as we can. Of course this imaginative experience--if I may use the phrase for brevity--differs with every reader and every time of reading: a poem exists in innumerable degrees. But that insurmountable fact lies in the nature of things and does not concern us now. What then does the formula "Poetry for poetry's sake" tell us about this experience? It says, as I understand it, these things. First, this experience is an end in itself, is worth having on its own account, has an intrinsic value. Next, its _poetic_ value is this intrinsic worth alone. Poetry may have also an ulterior value as a means to culture or religion; because it conveys instruction, or softens the passions, or furthers a good cause; because it brings the poet fame or money or a quiet conscience. So much the better: let it be valued for these reasons too. But its ulterior worth neither is nor can directly determine its poetic worth as a satisfying imaginative experience; and this is to be judged entirely from within. And to these two positions the formula would add, though not of necessity, a third. The consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet in the act of composing or by the reader in the act of experiencing, tends to lower poetic value. It does so because it tends to change the nature of poetry by taking it out of its own atmosphere. For its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other world of reality. Of the more serious misapprehensions to which these statements may give rise I will glance only at one or two. The offensive consequences often drawn from the formula "Art for Art" will be found to attach not to the doctrine that Art is an end in itself, but to the doctrine that Art is the whole or supreme end of human life. And as this latter doctrine, which seems to me absurd, is in any case quite different from the former, its consequences fall outside my subject. The formula "Poetry is an end in itself" has nothing to say on the various questions of moral judgment which arise from the fact that poetry has its place in a many-sided life. For anything it says, the intrinsic value of poetry might be so small, and its ulterior effects so mischievous, that it had better not exist. The formula only tells us that we must not place in antithesis poetry and human good, for poetry is one kind of human good; and that we must not determine the intrinsic value of this kind of good by direct reference to another. If we do, we shall find ourselves maintaining what we did not expect. If poetic value lies in the stimulation of religious feelings, _Lead kindly Light_ is no better poem than many a tasteless version of a Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotism, why is _Scots, wha hae_ superior to _We don't want to fight?_ if in the mitigation of the passions, the Odes of Sappho will win but little praise: if in instruction, Armstrong's _Art of preserving Health_ should win much. Again, our formula may be accused of cutting poetry away from its connection with life. And this accusation raises so huge a problem that I must ask leave to be dogmatic as well as brief. There is plenty of connection between life and poetry, but it is, so to say, a connection underground. The two may be called different forms of the same thing: one of them having (in the usual sense) reality, but seldom fully satisfying imagination; while the other offers something which satisfies imagination but has not full "reality." They are parallel developments which nowhere meet, or, if I may use loosely a word which will be serviceable later, they are analogues. Hence we understand one by help of the other, and even, in a sense, care for one because of the other; but hence also, poetry neither is life, nor, strictly speaking, a copy of it. They differ not only because one has more mass and the other a more perfect shape, but because they have different _kinds_ of existence. The one touches us as beings occupying a given position in space and time, and having feelings, desires, and purposes due to that position: it appeals to imagination, but appeals to much besides. What meets us in poetry has not a position in the same series of time and space, or, if it has or had such a position, it is taken apart from much that belonged to it there; and therefore it makes no direct appeal to those feelings, desires, and purposes, but speaks only to contemplative imagination--imagination the reverse of empty or emotionless, imagination saturated with the results of "real" experience, but still contemplative. Thus, no doubt, one main reason why poetry has poetic value for us is that it presents to us in its own way something which we meet in another form in nature or life; and yet the test of its poetic value for us lies simply in the question whether it satisfies our imagination; the rest of us, our knowledge or conscience, for example, judging it only so far as they appear transmuted in our imagination. So also Shakespeare's knowledge or his moral insight, Milton's greatness of soul, Shelley's "hate of hate" and "love of love", and that desire to help men or make them happier which may have influenced a poet in hours of meditation--all these have, as such, no poetical worth: they have that worth only when, passing through the unity of the poet's being, they reappear as qualities of imagination, and then are indeed mighty powers in the world of poetry. I come to a third misapprehension, and so to my main subject. This formula, it is said, empties poetry of its meaning: it is really a doctrine of form for form's sake. "It is of no consequence what a poet says, so long as he says the thing well. The _what_ is poetically indifferent: it is the _how_ that counts. Matter, subject, content, substance, determines nothing; there is no subject with which poetry may not deal: the form, the treatment, is everything. Nay, more: not only is the matter indifferent, but it is the secret of Art to 'eradicate the matter by means of the form,'"--phrases and statements like these meet us everywhere in current criticism of literature and the other arts. They are the stock-in-trade of writers who understand of them little more than the fact that somehow or other they are not "bourgeois." But we find them also seriously used by writers whom we must respect, whether they are anonymous or not; something like one or another of them might be quoted, for example, from Professor Saintsbury, the late R.A.M. Stevenson, Schiller, Goethe himself; and they are the watchwords of a school in the one country where Aesthetics has flourished. They come, as a rule, from men who either practise one of the arts, or, from study of it, are interested in its methods. The general reader--a being so general that I may say what I will of him--is outraged by them. He feels that he is being robbed of almost all that he cares for in a work of art. "You are asking me," he says, "to look at the Dresden Madonna as if it were a Persian rug. You are telling me that the poetic value of _Hamlet_ lies solely in its style and versification, and that my interest in the man and his fate is only an intellectual or moral interest. You allege that, if I want to enjoy the poetry of _Crossing the Bar_, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, but must consider solely his way of saying it. But in that case I can care no more for a poem than I do for a set of nonsense verses; and I do not believe that the authors of _Hamlet_ and _Crossing the Bar_ regarded their poems thus." These antitheses of subject, matter, substance on the one side, form, treatment, handling on the other, are the field through which I especially want, in this lecture, to indicate a way. It is a field of battle; and the battle is waged for no trivial cause; but the cries of the combatants are terribly ambiguous. Those phrases of the so-called formalist may each mean five or six different things. Taken in one sense they seem to me chiefly true; taken as the general reader not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me false, and mischievous. It would be absurd to pretend that I can end in a few minutes a controversy which concerns the ultimate nature of Art, and leads perhaps to problems not yet soluble; but we can at least draw some plain distinctions which, in this controversy, are too often confused. In the first place, then, let us take "subject" in one particular sense; let us understand by it that which we have in view when, looking at the title of an unread poem, we say that the poet has chosen this or that for his subject. The subject in this sense, so far as I can discover, is generally something real or imaginary, as it exists in the minds of fairly cultivated people. The subject of _Paradise Lost_ would be the story of the Fall as that story exists in the general imagination of a Bible-reading people. The subject of Shelley's stanzas _To a Skylark_ would be the ideas which arise in the mind of an educated person when, without knowing the poem, he hears the word "skylark." If the title of a poem conveys little or nothing to us, the "subject" appears to be either what we should gather by investigating the title in a dictionary or other book of the kind, or else such a brief suggestion as might be offered by a person who had read the poem, and who said, for example, that the subject of _The Ancient Mariner_ was a sailor who killed an albatross and suffered for his deed. Now the subject, in this sense (and I intend to use the word in no other), is not, as such, inside the poem, but outside it. The contents of the stanzas _To a Skylark_ are not the ideas suggested by the word "skylark" to the average man; they belong to Shelley just as much as the language does. The subject, therefore, is not the matter _of_ the poem at all; and its opposite is not the _form_ of the poem, but the whole poem. The subject is one thing; the poem, matter and form alike, another thing. This being so, it is surely obvious that the poetic value cannot lie in that subject, but lies entirely in its opposite, the poem. How can the subject determine the value when on one and the same subject poems may be written of all degrees of merit and demerit; or when a perfect poem may be composed on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if Macaulay may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem on a subject so stupendous as the omnipresence of the Deity? The "formalist" is here perfectly right. Nor is he insisting on something unimportant. He is fighting against our tendency to take the work of art as a mere copy or reminder of something already in our heads, or at the best as a suggestion of some idea as little removed as possible from the familiar. The sightseer who promenades a picture-gallery, remarking that this portrait is so like his cousin, or that landscape the very image of his birthplace, or who, after satisfying himself that one picture is about Elijah, passes on rejoicing to discover the subject, and nothing but the subject, of the next--what is he but an extreme example of this tendency? Well, but the very same tendency vitiates much of our criticism, much criticism of Shakespeare, for example, which, with all its cleverness and partial truth, still shows that the critic never passed from his own mind into Shakespeare's; and it may be traced even in so fine a critic as Coleridge, as when he dwarfs the sublime struggle of Hamlet into the image of his own unhappy weakness. Hazlitt by no means escaped its influence. Only the third of that great trio, Lamb, appears almost always to have rendered the conception of the composer. Again, it is surely true that we cannot determine beforehand what subjects are fit for Art, or name any subject on which a good poem might not possibly be written. To divide subjects into two groups, the beautiful or elevating, and the ugly or vicious, and to judge poems according as their subjects belong to one of these groups or the other, is to fall into the same pit, to confuse with our pre-conceptions the meaning of the poet. What the thing is in the poem he is to be judged by, not by the thing as it was before he touched it; and how can we venture to say beforehand that he cannot make a true poem out of something which to us was merely alluring or dull or revolting? The question whether, having done so, he ought to publish his poem; whether the thing in the poet's work will not be still confused by the incompetent Puritan or the incompetent sensualist with the thing in _his_ mind, does not touch this point; it is a further question, one of ethics, not of art. No doubt the upholders of "Art for art's sake" will generally be in favour of the courageous course, of refusing to sacrifice the better or stronger part of the public to the weaker or worse; but their maxim in no way binds them to this view. Rossetti suppressed one of the best of his sonnets, a sonnet chosen for admiration by Tennyson, himself extremely sensitive about the moral effect of poetry; suppressed it, I believe, because it was called fleshly. One may regret Rossetti's judgment and at the same time respect his scrupulousness; but in any case he judged in his capacity of citizen, not in his capacity of artist. So far then the "formalist" appears to be right. But he goes too far, I think, if he maintains that the subject is indifferent and that all subjects are the same to poetry. And he does not prove his point by observing that a good poem might be written on a pin's head, and a bad one on the Fall of Man. That truth shows that the subject _settles_ nothing, but not that it counts for nothing. The Fall of Man is really a more favourable subject than a pin's head. The Fall of Man, that is to say, offers opportunities of poetic effects wider in range and more penetrating in appeal. And the fact is that such a subject, as it exists in the general imagination, has some aesthetic value before the poet touches it. It is, as you may choose to call it, an inchoate poem or the débris of a poem. It is not an abstract idea or a bare isolated fact, but an assemblage of figures, scenes, actions, and events, which already appeal to emotional imagination; and it is already in some degree organized and formed. In spite of this a bad poet would make a bad poem on it; but then we should say he was unworthy of the subject. And we should not say this if he wrote a bad poem on a pin's head. Conversely, a good poem on a pin's head would almost certainly transform its subject far more than a good poem on the Fall of Man. It might revolutionize its subject so completely that we should say, "The subject may be a pin's head, but the substance of the poem has very little to do with it." This brings us to another and a different antithesis. Those figures, scenes, events, that form part of the subject called the Fall of Man, are not the substance of Paradise Lost; but in Paradise Lost there are figures, scenes, and events resembling them in some degree. These, with much more of the same kind, may be described as its substance, and may then be contrasted with the measured language of the poem, which will be called its form. Subject is the opposite not of form but of the whole poem. Substance is within the poem, and its opposite, form, is also within the poem. I am not criticizing this antithesis at present, but evidently it is quite different from the other. It is practically the distinction used in the old-fashioned criticism of epic and drama, and it flows down, not unsullied, from Aristotle. Addison, for example, in examining _Paradise Lost_ considers in order the fable, the characters, and the sentiments; these will be the substance: then he considers the language, that is, the style and numbers; this will be the form. In like manner, the substance or meaning of a lyric may be distinguished from the form. Now I believe it will be found that a large part of the controversy we are dealing with arises from a confusion between these two distinctions of substance and form, and of subject and poem. The extreme formalist lays his whole weight on the form because he thinks its opposite is the mere subject. The general reader is angry, but makes the same mistake, and gives to the subject praises that rightly belong to the substance. I will read an example of what I mean. I can only explain the following words of a good critic by supposing that for the moment he has fallen into this confusion: "The mere matter of all poetry--to wit, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men--being unalterable, it follows that the difference between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what not, to this invariable material." What has become here of the substance of _Paradise Lost_--the story, scenery, characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They have vanished clean away. Nothing is left but the form on one side, and on the other not even the subject, but a supposed invariable material, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men. Is it surprising that the whole value should then be found in the form? So far we have assumed that this antithesis of substance and form is valid, and that it always has one meaning. In reality it has several, but we will leave it in its present shape, and pass to the question of its validity. And this question we are compelled to raise, because we have to deal with the two contentions that the poetic value lies wholly or mainly in the substance, and that it lies wholly or mainly in the form. Now these contentions, whether false or true, may seem at least to be clear; but we shall find, I think, that they are both of them false, or both of them nonsense: false if they concern anything outside the poem, nonsense if they apply to something in it. For what do they evidently imply? They imply that there are in a poem two parts, factors, or components, a substance and a form; and that you can conceive them distinctly and separately, so that when you are speaking of the one you are not speaking of the other. Otherwise how can you ask the question, In which of them does the value lie? But really in a poem, apart from defects, there are no such factors or components; and therefore it is strictly nonsense to ask in which of them the value lies. And on the other hand, if the substance and the form referred to are not in the poem, then both the contentions are false, for its poetic value lies in itself. What I mean is neither new nor mysterious; and it will be clear, I believe, to any one who reads poetry poetically and who closely examines his experience. When you are reading a poem, I would ask--not analysing it, and much less criticizing it, but allowing it, as it proceeds, to make its full impression on you through the exertion of your recreating imagination--do you then apprehend and enjoy as one thing a certain meaning or substance, and as another thing certain articulate sounds, and do you somehow compound these two? Surely you do not, any more than you apprehend apart, when you see some one smile, those lines in the face which express a feeling, and the feeling that the lines express. Just as there the lines and their meaning are to you one thing, not two, so in poetry the meaning and the sounds are one: there is, if I may put it so, a resonant meaning, or a meaning resonance. If you read the line, "The sun is warm, the sky is clear," you do not experience separately the image of a warm sun and clear sky, on the one side, and certain unintelligible rhythmical sounds on the other; nor yet do you experience them together, side by side; but you experience the one _in_ the other. And in like manner when you are really reading _Hamlet_, the action and the characters are not something which you conceive apart from the words; you apprehend them from point to point _in_ the words, and the words as expressions of them. Afterwards, no doubt, when you are out of the poetic experience but remember it, you may by analysis decompose this unity, and attend to a substance more or less isolated, and a form more or less isolated. But these are things in your analytic head, not in the poem, which is _poetic_ experience. And if you want to have the poem again, you cannot find it by adding together these two products of decomposition; you can only find it by passing back into poetic experience. And then what you recover is no aggregate of factors, it is a unity in which you can no more separate a substance and a form than you can separate living blood and the life in the blood. This unity has, if you like, various "aspects" or "sides," but they are not factors or parts; if you try to examine one, you find it is also the other. Call them substance and form if you please, but these are not the reciprocally exclusive substance and form to which the two contentions _must_ refer. They do not "agree," for they are not apart: they are one thing from different points of view, and in that sense identical. And this identity of content and form, you will say, is no accident; it is of the essence of poetry in so far as it is poetry, and of all art in so far as it is art. Just as there is in music not sound on one side and a meaning on the other, but expressive sound, and if you ask what is the meaning you can only answer by pointing to the sounds; just as in painting there is not a meaning _plus_ paint, but a meaning _in_ paint, or significant paint, and no man can really express the meaning in any other way than in paint and in _this_ paint; so in a poem the true content and the true form neither exist nor can be imagined apart. When then you are asked whether the value of a poem lies in a substance got by decomposing the poem, and present, as such, only in reflective analysis, or whether the value lies in a form arrived at and existing in the same way, you will answer, "It lies neither in one, nor in the other, nor in any addition of them, but in the poem, where they are not." We have then, first, an antithesis of subject and poem. This is clear and valid; and the question in which of them does the value lie is intelligible; and its answer is, In the poem. We have next a distinction of substance and form. If the substance means ideas, images, and the like taken alone, and the form means the measured language taken by itself, this is a possible distinction, but it is a distinction of things not in the poem, and the value lies in neither of them. If substance and form mean anything _in_ the poem, then each is involved in the other, and the question in which of them the value lies has no sense. No doubt you may say, speaking loosely, that in this poet or poem the aspect of substance is the more noticeable, and in that the aspect of form; and you may pursue interesting discussions on this basis, though no principle or ultimate question of value is touched by them. And apart from that question, of course, I am not denying the usefulness and necessity of the distinction. We cannot dispense with it. To consider separately the action or the characters of a play, and separately its style or versification, is both legitimate and valuable, so long as we remember what we are doing. But the true critic in speaking of these apart does not really think of them apart; the whole, the poetic experience, of which they are but aspects, is always in his mind; and he is always aiming at a richer, truer, more intense repetition of that experience. On the other hand, when the question of principle, of poetic value, is raised, these aspects _must_ fall apart into components, separately conceivable; and then there arise two heresies, equally false, that the value lies in one of two things, both of which are outside the poem, and therefore where its value cannot lie. On the heresy of the separable substance a few additional words will suffice. This heresy is seldom formulated, but perhaps some unconscious holder of it may object: "Surely the action and the characters of _Hamlet_ are in the play; and surely I can retain these, though I have forgotten all the words. I admit that I do not possess the whole poem, but I possess a part, and the most important part." And I would answer: "If we are not concerned with any question of principle, I accept all that you say except the last words, which do raise such a question. Speaking loosely, I agree that the action and characters, as you perhaps conceive them, together with a great deal more, are in the poem. Even then, however, you must not claim to possess all of this kind that is in the poem; for in forgetting the words you must have lost innumerable details of the action and the characters. And, when the question of value is raised, I must insist that the action and characters, as you conceive them, are not in _Hamlet_ at all. If they are, point them out. You cannot do it. What you find at any moment of that succession of experiences called Hamlet is words. In these words, to speak loosely again, the action and characters (more of them than you can conceive apart) are focussed; but your experience is not a combination of them, as ideas, on the one side, with certain sounds on the other; it is an experience of something in which the two are indissolubly fused. If you deny this, to be sure I can make no answer, or can only answer that I have reason to believe that you cannot read poetically, or else are misinterpreting your experience. But if you do not deny this, then you will admit that the action and characters of the poem, as you separately imagine them, are no part of it, but a product of it in your reflective imagination, a faint analogue of one aspect of it taken in detachment from the whole. Well, I do not dispute, I would even insist, that, in the case of so long a poem as _Hamlet_, it may be necessary from time to time to interrupt the poetic experience, in order to enrich it by forming such a product and dwelling on it. Nor, in a wide sense of 'poetic,' do I question the poetic value of this product, as you think of it apart from the poem. It resembles our recollections of the heroes of history or legend, who move about in our imaginations, 'forms more real than living man,' and are worth much to us though we do not remember anything they said. Our ideas and images of the 'substance' of a poem have this poetic value, and more, if they are at all adequate. But they cannot determine the poetic value of the poem, for (not to speak of the competing claims of the 'form') nothing that is outside the poem can do that, and they, as such, are outside it." Let us turn to the so-called form--style and versification. There is no such thing as mere form in poetry. All form is expression. Style may have indeed a certain aesthetic worth in partial abstraction from the particular matter it conveys, as in a well-built sentence you may take pleasure in the build almost apart from the meaning. Even so style is expressive--presents to sense, for example, the order, ease, and rapidity with which ideas move in the writer's mind--but it is not expressive of the meaning of that particular sentence. And it is possible, interrupting poetic experience, to decompose it and abstract for comparatively separate consideration this nearly formal element of style. But the aesthetic value of style so taken is not considerable; you could not read with pleasure for an hour a composition which had no other merit. And in poetic experience you never apprehend this value by itself; the style is here expressive also of a particular meaning, or rather is one aspect of that unity whose other aspect is meaning. So that what you apprehend may be called indifferently an expressed meaning or a significant form. Perhaps on this point I may in Oxford appeal to authority, that of Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater, the latter at any rate an authority whom the formalist will not despise. What is the gist of Pater's teaching about style, if it is not that in the end the one virtue of style is truth or adequacy; that the word, phrase, sentence, should express perfectly the writer's perception, feeling, image, or thought; so that, as we read a descriptive phrase of Keats's, we exclaim, "That is the thing itself"; so that, to quote Arnold, the words are "symbols equivalent with the thing symbolized," or, in our technical language, a form identical with its content? Hence in true poetry it is, in strictness, impossible to express the meaning in any but its own words, or to change the words without changing the meaning. A translation of such poetry is not really the old meaning in a fresh dress; it is a new product, something like the poem, though, if one chooses to say so, more like it in the aspect of meaning than in the aspect of form. No one who understands poetry, it seems to me, would dispute this, were it not that, falling away from his experience, or misled by theory, he takes the word "meaning" in a sense almost ludicrously inapplicable to poetry. People say, for instance, "steed" and "horse" have the same meaning; and in bad poetry they have, but not in poetry that _is_ poetry. "Bring forth the horse!" The horse was brought: In truth he was a noble steed! says Byron in _Mazeppa_. If the two words mean the same here, transpose them: "Bring forth the steed!" The steed was brought: In truth he was a noble horse! and ask again if they mean the same. Or let me take a line certainly very free from "poetic diction:" To be or not to be, that is the question. You may say that this means the same as "What is just now occupying my attention is the comparative disadvantages of continuing to live or putting an end to myself." And for practical purposes--the purpose, for example, of a coroner--it does. But as the second version altogether misrepresents the speaker at that moment of his existence, while the first does represent him, how can they for any but a practical or logical purpose be said to have the same sense? Hamlet was well able to "unpack his heart with words," but he will not unpack it with our paraphrases. These considerations apply equally to versification. If I take the famous line which describes how the souls of the dead stood waiting by the river, imploring a passage from Charon: Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore, and if I translate it, "and were stretching forth their hands in longing for the further bank," the charm of the original has fled. Why has it fled? Partly (but we have dealt with that) because I have substituted for five words, and those the words of Virgil, twelve words, and those my own. In some measure because I have turned into rhythmless prose a line of verse which, as mere sound, has unusual beauty. But much more because in doing so I have also changed the _meaning_ of Virgil's line. What that meaning is _I_ cannot say: Virgil has said it. But I can see this much, that the translation conveys a far less vivid picture of the outstretched hands and of their remaining outstretched, and a far less poignant sense of the distance of the shore and the longing of the souls. And it does so partly because this picture and this sense are conveyed not only by the obvious meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of "tendebantque," through the time occupied by the five syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and through the identity of the long sound "or" in the penultimate syllables of "ulterioris amore"--all this, and much more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as _added_ to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the poetic meaning of the whole. It is always so in fine poetry. The value of versification, when it is indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be exaggerated. The gift for feeling it, even more perhaps than the gift for feeling the value of style, is the _specific_ gift for poetry, as distinguished from other arts. But versification, taken, as far as possible, all by itself, has a very different worth. Some aesthetic worth it has; how much you may experience by reading poetry in a language of which you do not understand a syllable. The pleasure is quite appreciable, but it is not great; nor in actual poetic experience do you meet with it, as such, at all. For, I repeat, it is not _added_ to the pleasure of the meaning when you read poetry that you do understand: by some mystery the music is then the music _of_ the meaning, and the two are one. However fond of versification you might be, you would tire very soon of reading verses in Chinese; and before long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were ignorant of their languages. But take the music as it is _in_ the poem, and there is a marvellous change. Now It gives a very echo to the seat Where Love is throned; or "carries far into your heart," almost like music itself, the sound Of old, unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago. What then is to be said of the following sentence of the critic quoted before: "But when any one who knows what poetry is reads-- Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal silence, he sees that, quite independently of the meaning, ... there is one note added to the articulate music of the world--a note that never will leave off resounding till the eternal silence itself gulfs it?" I must think that the writer is deceiving himself. For I could quite understand his enthusiasm, if it were an enthusiasm for the music of the meaning; but as for the music, "quite independently of the meaning," so far as I can hear it thus (and I doubt if any one who knows English can quite do so), I find it gives some pleasure, but only a trifling pleasure. And indeed I venture to doubt whether, considered as mere sound, the words are at all exceptionally beautiful, as Virgil's line certainly is. When poetry answers to its idea and is purely or almost purely poetic, we find the identity of form and content; and the degree of purity attained may be tested by the degree in which we feel it hopeless to convey the effect of a poem or passage in any form but its own. Where the notion of doing so is simply ludicrous, you have quintessential poetry. But a great part even of good poetry, especially in long works, is of a mixed nature; and so we find in it no more than a partial agreement of a form and substance which remain to some extent distinct. This is so in many passages of Shakespeare (the greatest of poets when he chose, but not always a conscientious poet); passages where something was wanted for the sake of the plot, but he did not care about it or was hurried. The conception of the passage is then distinct from the execution, and neither is inspired. This is so also, I think, wherever we can truly speak of merely decorative effect. We seem to perceive that the poet had a truth or fact--philosophical, agricultural, social--distinctly before him, and then, as we say, clothed it in metrical and coloured language. Most argumentative, didactic, or satiric poems are partly of this kind; and in imaginative poems anything which is really a mere "conceit" is mere decoration. We often deceive ourselves in this matter, for what we call decoration has often a new and genuinely poetic content of its own; but wherever there is mere decoration, we judge the poetry to be not wholly poetic. And so when Wordsworth inveighed against poetic diction, though he hurled his darts rather wildly, what he was rightly aiming at was a phraseology, not the living body of a new content, but the mere worn-out body of an old one. In pure poetry it is otherwise. Pure poetry is not the decoration of a preconceived and clearly defined matter: it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative mass pressing for development and definition. If the poet already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he write the poem? The poem would in fact already be written. For only its completion can reveal, even to him, exactly what he wanted. When he began and while he was at work, he did not possess his meaning; it possessed him. It was not a fully formed soul asking for a body: it was an inchoate soul in the inchoate body of perhaps two or three vague ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing of this body into its full stature and perfect shape was the same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning. And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere decoration cannot produce. This is also the reason why, if we insist on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we can only be answered "It means itself." And so at last I may explain why I have troubled myself: and you with what may seem an arid controversy about mere words. It is not so. These heresies which would make poetry a compound of two factors--a matter common to it with the merest prose, _plus_ a poetic form, as the one heresy says: a poetical substance _plus_ a negligible form, as the other says--are not only untrue, they are injurious to the dignity of poetry. In an age already inclined to shrink from those higher realms where poetry touches religion and philosophy, the formalist heresy encourages men to taste poetry as they would a fine wine, which has indeed an aesthetic value, but a small one. And then the natural man, finding an empty form, hurls into it the matter of cheap pathos, rancid sentiment, vulgar humour, bare lust, ravenous vanity--everything which, in Schiller's phrase, the form should extirpate, but which no mere form can extirpate. And the other heresy--which is indeed rather a practice than a creed--encourages us in the habit so dear to us of putting our own thoughts or fancies into the place of the poet's creation. What he meant by _Hamlet_, or the _Ode to a Nightingale_, or _Abt Vogler_, we say, is this or that which we knew already; and so we lose what he had to tell us. But he meant what he said, and said what he meant. Poetry in this matter is not, as good critics of painting and music often affirm, different from the other arts; in all of them the content is one thing with the form. What Beethoven meant by his symphony, or Turner by his picture, was not something which you can name, but the picture and the symphony. Meaning they have, but _what_ meaning can be said in no language but their own: and we know this, though some strange delusion makes us think the meaning has less worth because we cannot put it into words. Well, it is just the same with poetry. But because poetry is words, we vainly fancy that some other words than its own will express its meaning. And they will do so no more--or, if you like to speak loosely, only a little more--than words will express the meaning of the Dresden Madonna. Something a little like it they may indeed express. And we may find analogues of the meaning of poetry outside it, which may help us to appropriate it. The other arts, the best ideas of philosophy or religion, much that nature and life offer us or force upon us, are akin to it. But they are only akin. Nor is it the expression of them. Poetry does not present to imagination our highest knowledge or belief, and much less our dreams and opinions; but it, content and form in unity, embodies in its own irreplaceable way something which embodies itself also in other irreplaceable ways, such as philosophy or religion. And just as each of these gives a satisfaction which the other cannot possibly give, so we find in poetry, which cannot satisfy the needs they meet, that which by their natures they cannot afford us. But we shall not find it fully if we look for something else. And now, when all is said, the question will still recur, though now in quite another sense, What does poetry mean? This unique expression, which cannot be replaced by any other, still seems to be trying to express something beyond itself. And this, we feel, is also what the other arts, and religion, and philosophy are trying to express: and that is what impels us to seek in vain to translate the one into the other. About the best poetry, and not only the best, there floats an atmosphere of infinite suggestion. The poet speaks to us of one thing, but in this one thing there seems to lurk the secret of all. He said what he meant, but his meaning seems to beckon away beyond itself, or rather to expand into something boundless, which is only focussed in it; something also which, we feel, would satisfy not only the imagination, but the whole of us; that something within us, and without, which everywhere makes us seem To patch up fragments of a dream, Part of which comes true, and part Beats and trembles in the heart. Those who are susceptible to this effect of poetry find it not only, perhaps not most, in the ideals which she has sometimes described, but in a child's song by Christina Rossetti about a mere crown of wind-flowers, and in tragedies like _Lear_, where the sun seems to have set for ever. They hear this spirit murmuring its undertone through the _Aeneid_, and catch its voice in the song of Keats's nightingale, and its light upon the figures on the Urn, and it pierces them no less in Shelley's hopeless lament, _O world, O life, O time_, than in the rapturous ecstasy of his _Life of Life_. This all-embracing perfection cannot be expressed in poetic words or words of any kind, nor yet in music or in colour, but the suggestion of it is in much poetry, if not all, and poetry has in this suggestion, this "meaning," a great part of its value. We do it wrong, and we defeat our own purposes when we try to bend it to them: We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence; For it is as the air invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery. It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not speak at our bidding, nor answer in our language. It is not our servant; it is our master. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 78: From "Oxford Lectures on Poetry," 1909. Printed by courtesy of The Macmillan Company.] GREEK TRAGEDY[79] G. LOWES DICKINSON The character of Greek tragedy was determined from the very beginning by the fact of its connection with religion. The season at which it was performed was the festival of Dionysus; about his altar the chorus danced; and the object of the performance was the representation of scenes out of the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle of legends familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom might be allowed to the poet in his treatment of the theme, whatever the reflections he might embroider upon it, the speculative or ethical views, the criticism of contemporary life, all must be subservient to the main object originally proposed, the setting forth, for edification as well as for delight, of some episodes in the lives of those heroes of the past who were considered not only to be greater than their descendants, but to be the sons of gods and worthy themselves of worship as divine. By this fundamental condition the tragedy of the Greeks is distinguished sharply, on the one hand from the Shakespearian drama, on the other from the classical drama of the French. The tragedies of Shakespeare are devoid, one might say, or at least comparatively devoid, of all preconceptions. He was free to choose what subject he liked and to treat it as he would; and no sense of obligation to religious or other points of view, no feeling for traditions descended from a sacred past and not lightly to be handled by those who were their trustees for the future, sobered or restrained for evil or for good his half-barbaric genius. He flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour of the discoverer of a new continent; shaped and re-shaped it as he chose; carved from it now the cynicism of _Measure for Measure_, now the despair of _Hamlet_ and of _Lear_, now the radiant magnanimity of _The Tempest_, and departed leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a series of mutually incompatible landscapes. What Shakespeare gave, in short, was a many-sided representation of life; what the Greek dramatist gave was an interpretation. But an interpretation not simply personal to himself, but representative of the national tradition and belief. The men whose deeds and passions he narrated were the patterns and examples on the one hand, on the other the warnings of his race; the gods who determined the fortunes they sang, were working still among men; the moral laws that ruled the past ruled the present too; and the history of the Hellenic race moved, under a visible providence, from its divine origin onward to an end that would be prosperous or the reverse according as later generations should continue to observe the worship and traditions of their fathers descended from heroes and gods. And it is the fact that in this sense it was representative of the national consciousness, that distinguishes the Greek tragedy from the classical drama of the French. For the latter, though it imitated the ancients in outward form, was inspired with a totally different spirit. The kings and heroes whose fortunes it narrated were not the ancestors of the French race; they had no root in its affections, no connection with its religious beliefs, no relation to its ethical conceptions. The whole ideal set forth was not that which really inspired the nation, but at best that which was supposed to inspire the court; and the whole drama, like a tree transplanted to an alien soil, withers and dies for lack of the nourishment which the tragedy of the Greeks unconsciously imbibed from its encompassing air of national tradition. Such then was the general character of the Greek tragedy--an interpretation of the national ideal. Let us now proceed to follow out some of the consequences involved in this conception. In the first place, the theme represented is the life and fate of ancient heroes--of personages, that is to say, greater than ordinary men, both for good and for evil, in their qualities and in their achievements, pregnant with fateful issues, makers or marrers of the fortunes of the world. Tragic and terrible their destiny may be, but never contemptible or squalid. Behind all suffering, behind sin and crime, must lie redeeming magnanimity. A complete villain, says Aristotle, is not a tragic character, for he has no hold upon the sympathies; if he prosper, it is an outrage on common human feeling; if he fall into disaster, it is merely what he deserves. Neither is it admissible to represent the misfortunes of a thoroughly good man, for that is merely painful and distressing; and least of all is it tolerable gratuitously to introduce mere baseness, or madness, or other aberrations from human nature. The true tragic hero is a man of high place and birth who having a nature not ignoble has fallen into sin and pays in suffering the penalty of his act. Nothing could throw more light on the distinguishing characteristics of the Greek drama than these few remarks of Aristotle, and nothing could better indicate how close, in the Greek mind, was the connection between aesthetic and ethical judgments. The canon of Aristotle would exclude as proper themes for tragedy the character and fate, say, of Richard III--the absolutely bad man suffering his appropriate desert; or of Kent and Cordelia--the absolutely good, brought into unmerited affliction; and that not merely because such themes offend the moral sense, but because by so offending they destroy the proper pleasure of the tragic art. The whole aesthetic effect is limited by ethical presuppositions; and to outrage these is to defeat the very purpose of tragedy. Specially interesting in this connection are the strictures passed on Euripides in the passage of the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes to which allusion has already been made. Euripides is there accused of lowering the tragic art by introducing--what? Women in love! The central theme of modern tragedy! It is the boast of Aeschylus that there is not one of his plays which touches on this subject: "I never allow'd of your lewd Sthenoboeas Or filthy detestable Phaedras--not I! Indeed I should doubt if my drama throughout Exhibit an instance of woman in love!"[80] And there can be little doubt that with a Greek audience this would count to him as a merit, and that the shifting of the centre of interest by Euripides from the sterner passions of heroes and of kings to this tenderer phase of human feeling would be felt even by those whom it charmed to be a declension from the height of the older tragedy. And to this limitation of subject corresponds a limitation of treatment. The Greek tragedy is composed from a definite point of view, with the aim not merely to represent but also to interpret the theme. Underlying the whole construction of the plot, the dialogue, the reflections, the lyric interludes, is the intention to illustrate some general moral law, some common and typical problem, some fundamental truth. Of the elder dramatists at any rate, Aeschylus and Sophocles, one may even say that it was their purpose--however imperfectly achieved--to "justify the ways of God to man." To represent suffering as the punishment of sin is the constant bent of Aeschylus; to justify the law of God against the presumption of man is the central idea of Sophocles. In either case the whole tone is essentially religious. To choose such a theme as Lear, to treat it as Shakespeare has treated it, to leave it, as it were, bleeding from a thousand wounds, in mute and helpless entreaty for the healing that is never to be vouchsafed--this would have been repulsive, if not impossible, to a Greek tragedian. Without ever descending from concrete art to the abstractions of mere moralising, without ever attempting to substitute a verbal formula for the full and complex perception that grows out of a representation of life, the ancient dramatists were nevertheless, in the whole apprehension of their theme, determined by a more or less conscious speculative bias; the world to them was not merely a splendid chaos, it was a divine plan; and even in its darkest hollows, its passes most perilous and bleak, they have their hand, though doubtful perhaps and faltering, upon the clue that is to lead them up to the open sky. It is consonant with this account of the nature of Greek tragedy that it should have laid more stress upon action than upon character. The interest was centred on the universal bearing of certain acts and situations, on the light which the experience represented threw on the whole tendency and course of human life, not on the sentiments and motives of the particular personages introduced. The characters are broad and simple, not developing for the most part, but fixed, and fitted therefore to be the mediums of direct action, of simple issues, and typical situations. In the Greek tragedy the general point of view predominates over the idiosyncrasies of particular persons. It is human nature that is represented in the broad, not this or that highly specialised variation; and what we have indicated as the general aim, the interpretation of life, is never obscured by the predominance of exceptional and so to speak, accidental characteristics. Man is the subject of the Greek drama; the subject of the modern novel is Tom and Dick. Finally, to the realisation of this general aim, the whole form of the Greek drama was admirably adapted. It consisted very largely of conversations between two persons, representing two opposed points of view, and giving occasion for an almost scientific discussion of every problem of action raised in the play; and between these conversations were inserted lyric odes in which the chorus commented on the situation, bestowed advice or warning, praise or blame, and finally summed up the moral of the whole. Through the chorus, in fact, the poet could speak in his own person, and impose upon the whole tragedy any tone which he desired. Periodically he could drop the dramatist and assume the preacher; and thus ensure that his play should be, what we have seen was its recognised ideal, not merely a representation but an interpretation of life. But this without ceasing to be a work of art. In attempting to analyse in abstract terms the general character of the Greek tragedy we have necessarily thrown into the shade what after all was its primary and most essential aspect; an aspect, however, of which a full appreciation could only be attained not by a mere perusal of the test, but by what is unfortunately for ever beyond our power, the witnessing of an actual representation as it was given on the Greek stage. For from a purely aesthetic point of view the Greek drama must be reckoned among the most perfect of art forms. Taking place in the open air, on the sunny slope of a hill, valley and plain or islanded sea stretching away below to meet the blazing blue of a cloudless sky, the moving pageant, thus from the first set in tune with nature, brought to a focus of splendour the rays of every separate art. More akin to an opera than to a play it had, as its basis, music. For the drama had developed out of the lyric ode, and retained throughout what was at first its only element, the dance and song of a mimetic chorus. By this centre of rhythmic motion and pregnant melody the burden of the tale was caught up and echoed and echoed again, as the living globe divided into spheres of answering song, the clear and precise significance of the plot, never obscure to the head, being thus brought home in music to the passion of the heart, the idea embodied in lyric verse, the verse transfigured by song, and song and verse reflected as in a mirror to the eye by the swing and beat of the limbs they stirred to consonance of motion. And while such was the character of the odes that broke the action of the play, the action itself was an appeal not less to the ear and to the eye than to the passion and the intellect. The circumstances of the representation, the huge auditorium in the open air, lent themselves less to "acting" in our sense of the term, than to attitude and declamation. The actors raised on high boots above their natural height, their faces hidden in masks and their tones mechanically magnified, must have relied for their effects not upon facial play, or rapid and subtle variations of voice and gesture, but upon a certain statuesque beauty of pose, and a chanting intonation of that majestic iambic verse whose measure would have been obscured by a rapid and conversational delivery. The representation would thus become moving sculpture to the eye, and to the ear, as it were, a sleep of music between the intenser interludes of the chorus; and the spectator without being drawn away by an imitative realism from the calm of impassioned contemplation into the fever and fret of a veritable actor on the scene, received an impression based throughout on that clear intellectual foundation, that almost prosaic lucidity of sentiment and plot, which is preserved to us in the written text, but raised by the accompanying appeal to the sense, made as it must have been made by such artists as the Greeks, by the grouping of forms and colours, the recitative, the dance and the song, to such a greatness and height of aesthetic significance as can hardly have been realised by any other form of art production. The nearest modern analogy to what the ancient drama must have been is to be found probably in the operas of Wagner, who indeed was strongly influenced by the tragedy of the Greeks. It was his ideal like theirs, to combine the various branches of art, employing not only music but poetry, sculpture, painting and the dance, for the representation of his dramatic theme; and his conception also to make art the interpreter of life, reflecting in a national drama the national consciousness, the highest action and the deepest passion and thought of the German race. To consider how far in this attempt he falls short of or goes beyond the achievement of the Greeks, and to examine the wide dissimilarities that underlie the general identity of aim, would be to wander too far afield from our present theme. But the comparison may be recommended to those who are anxious to form a concrete idea of what the effect of a Greek tragedy may have been, and to clothe in imagination the dead bones of the literary text with the flesh and blood of a representation to the sense. Meantime, to assist the reader to realise with somewhat greater precision the bearing of the foregoing remarks, it may be worth while to give an outline sketch of one of the most celebrated of the Greek tragedies, the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus. The hero of the drama belongs to that heroic house whose tragic history was among the most terrible and the most familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of the family, for some offence against the gods, was suffering in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name. His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus. Of the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes seduced the wife of his brother Atreus; and Atreus in return killed the sons of Thyestes, and made the father unwittingly eat the flesh of the murdered boys. Agamemnon, son of Atreus, to propitiate Artemis, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia, and in revenge was murdered by Clytemnestra his wife. And Clytemnestra was killed by Orestes, her son, in atonement for the death of Agamemnon. For generations the race had been dogged by crime and punishment; and in choosing for his theme the murder of Agamemnon the dramatist could assume in his audience so close a familiarity with the past history of the House that he could call into existence by an allusive word that sombre background of woe to enhance the terrors of his actual presentation. The figures he brought into vivid relief joined hands with menacing forms that faded away into the night of the future and the past; while above them hung, intoning doom, the phantom host of Furies. Yet at the outset of the drama all promises well. The watchman on the roof of the palace, in the tenth year of his watch, catches sight at last of the signal fire that announces the capture of Troy and the speedy return of Agamemnon. With joy he proclaims to the House the long-delayed and welcome news; yet even in the moment of exultation lets slip a doubtful phrase hinting at something behind, which he dares not name, something which may turn to despair the triumph of victory. Hereupon enter the chorus of Argive elders, chanting as they move to the measure of a stately march. They sing how ten years before Agamemnon and Menelaus had led forth the host of Greece, at the bidding of the Zeus who protects hospitality, to recover for Menelaus Helen his wife, treacherously stolen by Paris. Then, as they take their places and begin their rhythmic dance, in a strain of impassioned verse that is at once a narrative and a lyric hymn, they tell, or rather present in a series of vivid images, flashing as by illumination of lightning out of a night of veiled and sombre boding, the tale of the deed that darkened the starting of the host--the sacrifice of Iphigenia to the goddess whose wrath was delaying the fleet at Aulis. In verse, in music, in pantomime, the scene lives again--the struggle in the father's heart, the insistence of his brother chiefs, the piteous glance of the girl, and at last the unutterable end; while above and through it all rings like a knell of fate the refrain that is the motive of the whole drama: "Sing woe, sing woe, but may the Good prevail." At the conclusion of the ode enters Clytemnestra. She makes a formal announcement to the chorus of the fall of Troy; describes the course of the signal-fire from beacon to beacon as it sped, and pictures in imagination the scenes even then taking place in the doomed city. On her withdrawal the chorus break once more into song and dance. To the music of a solemn hymn they point the moral of the fall of Troy, the certain doom of violence and fraud descended upon Paris and his House. Once more the vivid pictures flash from the night of woe--Helen in her fatal beauty stepping lightly to her doom, the widower's nights of mourning haunted by the ghost of love, the horrors of the war that followed, the slain abroad and the mourners at home, the change of living flesh and blood for the dust and ashes of the tomb. At last with a return to their original theme, the doom of insolence, the chorus close their ode and announce the arrival of a messenger from Troy. Talthybius, the herald, enters as spokesman of the army and king, describing the hardships they have suffered and the joy of the triumphant issue. To him Clytemnestra announces, in words of which the irony is patent to the audience, her sufferings in the absence of her husband and her delight at the prospect of his return. He will find her, she says, as he left her, a faithful watcher of the home, her loyalty sure, her honour undefiled. Then follows another choral ode, similar in theme to the last, dwelling on the woe brought by the act of Paris upon Troy, the change of the bridal song to the trump of war and the dirge of death; contrasting, in a profusion of splendid tropes, the beauty of Helen with the curse to which it is bound; and insisting once more on the doom that attends insolence and pride. At the conclusion of this song the measure changes to a march, and the chorus turn to welcome the triumphant king. Agamemnon enters, and behind him the veiled and silent figure of a woman. After greeting the gods of his House, the King, in brief and stilted phrase, acknowledges the loyalty of the chorus, but hints at much that is amiss which it must be his first charge to set right. Hereupon enters Clytemnestra, and in a speech of rhetorical exaggeration tells of her anxious waiting for her lord and her inexpressible joy at his return. In conclusion she directs that purple cloth be spread upon his path that he may enter the house as befits a conqueror. After a show of resistance, Agamemnon yields the point, and the contrast at which the dramatist aims is achieved. With the pomp of an eastern monarch, always repellent to the Greek mind, the King steps across the threshold, steps, as the audience knows, to his death. The higher the reach of his power and pride the more terrible and swift is the nemesis; and Clytemnestra follows in triumph with the enigmatic cry upon her lips: "Zeus who art god of fulfilment, fulfil my prayers." As she withdraws the chorus begin a song of boding fear, the more terrible that it is still indefinite. Something is going to happen--the presentiment is sure. But what, but what? They search the night in vain. Meantime, motionless and silent waits the figure of the veiled woman. It is Cassandra, the prophetess, daughter of Priam of Troy, whom Agamemnon has carried home as his prize. Clytemnestra returns to urge her to enter the house; she makes no sign and utters no word. The queen changes her tone from courtesy to anger and rebuke; the figure neither stirs nor speaks; and Clytemnestra at last with an angry threat leaves her and returns to the palace. Then, and not till then, a cry breaks from the stranger's lips, a passionate cry to Apollo who gave her her fatal gift. All the sombre history of the House to which she has been brought, the woe that has been and the woe that is to come, passes in pictures across her inner sense. In a series of broken ejaculations, not sentences but lyric cries, she evokes the scenes of the past and of the future. Blood drips from the palace; in its chambers the Furies crouch; the murdered sons of Thyestes wail in its haunted courts; and ever among the visions of the past that one of the future floats and fades, clearly discerned, impossible to avert, the murder of a husband by a wife; and in the rear of that, most pitiful of all, the violent death of the seer who sees in vain and may not help. Between Cassandra and the Chorus it is a duet of anguish and fear; in the broken lyric phrases a phantom music wails; till at last, at what seems the breaking-point, the tension is relaxed, and dropping into the calmer iambic recitative, Cassandra tells her message in plainer speech and clearly proclaims the murder of the King. Then, with a last appeal to the avenger that is to come, she enters the palace alone to meet her death.--The stage is empty. Suddenly a cry is heard from within; again, and then again; while the chorus hesitate the deed is done; the doors are thrown open, and Clytemnestra is seen standing over the corpses of her victims. All disguise is now thrown off; the murderess avows and triumphs in her deed; she justifies it as vengeance for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and sees in herself not a free human agent but the incarnate curse of the House of Tantalus. And now for the first time appears the adulterer Aegisthus, who has planned the whole behind the scenes. He too is an avenger, for he is the son of that Thyestes who was made to feed on his own children's flesh. The murder of Agamemnon is but one more link in the long chain of hereditary guilt; and with that exposition of the pitiless law of punishment and crime this chapter of the great drama comes to a close. But the _Agamemnon_ is only the first of a series of three plays closely connected and meant to be performed in succession; and the problem raised in the first of them, the crime that cries for punishment and the punishment that is itself a new crime, is solved in the last by a reconciliation of the powers of heaven and hell, and the pardon of the last offender in the person of Orestes. To sketch, however, the plan of the other dramas of the trilogy would be to trespass too far upon our space and time. It is enough to have illustrated, by the example of the _Agamemnon_, the general character of a Greek tragedy; and those who care to pursue the subject further must be referred to the text of the plays themselves. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 79: From "The Greek View of Life," 1909 (sixth edition). By permission of Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co.] [Footnote 80: From Aristophanes' "Frogs," l. 1043. Translated by Frere.] SHAKESPEARE[81] THOMAS CARLYLE As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakespeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece; so in Shakespeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Practice or body. This latter also we were to have; a man was sent for it, the man Shakespeare. Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-enduring record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had the honour of producing the other. Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete and self-sufficing is this Shakespeare, had the Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a Poet! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, did not it too come as of its own accord? The "Tree Igdrasil" buds and withers by its own laws,--too deep for our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not sufficiently considered: how everything does co-operate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or irrecognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap and influences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven! In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan Era with its Shakespeare, as the outcome and flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakespeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shakespeare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament. King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's,[82] on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakespeare into being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakespeare was the free gift of Nature; given altogether silently; received altogether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at that side of matters too. Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgment not of this country only: but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakespeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shakespeare's Dramas there is, apart from all other "faculties" as they are called, an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's _Novum Organum_. That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakespeare's dramatic materials, _we_ could fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,--everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,--we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call Shakespeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct, what condition he works under, what his materials are, what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly _seeing_ eye; a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it--is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is the true _beginning_, the true sequence and ending? To find out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the man. He must _understand_ the thing; according to the depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, _Fiat lux_, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is _light_ in himself, will he accomplish this. Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men, that Shakespeare is great. All the greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, what is this too but _seeing_ the thing sufficiently? The _word_ that will describe the thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shakespeare's _morality_, his valour, candour, tolerance, truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness, which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too? Great as the world! No _twisted_, poor convex-concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a perfectly _level_ mirror--that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal brother of all. _Novum Organum_, and all the intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy, material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he _saw_ the object; you may say what he himself says of Shakespeare: "His characters are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism also is all visible." The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them--you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all, and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents,--perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all _See_. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and _name_ yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, "But are ye sure he's _not a dunce_?" Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely fatal person. For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakespeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, etc., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another _side_ of the one vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is _one_; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways. Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but, consider it--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing, sympathise with it: that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to stand by the dangerous true at every turn, how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely. But does not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine _morality_, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life! These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limitations, modifications they require, your own candour will supply. If I say, therefore, that Shakespeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakespeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest generations of men will find new meanings in Shakespeare, new elucidations of their own human being; "new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man." This well deserves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be _a part of herself_. Such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow up withal _un_consciously, from the unknown deeps in him;--as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in Shakespeare lies hid; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all: like _roots_, like sap and forces working underground! Speech is great; but Silence is greater. Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I will not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without victory; but true battle,--the first, indispensable thing. Yet I call Shakespeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows: those _Sonnets_ of his will even testify expressly in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his life--as what man like him ever failed to have to do? It seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and offhand, never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered?--And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does he _exaggerate_ but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakespeare; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially "good hater." But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who _can_ laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only _desiring_ to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not "the crackling of thorns under the pot." Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakespeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing; and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. We have no room to speak of Shakespeare's individual works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays reviewed as _Hamlet_, in _Wilhelm Meister_, is! A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, _Henry Fifth_ and the others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shakespeare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is, as Schlegel says, _epic_;--as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakespeare's. The description of the two hosts: the wornout, jaded English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle shall begin; and then that deathless valour: "Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" There is a noble Patriotism in it--far other than the "indifference" you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakespeare. A true English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that. There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too had a right stroke in him, had it come to that! But I will say, of Shakespeare's works generally, that we have no full impress of him there; even as full as we have of many men. His works are so many windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing: you say, "That is _true_, spoken once and forever; wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that will be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakespeare had to write for the Globe Playhouse: his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him, then, as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor, cannot set his own free Thought before us; but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that was given, with the tools that were given. _Disjecta membra_[83] are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man. Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakespeare may recognise that he too was a _Prophet_, in his way; of an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine; _un_speakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: "We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey,[84] which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. But the man sang; did not preach, except musically. We called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakespeare the still more melodious Priest of a _true_ Catholicism, the "Universal Church" of the Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion: a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may say without offence, that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shakespeare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony!--I cannot call this Shakespeare a "Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him. But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakespeare has brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Light?--and, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man, was _conscious_ of no Heavenly message? He did not feel, like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, that he specially was the "Prophet of God:" and was he not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more successful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be young;--while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come! Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with Aeschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them? He is _sincere_ as they; reaches deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him _not_ to be so conscious! Alas, poor Mahomet; all that he was _conscious_ of was a mere error; a futility and triviality--as indeed such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious: that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he _thought_ to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history which _were_ great! His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always' is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up from the _in_articulate deeps. Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us;--on which point there were much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat: In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakespeare has actually become among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment of highest Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English Household, what item is there that we would not surrender rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give-up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give-up our Shakespeare! Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English: in America, in New Holland,[85] east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another? This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it: Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance, Parliament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone! This King Shakespeare, does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs; _in_destructible; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are, they will say to one another: "Yes, this Shakespeare is ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are of one blood and kind with him." The most common-sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that. Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak-forth melodiously what the heart of it means! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all; yet the noble Italy is actually _one_: Italy produced its Dante; Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically together; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity, while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 81: From Lecture III, "The Hero as Poet," in "Heroes and Hero-Worship," 1841.] [Footnote 82: St. Stephen's: House of Commons.] [Footnote 83: Scattered pieces.] [Footnote 84: The passage in Shakespeare's "Tempest" from which the words quoted in the preceding sentence are taken, is inscribed on the scroll in the hand of Shakespeare's statue in Westminster Abbey.] [Footnote 85: New Holland: Australia.] CHARLES LAMB[86] WALTER PATER Those English critics who at the beginning of the present century introduced from Germany, together with some other subtleties of thought transplanted hither not without advantage, the distinction between the _Fancy_ and the _Imagination_, made much also of the cognate distinction between _Wit_ and _Humour_, between that unreal and transitory mirth, which is as the crackling of thorns under the pot, and the laughter which blends with tears and even with the sublimities of the imagination, and which, in its most exquisite motives, is one with pity--the laughter of the comedies of Shakespeare, hardly less expressive than his moods of seriousness or solemnity, of that deeply stirred soul of sympathy in him, as flowing from which both tears and laughter are alike genuine and contagious. This distinction between wit and humour, Coleridge and other kindred critics applied, with much effect, in their studies of some of our older English writers. And as the distinction between imagination and fancy, made popular by Wordsworth, found its best justification in certain essential differences of stuff in Wordsworth's own writings, so this other critical distinction, between wit and humour, finds a sort of visible interpretation and instance in the character and writings of Charles Lamb;--one who lived more consistently than most writers among subtle literary theories, and whose remains are still full of curious interest for the student of literature as a fine art. The author of the _English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century,_ coming to the humourists of the nineteenth, would have found, as is true pre-eminently of Thackeray himself, the springs of pity in them deepened by the deeper subjectivity, the intenser and closer living with itself, which is characteristic of the temper of the later generation; and therewith, the mirth also, from the amalgam of which with pity humour proceeds, has become, in Charles Dickens, for example, freer and more boisterous. To this more high-pitched feeling, since predominant in our literature, the writings of Charles Lamb, whose life occupies the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, are a transition; and such union of grave, of terrible even, with gay, we may note in the circumstances of his life, as reflected thence into his work. We catch the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness about his first years, spent on Thames' side, amid the red bricks and terraced gardens, with their rich historical memories of old-fashioned legal London. Just above the poorer class, deprived, as he says, of the "sweet food of academic institution," he is fortunate enough to be reared in the classical languages at an ancient school, where he becomes the companion of Coleridge, as at a later period he was his enthusiastic disciple. So far, the years go by with less than the usual share of boyish difficulties; protected, one fancies, seeing what he was afterwards, by some attraction of temper in the quaint child, small and delicate, with a certain Jewish expression in his clear, brown complexion, eyes not precisely of the same colour, and a slow walk adding to the staidness of his figure; and whose infirmity of speech, increased by agitation, is partly engaging. And the cheerfulness of all this, of the mere aspect of Lamb's quiet subsequent life also, might make the more superficial reader think of him as in himself something slight, and of his mirth as cheaply bought. Yet we know that beneath this blithe surface there was something of the fateful domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism and devotedness too, of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his senior, in a sudden paroxysm of madness, caused the death of her mother, and was brought to trial for what an overstrained justice might have construed as the greatest of crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging himself to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, "seeking thenceforth," says his earliest biographer, "no connection which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and comfort her." The "feverish, romantic tie of love" he cast away in exchange for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we see the brother and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In estimating the humour of _Elia_, we must no more forget the strong undercurrent of this great misfortune and pity, than one could forget it in his actual story. So he becomes the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so _macabre._[87] _Rosamund Grey_ written in his twenty-third year, a story with something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly this note in his work. For himself, and from his own point of view, the exercise of his gift, of his literary art, came to gild or sweeten a life of monotonous labour, and seemed, as far as regarded others, no very important thing; availing to give them a little pleasure, and inform them a little, chiefly in a retrospective manner, but in no way concerned with the turning of the tides of the great world. And yet this very modesty, this unambitious way of conceiving his work, has impressed upon it a certain exceptional enduringness. For of the remarkable English writers contemporary with Lamb, many were greatly preoccupied with ideas of practice--religious, moral, political--ideas which have since, in some sense or other, entered permanently into the general consciousness; and, these having no longer any stimulus for a generation provided with a different stock of ideas, the writings of those who spent so much of themselves in their propagation have lost, with posterity, something of what they gained by them in immediate influence. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley even--sharing so largely in the unrest of their own age, and made personally more interesting thereby, yet, of their actual work, surrender more to the mere course of time than some of those who may have seemed to exercise themselves hardly at all in great matters, to have been little serious, or a little indifferent, regarding them. Of this number of the disinterested servants of literature, smaller in England than in France, Charles Lamb is one. In the making of prose he realises the principle of art for its own sake, as completely as Keats in the making of verse. And, working ever close to the concrete, to the details, great or small, of actual things, books, persons, and with no part of them blurred to his vision by the intervention of mere abstract theories, he has reached an enduring moral effect also, in a sort of boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he might seem, with great matters, he is in immediate contact with what is real, especially in its caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart of things, and meets it more than half-way with a perfect understanding of it. What sudden, unexpected touches of pathos in him!--bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity, the _Weltschmerz_, the constant aching of its wounds, is ever present with him: but what a gift also for the enjoyment of life in its subtleties, of enjoyment actually refined by the need of some thoughtful economies and making the most of things! Little arts of happiness he is ready to teach to others. The quaint remarks of children which another would scarcely have heard, he preserves--little flies in the priceless amber of his Attic wit--and has his "Praise of chimney-sweepers" (as William Blake has written, with so much natural pathos, the Chimney-sweeper's Song), valuing carefully their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of white sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel Castle, as he tells the story, anticipating something of the mood of our deep humourists of the last generation. His simple mother-pity for those who suffer by accident, or unkindness of nature, blindness for instance, or fateful disease of mind like his sister's, has something primitive in its largeness; and on behalf of ill-used animals he is early in composing a _Pity's Gift._ And if, in deeper or more superficial sense, the dead _do_ care at all for their name and fame, then how must the souls of Shakespeare and Webster have been stirred, after so long converse with things that stopped their ears, whether above or below the soil, at his exquisite appreciations of them; the souls of Titian and of Hogarth too; for, what has not been observed so generally as the excellence of his literary criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of painting also. It was as loyal, self-forgetful work for others, for Shakespeare's self first, for instance, and then for Shakespeare's readers, that that too was done: he has the true scholar's way of forgetting himself in his subject. For though "defrauded," as we saw, in his young years, "of the sweet food of academic institution," he is yet essentially a scholar, and all his work mainly retrospective, as I said; his own sorrows, affections, perceptions, being alone real to him of the present. "I cannot make these present times," he says once, "present to _me_." Above all, he becomes not merely an expositor, permanently valuable, but for Englishmen almost the discoverer of the old English drama. "The book is such as I am glad there should be," he modestly says of the _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare_; to which, however, he adds in a series of notes the very quintessence of criticism, the choicest savour and perfume of Elizabethan poetry being sorted, and stored here, with a sort of delicate intellectual epicureanism, which has had the effect of winning for these, then almost forgotten, poets, one generation after another of enthusiastic students. Could he but have known how fresh a source of culture he was evoking there for other generations, through all those years in which, a little wistfully, he would harp on the limitation of his time by business, and sigh for a better fortune in regard to literary opportunities! To feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist, the literary charm of Burton, for instance, or Quarles, or The Duchess of Newcastle; and then to interpret that charm, to convey it to others--he seeming to himself but to hand on to others, in mere humble ministration, that of which for them he is really the creator--this is the way of his criticism; cast off in a stray letter often, or passing note, or lightest essay or conversation. It is in such a letter, for instance, that we come upon a singularly penetrative estimate of the genius and writings of Defoe. Tracking, with an attention always alert, the whole process of their production to its starting-point in the deep places of the mind, he seems to realise the but half-conscious intuitions of Hogarth or Shakespeare, and develops the great ruling unities which have swayed their actual work; or "puts up," and takes, the one morsel of good stuff in an old, forgotten writer. Even in what he says casually there comes an aroma of old English; noticeable echoes, in chance turn and phrase, of the great masters of style, the old masters. Godwin, seeing in quotation a passage from _John Woodvil_, takes it for a choice fragment of an old dramatist, and goes to Lamb to assist him in finding the author. His power of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches the length of a fine mimicry even, as in those last essays of Elia on Popular Fallacies, with their gentle reproduction or caricature of Sir Thomas Browne, showing, the more completely, his mastery, by disinterested study, of those elements of the man which were the real source of style in that great, solemn master of old English, who, ready to say what he has to say with fearless homeliness, yet continually overawes one with touches of a strange utterance from worlds afar. For it is with the delicacies of fine literature especially, its gradations of expression, its fine judgment, its pure sense of words, of vocabulary--things, alas! dying out in the English literature of the present, together with the appreciation of them in our literature of the past--that his literary mission is chiefly concerned. And yet, delicate, refining, daintily epicurean, as he may seem, when he writes of giants such as Hogarth or Shakespeare, though often but in a stray note, you catch the sense of veneration with which those great names in past literature and art brooded over his intelligence, his undiminished impressibility by the great effects in them. Reading, commenting on Shakespeare, he is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky, and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits might seem to be abroad upon the air; and the grim humour of Hogarth, as he analyses it, rises into a kind of spectral grotesque; while he too knows the secret of fine, significant touches like theirs. There are traits, customs, characteristics of houses and dress, surviving morsels of old life, such as Hogarth has transferred so vividly into _The Rake's Progress_, or _Marriage a la Mode_, concerning which we well understand how, common, uninteresting, or even worthless in themselves, they have come to please us at last as things picturesque, being set in relief against the modes of our different age. Customs, stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture--types of cast-off fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant to preserve--we contemplate with more than good-nature, as having in them the veritable accent of a time, not altogether to be replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious deposits; like those tricks of individuality which we find quite tolerable in persons, because they convey to us the secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to which we are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the privilege of the genuine humourists to anticipate this pensive mood with regard to the ways and things of his own day; to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about him with that same refined, purged sort of vision, which will come naturally to those of a later generation, in observing whatever may have survived by chance of its mere external habit. Seeing things always by the light of an understanding more entire than is possible for ordinary minds, of the whole mechanism of humanity, and seeing also the manner, the outward mode or fashion, always in strict connection with the spiritual condition which determined it, a humourist such as Charles Lamb anticipates the enchantment of distance; and the characteristics of places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and in advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what some might condemn as mere sentimentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition of such fashion or accent. "The praise of beggars," "the cries of London," the traits of actors just grown "old," the spots in "town" where the country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on, one after another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just played-out farces, he had relished so much, coming partly through them to understand the earlier English theatre as a thing once really alive; those fountains and sundials of old gardens, of which he entertains such dainty discourse:--he feels the poetry of these things, as the poetry of things old indeed, but surviving as an actual part of the life of the present, and as something quite different from the poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique, which come back to us, if at all, as entire strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border personages, their oaths and armour. Such gift of appreciation depends, as I said, on the habitual apprehension of men's life as a whole--its organic wholeness, as extending even to the least things in it--of its outward manner in connection with its inward temper; and it involves a fine perception of the congruities, the musical accordance between humanity and its environment of custom, society, personal intercourse; as if all this, with its meetings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones of speech, were some delicate instrument on which an expert performer is playing. These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording more frequently than others "the gayest, happiest attitude of things;" a casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always giving the reader so much more than he seemed to propose. There is something of the follower of George Fox about him, and the Quaker's belief in the inward light coming to one passive, to the mere wayfarer, who will be sure at all events to lose no light which falls by the way--glimpses, suggestions, delightful half-apprehensions, profound thoughts of old philosophers, hints of the innermost reason in things, the full knowledge of which is held in reserve; all the varied stuff, that is, of which genuine essays are made. And with him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is, below all more superficial tendencies, the real motive in writing at all--a desire closely connected with that intimacy, that modern subjectivity, which may be called the _Montaignesque_ element in literature. What he designs is to give you himself, to acquaint you with his likeness; but must do this, if at all, indirectly, being indeed always more or less reserved, for himself and his friends; friendship counting for so much in his life, that he is jealous of anything that might jar or disturb it, even to the length of a sort of insincerity, to which he assigns its quaint "praise;" this lover of stage plays significantly welcoming a little touch of the artificiality of play to sweeten the intercourse of actual life. And, in effect, a very delicate and expressive portrait of him does put itself together for the duly meditative reader. In indirect touches of his own work, scraps of faded old letters, what others remembered of his talk, the man's likeness emerges; what he laughed and wept at, his sudden elevations, and longings after absent friends, his fine casuistries of affection and devices to jog sometimes, as he says, the lazy happiness of perfect love, his solemn moments of higher discourse with the young, as they came across him on occasion, and went along a little way with him, the sudden surprised apprehension of beauties in old literature, revealing anew the deep soul of poetry in things, and withal the pure spirit of fun, having its way again; laughter, that most short-lived of all things (some of Shakespeare's even being grown hollow) wearing well with him. Much of all this comes out through his letters, which may be regarded as a department of his essays. He is an old-fashioned letter-writer, the essence of the old fashion of letter-writing lying, as with true essay-writing, in the dexterous availing oneself of accident and circumstance, in the prosecution of deeper lines of observation; although, just as with the record of his conversation, one loses something, in losing the actual tones of the stammerer, still graceful in his halting, as he halted also in composition, composing slowly and by fits, "like a Flemish painter," as he tells us, so "it is to be regretted," says the editor of his letters, "that in the printed letters the reader will lose the curious varieties of writing with which the originals abound, and which are scrupulously adapted to the subject." Also, he was a true "collector," delighting in the personal finding of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets for him by the little accidents which attest previous ownership. Wither's _Emblems_, "that old book and quaint," long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less because a child had coloured the plates with his paints. A lover of household warmth everywhere, of that tempered atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's living within them, he "sticks to his favourite books as he did to his friends," and loved the "town," with a jealous eye for all its characteristics, "old houses" coming to have souls for him. The yearning for mere warmth against him in another, makes him content, all through life, with pure brotherliness, "the most kindly and natural species of love," as he says, in place of the _passion_ of love. Brother and sister, sitting thus side by side, have, of course, their anticipations how one of them must sit at last in the faint sun alone, and set us speculating, as we read, as to precisely what amount of melancholy really accompanied for him the approach of old age, so steadily foreseen; make us note also with pleasure, his successive wakings up to cheerful realities, out of a too curious musing over what is gone and what remains, of life. In his subtle capacity for enjoying the more refined points of earth, of human relationship, he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what seemed common or threadbare; has a care for the sighs, and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even; while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death, almost like Shakespeare. And that care, through all his enthusiasm of discovery, for what is accustomed, in literature, connected thus with his close clinging to home and the earth, was congruous also with that love for the accustomed in religion, which we may notice in him. He is one of the last votaries of that old-world sentiment, based on the feelings of hope and awe, which may be described as the religion of men of letters (as Sir Thomas Browne has his _Religion of the Physician_), religion as understood by the soberer men of letters in the last century, Addison, Gray, and Johnson; by Jane Austen and Thackeray, later. A high way of feeling developed largely by constant intercourse with the great things of literature, and extended in its turn to those matters greater still, this religion lives, in the main retrospectively, in a system of received sentiments and beliefs; received, like those great things of literature and art, in the first instance, on the authority of a long tradition, in the course of which they have linked themselves in a thousand complex ways to the conditions of human life, and no more questioned now than the feeling one keeps by one of the greatness--say! of Shakespeare. For Charles Lamb, such form of religion becomes the solemn background on which the nearer and more exciting objects of his immediate experience relieve themselves, borrowing from it an expression of calm; its necessary atmosphere being indeed a profound quiet, that quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy, working, we might say, on the principle of the _opus operatum,_[88] almost without any co-operation of one's own, towards the assertion of the higher self. And, in truth, to men of Lamb's delicately attuned temperament mere physical stillness has its full value; such natures seeming to long for it sometimes, as for no merely negative thing, with a sort of mystical sensuality. The writings of Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration of the value of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his quaintness, his humour, and what may seem the slightness, the occasional or accidental character of his work, there lies, as I said at starting, as in his life, a genuinely tragic element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest in those hard shadows of _Rosamund Grey_, is always there, though not always realised either for himself or his readers, and restrained always in utterance. It gives to those lighter matters on the surface of life and literature among which he for the most part moved, a wonderful force of expression, as if at any moment these slight words and fancies might pierce very far into the deeper soul of things. In his writing, as in his life, that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first drowsy by choice, and needing the prick of some strong passion or worldly ambition, to stimulate him into all the energy of which he is capable; but rather the reaction of nature, after an escape from fate, dark and insane as in old Greek tragedy, following upon which the sense of mere relief becomes a kind of passion, as with one who, having narrowly escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing for grateful tears in just sitting quiet at home, under the wall, till the end of days. He felt the genius of places; and I sometimes think he resembles the places he knew and liked best, and where his lot fell--London, sixty-five years ago, with Covent Garden and the old theatres, and the Temple gardens still unspoiled, Thames gliding down, and beyond to north and south the fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which, "with their living trees," the thoughts wander "from the hard wood of the desk"--fields fresher, and coming nearer to town then, but in one of which the present writer remembers, on a brooding early summer's day, to have heard the cuckoo for the first time. Here, the surface of things is certainly humdrum, the streets dingy, the green places, where the child goes a-maying, tame enough. But nowhere are things more apt to respond to the brighter weather, nowhere is there so much difference between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the clouds roll together more grandly; those quaint suburban pastorals gather a certain quality of grandeur from the background of the great city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone steeples. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 86: From "Appreciations," 1889.] [Footnote 87: Macabre: very grim.] [Footnote 88: Opus operatum (a phrase from Catholic theology): the work performed through the sacraments--baptism, confirmation, etc.--the efficacy of which is not dependent on the participants.] DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT[89] NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was, that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so, till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories, which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting each others' throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely hint, that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either by present troubles or woeful recollections. "My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study." If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios, and black-letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations, in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said--"Forbear!" Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale, a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the center of the room sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window, between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table. "My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?" Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine own veracious self; and if any passage of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger. When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands. "This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again?" "Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." "See!" answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a death-like slumber; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling. "That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends; carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show; "pray how was it effected?" "Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth'?" asked Dr. Heidegger, "which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?" "But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly. "No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept as fresh as violets, by the virtues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase." "Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?" "You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colonel," replied Dr. Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid, as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment.". While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and, though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment. "Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!" The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea, that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again. "Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; "I rejoice that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment." With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on the table. Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again. "Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are younger--but we are still too old! Quick--give us more!" "Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment, with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in half an hour! But the water is at your service." Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing down their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks; they sat around the table, three gentlemen, of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond her buxom prime. "My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak. The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness, caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the people's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair, that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table. "My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!" "Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor; "see! I have already filled the glasses." There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset, that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mild and moonlight splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created universe. "We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly. Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor, like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The Widow Wycherly--if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow--tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face. "Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!" And then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut. "Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner." "Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew. "No, no, I will be her partner!" shouted Mr. Gascoigne. "She promised me her hand fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne. They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp--another threw his arm about her waist--the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger. "Come, come gentlemen!--come, Madame Wycherly," exclaimed the doctor, "I really must protest against this riot." They stood still, and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed their seats; the more readily because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they were. "My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of the sunset clouds; "it appears to be fading again." And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its petals. "I love it as well thus, as in its dewy freshness," observed he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange dullness, whether of the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old friend, Dr. Heidegger? "Are we grown old again, so soon?" cried they, dolefully. In truth they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes! they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid were over it, since it could no longer be beautiful. "Yes, friends, we are old again," said Dr. Heidegger; "and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well--I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me!" But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 89: From "Twice Told Tales" 1837.] MARKHEIM[90] ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON "Yes," said the dealer, "our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest," and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, "and in that case," he continued, "I profit by my virtue." Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside. The dealer chuckled. "You come to me on Christmas Day," he resumed, "when you know that I am alone in my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it." The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, "You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?" he continued. "Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!" And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tip-toe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror. "This time," said he, "you are in error. I have not come to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady," he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich marriage is not a thing to be neglected." There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the interval of silence. "Well, sir," said the dealer, "be it so. You are an old customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle. Here is a nice thing for a lady now," he went on, "this hand glass--fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good collection, too, but I reserve the name, in the interests of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir, the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector." The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice, had stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that now received the glass. "A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated it more clearly. "A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?" "And why not?" cried the dealer. "Why not a glass?" Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable expression. "You ask me why not?" he said. "Why, look here--look in it--look at yourself! Do you like to see it? No! nor I--nor any man." The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now, perceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled. "Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favored," said he. "I ask you," said Markheim, "for a Christmas present, and you give me this--this damned reminder of years, and sins and follies--this hand-conscience! Did you mean it? Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?" The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth. "What are you driving at?" the dealer asked. "Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. "Not charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved; a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear God, man, is that all?" "I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. "But I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drinking the lady's health." "Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. "Ah, have you been in love? Tell me about that." "I," cried the dealer. "I in love! I never had the time, nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you take the glass?" "Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. "It is very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure--no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff's edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it--a cliff a mile high--high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly. Let us talk of each other; why should we wear this mask? Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become friends?" "I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer. "Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop." "True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. To business. Show me something else." The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions were depicted together on his face--terror, horror, and resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out. "This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, as he began to rearise, Markheim bounded from behind upon his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell. The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap. Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some stately and slow as was becoming to their great age; others garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad's feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of darkness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and peered into that leaguer of shadows with a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger. From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle of locomotion--there it must lie till it was found. Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the brains were out," he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that the deed was accomplished--time, which had closed for the victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer. The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz--the clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon. The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still as he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin. Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties, struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own house. But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth sweethearting, in her poor best, "out for the day" written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir of delicate footing--he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred. At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did there not hang wavering a shadow? Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accompanying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knocking and departed. Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the keys. He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the body by the shoulders; and turned it on its back. It was strangely light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly coloured: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion: he was once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly resist and conquer. He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies; and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor. With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door. The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs; on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half-rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-twenty agonies. On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under his feet like quicksands and detain him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim; or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himself he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt sure of justice. When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures, framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him from the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a packing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from time to time directly like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images; church-going children and the pealing of the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel. And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob, and the lock clicked, and the door opened. Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not, whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned. "Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with that he entered the room and closed the door behind him. Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he bore a likeness to himself; and always like a lump of living terror, there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the earth and not of God. And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added, "You are looking for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness. Markheim made no answer. "I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences." "You know me?" cried the murderer. The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favourite of mine," he said; "and I have long observed and often sought to help you." "What are you?" cried Markheim; "the devil?" "What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I propose to render you." "It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!" "I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or rather firmness. "I know you to the soul." "Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own control--if you could see their faces, they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself." "To me?" inquired the visitant. "To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were intelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it; my acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwilling sinner?" "All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away, so as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to find the money?" "For what price?" asked Markheim. "I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other. Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph. "No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to commit myself to evil." "I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the visitant. "Because you disbelieve their efficacy!" Markheim cried. "I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things from a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he can add but one act of service--to repent, to die smiling, and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply, spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such a death-bed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the man's last words: and when I looked into that face, which had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope." "And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do you think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at last, sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this, then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red hands that you presume such baseness? and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?" "Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action, but in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but because you are Markheim, that I offered to forward your escape." "I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many lessons; itself is a lesson, a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these temptations; mine was not so: I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches--both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of destination." "You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some thousands?" "Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing." "This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor, quietly. "Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim. "That also you will lose," said the other. The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well, then, what matter?" he exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the better? Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself? I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts." But the visitant raised his finger. "For six-and-thirty years that you have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?--five years from now I shall detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail to stop you." "It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their surroundings." "I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?" "In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. "No," he added, with despair, "in none! I have gone down in all." "Then," said, the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are irrevocably written down." Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it was the visitor who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show you the money?" "And grace?" cried Markheim. "Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the hymn?" "It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am." At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house; and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour. "The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance--no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the whole night, if needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!" he cried; "up, friend; your life hangs trembling in the scales; up, and act!" Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open--I can cease from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can draw both energy and courage." The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph; and, even as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour. He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile. "You had better go for the police," said he; "I have killed your master." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 90: First published in 1885.] SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS WITH SOME TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND FOR COMPOSITION (Note.--The selections named below are as a rule short; and, since they are contained in standard works of modern prose, they are accessible in the average library. Page numbers in parentheses refer to the present volume.) I. THE PERSONAL LIFE (_a_) William Hazlitt, _On Personal Character_, in "The Plain Speaker": How the main thesis differs from that in Emerson's _Self-Reliance_ (page 1). (_b_) Walter Pater, _Diaphaneité_, in "Miscellaneous Studies": The substance of the ideal personality here delineated, and how it differs from the type suggested by Emerson. (_c_) Matthew Arnold, _Doing as One Likes_, or _Hebraism and Hellenism_, in "Culture and Anarchy": The main principles of personal endeavor suggested in either of these essays. (_d_) Plutarch, _Marcus Cato,_ in "Lives," Vol. II of Clough's translation: 1. Cato's Self-Reliance. 2. Cato's type of character in American public life. (_e_) Walter Scott, fragment of _Autobiography_, in Lockhart's "Life of Scott:" A comparison of Scott's early training with Ruskin's. See also the early chapters of (_f_) Trevelyan's "Life of Macaulay" and (_g_) Froude's "Life of Carlyle." (_h_) Charles Darwin, _Autobiography_, in "Life and Letters:" 1. The change which came over Darwin's attitude toward literature. 2. The contrast between Darwin's type of mind and Lamb's as revealed in _Old China_ (page 40) and Pater's essay (page 437). II. EDUCATION (_a_) R.W. Emerson, _The American Scholar_, in "Nature, Addresses, Lectures:" The main points in the view here given of education. 2. Certain considerations, somewhat neglected by Emerson, but developed by Newman (page 52). (_b_) Woodrow Wilson, _The Training of Intellect_ (an address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University): How far your own course of study is fulfilling the requirements here set forth, (_c_) William Hazlitt, _On Application to Study_, in "The Plain Speaker:" 1. Hazlitt's view of the study of composition. 2. How the principles of application which he advocates may be applied to some other study in which you are interested. (_d_) T.H. Huxley, _Science and Culture_, in "Science and Education:" 1. How far the principles here set forth bear out Huxley's definition of education (page 47). 2. The main point at issue between Huxley and Arnold (Arnold's essay, page 75, is a reply to Huxley), and your own view of the matter drawn from your own experience. (_e_) J.S. Mill, _Inaugural Address at St. Andrew's,_ in "Dissertations," Vol. IV: Mill's main contentions as to the exact purpose and value of the study of language and literature in universities. (_f_) H.D. Thoreau, _Reading_, in "Walden:" The author's views in regard to reading not done in connection with school work. (_g_) A.G. Balfour, _Pleasures of Reading_, in "Essays and Addresses" (written as a reply to Harrison's claims, page 97): The main points at issue between Harrison and Balfour, and your own view of the matter. (_h_) John Lubbock, _The Choice of Books_, in "The Pleasures of Life:" Whether this essay goes to support Harrison's or Balfour's view, and how. (_i_) Woodrow Wilson, essays in "Mere Literature." (_j_) John Ruskin, _Sesame and Lilies_. (_k_) Consult several biographies of great men--for example, Morley's _Gladstone_, Froude's _Carlyle_, Darwin's _Life_, Huxley's _Life_--and make a comparative study of their early reading. III. RECREATION AND TRAVELS (_a_) George Santayana, on _Work and Play_, sections 3 and following, in "The Sense of Beauty," Part I: 1. The distinction between working and playing. 2. The relation between the sense of beauty and the sense of pleasure. (_b_) William Hazlitt, _On Living to One's Self_, in "Table Talk:" 1. The general method of enjoying life, which is developed here and illustrated further in _On Going a Journey_ (page 116). (_c_) R.L. Stevenson, _Walking Tours_, in "Virginibus Puerisque;" and _Roads_, in "Essays of Travel:" 1. The several ways in which these essays reflect Hazlitt's views; the points which are peculiar to Stevenson. 2. How far your own methods of securing outdoor enjoyment are in accord with Hazlitt's and Stevenson's. (_d_) W.H. Hudson, _Idle Days_, in "Idle Days in Patagonia:" What the author's so-called idleness consisted in. (_e_) Francis Parkman, _Hunting Indians_, in "The Oregon Trail:" The mental experiences of the writer himself in the course of the exploit he describes. IV. SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS (_a_) R.W. Emerson, _Culture_, in "The Conduct of Life:" The relation which the central thought bears to that of Behavior (page 154). (_b_) Matthew Arnold, _Sweetness and Light_, in "Culture and Anarchy:" 1. The chief motives and characteristics of culture. 2. The relation between culture and bodily vigor. 3. The "Social Idea." 4. A comparison of Emerson's and Arnold's attitude toward culture. (_c_) R.W. Emerson, _Manners_, in "Essays, Second Series." How Emerson's view of the relation between manners and fashion supplements Spencer's contention (page 172). (_d_) Henri Bergson, _the first part of Chapter I_ in "Laughter:" The function of laughter in social life. (_g_) William Hazlitt, _On the Spirit of Obligations_, in "The Plain Dealer:" The relation between good sense and good nature. (_f_) R.L. Stevenson, _The Truth of Intercourse_, in "Virginibus Puerisque:" The complex meaning of truthfulness in social life. (_g_) W.M. Thackeray, _George II_, in "The Four Georges:" The chief characteristics of Georgian society. V. PUBLIC AFFAIRS (_a_) Plato, _The Apology_, in the "Dialogues," translated by Jowett, and by others: 1. The part played by Socrates in the public life of Athens. 2. What function Socrates could fulfil in American public life. (_b_) J.S. Mill, _Civilization_, in "Dissertations and Discussions," Vol. I: The ill effects of civilization, and how they may be overcome. (_c_) Henry George, _The Persistence of Poverty amid Advancing Wealth_, in Book V of "Progress and Poverty:" George's exposition of the problem tested by your own experience. (_d_) J.S. Mill, _Of the Dangers to which Representative Government is Liable,_ in "Considerations on Representative Government:" The extent to which Mill's contentions apply to the United States. (_e_) Josiah Royce, _Some American Problems_, in "The Philosophy of Loyalty:" 1. The general solution proposed. 2. How this solution might be applied to some public or college problem you know of. VI. SCIENCE (_a_) Herbert Spencer, _The Genesis of Science_, in "Illustrations of Universal Progress:" The essential nature of science. (_b_) T.H. Huxley, _The Method of Scientific Investigation_, in "Man's Place in Nature:" The relation between scientific and everyday modes of thinking. (_c_) John Tyndall, _On the nature and function of the sun_, in Chapter XIV of "Heat as a Mode of Motion:" The general relation between the facts presented by Tyndall and those presented in _The Physical Basis of Life_ (page 240). (_d_) A.R. Wallace, _Darwinism as Applied to Man_, in "Darwinism": A comparison of this piece, in respect to aim and method, with Darwin's _Mental Powers of Men and Animals_ (page 263). (_e_) Charles Darwin, _On the flower of the ladies' slipper_, in Chapter VIII of "Fertilization of Orchids by Insects." (_f_) T.H. Huxley, _On the Formation of Coal_, in "Discourses Biological." VII. NATURE (_a_) R.W. Emerson, _Nature_, in "Essays, Second Series:" The effect of nature on the human mind. (_b_) H.D. Thoreau, _Spring_, in "Walden:" 1. The formative principle in nature. 2. A comparison of Thoreau's attitude toward nature, as revealed here and in "Walden Pond" (page 306), with that of Emerson. (_c_) John Burroughs, _The Pastoral Bees_ in "Locusts and Wild Honey:" The communal life of the bees. (_d_) W.H. Hudson, _The Perfume of an Evening Primrose_, in "Idle Days in Patagonia:" The association of phenomena of nature with events in one's life. (_e_) Leslie Stephen, _Sunset on Mont Blanc_, in "The Playground of Europe:" An analysis of the circumstances which combined to give this sunset its peculiar interest. (_f_) John Ruskin, descriptions of _water, sky, clouds, and foliage_ in "Modern Painters," Vol. I (look up passages other than those selected for the present volume, page 325): in each case, distinguish the _chief_ beautiful effect which the author wishes to bring out. VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE (_a_) William James, _The Will to Believe_, in "The Will to Believe, and other Essays:" The bearing of religious conviction on volition and conduct. (_b_) Josiah Royce, _Loyalty to Loyalty_, in "The Philosophy of Loyalty:" 1. The exact meaning of the title. 2. How the main thesis is fundamental for _Loyalty and Insight_ (page 365). (_c_) R.W. Emerson, _The Over-Soul_, in "Essays, First Series:" 1. How the conception here developed appears again in other essays of Emerson which you have read. 2. How Emerson's attitude toward spiritual truth differs from that of James; see (_a_), above. (_d_) Josiah Royce, _What is Vital_ in Christianity? in "William James and Other Essays:" The central thought as compared with Seeley's (page 351). (_e_) George Santayana, _The Poetry of Christian Dogma_, in "Poetry and Religion:" The full significance of the title. (_f_) J.R. Seeley, _Christ's Royalty_, in "Ecce Homo:" The significance of the term "King" as applied to Christ. (_g_) G.L. Dickinson, _The Greek View of Religion_, in "The Greek View of Life:" 1. How the Greek differs from the Christian view. 2. The most admirable features of the Greek view. (_h_) Walter Pater, _A Study of Dionysus_, in "Greek Studies:" What Dionysus was symbolic of. (_i_) William James, _Habit_, in "Psychology," Vol. I: The significance of habits, tested by your own experience. (_j_) W.E.H. Lecky, _The Management of Character_, in "The Map of Life:" Specific methods by which one may mold one's own character. IX. LITERATURE AND ART (_a_) George Santayana, _Art and Happiness_, in "The Life of Reason," Vol. IV: 1. What is Art? 2. The position of literature among the arts. 3. What art needs at the present day. (_b_) Walter Bagehot, On _Wordsworth_, in "Essay on Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning:" The nature of pure art. (_c_) Matthew Arnold, _Wordsworth_, in "Essays in Criticism:" A comparison of Arnold's main thesis in regard to Wordsworth with Bagehot's; see (_b_) above. (_d_) G.H. Lewes, _The Principle of Sincerity_, in "The Principles of Success in Literature:" The relation between sincerity and success in literature. (_e_) Thomas Carlyle, _Dante_, in "On Heroes and Hero-Worship:" 1. The chief differences between Dante and Shakespeare (see page 423). 2. How the principle of sincerity (see (_d_) above) is illustrated in the case of Dante. (_f_) P.B. Shelley, _Defence of Poetry_: A comparison of Shelley's attitude toward poetry with Bradley's (page 389). (_g_) G.L. Dickinson, _Chapter IV_ in the "Greek View of Life" (the part preceding the section reprinted in the present volume): How the principles determining the nature of Greek tragedy appear also in the other Greek arts. (_h_) S.H. Butcher, _What we Owe to Greece_, in "Some Aspects of Greek Genius:" Ideals we have inherited from the Greeks. (_i_) A.C. Bradley, _The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy_, in "Shakespearean Tragedy:" The conception of the relations between good and evil which appears in Shakespeare's tragedies. (_j_) Sophocles, _Oedipus Rex_ (translated by Gilbert Murray): A comparison of the theme of this tragedy with the theme of Shakespeare's _Richard III, Macbeth, or Lear_. 
42580	----	EXPOSITORY WRITING BY MERVIN JAMES CURL FORMERLY INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS [Illustration: Publisher's Device] HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY MERVIN JAMES CURL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS U. S. A. TO THE STUDENTS IN RHETORIC III AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS WITH WHOM I HAD PLEASANT ASSOCIATION FROM 1914 TO 1918 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since one of the pleasures of life is in being indebted to friends for kindnesses so generously given that the givers were unaware of the indebtedness which they were creating, the author is happy to set forth several acknowledgments of most helpful counsel and aid. To Dr. Emerson G. Sutcliffe, with whom a complete text on the whole subject of rhetoric had been projected, only to be set aside, and to result, for the present, in the text now published, the author wishes to express his thanks for advice, criticism, and general wise help throughout the preparation of this text. Dr. Herbert L. Creek read many sections of the book in manuscript, and made valuable suggestions. At the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Zeitlin the chapter on the "Informal Essay" was rewritten, with much improvement. Helpful advice was given concerning different sections of the book by Dr. Frank W. Scott, Dr. Harold N. Hillebrand, Dr. Clarissa Rinaker, and Miss Ruth Kelso. Dr. Robert C. Whitford and Mr. Bruce Weirick read a part of the book and kindly commented upon it. All these kind friends were members, at the time of giving aid, of the faculty of the University of Illinois. To Professor Fred L. Pattee, of the Pennsylvania State College, the author feels an especial debt of gratitude for unfailing interest and cheer and much wise counsel. To Mr. Warner G. Rice, a student in the University of Illinois, the author wishes to make acknowledgment for reading one chapter in manuscript and making valuable suggestions. So many friends have helped at one time and another that whatever of good the book may contain is doubtless due largely to them. For its faults the author alone is responsible. Due credit is made in the proper places to the several publishers who with unfailing kindness and courtesy allowed the use of material drawn from their publications. _Boston, Massachusetts_ _August 9, 1919_ CONTENTS I. THE NATURE AND MATERIAL OF EXPOSITION 1 II. HOW TO WRITE EXPOSITION 11 III. DEFINITION 73 IV. ANALYSIS 113 V. MECHANISMS, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATIONS 157 VI. CRITICISM 190 VII. THE INFORMAL ESSAY 231 VIII. EXPOSITORY BIOGRAPHY 257 IX. THE GATHERING OF MATERIAL FOR WRITING 297 INDEX 305 EXPOSITORY WRITING CHAPTER I THE NATURE AND MATERIAL OF EXPOSITION "The Anglo-Saxons," Emerson said, "are the hands of the world"--they, more than any other people, turn the wheels of the world, do its work, keep things moving. Without lingering to quarrel with Emerson, or to justify him, we may safely assert that Expository Writing is the hands of literature. In a world which man even as yet only slightly understands, surrounded as he is by his fellows who constantly baffle his intelligence, and shut up within the riddle of himself, Exposition attempts to explain, to make clear, to tear away the clouds of mystery and ignorance. Exposition attempts to answer the endless curiosity of man. "What is this?" man asks, of things and of ideas. "Who are you?" he addresses to his fellows. "How did this originate, what caused it, where is it going, what will it do, how is it operated?" he repeats from birth to grave. Perhaps the most interesting question in the world is the never-ending "What does this mean to me, how does it affect me, how can I use it?" These are the questions--and there are more of them--which Exposition tries to answer. Obviously, in making the answers the writing will often be garbed in the sack suit of business, will sometimes roll up its sleeves, will pull on the overalls or tie the apron. Then it may explain the workings of a machine, the wonders of a printing press, or may show the mysteries of Congressional action, or the organization of a department store, or even tell how to bake a lemon pie. But it may also appear in the opulence of evening costume, and criticize the ensemble of an orchestra, discuss the diplomacy of Europe, address us in appreciation of the Arts. It may assume the fine informality of the fireside and give us of its most delightful charms in discussing the joys of living and learning, the whimsicalities of the world. In any case it will be answering the endless curiosity of man. It would not be rash to say that more expository thinking is done than any other kind of mental activity. The child who dismantles a clock to find its secret is doing expository thinking; the official, of however complicated a business, who ponders ways and means, is trying to satisfy his business curiosity; the artist who studies the effect of balance, of light and shade, of exclusion or inclusion, is thinking in exposition; politicians are ceaselessly active in explaining to themselves how they may, and to their constituents how they did. We cannot escape Exposition. The question then arises, since this form of writing is always with us how can we make it effective and enjoyable? All writing should be interesting; all really effective writing does interest. It may not be required that every reader be interested in every bit of writing--that would be too much to hope for in a world where sympathies are unfortunately so restricted. To peruse a directory of Bangkok, if one has no possible acquaintance in that city, might become tedious, though one might draw pleasure from the queer names and the suggestions of romance. But if one has a lost friend somewhere in New York, and hopes that the directory will achieve discovery, the bulky and endless volume immediately takes on the greatest interest. Lincoln, driven at length to write a recommendation for a book, to escape the importunities of an agent, wisely, whimsically, wrote, "This is just the right kind of book for any one who desires just this kind of book." Wide though his sympathies were, he recognized that not every one enjoys everything. The problem of the writer of exposition is to make as wide an appeal as he can. Interest in reading is of two kinds: satisfaction and stimulation. And each of these may be either intellectual or emotional or both. The interest of satisfaction largely arises when the questions which the reader brings with him to his reading are answered. A reader who desires to know what is done with the by-products in a creamery, where the skim milk goes to, will be satisfied--and interested--when he learns the complete list of uses, among them the fact that skim milk is largely made into the white buttons that make our underclothing habitable. The reader who leaves an article about these by-products with the feeling that he has been only half told is sure to be dissatisfied, and therefore uninterested. In the same way, when a reader picks up an article or a book with the desire to be thrilled with romance or wonder, to be taken for the time away from the business of the world, to be wrenched with pity for suffering or with admiration for achievement--in other words, when a reader brings a hungry emotion to his reading--if he finds satisfaction, he is interested. The interest of stimulation may include that of satisfaction, but not necessarily. It is the interest that drives a person to further thinking or acting for himself, that loosens his own energies and makes him aware of desire for satisfaction that he did not know he had. A reader may, for example, peruse an editorial in a daily paper and find a complete array of facts, setting forth in detail the subject, and may be satisfied about the subject. He may read another editorial which will not leave him cold, indifferent, but will set his brain to churning with ideas, or may even make him clap on his hat and start forth to change things in the world. The second editorial has given him the interest of stimulation. Writing that makes the interest of stimulation is the writing of power: to the mere satisfaction of hunger, such as one can get from eating dry oatmeal, it adds the stimulation, the joy in life that a fragrant cup of coffee would add to the oatmeal. Exposition that satisfies is adequate; that which stimulates is powerful. Obviously, some expository writing would suffer from being filled with the power to rouse the reader. Much legal writing must be addressed to the intellect alone; often the entrance of stimulation, the rousing of the emotions, will destroy the chance for justice. Obviously, again, some subjects can be treated to contain both kinds of interest: an account of the devastation of northern France may be as cold as a ledger in its array of facts which are to be added; it may also be so treated as to rouse a vitriolic hatred for the government that caused such devastation to be made. Each treatment is allowable, and each necessary for a perfectly proper purpose. Let us admit, without debate, that much expository writing is stupid. Why is it thus? Largely for two reasons: the writer has not made his material mean anything to himself, and he has not made it significant for his reader. In writing exposition there is no place for him who draws his pen along like a quarry slave who is soon to be scourged to his dungeon and does not care for anything. A person who finds no interest in his subject should do one of two things: consult a physician to see if his health is normal so that he may expect reasonably vivid reactions to life and things; or choose a new subject. Interest, in other words, enters at the moment when the writing becomes related vitally to human beings, and not until that moment. Why do students enjoy reading the writings of William James? Simply because the author made his facts relate to himself and to everybody else. If a writer feels like saying, "I don't see anything interesting in this!" and yet he feels duty pointing a stern finger at composition, he should examine the subject more nearly, should see if it does not in some way affect him, does not present a front that he is really concerned with. Suppose, for example, that the task presents itself of accounting for the use of skim milk, and suppose that the writer thinks skim milk of all things the stupidest. Well, buttons, they say, are made from it--but who cares what buttons are made from; their purpose is to hold clothes together, and that's all! But wait a bit: here are some hundreds of gallons of skim milk, from which thousands of buttons can be made. Without the milk, the buttons will be cut from shells, perhaps, at a much larger cost. Ah, the pocketbook is affected, is it--well, let's have the milk used, then. And when one stops to think of it, is it not remarkable that from a soft thing like milk a hard thing like a button should be made? Isn't man, after all, rather ingenious? Who in the world ever thought of milk buttons? Some such process the mind often passes through in its approach to a subject. At length it finds interest, and then it can write--and not before. Here is the difference, then, between being a dumb beast of a reporter of facts, and a free agent of an interpreter. Some facts, to be sure, are in themselves so startling that mere report is sufficient. Slight comment is needed to horrify an audience at Turkish atrocities in the war. Perhaps comment would even weaken the effect. The terrible poignancy of such facts so fires the imagination that more is perhaps positively harmful. Many facts are not thus immediately translated into human experience. At first thought the fact that a new hotel will be supplied with indirect lighting seems a mere fact of trade: instead of ordering hanging chandeliers of one kind, the builder will order another kind. But thought of more fully, this fact takes on both the interest of satisfaction and that of stimulation: why did the builder decide to install the indirect system? and what will the effect be? Imagining one's self in that hotel at the end of a long and bewildering journey, with nerves on edge and eyes aflame with dust, will relate the fact of choice at once to human feelings and needs--and the subject is interesting. A reader can be made to understand the workings of the engine in a super-six automobile, and also to feel the power of it; to understand a cream separator and also to thrill to the economy of time and strength which it brings; to understand a clarinet and also to rouse to the beauty of its voice; to understand an adding machine and also to marvel at the uncanny weirdness of the invention. The writer interprets as soon as he brings his subject into relation with human life and shows its real value. As already mentioned, care is to be exercised to use the treatment which the subject demands. An explanation, for practical purposes, of a machine lathe will be dangerous if it attempts too much imaginative stimulation: there would lurk too great a danger to material fingers. An essay, on the other hand, such as those of Lamb and Stevenson, depends largely on its imaginative interpretation, on its appeal to the interest of stimulation. For a neutral newspaper account of a football game the following heading was used: "Yesterday's game between the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago resulted in no score for either side." That is a bald report of the facts, for a neutral audience. The interpreting spirit, as it appeared at the two universities, colored the tale: "Fighting Illini tie Maroons 0-0"; and, "Maroons hold Illini to 0-0 score." These two headings, if expanded into complete articles, would color the story with interpretation for a specific audience that is vitally interested. The accounts would probably be more interesting than that of the newspaper, but they would also run the chance of being less fair. For Webster's New International Dictionary _art_ is defined as follows: "Application of skill and taste to production according to æsthetic principles; an occupation having to do with the theory or practice of taste in the expression of beauty in form, color, sound, speech, or movement." George Gissing, making a definition of the same subject for his book, _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, writes as follows: It has occurred to me that one might define Art as: an expression, satisfying and abiding, of the zest for life. This is applicable to every form of Art devised by man, for, in his creative moment, whether he produce a great drama or carve a piece of foliage in wood, the artist is moved and inspired by supreme enjoyment of some aspect of the world about him; an enjoyment keener in itself than that experienced by another man, and intensified, prolonged, by the power--which comes to him we know not how--of recording in visible or audible form that emotion of rare vitality. Art, in some degree, is within the scope of every human being, were he but the ploughman who utters a few would-be melodious notes, the mere outcome of health and strength, in the field at sunrise; he sings or tries to, prompted by an unusual gusto in being, and the rude stave is all his own. Another was he, who also at the plough, sang of the daisy, or the field mouse, or shaped the rhythmic tale of Tam o' Shanter. Not only had life a zest for him incalculably stronger and subtler than that which stirs the soul of Hodge, but he uttered it in word and music such as go to the heart of mankind, and hold a magic power for ages.[1] [1] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. Of these two definitions obviously the first attempts merely to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of the reader, is a mere report of facts, and the second is interested in making an interpretation, in stimulating the reader. For most readers the words of Gissing would be more interesting; though, since a dictionary is not primarily an amusement, it is a bit unfair to mention the fact. Interesting our expository writing must be; it must also be truthful. Nothing worse can be imagined than the kind of writing that forgets the facts, that remembers only the desire to please. Under the pleasing phraseology of any bit of expository writing there must be the firm structure of thought, and the close weave of fact. Expository writing is commonly divided into Definition and Analysis. Definition attempts to set bounds to the subject, to say "thus far and no farther," to tell what the subject is. Analysis regards the subject as composed of parts, mutually related, which together form the whole, and attempts to divide the subject into as many parts as it contains. Analysis is divided into classification and partition. Classification groups individual members according to likeness, as one might classify Americans according to color or birthplace or education or health, in every case placing those who are alike together. Partition divides an organic whole into its parts, as one might divide the United States Government into its three branches of legislative, judicial, and executive, or the character of George Washington into its components. Now definition and analysis often intermingle and help each other, and are often informally treated, but somehow, in every piece of exposition, the underlying thought must have a sound basis of one or the other or both. This will be the nucleus of the thinking; it may then be treated as a bald report or as an interpretation, aiming merely to give information or to rouse the further interest of the reader. The method of treatment will be determined by the nature of the facts and the purpose of the author in writing. It cannot be too strongly stated that the underlying thought and the interest are really one, after all. As you approach a subject, and learn its character and meaning, you will be at the same time learning whether it is a subject capable of great appeal or only of slight attraction. Interest is not something laid on, but is a development from the nature of the facts themselves. The first question should be, "Is this interesting?" and then the second question may follow, "How shall I bring out the interest?" Remember that interest depends on relation to human beings; the closer the relation, the greater the interest. Mr. Henry Labouchere, English statesman and for many years editor of _Truth_, had an ideal reaction to life, so far as interest is concerned. If, scanning the horizon for interest, he had bethought himself of the rather impolite advice of the Muse to Sir Philip Sidney, "'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thine heart and write,'" he would have found, upon following the advice, a heart full of eager curiosity and readiness to be attracted to anything. The following account of one of his qualities, as related in his biography, is worth remembering when you feel like saying, "Oh, I don't see anything interesting in that!": "If he had encountered a burglar in his house already loaded with valuables, his first impulse would have been, not to call the police, but to engage the intruder in conversation, and to learn from him something of the habits of burglars, the latest and most scientific methods of burgling, the average profits of the business, and so forth. He would have been delighted to assist his new acquaintance with suggestions for his future guidance in his profession, and to point out to him how he might have avoided the mistake which had on this occasion led to his being caught in the act. In all this he would not by any means have lost sight of his property; on the contrary, the whole force of his intellect would have been surreptitiously occupied with the problem of recovering it with the least amount of inconvenience to his friend and himself. He would have maneuvered to bring off a deal. If by sweet reasonableness he could have persuaded the burglar to give up the 'swag,' he would have been delighted to hand him a sovereign or two, cheer him with refreshment, shake hands, and wish him better luck next time; and he would have related the whole story in the next week's _Truth_ with infinite humor and profound satisfaction." To make clear, to explain,--that is the task of exposition. Such writing does not have the excitement of the fighting-ring, which we find in argument, nor does it attain the lyric quality of impassioned description, or the keen wild flight of narrative. It keeps its feet on the earth, tells the truth--but tells it in such a way, with so much of reaction on the writer's part, and with so strong an appeal to the reader's curiosity or imagination or sympathy, that it is interesting, that it is always adequate, and may be powerful. CHAPTER II HOW TO WRITE EXPOSITION The Problem All writing--except mere exercise and what the author intends for himself alone--is a problem in strategy. The successful author will always regard his writing as a problem of manipulation of material wisely chosen to accomplish an objective against the enemy. The enemy is the reader. He is armed with two terrible weapons, lack of interest and lack of comprehension. Sometimes one weapon is stronger than the other, but a wise author always has an eye for both. The strategic problem is, then, so to choose material, and so to order and express it, that the reader will be forced to become interested, to comprehend, to arrive, in other words, at the point in his feeling and thinking to which the author wishes to lead him. The author's objective is always an effect in the reader's mind. In so far as the author creates this effect he is successful. And the time to consider the effect, to make sure of its accomplishment, is before the pen touches the paper. Sometimes the author makes a mistake in his planning, as did the composer Handel when he wrote the oratorio of "The Messiah." He placed the "Hallelujah Chorus" at the end of the oratorio. But when, toward the end of the second section, he saw from his place on the stage that the audience was not so enthusiastic as he had expected it to be at that point, he changed his plan, with practical shrewdness rushed to the front and shifted the famous chorus from the end of the third section to the end of the second, and had the satisfaction of seeing the audience so moved that first the King rose, and then, of course, the audience with him. The chorus has stood at the end of the second part to this day; that is the place for it--it brings about the effect that Handel desired much better there than if it were saved for the end of the oratorio. The oratorio is, in other words, a greater work than it would have been had not the author kept a keen eye for the audience, for the effect, and a willingness to change his plans whenever the gaining of the effect required a change. Just so the writer should constantly scan the horizon of the reader's mind for signs of interest and for shafts of intelligence. The effect that the writer desires in the reader's mind may be of different natures. In Baedeker's Guide-Book the aim is largely to satisfy the understanding, to meet the reader's desire for compact information. In some of Poe's tales the effect is of horror. Patrick Henry aimed primarily to rouse to vigorous action. Shakespeare wished to shed light upon the great truths of existence, to satisfy the reader's groping curiosity, and also to thrill the reader with pity and terror or with high good humor or the unrestrained laughter of roaring delight. In so far as the author accomplishes his purpose, in just so far he is successful. When friends complimented Cicero, telling him that he was the greatest orator, he replied somewhat as follows: "Not so, for when I give an oration in the Forum people say, 'How well he speaks!' but when Demosthenes addressed the people they rose and shouted, 'Come, let us up and fight the Macedonians!'" If Cicero was correct in his estimate, Demosthenes was the greater orator--of that there can be no doubt--for he gained his effect. President Wilson's great war messages had as one of their objects, certainly, the rousing in American hearts of a high thrill to the lofty object for which they fought, the overcoming of might with right. The remarkable success of the messages attests the author's power. Now the author will accomplish this effect in the reader's mind only if his writing "takes hold," and it will "take hold" only if it is weighty, that is, only if it bears toward the desired end in every part and in every implication. This is as true in writings that aim at light, frivolous effects as in those that stir the deeper emotions, in writing that aims at the understanding almost alone as in that which strives not only to make clear but to infuse with deathless appeal to the heart. A treatise on the fourth dimension must bear, in every stroke, toward the complete satisfaction of the reader's intellectual curiosity; a comedy must lay down each word in the intention of liberating the silver laughter of humor; a tragedy must leave us in every implication serious, even in its introduction of comical material to heighten the tragic nature of the whole. To make every word bear in the one general direction--that is the writer's task. In no other way can he move the reader's mind and heart as he wishes to. An author finds, however, that to gain the desired effect requires skillful manipulation on his part. He confronts a mass of refractory material, often full of contradictions, in which any potential effect seems almost as difficult to discover as the proverbial needle in the well-known haystack. For example, when a historian sits down, one hundred years hence, to the task of explaining the Great War, he will be confronted with an amazing welter of endless facts, tendencies, personal, national, and racial ambitions, enmities, competitions in trade, language, customs, indiscretions of diplomats, inscrutable moves of controlling powers, checks and counter checks, assertion and denial, accusation and assurance of innocence, bribery and plots and spy systems, amateur comment in newspaper and magazine, defenses by people who have retained their poise and other defenses by those whose faculties have been unseated by the awful strain of war--and everywhere he will find the endless array of events and detailed facts of organization of civil and military life to mold somehow into a consistent, intelligible whole. Well may he say that the task is too great for mortal man. Yet somehow the history is to be written, somehow the effect that he wishes is to be gained. Obviously the great prime task is to unify, to bring order out of chaos, to create from formless material a real edifice of thought. Exactly the same task awaits the writer of any kind of literature; in a short theme no less, the first great duty is to find some principle whereby the author can exclude the useless and include what is of value. The first question to ask is--and it is also the last and the intervening question--"What am I trying to accomplish?" At first thought this question may seem the most obvious, the most elementary, and the least helpful query possible. But upon its being successfully met depends the whole success of the writing, whether of choosing or ordering or proportioning the material, or of expressing the selected ideas. For, since the chief task before the writer is to make his thoughts and his expression drive in one direction, so that the whole composition is simplified in the reader's mind, is unified and given an organic existence, even the choice of words, upon which depends so much of the tone of the composition, is largely settled by the answer to this question of what the author hopes to accomplish. In Exposition, the explaining the relations among things and ideas, we are commonly told that we must "cover the ground," must "stick to the subject," must "include whatever is valuable and reject the rest." But such directions are insufficient. Until I have some touchstone, some applicable standard, I cannot tell whether material is valuable or not. It is as if one were brought into the presence of multifarious building material,--wood both hard and soft, cement and the other ingredients of concrete, bricks, stucco, and steel beams, and terra cotta tiles,--and then were requested to build a house, using whatever of the material might be of value, and removing the rest. The builder would be nonplussed. He cannot build, now with wood, now with stone, and again with tile; if he did, the saying would be all too true, "There's no place like home!" He can do nothing reasonable until he has been informed as to the kind of house desired, until he is given a principle of selection. Then, if he has been bidden to make a brick house, he at once knows what his object is, and can then reject whatever does not help him, in the accomplishment. In the same way, if I am asked to write five thousand words about Horticulture, I am at a loss to choose from the history of the science, or the present status, or the still unsolved problems, or the relative advancement in different countries, or the possibility of the pursuit of horticulture as a profession, or the poetic, the imaginative stimulus of working among apple blossoms, or the value to health of working in the open air. Perhaps any one of these divisions of the total subject would require five thousand words; certainly with so limited an amount of material of expression I cannot cover all; and if I choose a bit of each, the result will hopelessly confuse the reader as to the science, for I shall perforce write a series of mere _disjuncta membra_. I must, then, choose at once some guiding principle of selection that will make clear whether, for instance, the poetic appeal of the science has anything to do with my object. Then, and only then, shall I be able to write an article that will "take hold," that will bear in every part toward some definite goal, that will leave my reader with a well-organized, easily understood piece of writing. Only thus can I escape making a mere enumeration about as sensible as to add potatoes and church steeples and treasurers' reports and feather boas and card parties and library paste in the hope of making an integral whole. This guiding idea, which avoids such selections, may perhaps best be called the "controlling purpose" of the theme or article or book. The Controlling Purpose _What, then, is the controlling purpose? It is the answer to the question, "What am I trying to accomplish?" It is the intelligent determination on the writer's part to make the material of his writing march straight toward a definite goal which he wishes the reader to perceive. It is the actively operating point of view of the writer, the positive angle of vision that he takes toward the subject._ The controlling purpose in Lincoln's mind as he rode up to Gettysburg must have been to bring home to the civilians of the country, with a great humble thrill toward accomplishment, the fact that after the soldiers had done all they could, the civilians must reverently take up the fight for freedom and union. His address is immortal. But suppose, for a moment, that he had ascended the platform with the vague idea of "saying something about America, the war, you know, and the soldiers, and liberty,--oh, yes, Liberty, of course,--and, oh, things in general." Though he had thundered for hours his words would likely have been ineffective. Only an intense realization of the purpose in one's mind, and a consistent bending of one's efforts to gain this end, bring simplicity, weightiness, and the powerful effect in the reader's mind. From the reader's point of view, in fact, we might say that the controlling purpose is the means of making writing interesting, since nothing so holds a reader's mind as to feel that he is getting somewhere, that he is accomplishing something by his efforts. In no other way can he be made so clearly to see his progress, for only thus can he be prevented from undirected wandering. Source of the Controlling Purpose _a._ _The Subject itself_ When we ask how we shall find and choose the controlling purpose, we discover that it is determined by three things; the subject itself, the personality of the writer, and the character of the reader. Just how these three operate to determine the cast of the writing we shall now attempt to discover. The first thing for the writer to do is to look at the subject itself and learn what it is, really understand it. He must know its exact nature before he can be allowed to proceed with the development. Now this often requires much honesty, for it is necessary to put aside prejudice and bias of all kinds and to look at the subject just as it is, with a passionate desire to learn its exact nature. For example, if you are to write about the value of a college education, and you are an idealist, you may be tempted to overlook the fact that such a training does actually help a man to earn more money than he otherwise would. You may think that such a consideration is beneath your dignity. But you must put aside your prejudice for the time being and must look the fact honestly in the face. And, if you are a hard-headed, practical person, you must nevertheless admit that a college education is broadening, chastening, in its influence. In either case you will not stop until you have looked at all possible sides of the subject. You will amass such facts, then, as that a college education is broadening, that it increases earning capacity, that it puts a person in touch with the world, that it makes him more able to be a useful citizen. Other facts also will occur to you, but let us suppose that these are the most important. If you carefully examine them you will perhaps come to the conclusion that a college education is valuable in that it helps a person to realize his best possibilities in every way, as a citizen, a friend, a personality. Or, if you are to write about the aeroplane, you will discover that it is heavier than air, that it is propelled by motor-power, that it attains certain speeds, that it has definite lifting power, that it is self-stabilizing to a remarkable degree, that it is made of certain kinds of material, of certain weight, and that it has one, or two, or even three planes. In addition you will note the qualities of efficiency, of triumphing over winds, of beautiful poise, and smoothness of execution. In both these cases you have been seeking the core of your subject, the real meaning of it, its essence. You must, before you begin to write a word, be able to say what all the noticed facts amount to, to say, "All told, this subject, this machine, or whatever it is, means so-and-so." Perhaps of the aeroplane you would say, "This machine stands for wonderful potential efficiency, not yet completely understood." In the same way we say of people and things, "He is a bore," or "a tyrant," or, "That is a great social menace," or some other such comment. In each case we have tagged the person or thing with what we think it is at its heart, with its total significance. And not until we have done this are we at all ready to begin writing. _b._ _The Writer's Attitude_ The second influence in determining the controlling purpose is the reaction of the writer to the subject. In the following estimate of Lord Morley, the great English statesman, you will notice that, though the treatment seems to be, at first, purely objective, quite impersonal, the author cannot keep himself out: he enters with the fifth word, "thrilling," in which he shows where he stands himself in regard to truth, and he appears more at length in the last two clauses of the selection, where he definitely set the approval of his own heart upon Lord Morley's attitude. The third influence, that of the reader, appears also, for when you consider that the article was written for Englishmen to read, you see the molding for the national temper, different of necessity from that which would have been made for Frenchmen, for example. The author relies upon a knowledge of Morley among his readers, and upon a certain definite attitude among them toward the truth. You will catch that thrilling note in the oratory of Lord Morley at all times, for he touches politics with a certain spiritual emotion that makes it less a business or a game than a religion. He lifts it out of the street on to the high lands where the view is wide and the air pure and where the voices heard are the voices that do not bewilder or betray. He is the conscience of the political world--the barometer of our corporate soul. Tap him and you will see whether we are at "foul" or "fair." He has often been on the losing side: sometimes perhaps on the wrong side: never on the side of wrong. He is True as a dial to the sun, Although it be not shined upon. There is about him a sense of the splendid austerity of truth--cold but exhilarating. It is not merely that he does not lie. There are some other politicians of whom that may be said. It is that he does not trifle with truth. It is sacred and inviolate. He would not admit with Erasmus that "there are seasons when we must even conceal truth," still less with Fouché that "les paroles sont faites pour cacher nos pensées."[2] His regard for the truth is expressed in the motto to the essay "On Compromise": "It makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place or in the second." This inflexible veracity is the rarest and the most precious virtue in politics. It made him, if not, as Trevelyan says of Macaulay, "the worst popular candidate since Coriolanus," at least a severe test of a constituency's attachment. It is Lord Morley's contribution to the common stock. Truth and Justice--these are the fixed stars by which he steers his barque, and even the Prayer Book places Religion and Piety after them, for indeed they are the true foundation of religion and piety.[3] [2] Words were made to conceal our thoughts. [3] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. The second consideration, then, is, "What does this subject mean to me?" Of course there are subjects in which this question is of slight importance: in writing a treatise on mathematics, for instance, one might be quite indifferent to any personal reaction, though in even such a piece of writing there might appear a thrill at the neat marshaling of forces for the inevitable waiting answer to the problem. In general, however, this question is of great importance. Stevenson goes so far as even to say that the author's attitude is more important than the facts themselves. Certainly a writer cannot tell what is the truth for himself unless he expresses his ideas in the light of his own personality. Suppose that in the case of the aeroplane, though you believe the central fact as we expressed it above, you are primarily appealed to by the fact that the motor is of the utmost importance, and that at present it is not so highly developed as it should be for perfect flying. You are, in other words, impressed with the problem that confronts engineers of making the motor more efficient. Your controlling purpose would now be modified, then, and would perhaps read, "The aeroplane is a machine of wonderful potential efficiency not yet completely understood, _especially as regards the driving power_." In the same way you would modify the purpose of the treatment of college education and might say, "A college education is valuable in that it helps a person to realize his best possibilities in every way, but _especially as an heir of all the wisdom of the ages gone_." The relative importance of this second consideration depends on whether the subject is much or little affected by personal interpretation. In the personal essay, as written by Lamb, for example, we may care more for the man than for the facts, or more for the facts as seen by the man than for the mere facts alone. In questions of society, of morality, of taste, in which the answer is not absolute in any case, in all matters that affect the well-being of humanity and in which there is a shifting standard, the attitude of the writer is important. The writer who wishes to have a voice of authority must cling to the fact as to a priceless jewel, but he must also remember that if, for example, he is writing on Feminism, or Socialism, or Church Attendance, or The Short Ballot, or The New Poetry, or The Value of Social Clubs in the Country, or any such subject, we, the readers, eagerly wait on his words as being primarily an expression of his personal reaction to the matter. And the final value of the treatment will depend on whether the personality is well-poised, largely sympathetic, able to take an elastic view of the subject and to bring it home to the reader as a piece of warmly felt and honestly stated conviction. In exposition, as well as in argument, we must ask the witness,--that is, the writer,--whether he is prejudiced or not. Especially must we do this when we happen to be the author ourselves. Violent condemnation of Capital by a man who has become embittered by mistreatment at the hands of employers must be taken with somewhat of caution, just as sweeping arraignment of Socialism by an arrogant capitalist must be eyed askance. It might not be amiss to remark here that the writer in a college class who declares that he has no reaction to his subject, that he is quite indifferent to it, should do one of two things, either choose a new subject, or drop from college and go to work at some vitalizing effort with other people which will bring home realities to him in such a way that he cannot fail to react. In the following brief incident it is interesting to note how the author shows his own personality. Another would have thought of the problem of dietetics involved, or of the absence of coffee or "parritch" or the rasher of bacon, or of the austerity of the meal. To Gissing[4] the incident was significant as showing a national characteristic both admirable and amusing. [4] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Summer," XXI. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. At an inn in the north I once heard three men talking at their breakfast on the question of diet. They agreed that most people ate too much meat, and one of them went so far as to declare that, for his part, he rather preferred vegetables and fruit. "Why," he said, "will you believe me that I sometimes make a breakfast of apples?" This announcement was received in silence; evidently the two listeners didn't quite know what to think of it. Thereupon the speaker, in rather a blustering tone, cried out, "Yes, I can make a very good breakfast on _two or three pounds of apples_." Wasn't it amusing? And wasn't it characteristic? This honest Briton had gone too far in frankness. 'T is all very well to like vegetables and fruit up to a certain point; but to breakfast on apples! His companions' silence proved that they were just a little ashamed of him; his confession savoured of poverty or meanness; to right himself in their opinion, nothing better occurred to the man than to protest that he ate apples, yes, but not merely one or two; he ate them largely, _by the pound_! I laughed at the fellow, but I thoroughly understood him; so would every Englishman; for at the root of our being is a hatred of parsimony. This manifests itself in all manner of ludicrous or contemptible forms, but no less is it the source of our finest qualities. An Englishman desires, above all, to live largely; on that account he not only dreads but hates and despises poverty. His virtues are those of the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position. _c._ _The Reader_ The third consideration is, "Who is my reader, and what are his characteristics?" The counter-question, "What difference does it make who my reader is?" can be summarily answered with the statement that it makes a great deal of difference. As soon as you note what a large part temperament plays in the forming of opinions in politics and religion and social questions, and remember that no two people ever react to any truth in exactly the same way--that what seems to one sensible person monstrous will appear to another equally sensible person as highly virtuous--you will see that in all writing, where either the understanding or the emotions are involved, this question assumes importance. If we believe the theory with which we set out, that all writing is done to accomplish an object, that is, a certain effect in the reader's mind, and then remember that different readers take different trails to the same objective, and that some must be even coaxed back from one trail into another, we shall see that it is vital that the reader do not select the wrong way, and, like a futile dog, "bark up the wrong tree." A hasty glance at current magazines will at once show how operative this consideration is in practical writing: _The Atlantic Monthly_ uses a different set of subjects and a different style of expression from that of _The Scientific American_ or _The Black Cat_ or _The Parisienne_. The editors, in other words, are remembering who their readers are and are trying to meet them with gifts, not with weapons of offense. After all, the reader is always the destination of all writing; the place where the effect will be made is the reader's mind. To apply this third consideration to our two subjects, the value of a college education and the aeroplane, let us see how the treatment should differ according to the differing readers. If, in the treatment of the first subject, we are presenting our statements to a body of educators, even though the facts of college education remain unmoved, and though our personal leaning toward the supreme value in dowering the student with the wisdom of the past is unchanged, we shall yet see that these educators have already thought as we have about the matter, that merely to repeat to them will be futile and wearying; and we shall, if we are wise, change the point of attack and develop the value as enabling the student _to apply to practical problems the wisdom of the past_. Or, if the readers are to be politicians whom we wish to enlist in sympathy with larger endowments, we shall perhaps treat the subject as being _increased political insight and sympathy with all people_. In the treatment of the aeroplane, if we are presenting our words to engineers, we shall probably analyze the present lack of proper engine power and try to suggest means of correction. And we shall make our presentation in language that has not been stripped of its technicalities but has been allowed to stand in engineering terms. But if we address a body of benevolent women who are trying to organize an "Airmen's Relief Fund," and who look upon the machine with horror as a potential destroyer of life, we shall simply show that _accidents may be caused through faulty engines which may often result in loss of life_. The original controlling purpose will now appear, "The value of a college education lies in its offering the best chance for personal development through showing to the student his heirship to all the wisdom of the ages past, especially as this is applied to present-day problems," or, "The aeroplane is a machine of great potential efficiency not yet completely understood, especially as regards the driving power, through which lack of understanding grave accidents may occur." Now if we scan these two statements carefully, I believe that we shall be persuaded of their inadequacy. To explain to the benevolent women who are interested in saving lives the fact that we do not yet fully understand the aeroplane, is like attempting to persuade a man from the path of an oncoming thunderous locomotive by telling him of the lack of laws to regulate public safety. In other words, we have forgotten that a wedge makes the easiest entrance, and we have attacked on far too broad a front, have failed to whittle away the chips that are of no value to the reader. Perhaps we need a complete restatement of the controlling purpose, occasioned by the nature of the reader. We may say that the value of a college education is in enabling a student to be of service to the state by applying the wisdom of the past, or that the aeroplane, partly through our ignorance of it, is causing terrible accidents. These purposes are far different from those with which we started out. All are perfectly true; these are better adapted to our particular readers, are more useful in helping to accomplish our selected aim. The gist of the matter is this: wisdom in writing demands that we discover the special loophole through which our readers regard the subject and then bring our material within the view from that loophole, bearing in mind always the training and the prejudices of the reader, and conforming material to suit the special needs. One large reason why college themes are liable to dullness is the fact that few students write for any one in particular. They merely put down colorless facts which do not stir a reader in the slightest. They forget that facts exist, really, only as they relate to people, individual people, and that they must be clothed attractively, as is virtue for a child's consumption, or the reader will have none of them. Even the patient writer of themes should regard a specially chosen reader as at the same time his best friend and his potentially worst enemy: friend in the sense of recipient of literary gifts, and enemy in the sense of possible foiler of all the author's good intentions. As enemy the reader must be conquered, must be made to read and understand; as friend he is to be sympathetically met and smiled upon. And if there be no reader determined by the circumstances, the writer should choose some well-known friend and adapt his material to that friend, or should select any ordinarily intelligent being and use the widest appeal that he can. _d._ _Relative Value of Sources_ Now the relative value of these three sources of the controlling purpose is variable. In an article for the encyclopædia the writer's reaction should be subordinated, since the reader comes to the encyclopædia for facts and not for opinion. Likewise the reader, in such an article, will be of minor importance, for the article is addressed to general ordinary intelligence that desires a straightforward statement. But as we have seen, an article on Feminism must with the greatest care watch the reader and the writer--the reader because the subject rouses both assent and opposition; the writer because the subject is of the kind that depend largely on opinion. So a theme on the problem of the hired man, or Tennyson's attitude toward science, or the reasons for attending one university rather than another, or the value of mechanical stokers, or the application of Mendel's Law to human beings will vary its purpose according to the varying importance of the three sources. Only one great caution needs to be made. Never falsify or mistreat the facts: they are the supreme thing. It is for this fault that the newspapers are most blameable: they consider their readers and their own points of view, but all too often they treat the facts cavalierly. A high reverence for the truth, and an unflinching determination to tell it are prime essentials. The Controlling Purpose and the Emotional Reaction So far we have been concerned with the problem of placing the _facts_ before the reader, of appealing to his intelligence. But writing consists of vastly more than that alone. After the understanding, sometimes before, must be considered the emotions. We have the facts, we know what we think of them, and we are reasonably sure of the reader's attitude. Now we must discover how to set the reader's emotions afire in so far as we desire such an effect. In listening to a great tragedy we perceive the cold analysis of a great truth of life; but that is not all: far out beyond the bounds of understanding our emotions are profoundly stirred and we _feel_ pity and terror. So in the account of a tremendous battle, of a fire, of anything that touches human life at all nearly and with power, our emotions are called into play. Now different pieces of writing, just like different subjects, call for different degrees of emotional reaction. Drama always rouses us, lyric poems depend upon their emotional quality, the informal essay has much emotional appeal, fiction of any sort stirs our feelings, and the more powerful the writing is, the more sure the appeal. At first thought most expository writing might be considered to make slight appeal, if any, to emotions. That is not necessarily true; the more effective the exposition, the more real is usually the call to feeling. Often this call is subtle, usually it is subordinate to the appeal to the understanding, but in most effective expository writing it will be found. In an explanation of the Panama Canal certainly there would be roused the reader's admiration and wonder at the magnitude of the operation. The mere analysis of the facts in a criminal trial often settles the case, so great is the emotional appeal. In didactic writing the call to emotion is less strong, though such a writer as Jonathan Edwards could explain the writhing of man like a spider before the Almighty in a profoundly moving way. In axiomatic mathematical propositions we find perhaps the least strong appeal: that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles might seem to be divorced from all excitement. But in most exposition when emotional appeal is overlooked the writing suffers. In an account of the American Civil War, for example, the writer might set out to show that the conflict was the culmination of the struggle between yeoman and cavalier begun long since in England. But the war meant more than that. The author will then see the emotional significance of the fight and will add to his purpose the intention to thrill the reader at the magnificent exhibition, on both sides, of devotion to an idea. So Emerson, in his essay on "Fate" in _The Conduct of Life_, fills the reader with gloom for page after page, detailing how thoroughly the individual is bound down by conditions of birth, sex, breeding, wealth--and then in two wonderful sentences he turns the whole course of thought and emotion by saying, "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free," and the reader is stirred as with a trumpet call to renewed courage, which, to use Emerson's words, "neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius" can overcome. And the historian Greene, in his well-known account of Queen Elizabeth, states his controlling purpose in the words, "Elizabeth was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn." But these words are not the whole of his purpose; he intends, besides the intellectual grasping of the Queen's character, an intense admiration and wonder at the resourcefulness, the shrewd judgment, and a reaction of amusement to the strange outbreaks of unwomanly freaks or of feminine wiles. The controlling purpose, then, is almost always of a dual nature; it aims at both the understanding and the emotions. Whenever there is any real possibility of making it thus double the writer should so express it to himself. In the following magazine article such a double purpose obviously exists. First of all there are the facts of the marching of American troops through London. These facts are unchangeable. Baldly stated, the significance of the fact is that the New World is coming to the help of the Old World against the monster of unrestrained militarism. To a person who regards life coldly, as the mere interplay of calculable forces, one whose emotions are not concerned, this would be a sufficient statement of the whole truth, of the total significance. But such writing would miss the chance of power, would be forever less valuable than it ought to be, for a great warming of the heart answers those footfalls in London streets. In other words, just as we have seen that there are two kinds of exposition--mere noting of facts and interpreting of facts--so we now see that interpretation can be either lifeless, or moving, charged with power. It is the old difference between the drama and a sermon: the play thrills and the sermon convinces. Either may add the other quality--a fine drama or a well-made sermon does. In this account of American soldiers in London the truth is made clear, but far more than that it is made alive, pulsating with emotion of national pride, of racial solidarity, of high moral purpose. In so far as the writer succeeds in stirring us, in just so far he is more likely to make the truth take hold upon us and bind us firmly in its grasp. It is the writing that both convinces and moves us that is lasting, that is really powerful. "SOLEMN-LOOKING BLOKES"[5] [5] Stacy Aumonier, in _The Century Magazine_, December, 1917. By courtesy of the publisher, The Century Company, New York City. At midday on August 15 I stood on the pavement in Cockspur Street and watched the first contingent of American troops pass through London. I had been attracted thither by the lure of a public "show," by the blare of a band, and by a subconscious desire to pay tribute in my small way to a great people. It was a good day for London, intermittently bright, with great scurrying masses of cumuli overhead, and a characteristic threat of rain, which fortunately held off. Cockspur Street, as you know, is a turning off Trafalgar Square, and I chose it because the crowd was less dense there than in the square itself. By getting behind a group of shortish people and by standing on tiptoe I caught a fleeting view of the faces of nearly every one of the passing soldiers. London is schooled to shows of this kind. The people gather and wait patiently on the line of route. And then some genial policemen appear and mother the people back into some sort of line, an action performed with little fuss or trouble. Then mounted police appear, headed by some fat official in a cockade hat and with many ribbons on his chest. And some one in the crowd calls out: "Hullo, Percy! Mind you don't fall off yer 'orse!" Then the hearers laugh and begin to be on good terms with themselves, for they know that the "show" is coming. Then follows the inevitable band, and we begin to cheer. It is very easy and natural for a London crowd to cheer. I have heard Kaiser William II cheered in the streets of London! We always cheer our guests, and we love a band and a "show" almost as much as our republican friends across the channel. I have seen royal funerals and weddings, processions in honor of visiting presidents and kings, the return of victorious generals, processions of Canadian, Australian, Indian, French and Italian troops and bands. I wouldn't miss these things for worlds. They give color to our social life and accent to our everyday emotions. It is, moreover, peculiarly interesting to observe national traits on a march: the French, with their exuberant élan, throwing kisses to the women as they pass; our own Tommies, who have surprised the world with their gayety, and keep up a constant ragging intercourse with the crowd and cannot cease from singing; the Indians, who pass like a splendidly carved frieze; the Canadians, who move with a free and independent swing and grin in a friendly way; the Scotch, who carry it off better than any one. But I had never seen American troops, and I was anxious to see how they behaved. I said to myself, "The American is volatile and impressionable, like a child." I had met Americans who within an hour's acquaintance had told me their life-story, given me their views on religion, politics, and art, and invited me to go out to Iowa or Wisconsin or California, and spend the summer with them. Moreover, the American is above all things emotional and--may I say it?--sentimental. It would therefore be extremely interesting to see how he came through this ordeal. The first band passed, and the people were waving flags and handkerchiefs from the windows. We could hear the cheers go up from the great throng in the square. And there at last, sure enough, was Old Glory, with its silken tassels floating in the London breeze, carried by a solemn giant, with another on either side. And then they came, marching in fours, with their rifles at the slope, the vanguard of Uncle Sam's army. And we in Cockspur Street raised a mighty cheer. They were solemn, bronzed men, loose of limb, hard, and strong, with a curious set expression of purpose about them. _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ And they looked neither to the right nor the left; nor did they look up or smile or apparently take any notice of the cheers we raised. We strained forward to see their faces, and we cried out to them our welcome. _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ They were not all tall; some were short and wiry. Some of the officers were rather elderly and wore horn spectacles. But they did not look at us or raise a smile of response. They held themselves very erect, but their eyes were cast down or fixed upon the back of the man in front of them. There came an interval, and another band, and then Old Glory once more, and we cheered the flag even more than the men. Fully a thousand men passed in this solemn procession, not one of them smiling or looking up. It became almost disconcerting. It was a thing we were not used to. A fellow-cockney near me murmured: "They're solemn-looking blokes, ain't they?" _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ The band blared forth once more, a drum-and-fife corps with a vibrant thrill behind it. We strained forward more eagerly to see the faces of our friends from the New World. We loved it best when the sound of the band had died away and the only music was the steady throb of those friendly boots upon our London streets. And still they did not smile. I had a brief moment of some vague apprehension, as though something could not be quite right. Some such wave, I think, was passing through the crowd. What did it mean? _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ The cheers died away for a few moments in an exhausted diminuendo. Among those people, racked by three years of strain and suffering, there probably was not one who had not lost some one dear to them. Even the best nerves have their limit of endurance. Suddenly the ready voice of a woman from the pavement called out: "God bless you, Sammy!" And then we cheered again in a different key, and I noticed a boy in the ranks throw back his head and look up. On his face was the expression we see only on the faces of those who know the finer sensibilities--a fierce, exultant joy that is very near akin to tears. And gradually I became aware that on the faces of these grim men was written an emotion almost too deep for expression. As they passed it was easy to detect their ethnological heritage. There was the Anglo-Saxon type, perhaps predominant; the Celt; the Slav; the Latin; and in many cases definitely the Teuton: and yet there was not one of them that had not something else, who was not preëminently a good "United States man." It was as though upon the anvil of the New World all the troubles of the Old, after being passed through a white-hot furnace, had been forged into something clear and splendid. And they were hurrying on to get this accomplished. For once and all the matter must be settled. _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ There was a slight congestion, and the body of men near me halted and marked time. A diminutive officer with a pointed beard was walking alone. A woman in the crowd leaned forward and waved an American flag in his face. He saluted, made some kindly remark, and then passed on. _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ The world must be made safe for democracy. And I thought inevitably of the story of the Titan myth, of Prometheus, the first real democrat, who held out against the gods because they despised humanity. And they nailed him to a rock, and cut off his eyelids, and a vulture fed upon his entrails. But Prometheus held on, his line of reasoning being: "After Uranus came Cronus. After Cronus came Zeus. After Zeus will come other gods." It is the finest epic in human life, and all the great teachers and reformers who came after told the same story--Christ, Vishnu, Confucius, Mohammed, Luther, Shakespeare. The fundamental basis of their teaching was love and faith in humanity. And whenever humanity is threatened, the fires which Prometheus stole from the gods will burn more brightly in the heart of man, and they will come from all quarters of the world. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword. There is no quarter, no mercy, to the enemies of humanity. There is no longer a war; it is a crusade. And as I stood on the flags of Cockspur Street, I think I understood the silence of those grim men. They seemed to epitomize not merely a nation, not merely a flag, but the unbreakable sanctity of human rights and human life. And I knew that whatever might happen, whatever the powers of darkness might devise, whatever cunning schemes or diabolical plans, or whatever temporary successes they might attain, they would ultimately go down into the dust before "the fateful lightning." "After Zeus will come other gods." _Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._ Nothing could live and endure against that steady and irresistible progression. And we know how you can do things, America. We have seen your workshops, your factories, and your engines of peace. And we have seen those young men of yours at the Olympic Games, with their loose, supple limbs, their square, strong faces. When the Spartans, lightly clad, but girt for war, ran across the hills to Athens and, finding the Persian hosts defeated, laughed, and congratulated the Athenians, and ran back again--since those days there never were such runners, such athletes, as these boys of yours from Yale and Harvard, Princeton and Cornell. And so on that day, if we cheered the flag more than we cheered the men, it was because the flag was the symbol of the men's hearts, which were too charged with the fires of Prometheus to trust themselves expression. At least that is how it appeared to me on that forenoon in Cockspur Street, and I know that later in the day, when I met a casual friend, and he addressed me with the usual formula of the day: "Any news?" I was able to say: "Yes, the best news in the world." And when he replied: "What news?" I could say with all sincerity: "I have seen a portent. The world is safe for democracy." Proper Use of the Controlling Purpose Despite whatever of good has been said here about the controlling purpose, there may lurk the suspicion that it is, after all, dangerous, that perhaps it gives to a piece of writing a tendency toward bias, partial interpretation, even unfairness, and that it makes toward incompleteness. In the first place, in answering this charge, we must remember that facts _as related to people_ are eternally subject to different interpretations according to shifting significance, which is determined largely by the individual to whom the facts are related. In the second place we have to remind ourselves that seldom does a writer try to say all that can be said about his subject. Much is always either implied or left to another piece of writing. And finally, even when an author attempts perfect completeness and objectivity, he usually addresses his work to some one in particular, even though the "some one" is as vague as the general reading public; and that some one has a particular attitude that must be borne in mind. In "Solemn-Looking Blokes" not everything about the subject is said. From one point of view the tramp of American feet in London streets signified that the United States had emerged from its traditional aloofness and had joined the main current of the world; from another, that a tremendous military preparation was going on in America, the first fruits of which were those solemn ringing steps; from another, that however Europe had professed to despise American power, she was now willing, eager, to accept American aid; from another, that the old enmity between England and America has been forgotten in the common bond of like ideals and racial traditions. Each of these possible meanings--and there are more not listed here--is implied in the treatment actually given to the subject. No one of them is really developed. Instead, we have flowering before us the idea that the world is to be made safe for democracy. No one would presume to declare that the total possibilities of the subject are here met and explained; yet no one can rightly say that the chosen treatment is unfair. Considering the facts, the author, and the people who would read the article, and their emotional connection with the facts, we see that the author chose the purpose that seemed most useful--to make American hearts warm to the fact that their country was helping to make the world safer for all men everywhere. In other words, facts are useful only in so far as they accomplish some definite end, which, in writing, is to make the reader see the truth as the author thinks that he should try to make the reader see it. Now, of course, if the writer makes an unfair analysis, if he blindly or willfully falsifies in seeing or expressing his subject, his writing is not only useless but actually vicious. The analysis must be correct. Every subject has its center of truth, which can be discovered by patient clear thinking; if the thinking be either unclear or impatient, the interpretation will be false. If the author of "Solemn-Looking Blokes" has made an incorrect estimate, his writing is futile. There is no more challenging quest than the search for the real truth at the core of a chosen subject. Perhaps the very difficulty of attaining success is what has stayed many minds in floundering, timid, fogginess. As to the charge that infusion of emotional quality into the writing produces bias, first of all it must be said that if the subject contains no emotion, none should be attempted in the writing. In a report, for example, of the relative value of different woods for shingles, an author will hardly try to infuse emotion, for the reader wishes to learn, quickly and easily, just what kind of wood is the best. But most subjects are not thus aloof; even the report about shingles becomes of vast significance to the owner of extensive timber lands which are suddenly found to be of high value. All subjects which concern the prosperity and happiness of humanity are charged with emotion; the nearer to the great facts of life, such as birth, marriage, death, food, shelter, love, hatred, the keener the emotion. Who shall write of problems of heredity and leave us unstirred? Who shall treat of our vast irrigation projects, which turn the deserts into fair gardens and give food to millions of people, without firing the imagination? The writer's task is to look so clearly at his subject that he discovers its true value to both brain and heart. As a matter of fact, in writing of such subjects a writer finds that words _will be_ emotional, whether he will have them so or not, that they take sides, are charged with tendency and fly toward or away from an emotional quality with all the power of electricity. Now, this emotional quality, when it is uncontrolled, is dangerous. Words that show tendency must be guided with the firm hand lest they lead the reader into wrong impressions and into the confusion that comes from counter emotions, the strong impression of disunion. It is only by relating these cross-tendencies to a guiding idea that they can be made to serve the author's purpose. To choose wisely a controlling purpose that recognizes and handles the inherent emotions of words is merely to organize inescapable material. In the following selection from Emerson's "Fate" we find the emotional quality both high and well-organized. Such a paragraph might easily be made to confuse a reader hopelessly, but Emerson drives the chargers of his thought straight to his goal, intellectual and emotional, and holds tight his reins: Nature is no sentimentalist,--does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,--these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and however the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races--race living at the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and counties fall into it. At Lisbon an earthquake killed men like flies. At Naples three years ago ten thousand persons were crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea, the sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our western prairies shake with fever and ague. The cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes as a frost to crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by the fall of the temperature of one night. Without uncovering what does not concern us, or counting how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx, or groping after intestinal parasites or infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate generation,--the forms of the shark, the _labrus_, the jaw of the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea, are hints of ferocity in the interior of nature. Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neck-cloth of a student in divinity.[6] [6] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Fate," _The Conduct of Life_. Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers, Boston. Now this controlling purpose, including both the appeal to the understanding and that to the emotions, should be stated, clearly, before the author begins his actual writing, in one sentence. The value of this is at once apparent: our minds tend all too much to wander from subject to subject, browsing here and there, without any really directed feeding. Now such procedure, though difficult to avoid, is nevertheless harmful to our writing. The edge of the writing is never so keen, the telling of the message, whatever it may be, is never so well done, until we thoroughly organize and direct all that we are to say. In phrasing the controlling purpose in one sentence, we make just such an organization. And we have one which is most easily handled, most easily remembered, least likely to allow us to escape into empty wandering. Even in a long work this should be done, this unifying knot should be tied in the writer's mind. Those readers who rise from the last pages of a long historical work, covering several volumes and hundreds or thousands of pages, with a clear central conception of the whole work are profoundly grateful to the author. It is safe to say that such a conception could not have been given to the reader had not the writer, before he wrote a word, formulated in a few words the goal, the aim of his writing. This sentence should include the emotional appeal either as stated in a separate clause or phrase, or as expressed in the choice of words to present the facts. The amount of machinery that seems to be required for using the controlling purpose may appear too much for practical purposes in one short lifetime. The truth is that the actual finding of the purpose will require much less time, often, than the explanation of the process here has needed. In a short theme you will often be able to scan the subject itself, to estimate your own reaction to the subject, and to determine upon your reader with remarkable quickness. More frequently you will find difficulty in determining the emotional quality of the material and your desires. But a little practice will enable you to do the preliminary thinking with rapidity and comfort. But if your subject is difficult, and if the effect is of great importance, by no means allow yourself to be swerved from determination to find the real object which you are seeking, but even at the expense of time and trouble state the center of your intentions as related to the subject, yourself, and your reader. Practical Use of the Controlling Purpose We have yet to answer the practical question: when I sit down to write, of just what value will the controlling purpose be to me in the actual task of expressing my ideas? How can it really serve me in my writing? The answer is clear: the controlling purpose is of the utmost strategic value in helping to select and arrange material for attack upon the objective, which is the effect to be created in the reader's mind. Now the best strategy always combines the line of greatest advantage to the writer, the line of least resistance from the reader, and the necessities of the subject. In other words, what point can I attack easiest, where is my opponent weakest, what demands of the ground--gullies, hills, swamps, etc.--must I allow for? Sometimes these three are more or less mutually antagonistic; sometimes they unite with the greatest helpfulness, as we shall see. _Selection of Material_ The first question is, What, and how many, forces shall I choose for the attack? Remember, we do not now merely attack in general, wherever we find an enemy. Instead, we decide that our objective is, perhaps, a hill ten miles across the enemy's frontier. The taking of that hill is our controlling purpose. It would be easiest for us to use several regiments of fresh young troops. But the terrain is strewn with gullies and hillocks, with boulders and tangled timber. So we shall use two regiments of veteran troops who are accustomed to rough country, and follow these with some fresh youngsters who are endowed with sense and a desire to outdo the veterans. Since the enemy has a strong battery, we shall use heavy artillery. And since the enemy lacks machine guns, we shall use many of them and catch him where he is weak and may be terrified. We could easily send thirty camp kitchens to the fighting lines, but strategy demands that they be kept back. In exactly the same way Mr. Burroughs plans the essay which follows this discussion. His controlling purpose is obviously to make the reader understand the process of bee-hunting in such a way as to be attracted to it as a delightful sport. The nature of the subject demands that the several steps in the process be explained. Well, that suits Mr. Burroughs, because he knows these steps. The easiest method for him is to narrate his own experiences. Of course he could investigate the authorities on bee-hunting, and write a treatise, but that would be more difficult, and moreover, it would not meet the line of least resistance from the reader. To be successful, the essay must overcome the reader's inertia and make him feel that he is actually sharing in things that he enjoys. The selection is thus determined. From his personal experience, as giving the writer the greatest advantage, Mr. Burroughs chooses. He selects details about the beauty of nature because a reader would prefer to have fine surroundings. He mentions traits of the bee that are interesting or necessary to know. He narrates two special experiences of his own for added attractiveness. And all the while, lest inertia raise its head, he lures the reader with the glimpses of pails full of rich golden honey. In other words, keeping his eye for his controlling purpose, Mr. Burroughs can easily select the things that will accomplish that purpose to his own greatest advantage, the reader's greatest ease, and according to the demands of the subject. You do not find in the essay a discussion of the lucrative value of bees, nor of the complicated life of the hive, nor of the present standing of the science of bee-keeping. These topics, however interesting, are not useful to the controlling purpose. The standard is, not connection, but usefulness. "Any road," says Carlyle, "this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world," and if you follow mere connection with your subjects, you will find yourself at the end of the world. The practical helpfulness of the controlling purpose is seen when you ask yourself the question, "Does the matter that I am putting in this paragraph, this sentence, actually advance my reader in thought or emotion or both, nearer the point to which I wish to lead him?" Thus the question of selection is answered. _The Ordering of the Material_ If we could have our own sweet will in attacking the hill ten miles beyond the border, we should ask the enemy to stack his arms, and then, with trumpet and drum and flag we should sweep in and take possession. But our sweet will must give way to necessity. Since unscalable crags lie ahead, we shall have to go round to the rear of the hill. Since we must cross a swamp, engineers must precede and build a road. Though we should like to crawl up a wide valley on the other side, we must choose a smaller one, because the enemy could wither us away in the larger one. And, to trick the enemy, we shall perhaps open fire far off on the left, while we are stealing out to the right, and thus we may take him off his guard. Our purpose of securing that hill makes these things necessary. Similarly, in writing, we may sometimes employ the order of greatest advantage, but more often we must modify this order to meet the requirements of the subject and to rouse the least resistance from the reader. In Stevenson's essay, "Pulvis et Umbra," part of which follows the essay by Mr. Burroughs, the author used the method of greatest advantage. His object is to thrill the reader at the thought that mankind constantly strives in spite of all his failures. Several orders are possible: he could treat of the striving alone, neglecting the failure; he could treat the striving first and then the failure, or vice versa, and so on. He saw that he would gain his purpose best if he treated failure first, until he had fairly overwhelmed the reader, and then suddenly shifted and showed that in spite of all this failure man still strives. He had to run the risk of offending the reader at the beginning by his insistence upon failure, and thus rousing the reader's possible great resistance. For we do not like to read unpleasant things. But he took the chance, knowing that if, by skillful use of words he could persuade the reader through the first part, he could easily thrill him with the reaction. For it makes a great difference whether we say, "In spite of striving, man always fails," or "In spite of failure, man always strives." The selection from the essay which appears here is taken from the middle. It is interesting to note that the first two sentences of the essay read: "We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed; not success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun." And the words of the final sentence of the essay are: "Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy: surely not all in vain." In the essay by Mr. Burroughs the author's advantage and the reader's acquiescence largely coincide, so that the author can at once begin with remarks about the attractiveness of the hunt, the delights of its successful conclusion. To discuss at once the possibility of being stung would have been unwise, because unpleasant, and the controlling purpose of the essay is to attract. Later, this topic can safely be tucked in. Mr. Wilson's war messages showed a combination of the lines of greatest advantage and of least resistance with the nature of the historical events. These messages began with a series of facts which, obviously true, would rouse no resistance and would at the same time insert some resentment against Germany, the very thing that the author wished to do. Then they followed the strict chronological order, as if the author were pursuing a course already mapped for him--which, of course, he was not doing. With the controlling purpose of showing that America's entrance into the war was occasioned entirely by Germany's actions, he then proceeded to base the proposals of the messages upon the very facts that the readers had already accepted in accordance with his ultimate point of view. Such skillful manipulation deserved the success that the messages met. All three of these examples gain their point, their objective. They do this largely because the authors knew exactly what they wished to do, what their controlling purposes were, and then marshaled their material so as to accomplish this end. Some of the topics that are subordinated, such, for example, as the possibility of being stung, are as important as others which are magnified, such as the beauty of nature--that is, they are as important in an impersonal way. As soon as the controlling purpose is known, however, they immediately become dangerous unless so placed as to bring the reader nearer the goal and not to push him from it. The point is that knowing the controlling purpose, that is, having thought out beforehand exactly what you wish to do with subject and reader, you are at once aware of both helps and obstacles, and can make use of the one, avoid the other. Thus you will consider both the reader's ease and his prejudices. If you are to write of abstruse matters, of some question in philosophy or ethics or religion, in order to carry your reader with you you will begin with things that he can understand, and thus pave a highway into the misty lands where you desire to take him. Failure of some eminent philosophers to receive recognition has been due to their lack of a comprehensive controlling purpose, to their restricting attention to the subject alone regardless of the reader. In setting forth the principle of the machinery that digs tunnels under rivers Mr. Brooks in _The Web-foot Engineer_ first shows how a boy digs a tunnel into a sand bank, and then proceeds, with the reader's understanding assured, to the more complex but still similar operation under the river. In explaining inductive reasoning, with the controlling purpose of making it seem both frequent and natural, Huxley showed first how we reason practically about the nature of apples in a basket at the grocer's. The reader's resistance is thus avoided and the writer's advantage is increased. A shrewd controlling purpose also makes allowance for the reader's prejudices. You ought to take as much care to cajole your reader into following you as the cook does to make us happy to the final morsel. After ices and cakes and coffee a roast or a soup is positively offensive; the cook wisely wins the battle of the spit and the dripping pan while the epicure is still receptive. So, if you are to explain democracy in a state where the recall of judges is practiced to an aristocrat who distrusts the "common herd" and is easily ruffled, you will do well to preface discussion of this recall with words about the general excellence of life in the state and then, when your reader is in a mood of acceptance, pass to the possibly offensive topic. Without knowing just what you wish to accomplish, you are likely to write in what may seem a dogged, defiant mood that intends to strike right and left, hoping to wallow through to victory. If between us and the enemy's fort is a stream which needs pontoons for crossing, and we blindly start out marching up toward victory with no pontoons, we shall perhaps sail away to sea, but shall also probably not win the fort. If we insist upon keeping our platoon as rigidly straight, even while we climb hills through the woods, as ever a line was kept at West Point, we shall come to grief. So, if the logic of the subject has imperious demands, the controlling purpose must make count of them. William James in his essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War," saw that before a reader could understand how civic work could be a moral equivalent, he must see what the morality of war is. The subject demands this. In an account of the United States Government it might be logically necessary to state and explain first the theory of checks and balances before the relations of executive, legislative, and judicial branches could be properly estimated. Wisely chosen, the controlling purpose of such an account would make this fact at once evident. Constantly keeping in mind, in planning and composing an article, what the objective is, makes even the individual paragraphs and sentences more successful. If you will examine the paragraphs in "Pulvis et Umbra," you will observe, pretty uniformly, at the beginning and end of each, a strong statement of the message of the paragraph, sentences of high emotional value. Each paragraph definitely advances the cause of the controlling purpose. Even the sentences--an example of a sentence uncontrolled occurs in Mr. Hamlin Garland's book, _A Son of the Middle Border_: "It stood on the bank of a wide river and had all the value of a seaport to me, for in summer-time great hoarsely bellowing steam-boats came and went from its quay, and all about it rose high wooded hills." The final item about the hills is in no way necessary, does not even help to give the feeling of a seaport, which more often than not lacks high hills. A sentence from Stevenson is in contrast: "The sun upon my shoulders warmed me to the heart, and I stooped forward and plunged into the sea." In this sentence facts, rhythm, even the sound of the words drive in one direction. Without being too dogmatic--for every problem in writing is new and not infrequently a law to itself--you may be sure that if you have a definite controlling purpose, and know well what it is, you will be more likely to attain success with subject and with reader when you come to the ordering of your material. Finally, since strategy suggests that we attack the weakest places in the enemy's defense, we shall do well, unless the logic of the subject or the reader's prejudice demand otherwise, to make our strongest blows when the enemy, the reader, is least prepared, that is, at the beginning and the end. Success in writing depends so much upon the freshness of the reader's mind, that an _attaque brusque_ at first to insert important things, and a strong reinforcement at the end, when the reader is pricking up his ears at the coming final period, form a wise strategy. If, in order to understand one point, another is necessary, or to avoid irritation, a roundabout method is advisable, the path is plain. When these accidents do not obtain, the reader's understanding will be most easily won at the beginning and the end. At these points you must see to it that the reader is guided, with the first word, toward the emotional tone that your controlling purpose demands, and toward some important idea that bolsters this purpose, even if, as we have seen Stevenson do, you seem to be at first flying away from the purpose which we later discover. Thus Mr. Taft, in an article entitled "Present Relations of the Learned Professions to Political Government," places the ministry at the beginning and the law at the end. His controlling purpose is to make the reader believe that every profession offers large chance for the conscientious man to be of use to the political government. Consequently he chooses the two that he thinks most important, and of these places the less important at the beginning and the more important at the end. In this way he succeeds at once in turning the reader as he wishes, and leaves him also with the strongest possible bias toward belief. And since these two professions offer the greatest chance for victory for his controlling purpose, he gives them much more space than to the others, almost three times as much to law, for instance, as to teaching. Moreover, since the emotions are affected in much writing, the skilled strategist will instantly bear in mind just what emotion he wishes to rouse, and will see that the ideas of greater moving value receive larger development. Mr. Burroughs gives much more space to the sections that deal with the excitement and the joy of bee-hunting than to those that deal with the less pleasant side. To the difficulty of detecting the flight of a bee he gives the single sentence: "Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun." To the interesting actions of the bee when it is caught he gives at least ten times as much space. In this way he guides the reader's emotions in the way he wishes them to go--and makes successful writing. The chief strategic problem in exposition, then, is that of so choosing and arranging the material that the point of the writing is made with the proper emphasis. For the accomplishment of this purpose the writer must be able to answer the question, "_What do I wish to do in this piece of writing?_" Then he must bring all the material and its expression to bear upon the reader's mind so that the desired end may be inevitable. To determine what his purpose is the writer must consult the subject itself, his own personality, and the reader. He must also bear in mind the reader's intellect and his emotions. And he must unify the approach to both intellect and emotions. The firmly held conception of what his purpose is will determine what material he is to choose--what is useful and what is not--and also how to arrange this material and how to proportion the space that different sections shall have. He will arrange the material for the greatest advantage to himself and the least resistance from the reader. In other words, to make his writing successful in the sense of accomplishing its end, the writer must, before he sets down a single word, decide upon what his controlling purpose is to be and just how he intends to make material and expression--even in the individual sentence--unite to drive in the one direction of that controlling purpose. AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE[7] _John Burroughs_ [7] John Burroughs: _Pepacton_. Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers, Boston. One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is; a tree with a heart of comb-honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches; secret chambers where lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand little free-booters, great nuggets and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from every field and wood about. But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how many sweets such a trip yields beside honey, come with me some bright, warm, late September or early October day. It is the golden season of the year, and any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon the hills or by the painted woods and along the amber colored streams at such a time is enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and peaches and apples and a bottle of milk,--for we shall not be home to dinner,--and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb-honey neatly fitted into it--any box the size of your hand with a lid will do nearly as well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter--we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway, under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward some high, uplying land, behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all this section. Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms of bees. After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we will make our first trial--a high stone wall that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field. There are bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little manoeuvring to sweep one into our box. Almost any other creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into a cage in this way would show great confusion and alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty. "Such rage of honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey behind and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute objects first, then the larger and more distant, till having circled about the spot five or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun. This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away toward a farm-house half a mile away, where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction, goes straight toward the woods. We could see the brown speck against the darker background for many yards. A bee will usually make three or four trips from the hunter's box before it brings back a companion. I suspect the bee does not tell its fellows what it has found, but that they smell out the secret; it doubtless bears some evidence with it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been upon honey-comb and not upon flowers, and its companions take the hint and follow, arriving always many seconds behind. Then the quantity and quality of the booty would also betray it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about a hive that note and tell everything. "Oh, did you see that? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and one of the up-stairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with apple-blossom honey which she deposited, and then rushed off again like mad. Apple blossom honey in October! Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell something! Let's after." In about half an hour we have three well-defined lines of bees established--two to farm-houses and one to the woods, and our box is being rapidly depleted of its honey. About every fourth bee goes to the woods, and now that they have learned the way thoroughly they do not make the long preliminary whirl above the box, but start directly from it. The woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, and we do not like to follow the line of bees until we have tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance they go into the woods--whether the tree is on this side of the ridge or in the depth of the forest on the other side. So we shut up the box when it is full of bees and carry it about three hundred yards along the wall from which we are operating. When liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, go off in the same directions they have been going; they do not seem to know that they have been moved. But other bees have followed our scent, and it is not many minutes before a second line to the woods is established. This is called cross-lining the bees. The new line makes a sharp angle with the other line, and we know at once that the tree is only a few rods into the woods. The two lines we have established form two sides of a triangle of which the wall is the base; at the apex of the triangle, or where the two lines meet in the woods, we are sure to find the trees. We quickly follow up these lines, and where they cross each other on the side of the hill we scan every tree closely. I pause at the foot of an oak and examine a hole near the root; now the bees are in this tree and their entrance is on the upper side near the ground, not two feet from the hole I peer into, and yet so quiet and secret is their going and coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up the hill. Failing in this direction, I return to the oak again, and then perceive the bees going out in a small crack in the tree. The bees do not know they are found out and that the game is in our hands, and are as oblivious of our presence as if we were ants or crickets. The indications are that the swarm is a small one, and the store of honey trifling. In "taking up" a bee-tree it is usual first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of burning sulphur or with tobacco smoke. But this course is impracticable on the present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree with an axe we have procured. At the first blow the bees set up a loud buzzing, but we have no mercy, and the side of the cavity is soon cut away and the interior with its white-yellow mass of comb-honey is exposed, and not a bee strikes a blow in defense of its all. This may seem singular, but it has nearly always been my experience. When a swarm of bees are thus rudely assaulted with an axe, they evidently think the end of the world has come, and, like true misers as they are, each one seizes as much of the treasure as it can hold; in other words, they all fall to and gorge themselves with honey, and calmly await the issue. When in this condition they make no defense and will not sting unless taken hold of. In fact they are as harmless as flies. Bees are always to be managed with boldness and decision. Any halfway measures, any timid poking about, any feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have a special antipathy toward certain persons and a liking for certain others has only this fact at the bottom of it; they will sting a person who is afraid of them and goes skulking and dodging about, and they will not sting a person who faces them boldly and has no dread of them. They are like dogs. The way to disarm a vicious dog is to show him you do not fear him; it is his turn to be afraid then. I never had any dread of bees and am seldom stung by them. I have climbed up into a large chestnut that contained a swarm in one of its cavities and chopped them out with an axe, being obliged at times to pause and brush the bewildered bees from my hands and face, and not been stung once. I have chopped a swarm out of an apple-tree in June and taken out the cards of honey and arranged them in a hive, and then dipped out the bees with a dipper, and taken the whole home with me in pretty good condition, with scarcely any opposition on the part of the bees. In reaching your hand into the cavity to detach and remove the comb you are pretty sure to get stung, for when you touch the "business end" of a bee, it will sting even though its head be off. But the bee carries the antidote to its own poison. The best remedy for bee sting is honey, and when your hands are besmeared with honey, as they are sure to be on such occasions, the wound is scarcely more painful than the prick of a pin. When a bee-tree is thus "taken up" in the middle of the day, of course a good many bees are away from home and have not heard the news. When they return and find the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is to fall to and fill themselves; this done, their next thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly through the branches of the trees till they have attained an altitude that enables them to survey the scene, when they seem to say, "Why, _this_ is home" and down they come again; beholding the wreck and ruins once more they still think there is some mistake, and get up a second or a third time and then drop back pitifully as before. It is the most pathetic sight of all, the surviving and bewildered bees struggling to save a few drops of their wasted treasures. Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robber-bees appear. You may know them by their saucy, chiding, devil-may-care hum. It is an ill-wind that blows nobody good, and they make the most of the misfortune of their neighbors; and thereby pave the way for their own ruin. The hunter marks their course and the next day looks them up. On this occasion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant, and a line of bees was soon established S.S.W. Though there was much refuse honey in the old stub, and though little golden rills trickled down the hill from it, and the near branches and saplings were besmeared with it where we wiped our murderous hands, yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast to which not only honey-bees came, but bumble-bees, wasps, hornets, flies, ants. The bumble-bees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragment of bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in the most stupid, lubberly fashion. The honey-bee that licked up our leavings on the old stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, about half a mile farther down the ridge, and a few days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn became the prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Providence and were overwhelmed. The first mentioned swarm I had lined from several points, and was following up the clue over rocks and through gulleys, when I came to where a large hemlock had been felled a few years before and a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it; fragments of the old comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood another short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there. As I paused near it I noticed where the tree had been wounded with an axe a couple of feet from the ground many years before. The wound had partially grown over, but there was an opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I was about to pass on when a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others and others, little bands and squads of them heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the axe mark down. This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an axe we cut away the outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the tree and trickled down the hill. The other bee-tree in the vicinity, to which I have referred, we found one warm November day in less than half an hour after entering the woods. It also was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The bees entered a small hole at the root, which was seven or eight feet from the ground. The position was a striking one. Never did apiary have a finer outlook or more rugged surroundings. A black, wood-embraced lake lay at our feet; the long panorama of the Catskills filled the far distance, and the more broken outlines of the Shawangunk range filled the near. On every hand were precipices and a wild confusion of rocks and trees. The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in diameter. With an axe we cut away one side of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there were! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked like some precious ore. When we carried a large pail of it out of the woods, it seemed still more like ore. In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of the hunter are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop away the branches or cut down the trees, and set the bees to work again. If they still go forward, he goes forward also and repeats his observations till the tree is found or till the bees turn and come back upon the trail. Then he knows he has passed the tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient distance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces the space to be looked over till the swarm is traced home. On one occasion, in a wild rocky wood, where the surface alternated between deep gulfs and chasms filled with thick, heavy growths of timber and sharp, precipitous, rocky ridges like a tempest-tossed sea, I carried my bees directly under their tree, and set them to work from a high, exposed ledge of rocks not thirty feet distant. One would have expected them under such circumstances to have gone straight home, as there were but few branches intervening, but they did not; they labored up through the trees and attained an altitude above the woods as if they had miles to travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bees will always do this. They are acquainted with the woods only from the top side, and from the air above; they recognize home only by landmarks here, and in every instance they rise aloft to take their bearings. Think how familiar to them the topography of the forest summits must be--an umbrageous sea or plain where every mark and point is known. Another curious fact is that generally you will get track of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile from it than when you are only a few yards. Bees, like us human insects, have little faith in the near at hand; they expect to make their fortune in a distant field, they are lured by the remote and the difficult, and hence overlook the flower and the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and waited long for bees without getting them, when, on removing to a distant field or opening in the woods I have got a clue at once. Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is then of course thicker and sweeter, and will bear diluting. Hence, old bee-hunters look for bee-trees along creeks and near spring runs in the woods. I once found a tree a long distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter flavor imparted to it, I was convinced, by rain water sucked from the decayed and spongy hemlock tree, in which the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the north side of it was found to be saturated with water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or a cistern in their own house. Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are like their brothers in the hive. The only difference is that wild honey is flavored with your adventure, which makes it a little more delectable than the domestic article. PULVIS ET UMBRA[8] _Robert Louis Stevenson_ [8] R. L. Stevenson: _Across the Plains_. Copyright, 1892, by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. What a monstrous specter is this man, the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues, infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbor, to his God; an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought. It sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but the most cowardly stand amidst the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at large presents: of organized injustice, cowardly violence, and treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from which success is banished, our race should not cease to labor. If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight he startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by campfires in Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears as she drowns her child in the sacred river; in the brothel, the discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of honor and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, rejecting riches: everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness:--ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls! OUTLINES The Value of Outlines It has been thought that the old Scotchman who said, "A man's years are three score and ten, or maybe by good hap he'll get ten more, but _it's a weary wrastle all the way through_!" came to his final words as the result of writing outlines. If this be true, surely it is unfortunate, for the writing of outlines brings exceeding great reward. An outline is not an ancient form of blind discipline, but rather a helping hand across the bogland of facts and ideas. It is a most useful instrument toward good writing; its justification is its practical usefulness. This usefulness, helpfulness, is double in its value--to the writer and to the instructor, when there is one. As to the value of an outline for the writer--without an outline you face in your writing a complicated problem, more complicated, in fact, than is justifiable. At one and the same time you must make your thinking logical and your expression adequate--distinguished if possible. Either of these tasks is sufficient to demand all your powers; together, they offer a really overwhelming problem. Stevenson, to whom style was of the greatest importance, as bone of the bone and blood of the blood of the writing, wrote to a friend, "Problems of style are (as yet) dirt under my feet; my problem is architectural, creative--to get this stuff joined and moving." It was only after he had fitted his material together that he felt able to devote himself to making the beautiful prose that is so much admired. A noted Frenchman is quoted as exclaiming, when first he beheld the famous Brooklyn Bridge, "How beautiful it is!", then, "How well made it is!" and finally, after a moment's reflection, "How well planned it is!" A good piece of writing should have the same comments made; but they cannot be made, usually, without the carefully planned outline. You face the problem, without an outline, of answering the two questions about every detail that presents itself for treatment: first, shall I include or exclude this detail; and secondly, how shall I make this detail help the general flow of my writing, and how shall I express it so that it shall contribute to the proper tone of the work? And while you thus judge each small detail, you must also keep your critical faculties active to estimate your total course, whether you are cleaving your way clearly, steadily, and with sufficient directness to your goal, whether the work as a whole is answering your desires. Now to ask the unaided brain, unless it has had long years of training, to perform all this critical work during the actual process of expression, is nothing short of cruel--and almost sure of failure. For in any writing which enlists from you even a spark of interest the fervor of creative work, the stimulating effect of seeing the work grow under your pen, tends often to unseat the critical powers, to destroy perspective, to make a detail seem more valuable or less valuable than it should, on the whim of the momentary interest or repulsion. Thus the logic of the writing is impaired, for details are included which should not enter, and others are excluded which ought to be welcomed, and proportions are bad. And the expression is so liable to unevenness as to be less worthy than it should be. Bad logic and uneven expression beget failure. The outline helps to overcome these difficulties. In the first place, it is not final, can be changed at will, and makes no extraordinary demands on the powers of expression. In the second place, as regards logic, the outline shows the relation of ideas to each other and to the whole subject; you can estimate rather easily whether a detail is of sufficient value to warrant inclusion, and, if so, how much space it deserves. For in the outline you have the bare fact, succinctly expressed, which enables you to focus your attention upon the thought. But since logic is more than mere inclusion and order and spacing, and deals also with the logic of attitude, the outline is again of service. For it shows what should be the tone of the complete piece of writing, and how this tone should be modified by the individual section of the writing. Suppose that you are to write of the attitude of a politician toward party principles. If a heading in your outline reads, "He never _feared_ to _modify_ principles to meet inevitable conditions," the attitude which you take in writing will be radically different from that which you would assume if the heading read, "He never _hesitated_ to _warp_ principles to outwit unfavorable conditions." Both the logic of structure and that of attitude, then, are aided by the use of an outline. And, at any point in the actual completed writing, you can easily determine by referring to the outline, whether you are gaining the effect that you desire and what progress you have made. And in the third place, as regards expression, the outline relieves you of the necessity of doing the constructive thinking of the subject, and enables you to apply all your powers to the actual saying of your message. Shakespeare might have written, instead of "the multitudinous seas incarnadine," "make all the ocean, that's full of fishes,[9] look red"--but he did not. Had he done so, where would now have been the power and the charm? Expression is of utmost value, and you can ill afford to slight it. For this reason, and especially since distinguished expression is so difficult to form, to be released from the attendant worry of constructive thinking is of the greatest help to the writer. Both logic and expression, then, are dependent on the outline: with it they are more sure. [9] If this be the meaning of "multitudinous." Instead, then, of feeling that dim dread of failure, which ever dogs the writer's steps, with a well-constructed outline you can feel comparative safety in the possession of a safe guide in case of perplexity. You will be initiated, will know the secrets of your subject, will have a "grip" with your facts and ideas, and can apply your powers to putting the intangible thoughts into tangible words. As for being of value to the instructor, often he too can estimate more surely and easily the worth of the writing if he has the skeleton to examine. For there the structural defects are more apparent, are not concealed by the pleasant flow of words, just as the structure of a skyscraper is more apparent before the wall-tiles or bricks are laid on to conceal the girders. The instructor can therefore often point out insufficiencies in the thought, or wrong relations, which might otherwise stand as defects in the finished work. The Form of the Outline Shall an outline be written in words and phrases or in complete sentences? In the first place, so far as any reader except the author is concerned, complete sentences are necessary for understanding. Often they are necessary for the writer himself. In an outline of a theme explaining gas engines the isolated heading _Speed_ means nothing definite to any one but the author, if indeed to him. A reader cannot tell from such a word whether speed is important or insignificant, or whether the author intends to give to gas engines credit for comparative excellence in this property. If, however, the heading reads, "In the important property of _Speed_ gas engines are the equal of steam engines," the reader knows at once what is meant, whether he may agree with the statement or not. He can definitely tell from an outline of complete sentences what the course of thought is to be and what will be the tone of the theme. The reader, then, needs complete sentences. The writer, on the other hand, might seem to be sufficiently helped by mere words or phrases, since he naturally knows what he means. But does he know? The chances are that when an author puts down such a heading as _Speed_ he has only a large general notion of what he means, without being sure of the immediate connection and application, and with perhaps no idea at all of the tone which he intends to catch. If the author will write the sentence quoted above, he will complete his thought, make it really definite, and be pretty sure to know what he is talking about, what he intends to do. Furthermore, even though he know, when he sets down a phrase, what he means by it, the chance is strong that when he arrives at the expansion of the phrase he will have forgotten some of the implications and may give the heading a cast that he did not intend. Whether he knows definitely what he means or not, the writer is more safe if he uses complete sentences, and for any other reader of the outline complete sentences are quite necessary. Outlines are of three kinds: those that show the topic relations by division into indented headings; those that show the sequence of paragraphs by statement of the topic sentence; and those that combine these two forms. The primary object of the first form, which is illustrated by the first outline of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee" which follows, is to aid in the thinking, to plot out the ground and to group the material. In this first outline a glance at the five main headings makes the plan of the essay at once apparent--first a statement of the effect of bees upon us; then an account of a hunt; then some specific examples to drive things home; then some special directions that might be overlooked, and finally a tribute to the joy of the hunting. The benefit of this kind of outline is that the general relationships among topics are made clear, the large divisions of thought appear, and the writer can with comparative ease tell whether he has covered the subject, and whether he has chosen the best order of thought. It avoids the invertebrate flow of thought that is unaware of structure. In other words, it is of value chiefly to the thinking. It does not show which topics shall be grouped into paragraphs together, and it does not, of course, phrase the topic sentences, usually. In such an outline care should be taken to make each heading a complete sentence, and to make headings that are of the same rank fairly parallel in structure of expression unless this interferes with the tone of the heading. For example, A, B, and C under III are made similar in structure since they bear the same general relation to III. The second type of outline, that in which a list of the topic sentences is given, and which is illustrated by the second outline of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee" which follows, is of value, especially if used with an outline of the first type, in that it shows just how much of the thought should go into the various paragraphs, and thereby establishes the divisions of expression. Comparison of the two outlines of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee" will show that paragraph 5 in the second outline includes all the material in the four headings, 2, a, 1´, and b, under II in the first outline. Now for the writer to know beforehand how he intends to divide his material into paragraphs is of great value; otherwise he might be giving to some comparatively minor point--which for the moment assumes interest for him--a separate paragraph, as if, for example, Mr. Burroughs had dwelt at length on the interesting location of trees on ledges. In other words, this second kind of outline is valuable chiefly in its arrangement and placing of material. Its service in making the original choice is not so immediately apparent. It has also the advantage that it indicates pretty well what kind of expression is to be used in the expanded form. The third type of outline, which many writers prefer to either of the others, indicates both the topics to be treated and the division into paragraphs. It may be constructed in either of two ways: first, the topic sentences may be stated in their regular order, with the subdivisions of the thought as they appear in the indented outline grouped under the topic sentences; or in the indented outline the paragraphs may be indicated by the regular sign for the paragraph at any point where a new division is to be made. That is, in the first of the two outlines that follow, the first paragraph might be indicated in the first outline as including I and I, A; the second as including II and II, A; the third as including II, B, 1, a, b, etc. Or, in the second outline the subheadings of the first might be indicated under the various topic sentences. The value of this type of outline is obviously that it both shows the logic of the thought and the divisional arrangement for presentation in paragraphs. With such an outline the chances that you could go wrong, in even a long theme on a difficult subject, are slight. Do not fail, therefore, when your theme is to be of any considerable length, or when the subject is at all difficult, to make an outline. There is no greater pleasure in the world than that of creative effort when the creator knows what he is about. But when the ideas are hazy, when the writer does not know exactly what he wishes to do and what impression he wishes to make--then the process of creation is anything but pleasant. And since the outline presents a pattern of your work, since with it you cannot fail to see what your intentions are and what the requirements of your subject, regard it as your best writing friend--and make use of the rights of friendship and require service. FIRST OUTLINE OF "AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE" I. A colony of bees increases our interest in a wood. A. The secret of the hidden golden store of honey is pleasing. II. The hunt is most interesting, especially in the autumn. A. Nature, as we tramp with luncheon and with bait, is in her greatest glory. B. We are stimulated by the odds against our finding the tree. 1. Determining the direction of the tree is a problem. a. It is easy to catch the first bee and watch it devour the bait. b. But to be sure of its rapid flight home requires sharp eyes and concentrated watching. c. Only after three or four trips of the first bee do others discover the secret of our bait and join in establishing the necessary "line" to the tree. 2. Determining the distance of the tree requires skill. a. From another point we make a new "line" that meets the first at the tree. 1´. This is called "cross-lining." b. It is easy to pass by the tree even when we know about where it is. C. Once found, the tree must be attacked boldly. 1. Bees do not sting a bold person. 2. But when a sting is touched, even on a dead bee, it hurts. 3. Honey is the best cure for the sting. D. The actions of the bees are interesting. 1. Those which are away from home do not recognize the ruins of their own hive, and begin to eat. a. At last they pathetically understand. 2. Robber bees come for plunder. a. Bumble-bees arrive in large numbers. 1´. Compared with honey-bees they are clumsy. III. Two examples from experience show the chances for missing and the delights of triumph. A. Both trees were hemlocks. B. Both were in interesting situations. C. Both yielded good store of honey. IV. Special facts, occasioned by the habits of bees, need to be remembered. A. In the woods, the hunter must stop, every little while, to test his "line." 1. Sometimes he is baffled, because the bees do not know the woods from the ground side. B. Bees hunt for honey far from home. 1. Usually it is easier to find a tree half a mile away than from only a few yards. C. Since bees like water, a careful hunter looks along creeks and near springs. V. Wild honey is better than tame because it tastes of the adventure of finding it. SECOND OUTLINE OF "AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE" 1. The presence of a colony of bees in a wood gives it interest. 2. The fall is the best time to start with luncheon and bait off across the fields a-hunting. 3. After two miles we catch several bees and watch them start for home with our honey. 4. After several trips, other bees that have discovered the secret arrive. 5. With one line established, we move on, establish another, find the tree and attack it. 6. Boldness in handling bees is essential. 7. Bees that are away from home when their tree is attacked have considerable difficulty in recognizing it. 8. Robber bees join the plundered to eat all the remnants of honey. 9. A neighbor honey-bee leads to another store in a hemlock. 10. Another tree in the vicinity, also a hemlock, had a superb situation. 11. The honey in this tree was most pleasing to see and to carry home. 12. In lining bees one must stop every little while and test his line; bees puzzle sometimes by their actions since they know the woods only from above. 13. Bees discover their home to the hunter better when they are caught at some distance from the tree. 14. Since bees like water, it is well to hunt along brooks and near springs. 15. Wild honey is sweeter than tame. EXERCISES I. Select the words and phrases in the selection from _Pulvis et Umbra_ which immediately help to accomplish the controlling purpose of the essay. II. From what grade in the intellectual and social world does Stevenson select his examples in the paragraph beginning: _If the first view of this creature_, etc.? Why? From what grade would you select examples for a similar paragraph if you intended the creation of despair as your controlling purpose? What common qualities are found in _all_ Stevenson's examples through the selection? Why does he strive for this quality? III. Make an outline of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee," using the material which now appears, but placing the accent of the essay upon the difficulty of obtaining the honey, instead of upon the pleasures of the hunt, as it is now placed--in other words, outline the essay with change of controlling purpose. IV. Write the first paragraph of the essay, and the last one, as you would wish them to appear if your intention were to make difficulty rather than joy the controlling purpose. V. 1. Make an outline for "Solemn-Looking Blokes" with the controlling purpose of bringing out the romantic nature of the presence of American troops in England. 2. Make an outline such as would suit the expression of an American who had been living in England since the declaration of war in 1914 and had been taunted with the apathy of the United States government, and now was supremely proud to see United States troops in England. VI. Write a final paragraph of "Solemn-Looking Blokes" to express any of the following controlling purposes: 1. Joy at the union of the old and the new worlds in a common cause. 2. Heartache at the awfulness of soldiers' sailing 3000 miles to die because an autocratic government precipitated war. 3. The pride of an American resident in London over the physique of the United States soldiers. 4. The astonishment of a London school-boy who has just read in his history how the American colonies rebelled. 5. The apprehension of a British Tory lest aristocracy be doomed when the troops of a great democracy appear so far away from home to battle against autocracy. VII. Write outlines and themes on any of the following subjects to accomplish the different controlling purposes: 1. The Scientific Reduction of Noise. 1. To show the _social duty_ of engineers. 2. To show the wonder of man's analytical powers. 3. To show the seriousness of the difficulties that must be faced. 2. The Growing Appreciation of Good Architecture in America. 1. To show the good educative work of our architects. 2. To show the influence of European travel. 3. To show the effect of the general rise in standards of education. 3. The Popular Magazines. 1. To show the general looseness of thinking. 2. To show the senseless duplication of material and ideas. 3. To show the opportunity for a host of authors. 4. The Effects of the Big Mail-Order Houses. 1. To show how they ruin the small country store. 2. To show how they increase the opportunities of the small buyers. 3. To show how they help give employment in the large cities. 5. Is Religion Declining? 1. To show the shifting of responsibility from creeds to deeds. 2. To show the changed status of the church. 3. To show the effect of increased education on religion. 6. "Best Sellers." 1. To show the relation of their immediate popularity to their final valuation. 2. To indicate the qualities necessary to a "best seller." 3. To show the effect upon the thinking of a nation that has many "best sellers." 7. Results of the Farm Credit Legislation. 1. To show the relief gained for the farmers. 2. To show the effect on increased production. 3. To show the fairer economic distribution. 8. The Use of Concrete. 1. To show the general economic value. 2. To show the general lightening of toil that it may have caused. 3. To show the variety of its service. 9. The American Spirit. 1. To show its idealism. 2. To show its indebtedness to England, or France, or Germany. 3. To show how it may help the world. 10. Beethoven's Piano-forte Sonatas. 1. To show them as the culmination of the sonata development. 2. To show their romantic nature. 3. To show the development of Beethoven's genius as he matured. 11. Heredity in Plants. 1. To show the similarity to heredity in man. 2. To show how knowledge of heredity in plants may serve an economic purpose. 3. To show the wonderful consistency of the laws of heredity in plants. 12. Glacial Action in the Mississippi Valley. 1. To show the economic result. 2. To indicate the sweep of time consumed in the formation. 3. To show the picturesque qualities in the gradual action. VIII. What is the controlling purpose in the following selection? Point out the influence upon the writer of knowing that Bostonians would read his words. Indicate how the selection would differ if the controlling object were to be bitter jealousy expressed by a resident in a newer, larger, envious city. Boston has a rather old-fashioned habit of speaking the English language. It came upon us rather suddenly one day as we journeyed out Huntington Avenue to the smart new gray and red opera house. The very coloring of the _foyer_ of that house--soft and simple--bespoke the refinement of the Boston of to-day. In the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in every other one of the glib opera houses that are springing up mushroom-fashion across the land, our ears would have been assailed by "Librettos! Get your Librettos!" Not so in Boston. At the Boston Opera House the young woman back of the _foyer_ stand calmly announced at clocklike intervals: "Translations. Translations." And the head usher, whom the older Bostonians grasped by the hand and seemed to regard as a long-lost friend, did not sip out, "Checks, please." "Locations," he requested, as he condescended to the hand-grasps of the socially elect. "The nearer door for those stepping out," announces the guard upon the elevated train, and as for the surface and trolley-cars, those wonderful green perambulators laden down with more signs than nine ordinary trolley-cars would carry at one time, they do not speak of the newest type in Boston as "Pay-as-you-enter-cars," after the fashion of less cultured communities. In the Hub they are known as Prepayment cars--its precision is unrelenting.[10] [10] Edward Hungerford: _The Personality of American Cities_. By courtesy of the publisher, Robert M. McBride & Co., New York City. IX. What is the controlling purpose in the following selection from Mr. John Masefield's volume of _Gallipoli_? Analyze this controlling purpose as to the subject itself, the author's personal reaction, and the intended readers--largely perhaps, the American people. Let the reader imagine himself to be facing three miles of any very rough broken sloping ground known to him, ground for the most part gorse-thyme-and-scrub-covered, being poor soil, but in some places beautiful with flowers (especially a "spiked yellow flower with a whitish leaf") and on others green from cultivation. Let him say to himself that he and an army of his friends are about to advance up the slope towards the top, and that as they will be advancing in a line, along the whole length of the three miles, he will only see the advance of those comparatively near to him, since folds or dips in the ground will hide the others. Let him, before he advances, look earnestly along the line of the hill, as it shows up clear, in blazing sunlight only a mile from him, to see his tactical objective, one little clump of pines, three hundred yards away, across what seem to be fields. Let him see in the whole length of the hill no single human being, nothing but scrub, earth, a few scattered buildings, of the Levantine type (dirty white with roofs of dirty red) and some patches of dark Scotch pine, growing as the pine loves, on bleak crests. Let him imagine himself to be more weary than he has ever been in his life before, and dirtier than he has ever believed it possible to be, and parched with thirst, nervous, wild-eyed and rather lousy. Let him think that he has not slept for more than a few minutes together for eleven days and nights, and that in all his waking hours he has been fighting for his life, often hand to hand in the dark with a fierce enemy, and that after each fight he has had to dig himself a hole in the ground, often with his hands, and then walk three or four roadless miles to bring up heavy boxes under fire. Let him think, too, that in all those eleven days he has never for an instant been out of the thunder of cannon, that waking or sleeping their devastating crash has been blasting the air across within a mile or two, and this from an artillery so terrible that each discharge beats as it were a wedge of shock between the skull-bone and the brain. Let him think too that never, for an instant, in all that time, has he been free or even partly free from the peril of death in its most sudden and savage forms, and that hourly in all that time he has seen his friends blown to pieces at his side, or dismembered, or drowned, or driven mad, or stabbed, or sniped by some unseen stalker, or bombed in the dark sap with a handful of dynamite in a beef-tin, till their blood is caked upon his clothes and thick upon his face, and that he knows, as he stares at the hill, that in a few moments, more of that dwindling band, already too few, God knows how many too few, for the task to be done, will be gone the same way, and that he himself may reckon that he has done with life, tasted and spoken and loved his last, and that in a few minutes more may be blasted dead, or lying bleeding in the scrub, with perhaps his face gone and a leg and an arm broken, unable to move but still alive, unable to drive away the flies or screen the ever-dropping rain, in a place where none will find him, or be able to help him, a place where he will die and rot and shrivel, till nothing is left of him but a few rags and a few remnants and a little identification-disc flapping on his bones in the wind. Then let him hear the intermittent crash and rattle of the fire augment suddenly and awfully in a roaring, blasting roll, unspeakable and unthinkable, while the air above, that has long been whining and whistling, becomes filled with the scream of shells passing like great cats of death in the air; let him see the slope of the hill vanish in a few moments into the white, yellow, and black smokes of great explosions shot with fire, and watch the lines of white puffs marking the hill in streaks where the shrapnel searches a suspected trench; and then, in the height of the tumult, when his brain is shaking in his head, let him pull himself together with his friends, and clamber up out of the trench, to go forward against an invisible enemy, safe in some unseen trench expecting him.[11] [11] John Masefield: _Gallipoli_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. What light does the following paragraph which appears at the beginning of the book throw upon the controlling purpose? Later, when there was leisure, I began to consider the Dardanelles Campaign, not as a tragedy, nor as a mistake, but as a great human effort, which came, more than once, very near to triumph, achieved the impossible many times, and failed, in the end, as many great deeds of arms have failed, from something which had nothing to do with arms nor with the men who bore them. That the effort failed is not against it; much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things and noble men have failed. To myself, this failure is the second grand event of the war; the first was Belgium's answer to the German ultimatum.[12] [12] John Masefield: _Gallipoli_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. X. Explain what would be your controlling purpose in a theme on any of the following subjects, and how you would _arrange your material_ to accomplish this purpose. 1. What is the Primary Function of a Successful Novel? 2. The Philosophy of Woman Suffrage. 3. Lynch Law and Law Reform. 4. The Conservatism of the American College Student. 5. Intellectual Bravery. 6. A Mediæval Free City. 7. Mr. Roosevelt's Career as an Index of the American Character. 8. Practical Efficiency as an Enemy to "Sweetness and Light." 9. The Æsthetics of the Skyscraper. 10. Possibilities for the Small Farmer in America. 11. The Future of Civil Engineering. 12. Housekeeping as an Exact Science. XI. Indicate what your controlling purpose would be in writing of the following subjects, if you chose your purpose from the _subject-matter alone_. Then show how the purpose might be affected by the different sets of readers as they are indicated in the subheadings. 1. The Intelligence of the Average Voter. a. For a woman who eagerly desires woman suffrage. b. For a refined but narrow aristocrat, descendant of an old family. c. For an agitating member of the I.W.W. 2. The Value of Courses in Literature for the Technical Student. a. For a hard-headed civil engineer. b. For a white-haired, kindly old professor of Greek, who resents the intrusion of science and labor. c. For a mother who wants her son to "get everything good from his technical course." 3. The Delights of Fishing. a. For a woman who cannot understand why her husband wants to be always going on silly fishing trips. b. For a group of city men who are devotees of the sport. c. For a small boy who hopes some day to go with "Dad" on his trips. 4. The Value of the Civic Center. a. For a man who resents the extra taxation that would be necessary to make one in his city. b. For a prominent, public-spirited architect. c. For a young woman graduate from college who eagerly desires to "do something" for her city. 5. The Spirit of the "Middle West," the "Old South" or any other section of the country. a. For a proud resident. b. For a sniffy resident of another section. c. For a person who has never thought of such a thing. CHAPTER III DEFINITION Definition is the process of explaining a subject by setting bounds to it, enclosing it within its limits, showing its extent. The ocean is properly defined by the shore; a continent or island is defined by its coastline: shores set limits to the ocean; coastlines bound the island or continent. So, when a child asks, "What is Switzerland?" you show on the map the pink or yellow or green space that is included within certain definite boundaries. These boundaries set a limit to the extent of that country; in other words, they define it. As soon as a traveler steps beyond the limit of that country, he is at once in another realm, has become identified with a quite different set of conditions and circumstances--he is, in fact, in a country that has a different definition from that of Switzerland. In the same way, when some one asks what truth is, or nickel steel, or a grand piano, or humanism, or art, or rotation of crops, or a rocking chair, or the forward pass, you attempt, in your reply, to set bounds to the thing in question, to restrict it, to fence it off, to state the line beyond which if it goes it ceases to be one thing and becomes another. It is by no means always an easy task to find this line. Many a child has come to grief in his attempts to keep safely within the limits of truth and yet be close up to the realm of desirable falsehood. Likewise many witnesses in court have been beguiled or browbeaten into crossing the line without knowing that they were getting into the country of the enemy. But though the quest for the line may be difficult, a true definition must set off the thing being defined from other things, must set bounds to it, enclose it within its limits, show its extent. The Process of Definition The logical process of defining consists of two steps: first, stating the class or group to which the object of definition belongs, as to say that Switzerland is a _country_, the forward pass is a _strategic device in football_, humanism is a _philosophy of personal development_; and second, pointing out the difference between the object of definition and other members of the class, showing how it is distinguished from them. Since the purpose of definition is to limit the thing defined, the practical value of the first step is at once apparent. If, in total ignorance, a resident of India asks you, "What is ragtime?" the most helpful thing in the world that you can do for him is to cleave away with one stroke everything else in the world but music--absolute exclusion of all other human interests--and place ragtime in that comparatively narrow field. That is the first thing of great help. However many qualities you may attribute to ragtime,--whether you call it inspiring, invigorating, pleasing, detestable, or what not,--you are making at best only slow progress toward defining, really limiting ragtime. The number of pleasing things, for example, is so endless, and the things are so diverse in character that your listener is almost as ignorant after such a quality has been attributed as he was before. But the moment that you limit ragtime to music you scatter untold clouds of doubt and place the inquirer in the comfortable position of having a fairly large working knowledge. What is left for the inquirer to do is merely to distinguish ragtime from other kinds of music--after all, a rather simple task. Likewise in any definition, such as that of rotation of crops, the first necessity is to place the subject in its proper field, in this case agriculture; the grand piano in the class of musical instruments; the rocking chair in the class of furniture. Now sometimes the task of discovering to what class your subject belongs is difficult. Is a believer in Unitarianism a Christian? He follows the ethical teachings of Jesus but denies him any special divinity. In this case obviously the question of classification will depend on the definition that we make of Christianity. Is a man who serves the state in legislative or judicial capacity and at the same time writes novels to be called a statesman or a man of letters? Governments have fallen into difficulty with each other over such things as contraband of war, there being great doubt at times whether a particular thing is properly contraband or not. The question is sometimes doubtful--you will be inclined to say, "I don't know what to call this," but in making a definition call it you must. The United States Government, facing the problem of discovering the proper class for frogs' legs, in determining customs duties after much perturbation placed them under the heading "poultry." Ordinarily you will find slight difficulty in determining the class; but in every case you must patiently search until you have found some class into which your subject naturally fits. Until you have done this you obviously cannot set it apart from other members, because you will not really know what the other members are, you will be forced to run through the total list of human ideas and things. Until you know that _oligarchy_ is one form of political society you cannot know whether to set it off from _democracy_ and _monarchy_ or from _Christianity_ and _Buddhism_. First, then, however difficult, discover the class to which your subject belongs. In the following definition of a _clearing-house_, you will find that in the course of time the class to which the subject belongs has changed, has come to include more space, needs a larger fence to surround it, and therefore the definition has been changed. What is a clearing-house? The Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania has defined it thus: "It is an ingenious device to simplify and facilitate the work of the banks in reaching an adjustment and payment of the daily balances due to and from each other at one time and in one place on each day. In practical operation it is a place where all the representatives of the banks in a given city meet, and, under the supervision of a competent committee or officer selected by the associated banks, settle their accounts with each other and make or receive payments of balances and so 'clear' the transactions of the day for which the settlement is made." But we must go farther than this, for though originally designed as a labor-saving device, the clearing-house has expanded far beyond those limits, until it has become a medium for united action among the banks in ways that did not exist even in the imaginations of those who were instrumental in its inception. A clearing-house, therefore, may be defined as a device to simplify and facilitate the daily exchange of items and settlements of balances among the banks, and a medium for united action upon all questions affecting their mutual welfare.[13] [13] Francis M. Burdick: _The Essentials of Business Law_. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright 1902, 1908, by D. Appleton & Co. The second step in the logical process of definition is to show how the subject for definition differs from other members of its class. Once I am told that the piano is a musical instrument I must next learn wherein it differs from the violin, the kettle-drum, and the English horn. The surname _Tomlinson_ partly defines a person as a member of the Tomlinson family, but the definition is not complete until the name is modified and the person is distinguished by _George_ or _Charles_ or whatever name may belong to him. A skillful shepherd knows not only his flocks but also the characteristics of the different members of the flocks, so that he can say, "This sheep is the one in X flock that is always getting into the clover." Here "X flock" is the class, and the quality of abusing the clover is the distinguishing individual tag. Since the desire in this part of the process of defining is to set individuals apart, no mention will be made of qualities that are shared in common but only of those that are peculiar to the individual. These qualities that distinguish individual members of classes from each other are called the _differentia_, just as the class is commonly called the _genus_. For convenience in keeping the list of differentia reasonably small, to avoid unwieldiness of definition, care must be exercised in choosing the class. When a class which itself contains other possible classes is chosen, a long list of differentia will be necessary. It is well, therefore, to choose a relatively small class to begin with. For example, if I put the piano into the large class of _musical instruments_, I shall then be under the necessity of amassing sufficient differentia to set it apart from wind instruments whether of brass or wood, from instruments of percussion, and from other stringed instruments that do not use metal strings. If I restrict the class to _stringed instruments_, I thereby exclude the differentia of both wind instruments and instruments of percussion. If I further restrict the class, at the beginning, to _instruments with metal strings_, I need then to employ only such differentia as will set it off, perhaps, from instruments that do not have a sounding board for their metal strings. Such restriction of the class is advisable chiefly for purposes of economy of effort in discovering the differentia, and is usually accomplished, in expression, by preceding the class name with a limiting adjective or by using a limiting phrase. This adjective or this phrase is likely to be the expression of differentia among smaller classes, the differentia among individual members being stated more at length later in the definition. The process of definition will be complete, then, when the subject of definition has been assigned to a class, which for convenience should be relatively small, and the qualities that distinguish the subject from other members of the class have been found. The Two Main Classes of Definitions Two main classes of definition exist: first, the rigidly logical, scientific kind such as is found in dictionaries, textbooks, and other such writings which are not concerned with emotional values; and second, the less rigid, more expanded, more informal kind which aims to please as well as to instruct, and which is found in essays and all forms of writing with a strong human appeal. The two kinds are alike in the presence of both genus and differentia; they differ chiefly in the presence, in the less formal, of the qualities of pleasingness and stimulation as opposed to the quality, in the formal, of scientific impersonality, cold intellectuality. For example, the Standard Dictionary defines a _correspondent_ as "one who communicates by means of letters; specifically one who sends regular communications from a distant place to a newspaper or a business house." The author of the volume entitled _Famous War Correspondents_[14] defines, with much the same fundamental ideas, if not indeed exactly the same, a _war correspondent_ as follows: [14] F. L. Billiard: _Famous War Correspondents_. By courtesy of the publishers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston. Copyright, 1914. The war correspondent is a newspaper man assigned to cover a campaign. He goes into the field with the army, expecting to send his reports from that witching region known as "the front." He is a special correspondent commissioned to collect intelligence and transmit it from the camp and the battle ground. A non-combatant, he mingles freely with men whose business it is to fight. He may be ten thousand miles from the home office, but he finds competition as keen as ever it is in Fleet Street or Newspaper Row. He is engaged in the most dramatic department of a profession whose infinite variety is equalled only by its fascination. If he becomes a professional rather than an occasional correspondent, wandering will be his business and adventure his daily fare. Mr. A. G. Hales is of the opinion that the newspaper man who is chosen as a war correspondent has won the Victoria Cross of journalism. For the making of a first-rate war correspondent there are required all the qualifications of a capable reporter in any other branch of the profession, and others besides. Perhaps it is true that the regular hack work of the ordinary newspaper man is the best training for the scribe of war. The men who had reported fires and train wrecks in American cities proved themselves able to describe vigorously and clearly the campaign in Cuba. William Howard Russell had been doing a great variety of descriptive writing before he was sent to the Crimea. The prime requisites for a satisfactory war correspondent are those fundamental to success in any kind of newspaper work, the ability to see straight, to write vividly and accurately, and to get a story on the wire. Occasionally a brilliant workman appears from nowhere, the happy possessor of an almost uncanny intuition of movements and purposes. Such a man was Archibald Forbes. But Forbes, no less than the average special, had to have the physical capacity to march with the private soldier, to ride a hundred miles at a clip at top speed over rough country, to sleep in the open, to stand the heat of the desert and the cold of the mountain height, to endure hunger and thirst and all the deprivations of a hard campaign. Every correspondent at times must keep going until his strength is utterly spent. He must have the tenacity which does not yield to exhaustion until his messages are written and on the way to his paper. When the soldier ceases fighting, the correspondent's work is only begun. He needs also to have a degree of familiarity with the affairs of the present and the history of the past which will secure him the respect of the officers with whom he may associate. Along with the courage of the scout he should possess the suavity and tact of the diplomat, for he will have to get along with men of all types, and occasionally, indeed, his own influence may overlap into the field of international diplomacy. British correspondents, having covered many wars, small and great, since 1870, usually are acquainted with several languages, and often have acquired a knowledge of the technicalities of military science. Of the two kinds of definition--formal and informal--you will more often have occasion to write the second. You must guard against the danger, in such writing, of allowing the interest to cloud the truth, of being led into inaccurate partial statements by your desire to please. At the root of every good definition is still the accurate statement of genus and differentia. It is chiefly of the second kind that we shall treat here. If you can write a definition that is pleasing and stimulating and also accurate, you can always boil it down into the more bald formal statement such as the dictionary offers. Whatever powers of grace or neatness in expression you possess, whatever powers of saying things in a pleasing manner, it is your privilege to employ in the writing of definitions. General Cautions For the sake of clearness and general effectiveness a few cautions need to be made. In the first place, be sure to exclude everything from your definition that does not properly belong in it. For example, if you define the aeroplane as a machine that journeys through the air under its own power, you include dirigible balloons, which are not aeroplanes. You must introduce both the characteristics of being heavier than air and of having a plane or planes before your definition can stand. You will make this exclusion by choosing both class and differentia with the greatest care. In the second place, include everything that does properly belong in the definition. If you define a bridge as a roadway over a stream, either resting on piers or hanging on cables strung over towers, you exclude pontoon bridges certainly, and all bridges across dry chasms, if not other kinds. Not until you include all varieties of things crossed and all the methods of support and the various materials used will your definition be sound and complete. This does not mean that you will have to make an endless list of all possible forms, but that you will make a comprehensive statement which will allow of being distributed over all the different forms and kinds of bridges. In the third place, use simple and familiar diction. Since the first purpose of a definition is to explain, one that is obscure or difficult makes confusion worse confounded. The famous--or notorious--definition which Dr. Johnson made of so simple a thing as _network_, "anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances with interstices between the intersections," is worse than useless because it positively throws dust upon a comparatively easy matter to perceive--unless the reader take time out for meditation. Remember that the Gettysburg Address and many of Shakespeare's sonnets are largely in words of one syllable. And then do not be afraid that you will be understood; the fire is always presumably somewhat more uncomfortable than the frying-pan. In the fourth place, do not use the term that you are defining, or any derivative of it. When college freshmen, in mortal combat with a quiz question, define a description as _something that describes_, they use words that profit them nothing. That a cow is a cow is fairly obvious. The temptation to make this mistake, which, in the intellectual world, occupies the relative space of the saucy old advice, "Chase yourself round the block!" occurs usually when a long definition is being written, in which the writer forgets to keep the horizon clear, and finally falls into the formula _x_ is _x_. To avoid yielding to such temptation, you will do well, after a definition is complete, to phrase it in a single sentence which shall include both differentia and genus, and in which you can easily discover the evil formula _x_ is _x_. Bardolph, in Shakespeare's _King Henry IV_, yields to the temptation--for which we are glad as to humor but not made wise as to meaning--when Shallow puts him to the test: _Shallow_: Better accommodated! it is good; yea, indeed, it is: good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. Accommodated! it comes of accommodo: very good; a good phrase. _Bardolph_: Pardon me, sir; I have heard the word. Phrase call you it? by this good day, I know not the phrase; but I will maintain the word with my sword to be a soldier-like word, and a word of exceeding good command, by heaven. Accommodated; that is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being, whereby 'a may be thought to be accommodated; which is an excellent thing. In the fifth place, be sure that you define, and do not merely "talk about" the subject. Any amount of however interesting comment that fails to accomplish the two necessities of definition, statement of the genus and the differentia, is futile; it is not definition. This temptation, like the former one, will be overcome if you take the trouble to phrase the actual material of your definition in one sentence that really includes both genus and differentia. As a minor suggestion, do not begin your definition with the words, "X is when" or "X is where," unless you are defining either a unit of time or a place--and even then you will do well to avoid these too frequently used phrases. Finally, do not make your definition too mechanical, too much lacking in real life. Thinking of how you must deal with genus and differentia, you are liable to be overwhelmed with the grim duty of being logical, and to forget that you should also be human, that people read definitions, as other kinds of writing, in the double hope of information and pleasure. No real antagonism exists between logic of the strictest kind and pleasurable presentation, as is proved by the examples quoted during the course of this chapter and at the end. While you remember your subject, remember also your reader; then you will be unlikely to make a dull definition. Methods of Defining You may use various methods of defining. Sometimes you will choose only one, and sometimes you will combine. There is no special virtue in one method more than another except as sometimes one happens to be more useful for a given case, as we shall see. In selecting your method, then, select on the basis of practical workability for the effect that you desire to create, adhering to one or using several as seems most effective. _a._ _The Method of Illustration_ One of the most useful, natural, and easy methods is that of giving an example or illustration of the thing that is being defined. The great usefulness of this method lies in the stimulating quality that the concrete example always has. If you wish to define an abstract quality, for example, such as _patriotism_, or _honor_, or _generosity_, you will often find advantage, for the first, in calling up the figure of Washington, of Lincoln, of Cromwell; in citing, for the second, the case of some man who, after bankruptcy, has set himself to pay all his former debts, or of Regulus who, though he had the chance not to keep his promise to return to Carthage as prisoner, yet bade Rome farewell and returned to unspeakable torture; in presenting, for the third, a specific set of conditions, such as possession of only one dime, which is then shared with another person who is even less fortunate, or showing a known person, like Sir Philip Sidney, who, though at death's door on the field of battle, urged that the exquisite joy of cold water be given to a comrade who was even more terribly in need. In every one of these cases the quality under definition is presented in an easily grasped, concrete form that has the great advantage of human interest, of stimulating the reader's thought. That using such a method is natural is apparent as soon as we remember that we think largely in concrete forms, specific cases. That it is rather easy is obvious, because so many instances are always at hand to be used. The danger in this method is that the example chosen will not be entirely fair. Such lack of fairness may occur if the example covers too little ground of the definition or if it too highly accentuates one phase of the subject of definition. If, for instance, you cite the example of the man who gave away his only pair of shoes, as an example of generosity, you may run the risk of making the reader think that nothing but an extreme act has the real stamp of the generous giver, or that generosity is expressed only in material ways, forgetting that it is generous to acknowledge a fault or to overlook unintended affront. To avoid this danger be sure that your example is fair and sufficiently comprehensive, and if it is not, choose other examples to add to it until you are convinced of the all-round fitness of your definition. In the following examples you may feel that Gissing does not wholly define _poverty_, whereas Shaw is more complete in his approach to defining _ability that gives value for money_, and Mr. Morman by taking a typical example and working it out arrives at complete understanding with perhaps less of piquant interest. Blackberries hanging thick upon the hedge bring to my memory something of long ago. I had somehow escaped into the country and on a long walk began to feel mid-day hunger. The wayside brambles were fruiting; I picked and ate, and ate on, until I had come within sight of an inn where I might have made a good meal. But my hunger was satisfied; I had no need of anything more, and, as I thought of it, a strange feeling of surprise, a sort of bewilderment, came upon me. What! Could it be that I had eaten, and eaten sufficiently, _without paying_? It struck me as an extraordinary thing. At that time, my ceaseless preoccupation was how to obtain money to keep myself alive. Many a day I had suffered hunger because I durst not spend the few coins I possessed; the food I could buy was in any case unsatisfactory, unvaried. But here nature had given me a feast, which seemed delicious, and I had eaten all I wanted. The wonder held me for a long time, and to this day I can recall it, understand it. I think there could be no better illustration of what it means to be poor in a great town.[15] [15] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Autumn." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. * * * * * In business, as a rule, a man must make what he gets and something over into the bargain. I have known a man to be employed by a firm of underwriters to interview would-be insurers. His sole business was to talk to them and decide whether to insure or not. Salary, £4000 a year. This meant that the loss of his judgment would have cost his employers more than £4000 a year. Other men have an eye for contracts or whatnot, or are born captains of industry, in which cases they go into business on their own account, and make ten, twenty, or two hundred per cent where you or I would lose five. Or, to turn back a moment from the giants to the minnows, take the case of a woman with the knack of cutting out a dress. She gets six guineas a week instead of eighteen shillings. Or she has perhaps a ladylike air and a figure on which a mantle looks well. For these she can get several guineas a week merely by standing in a show-room letting mantles be tried on her before customers. All these people are renters of ability; and their ability is inseparable from them and dies with them. The excess of their gains over those of an ordinary person with the same capital and education is the "rent" of the exceptional "fertility." But observe, if the able person makes £100,000, and leaves that to his son, who, being but an ordinary gentleman, can get only from two and a half to four per cent on it, that revenue is pure interest on capital and in no sense whatever rent of ability.[16] [16] George B. Shaw: _Socialism and Superior Brains_. By courtesy of the publishers, John Lane Company, New York City. * * * * * By "amortization" is meant the method of paying a debt by regular semi-annual or annual installments. To illustrate: Suppose a farmer gives a mortgage on his farm of $1000, with interest at 5 per cent. In addition to the interest, he agrees to pay 2 per cent a year on the principal. This makes a total of 7 per cent a year, or a payment of $70, which may be paid in two semi-annual installments of $35 each. The first year's interest and payment on the principal are taken as the amount to be paid annually. But of the first payment, $50 represents the interest and $20 the payment on the principal. After the first year's payment, therefore, instead of owing $1000, the farmer owes only $980, with interest at 5 per cent. For the sake of simplicity, let us suppose that payments are made annually. When the next time of payment comes round, the farmer pays his $70. Since his debt is less, the interest the second year amounts to $49 instead of $50, and therefore the payment on the principal is $21 instead of $20 as it was the first year. In the second year the debt is reduced to $959. On the return of the third time of payment the farmer pays another $70, of which amount $47.95 represents the interest and $22.05 the payment on the principal. This reduces the farmer's mortgage debt to $936.95. Now, this system of payment and method of reducing the debt continues until the mortgage has been lifted by a gradual process. Thus, while the annual payments are always the same, the amount of interest is always decreasing and the amount of the payments on the debt is always increasing. Consequently, the mortgage is paid off in ten to forty years according to the rate of payment on the loan that the debtor himself elects to pay when the contract is made. This is the simple principle of amortization, and it is recognized in Europe as the safest, easiest, and best method of reducing land-mortgage indebtedness hitherto conceived and put into practice.[17] [17] J. B. Morman: _Principles of Rural Credit_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. If, then, you have a subject that is abstract and perhaps difficult to understand in abstract explanation; if you wish, to stimulate your readers and make their reading pleasant; if, for any reason, you wish to write informally, then you may well decide to employ the useful, natural, and easy method of definition by illustration. _b._ _The Method of Comparison or Contrast_ A second method, closely akin to that by illustration, is the method of defining by comparison or contrast. The value of this method lies in its liveliness and the ease with which it makes an idea comprehended. The liveliness derives largely from the usual presence of specific facts or things with which the subject of definition is compared or to which it is contrasted, and from the imaginative stimulus that perception of similarity in function creates. The implied definition of leader in politics in Lincoln's famous remark about changing political parties in war time, "Don't swap horses while crossing a stream," is not only true, but more, it is interesting. The ease of comprehension is due largely to employing the method of proceeding from the known to the unknown in that comparison is usually made to things already familiar. If contrast is used, there is the added interest of dramatic presentation found especially in oratorical definitions. Liveliness and ease in comprehension make this method a valuable one in addressing a popular or an unlearned body of readers; it presents the truth and it enlists interest. In the following examples you will not be aware of dramatic quality in the first but you will find picturesque qualities in both. Lord Cromer describes a responsible statesman in a democracy as very much in the position of a man in a boat off the mouth of a tidal river. He long has to strive against wind and current until finally a favorable conjunction of weather and tide forms a wave upon which he rides safely into the harbor. There is an essential truth in this which no man attempting to play the part of leader in a democracy can forget except at his peril. Government by public opinion is bound to get a sufficient body of public opinion on its side. But withal it is manifestly the duty of a leader to help form a just public opinion. He must dare to be temporarily unpopular, if only in that way he can get a temporary hearing for the truths which the people ought to have presented to them. He is to execute the popular will, but he is not to neglect shaping it. It is his duty to be properly receptive, but his main striving ought to be that virtue should go out of him to touch and quicken the masses of his citizens. If their minds and imaginations are played upon with sufficient persistence and sufficient skill, they will give him back his own ideas with enthusiasm. A man who throws a ball against a wall gets it back again as if hurled by the dead brick and mortar; but the original impulse is in his own muscle. So a democratic leader may say, if he chooses, that he takes only what is pressed upon him by the people; but his function is often first to press it upon them.[18] [18] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_. * * * * * The quack novel is a thing which looks like a book, and which is compounded, advertised, and marketed in precisely the same fashion as Castoria, Wine of Cardui, Alcola, Mrs. Summers's free-to-you-my-sister Harmless Headache Remedy, Viavi Tablettes, and other patent medicines, harmful and harmless. As the patent medicine is made of perfectly well-known drugs, so the quack novel of course contains perfectly familiar elements, and like the medicine, it comes wrapped in superlative testimonials from those who say they have swallowed it to their advantage. Instead of "After twenty years of bed-ridden agony, one bottle of your Fosforo cured every ache and completely restored my manhood," we have "The secret of his powers is the same God-given secret that inspired Shakespeare and upheld Dickens." This, from the Philadelphia _Sunday Dispatch_, accompanies a quack novel by Mr. Harold Bell Wright, of whom the Portland, Oregon, _Journal_ remarks, "It is this almost clairvoyant power of reading the human soul that has made Mr. Wright's books among the most remarkable works of the present age." Similar to that aroma of piety and charity which accompanies the quack medicines, an equally perceptible odor of sanctity is wafted to us with Mr. Wright; and just as imitators will make their boxes and bottles to resemble those of an already successful trade article, so are Mr. Wright's volumes given that red cloth and gold lettering which we have come to associate with the bindings of Mr. Winston Churchill's very popular and agreeable novels. Lastly--like the quack medicines--the quack novel is (mostly) harmful; not always because it is poisonous (though this occurs), but because it pretends to be literature and is taken for literature by the millions who swallow it year after year as their chief mental nourishment, and whose brains it saps and dilutes. In short, both these shams--the book and the medicine--win and bamboozle their public through methods almost identical.[19] [19] Owen Wister: _Quack Novels and Democracy_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston. For complete truth you need to present both resemblance and difference. This necessity is apparent as soon as we remember that the differentia are of vital importance, that we understand the subject only when we see how it differs from other members of the same class. When these differences are obvious, of course they need no mention. But in defining _wit and humor_, for example, or _immorality and unconventionality_, we must know not only the parallelisms but also the divergencies. The best method of procedure is to discover in each of the subjects compared the vital things, the heart without which it could not exist, and then to observe how these work out in the particulars of the subject. In defining _State_ and _Nation_ in the following selection Mr. Russell takes care to show both resemblances and differences. _Nation_ is not to be defined by affinities of language or a common historical origin, though these things often help to produce a nation. Switzerland is a nation, in spite of diversities of race, religion, and language. England and Scotland now form one nation, though they did not do so at the time of our Civil War. This is shown by Cromwell's saying, in the height of the conflict, that he would rather be subject to the dominion of the royalists than to that of the Scotch. Great Britain was one state before it was one nation; on the other hand, Germany was one nation before it was one state. What constitutes a nation is a sentiment and an instinct--a sentiment of similarity and an instinct of belonging to the same group or herd. The instinct is an extension of the instinct which constitutes a flock of sheep, or any other group of gregarious animals. The sentiment which goes with this is like a milder and more extended form of family feeling. When we return to England after having been on the Continent, we feel something friendly in the familiar ways, and it is easy to believe that Englishmen on the whole are virtuous while many foreigners are full of designing wickedness. Such feelings make it easy to organize a nation into a state. It is not difficult, as a rule, to acquiesce in the orders of a national government. We feel that it is our government, and that its decrees are more or less the same as those which we should have given if we ourselves had been the governors. There is an instinctive, and usually unconscious, sense of a common purpose animating the members of a nation. This becomes especially vivid when there is a war or a danger of war. Any one who, at such a time, stands out against the orders of his government feels an inner conflict quite different from any that he would feel in standing out against the orders of a foreign government, in whose power he might happen to find himself. If he stands out, he does so with a more or less conscious hope that his government may in time come to think as he does; whereas, in standing out against a foreign government, no such hope is necessary. This group instinct, however it may have arisen, is what constitutes a nation, and what makes it important that the boundaries of nations should also be the boundaries of states.[20] [20] Bertrand Russell: _National Independence and Internationalism_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston. _c._ _The Method of Division_ A third method, often used, and similar in its general form to analysis, divides the subject into its various headings, the sum of which must equal the whole. This method differs from analysis, perhaps, in that it treats the subject throughout as a unit rather than as a congregation of parts. This method may be used to define a subject like _mathematics_, in stating that it is the pure science which includes arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc., or to define a quality like _patriotism_, by enumerating the qualities that patriotism has. These qualities may be, also, the uses to which the subject can be put, as in defining a tool or a machine. The method consists in establishing the genus and then, from a mental map of the subject, selecting the various parts that constitute the whole, whether these parts be of physical extent, as in defining the United States by giving the various sections of the country, or of spiritual significance, as in defining an honest man by stating the qualities that he should possess. One danger from this method is lack of completeness; great practical value attaches here to the caution to be sure that the definition includes all that properly belongs under it. Another danger is in the temptation to "talk about" the subject without actually defining it, merely saying some pleasant things and then ceasing. The caution against this danger in general must be remembered. Properly used, this method, though it is sometimes rather formal, should result in great clearness through completeness of definition. The following celebrated definition of a "classic" is a good example of compact definition by this method, and the definition of "moral atmosphere" of a more leisurely, informal breaking-up. A classic is an author who has enriched the human mind, who has really added to its treasure, who has got it to take a step further; who has discovered some unequivocal moral truth, or penetrated to some eternal passion, in that heart of man where it seemed as though all were known and explored, who has produced his thought, or his observation, or his invention, under some form, no matter what, so it be large, great, acute, and reasonable, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken to all in a style of his own, yet a style which finds itself the style of everybody,--in a style that is at once new and antique, and is the contemporary of all ages.[21] [21] Sainte-Beuve. * * * * * The moral atmosphere of the office was ideal. I mean more in the extended and not alone in our specific English sense, though in the latter it was even perhaps more marked. There was not only no temporizing, compromising, compounding with candor, in either major matters or trifling; there was no partiality or ingenuity or bland indifference by which the devil may be, and so often is, whipped round the stump. There was in the _Nation's_ field and conception of its function no temptation to anything of this sort, to be sure, which consideration may conceivably qualify its assessment of merit on the Day of Judgment--a day when we may hope the sins of daily journalism will, in consequence of the same consideration, be extended some leniency--but certainly cannot obscure the fact of its conspicuous integrity. There were people then--as now--that complained of its fairness; which involved, to my mind, the most naïve attitude imaginable, since it was the _Nation's_ practice that had provided the objector with his criterion of fairness in journalism. Of course he might assert that this was only a way of saying that the paper made extraordinary claims which in his estimation it failed to justify; but this was verbiage, the fact being as I have stated it. But I also mean by moral atmosphere the peace, the serenity, the gentleness, the self-respect, the feeling of character, that pervaded the office. We seemed, to my sense, so recently filled with the reactions of Park Row phenomena, "to lie at anchor in the stream of Time," as Carlyle said of Oxford--which, actually, we were very far from doing; there was never any doubt of the _Nation's_ being what is now called a "live wire," especially among those who took hold of it unwarily--as now and then some one did. Mr. Garrison shared the first editorial room with me. Mr. Godkin had the back office. The publication offices were in front, occupied by the amiable Mr. St. John and his staff, which included a gentle and aristocratic colored bookkeeper who resembled an East Indian philosopher--plainly a Garrisonian protégé. The silence I especially remember as delightful, and I never felt from the first the slightest constraint; Mr. Garrison had the courtesy that goes with active considerateness. The quiet was broken only by the occasional interchange of conversation between us, or by the hearty laugh of Mr. Godkin, whose laugh would have been the most noteworthy thing about him if he had not had so many other noteworthy characteristics; or by a visit now and then from Arthur Sedgwick, in my time not regularly "on" the paper, who always brought the larger world in with him (the office _was_ perhaps a little cloistral as a rule), or the appearance of Earl Shinn with his art or dramatic criticism--both the best written, if not also the best we have ever had in this country, and the latter so distinguished, I think, as to be unique. Of course, there were visitors, contributors and candid friends, but mainly we worked in almost Quakerish tranquillity five days in the week during my incumbency.[22] [22] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_. _d._ _The Method of Repetition_ A fourth method, which may be used in connection with any other, consists in repeating the definition over and over in different words, from different points of view, driving home by accumulated emphasis. The value of this method lies in its feeling of absolute sureness in the reader's mind: once completed, the definition seems quite settled, quite tamped down, quite clinched. It is a difficult method to employ, for the writer is in great danger of saying exactly the same thing again and again, forgetting to assume different points of view. From such a definition tediousness is of course the result. The subjects treated by this method are likely to be abstract matters upon which light is shed from various angles, as if one poured spot lights from all sides upon some object which remains the same but which delivers up all its phases. Emerson often used this method, as in the following example where both the method of repetition and that of comparison are used: The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.... It is the counteraction of the centripetal and the centrifugal forces. Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement. "That which is was made by God," says Conservatism. "He is leaving that, he is entering this other," enjoins Innovation. There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact. It affirms because it holds. Its fingers clutch the fact, and it will not open its eyes to see a better fact. The castle which conservatism is set to defend is the actual state of things, good and bad. The project of innovation is the best possible state of things. Of course conservatism always has the worst of the argument, is always apologizing, pleading a necessity, pleading that to change would be to deteriorate: it must saddle itself with the mountainous load of the violence and vice of society, must deny the possibility of good, deny ideas, and suspect and stone the prophet; whilst innovation is always in the right, triumphant, attacking, and sure of final success. Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations, reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance, liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame, the other to postpone all things to the man himself; conservatism is debonair and social, reform is individual and imperious. We are reformers in the spring and summer, in autumn and winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory. Reform has no gratitude, no prudence, no husbandry. It makes a great difference to your figure and your thought whether your foot is advancing or receding. Conservatism never puts the foot forward; in the hour when it does that, it is not establishment, but reform. Conservatism tends to universal seeming and treachery, believes in a negative fate; believes that men's temper governs them; that for me it avails not to trust in principles, they will fail me, I must bend a little; it distrusts nature; it thinks there is a general law without a particular application,--law for all that does not include any one. Reform in its antagonism inclines to asinine resistance, to kick with hoofs; it runs to egotism and bloated self-conceit; it runs to a bodiless pretension, to unnatural refining and elevation which ends in hypocrisy and sensual reaction. And so, while we do not go beyond general statements, it may be safely affirmed of these two metaphysical antagonists, that each is a good half but an impossible whole. Each exposes the abuses of the other, but in a true society, in a true man, both must combine.[23] [23] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The Conservative," in _Nature, Addresses, and Lectures_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. _e._ _The Method of Elimination_ Two methods, which are perhaps less frequently found, but which are none the less useful, remain to be mentioned. The first is the method of elimination, that is, the method of defining a thing by telling what it is not, by eliminating all things with which it might become confused. This method is of great value in defining an idea which is often considered to mean what it actually does not. By shutting out the erroneous interpretations, one by one, the errors are finally disposed of. This method is most effective when not only are the wrong interpretations excluded, but the correct idea, interpretation, is positively stated at some point. If this is not done there lingers in the reader's mind a taint of suspicion that either the author did not know exactly the correct meaning, or that the subject is really too difficult to bear real definition. And with a reader who does not think clearly in original ways a positive statement is almost essential lest he be unable to tell what the subject really is, after all, being unable to supply the residue after the process of elimination has been completed. Following this method Mr. Cross defines Socialism by showing that it is not anarchy, is not single tax, is not communism, and is not other systems with which it is often confused. The result is to leave socialism standing out by itself with clearness. In the following definition of college spirit the author has followed the method of elimination to clear away the haze that in many minds surrounds the subject: College spirit is like ancestry: we are all supposed to have it, but few of us know intimately what it is. The freshman in whose heart beats desire to show loyalty, the graduate whose pulse stirs as the train nears the "little old college," the alumnus who unties his purse-strings at the clarion call of a deficit--do these show loyalty by mere desire or by deeds? And if by deeds, by what kind of action shall their loyalty be determined? In the first place, college spirit is not mere voice culture. The man who yells until his face is purple and his throat is a candidate for the rest cure is not necessarily displaying college spirit--though he may possess it. Yelling is not excluded; it is merely denied the first place. For, to parody Shakespeare, a man can yell and yell and still be a college slacker. Cheering, indiscriminate noise making, even singing the college song with gusto at athletic games--none of these will stamp a man as necessarily loyal. Nor will participation in athletic sports or in "college activities" of other natures be sufficient to declare a man, for the participation may be of a purely selfish nature. The man who makes a record in the sprints chiefly for his own glory, or the man who edits the college paper because by so doing he can "make a good thing out of it" for himself, is not possessed of true college spirit, for college spirit demands more than mere selfishness. In the same way, taking part in celebrations, marching down Main Street with a flag fluttering round his ears, a sunflower in his buttonhole, an inane grin on his face, a swagger in his gait, and a determination to tell the whole world that his "dear old Alma Mater" is "the finest little college in the world"--this, too, is without avail, though it is not necessarily opposed to college spirit. For this exhibition, also, is largely selfish. Likewise, becoming a "grind," removing one's self from the human fellowship that college ought to furnish in its most delightful form, and becoming determined to prepare for a successful business career without regard to the warm flow of human emotion through the heart--this is not college spirit. All these harmless things are excluded because they are primarily selfish, and college spirit is primarily opposed to selfishness. True college spirit is found in the man whose heart has warmed to the love of his college, whose eyes have caught the vision of the ideals that the college possesses, whose brain has thought over and understood these ideals until they have become very fibre of his being. This man will yell not for the selfish pleasure of wallowing in sentimentality, but for the solid glory of his college; will run and leap, will edit the paper with the desire to make and keep the college in the front rank of athletic, social, and intellectual life; will study hard that the college may not be disgraced through him; will conduct himself like a gentleman that no one may sneer at the institution which has sponsored him; will resent any slurs upon the fair name of the college; will be willing to sacrifice himself, his own personal glory, for the sake of the college; will be willing to give of his money and his time until, perhaps, it hurts. And above all, he will never forget the gleam of idealism that he received in the old halls, the vision of his chance to serve his fellows. The man who does these things, who thinks these things, has true college spirit. _f._ _The Method of Showing Origin, Cause, Effect_ The other of these two methods is that of defining by showing the origin or causes of the subject or by showing its effects. If we can be made to see what forces went to the making of anything, or what has resulted from it, we shall have a fairly clear idea of the nature of the thing. Thus we may perhaps best understand the nature of _cabinet government_ by showing how the system came into being, what need it filled, what forces produced it. The same method might make clear _primitive Greek drama_, _the Hanseatic League_, _fertilization of land_, _the Federal Reserve System of Banking_, _the modern orchestra_. And by showing the effects we might define such matters as _the Montessori method of education_, _the Feudal System_, _anarchy_, _militarism_. The writer of a definition after this method needs to take care that when he has shown the various causes or effects, he surely binds them somehow together and vitally to the subject of definition. There must be no dim feeling in the mind of the reader that, after all, the subject is not yet clearly limned, not yet set off from other things. The definition which follows makes clear the origin of the mechanical engineer, and by showing what he does, what need there was for him, what lack he fills, makes clear what he is. The period of systematic and scientific power development is coincident with the true progress of the most basal of the several branches of natural philosophy, chemistry, physics, mechanics, thermodynamics, and the theory of elasticity of materials of construction; and there is no doubt that the steam engine, which was designed and built by workmen before these were formulated, attracted the attention of philosophers who, in attempting to explain what took place in it, created a related body of principles by which future development was guided, and which are now the fundamental bases for the design of the future. Those men who became familiar with the natural sciences, and also with the shop methods of making machinery, and who brought both to bear on the problem of the production of machinery for specified conditions, combining the special knowledge of the scientist and the shop mechanic, were the first mechanical engineers; and the profession of mechanical engineering, which is the term applied to this sort of business, was created out of the efforts to improve power systems, so as to make them more efficient and adapted to all classes of service, and to render that service for the least cost.[24] [24] C. E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press. Emerson makes a definition of the civilization of America in the following selection wherein he describes the effect of American society and life upon the individual. The true test of civilization is, not the crops, not the size of cities, not the census,--no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I see the immense material prosperity,--towns on towns, states on states, and wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities: California quartz, mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally alongshore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again. But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of workmen and wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford, Springfield, Worcester, and Boston,--not these that make the real estimation. But when I look over this constellation of cities which animate and illustrate the land, and see how little the government has to do with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed all families are,--knots of men in purely natural societies, societies of trade, of kindred blood, of habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man by weight of opinion, of longer or better-directed industry; the refining influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes open to youth and labor: when I see how much each virtuous and gifted person whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with greatest reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue and in the symmetry and force of their qualities,--I see what cubic values America has, and in these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous wealth.[25] [25] Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Civilization," in _Society and Solitude_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. These, then, are the various methods that are in common use. The list might be extended, but perhaps enough varieties have been discussed to be of practical value. The choice of method will depend on the result that the writer wishes to accomplish; at times he will wish to please the reader's fancy with an illustration, and again he may wish to contrast the subject to something else. If at any time more methods than one are useful, there is not the slightest objection to combining; in fact, most definitions of any length will be found to have more than one method employed. Remember that the methods were made for you, not you for the methods. And so long as you make your subject clear, so long as you set it off by itself in a class, distinct from other members of the class, you can be sure of the value of your definition. EXERCISES I. Discover the restricting adjectives or phrases that will reduce the number of differentia required by the genus in the following definitions: 1. Vaudeville is _an entertainment_. 2. Pneumonia is _a disease_. 3. The Browning gun is _a machine_. 4. Landscape gardening is _an occupation_. 5. Smelting is _an operation_. 6. Lyrics are _writing_. 7. A college diploma is _a statement by a body of men_. 8. Rotation of crops is _a system_. 9. The Republican party is _an organization_. 10. Anglo-Saxon is _a language_. 11. An axe is _a tool_. 12. A printing press is _a steel structure_. 13. A hair-net is _weaving_. 14. Literature is _writing_. 15. Militarism is _an attitude of mind_. II. Write a definition of any of the following, showing how the subject has shifted its genus by its development, as the _clearing-house_ (page 75) has. 1. The Temperance Movement (sentimental crusade; sensible campaign for efficiency). 2. War. 3. Incantation (means of salvation; curiosity). 4. Household Science (drudgery; occupation). 5. Aristocracy (through physical strength; through birth; through property). 6. Justice (B.C.; A.D.). 7. Chemistry (magic; utility). 8. The Presidency of the United States (as changed by Mr. Wilson's procedure with Congress). 9. The Theater (under Puritan and Cavalier). 10. Electricity (curiosity; fearsome thing; utility). Of course any one of these ten subjects can be defined with a changeless genus, but such a genus is likely to be in the realm of the abstract, pretty thoroughly divorced from practical life. III. From the following definitions taken from Webster's New International Dictionary construct definitions of a more amplified, pleasing nature, after the manner of the definition of _war correspondents_. 1. _Laziness_ is the state of being disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; indolent; idle; slothful. 2. _Efficiency_ is the quality of being efficient, of producing an effect or effects; efficient power or action. 3. A _department store_ is a store keeping a great variety of goods which are arranged in several departments, especially one with dry goods as the principal stock. 4. _Metabolism_ is the sum of the processes concerned in the building up of protoplasm and its destruction incidental to the manifestation of vital phenomena; the chemical changes proceeding continually in living cells, by which the energy is provided for the vital processes and activities and new material is assimilated to repair the waste. 5. _Judgment_ is the faculty of judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely; good sense; as, a man of judgment; a politician without judgment. 6. _Puddling_ is the art or process of converting cast iron into wrought iron, or, now rarely, steel by subjecting it to intense heat and frequent stirring in a reverberatory furnace in the presence of oxidizing substances, by which it is freed from a portion of its carbon and other impurities. 7. _Overhead cost_ is the general expenses of a business, as distinct from those caused by particular pieces of traffic. 8. A _joke_ is something said or done for the sake of exciting a laugh; something witty or sportive (commonly indicating more of hilarity or humor than jest). 9. A _diplomat_ is one employed or skilled in the art and practice of conducting negotiations between nations, as in arranging treaties; performing the business or art of conducting international discourse. 10. A _visionary_ is one who relies, or tends to rely, on visions, or impractical ideas, projects, or the like; an impractical person. 11. An _entrepreneur_ is an employer in his character of one who assumes the risk and management of business. 12. _Loyalty_ is fidelity to a superior, or to duty, love, etc. 13. A _prig_ is one narrowly and self-consciously engrossed in his own mental or spiritual attainments; one guilty of moral or intellectual foppery; a conceited precisian. 14. _Heresy_ is an opinion held in opposition to the established or commonly received doctrine, and tending to promote division or dissension. 15. _Eugenics_ is the science of improving stock, whether human or animal, or of improving plants. IV. Compare the definitions of the following which you find in the Century Dictionary, the Standard Dictionary, the Webster's New International Dictionary and the New English Dictionary; find the common elements, and make a definition of your own. 1. Literature. 2. Living wage. 3. Capillary attraction. 4. Sympathy. 5. Classicism. 6. Inertia. 7. Fodder. 8. Religion. 9. Introspection. 10. Individuality. 11. Finance. 12. Capital. 13. Soil physics. 14. Progress. 15. Narrow-mindedness. V. Look up the definitions of the following terms and estimate the resulting amount of increase in your knowledge of the subject which includes the terms. Do you find any stimulus toward _thinking_ about the subject? What would you say, as the result of this investigation, about the value of definitions? What does Coleridge mean by his statement "Language thinks for us"? 1. _Religion_: awe, reverence, duty, mystery, peace, priest, worship, loyalty, prayer, supplication, trust, divinity, god, service, church, temple, heaven, fate. 2. _Socialism_: property, social classes, economic rights, capital, labor, wages, the masses, aristocracy, envy, self-respect, economic distribution, labor union, boycott, strike, lock-out, materialism, profit-sharing. 3. _Ability_: genius, wit, talent, insight, judgment, perseverance, logic, imagination, originality, intellectuality, vitality. 4. _Music_: sound, rhythm, melody, harmony, orchestra, interval (musical), key, beat, tonic, modulation, musical register, polyphony, monophony, sonata, oratorio, musical scale, diatonic, chromatic, tempo. 5. _Democracy_: independence, suffrage, representation, equality, popular, coöperation. VI. Are the two statements which follow definitions? If not, why not? What would be the effect of the use of definitions of this type in argument? Write a defining theme with such a definition as its nucleus, and test its value. 1. Beauty is its own excuse for being. 2. Virtue is its own reward. VII. In the following definitions[26] what are the genera? Are the definitions fair? How would you criticize them in general? Write a theme using the differentia noted, and trying to catch in the theme the spirit that is shown in the lists. [26] From B. L. T.'s "The Line o' Type Column." By courtesy of the _Chicago Tribune_. Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the up-lift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, "eyether," pâté de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson. Low-highbrow: Municipal government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken à la Maryland, "eether," stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private. High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whiskey, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends. Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven't came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the Duchess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public. VIII. Expand the following definition[27] into a theme, using the combined methods of illustration and comparison. What is the value of having the heart of the definition stated before the theme is begun? [27] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the publishers, Boni & Liveright. The worthy artist or craftsman is he who serves the physical and moral senses by feeding them with pictures, musical compositions, pleasant houses and gardens, good clothes and fine implements, poems, fictions, essays, and dramas which call the heightened senses and ennobled faculties into pleasurable activity. The great artist is he who goes a step beyond the demand, and, by supplying works of a higher beauty and a higher interest than have yet been perceived, succeeds, after a brief struggle with its strangeness, in adding this fresh extension of sense to the heritage of the race. IX. See "Poverty" (page 84). 1. In view of the fact that Gissing uses so slight an illustration to fix his ideal, what makes the definition valuable? Compare the value of this definition with another of the same subject such as you might find in a text on Sociology or Economics. 2. Define by illustration any of the following: Homesickness, Jealousy, Despair, Discouragement, Vulgarity, Opulence, Misery, Cheapness, Tenacity, Anger, Adaptability, Man of action, Man of executive ability, Statesman, Ward boss, Man of learning, Luck, Courage, Business success, "Bonehead Play," Political shrewdness, The "College Widow," Perfect technique, Up-to-date factory, Social tact, A Snob, "Some Kid," Other-worldliness, A Gentleman, A Lady, A "real meal," A fighting chance, Good breeding, A "Social climber," Community music, Poetic justice, A wage-slave, A political ring, Good team-work, Elasticity of mind, Bigotry. How far is definition by illustration concerned with _morality_? Could you, for example, so illustrate _courage_ as to seem to exclude a really courageous person? What necessity in employing this method does your answer to the preceding question indicate? Define any of the following: The ideal leader of the "gang," The ideal ward boss, The ideal town librarian, The ideal teacher, The ideal military general, captain, corporal, The ideal headwaiter, The ideal foreman in a factory, The ideal soda-clerk, The ideal athletic coach, The ideal intellectual leader, The ideal orchestra conductor, The ideal mayor, The ideal "boss" in a steel mill, on a farm, of an engineering gang, of cotton pickers, of lumberjacks. Is the definition of a _Responsible Statesman_ any the less sound because the differentia are duties rather than facts? Write a theme explaining why an executive too far "ahead of his times" fails of immediate results. 3. In the manner of the definition of _Amortization_, write a definition of the following: Collective buying, Sabotage, Montessori method of education, Dry cleaning, Dry farming. X. What is the chief value of the following selection as a real definition? Which is of greater value, this selection or the kind of definition that would be found in a text on geography? Define, in a manner similar to that of the selection: New England, The Middle West, The "Old Dominion," "The Cradle of Liberty," "Gotham," The "Gold Coast," "Dixie," "The Old South," "The Auld Sod," "The Corn Belt," "The Wheat Belt," The Anthracite Region, The Land of Big Game, "The Land of Heart's Desire," "The Cockpit of Europe," "The Vacation Land." Between the Seine and the Rhine lay once a beautiful land wherein more history was made, and recorded in old monuments full of grace and grandeur and fancy, than in almost any other region of the world. The old names were best, for each aroused memory and begot strange dreams: Flanders, Brabant, the Palatinate; Picardy, Valois, Champagne, Franche-Comté; Artois, Burgundy, and Bar. And the town names ring with the same sonorous melody, evoking the ghosts of a great and indelible past: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, and Liége; Aix-la-Chapelle, Coblenz, and Trêves; Ypres and Lille, Tournai and Fontenoy, Arras and Malplaquet; Laon, Nancy, Verdun, and Varennes; Amiens, Soissons, and Reims. Cæsar, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Napoleon, with proconsuls, paladins, crusaders, and marshals unnumbered; kings, prince-bishops, monks, knights, and aureoled saints take form and shape again at the clang of the splendid names. It is not a large land, this Heart of Europe; three hundred and fifty miles, perhaps, from the Alps to the sea, and not more than two hundred and fifty from the Seine at Paris to the Rhine at Cologne; half the size, shall we say, of Texas; but what Europe was for the thousand years following the fall of Rome, this little country--or the men that made it great--was responsible. Add the rest of Normandy, and the spiritual energy of the Holy See, and with a varying and sometimes negligible influence from the Teutonic lands beyond the Rhine, and you have the mainsprings of mediævalism, even though for its full manifestation you must take into account the men in the far countries of the Italian peninsula and the Iberian, in France and England, Bavaria, Saxony, Bohemia.[28] [28] Ralph Adams Cram: _The Heart of Europe_. By courtesy of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright, 1915. XI. Note the two selections that follow, in comparison with the definitions of a responsible statesman and quack novels on pages 87 and 88, and write a definition of any of the following groups, using the method of comparison and contrast. A sale of personal property is the transfer of its general ownership from one person to another for a price in money. It is almost always the result of a contract between the seller and the buyer. If the contract provides for the transfer of ownership at once the transaction is called "a present sale," or "a bargain and sale," or "an executed contract of sale." If it provides for the transfer of ownership at some future time it is called "a contract to sell," or "an executory contract of sale." The business transaction most nearly resembling a sale is that of barter, or the transfer of one article of personal property for another, as when A and B trade horses, or wagons, or oats, or cows. It differs from a sale only in this, that the consideration for each transfer is the counter-transfer of a chattel instead of money. Next to barter in its likeness to sale is a mortgage of personal property, usually called a chattel mortgage. This, in form, is a sale, but it contains a proviso that if the mortgagor pays a certain amount of money, or does some other act, at a stipulated time, the sale shall be void. Even though the mortgagor does not perform the act promised at the agreed time, he still has the right to redeem the property from the mortgage by paying his debt with interest. In other words, a chattel mortgage does not transfer general ownership, or absolute property in the chattels, while a sale does. A sale differs from a bailment.... The former is the transfer of title to goods, the latter of their possession. A bailee undertakes to restore to the bailor the very thing bailed, although it may be in a changed form, while the buyer is to pay money to the seller for the subject-matter of their contract.[29] [29] Francis M. Burdick: _The Essentials of Business Law_. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright, 1902 and 1908. The familiar distinction between the poetic and the scientific temper is another way of stating the same difference. The one fuses or crystallizes external objects and circumstances in the medium of human feeling and passion; the other is concerned with the relations of objects and circumstances among themselves, including in them all the facts of human consciousness, and with the discovery and classification of these relations. There is, too, a corresponding distinction between the aspects which conduct, character, social movement, and the objects of nature are able to present, according as we scrutinize them with a view to exactitude of knowledge, or are stirred by some appeal which they make to our various faculties and forms of sensibility, our tenderness, sympathy, awe, terror, love of beauty, and all the other emotions in this momentous catalogue. The starry heavens have one side for the astronomer, as astronomer, and another for the poet, as poet. The nightingale, the skylark, the cuckoo, move one sort of interest in an ornithologist, and a very different sort in a Shelley or a Wordsworth. The hoary and stupendous formations of the inorganic world, the thousand tribes of insects, the great universe of plants, from those whose size and form and hue make us afraid as if they were deadly monsters, down to "the meanest flower that blows," all these are clothed with one set of attributes by scientific intelligence, and with another by sentiment, fancy, and imaginative association.[30] [30] John Morley: _Miscellanies_, vol. I. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. 1. Autocracy and Democracy. 2. Fame and Notoriety. 3. Cribbing and Lying. 4. Immorality and Unconventionality. 5. Musician and Music Lover. 6. Popularity and Cheapness. 7. Enthusiast and Crank. 8. An Irish Bull and a Paradox. 9. Puppy Love and Real Love. 10. Boiling and Broiling. 11. Honesty and Truthfulness. 12. White Lies and Falsehoods. 13. Liberty and License. 14. Wages and Unearned Increment. 15. Knowledge and Scholarship. 16. Religion and Superstition. 17. Broadmindedness and Spinelessness. 18. Architecture and Architectural Engineering. 19. Socialism and Anarchy. 20. Wit and Humor. 21. Enough and Sufficient. 22. Genetic Heredity and Social Heredity. 23. Lying and Diplomacy. 24. Theology and Religion. 25. Force, Energy, and Power. 26. Sanitary Engineers and Plumbers. 27. Business, Trade, and Commerce. 28. "Kidding" and Taunting. 29. Eminence and Prominence. 30. Realism and Romanticism. 31. Kinetic and Potential Energy. 32. Popular and Permanent Literature. 33. A "Gentleman Farmer" and a Producer. 34. An Employer and a Slave-driver. 35. A Practical Joke and a "Mean Trick." Is the following selection properly a definition by the method of comparison? What is defined? Are the general statements that serve as background true? In how far does the whole selection depend for its validity upon the truth of these general statements? There is a difference between boys and men, but it is a difference of self-knowledge chiefly. A boy wants to do everything because he does not know he cannot; a man wants to do something because he knows he cannot do everything; a boy always fails, and a man sometimes succeeds because the man knows and the boy does not know. A man is better than a boy because he knows better; he has learned by experience that what is a harm to others is a greater harm to himself, and he would rather not do it. But a boy hardly knows what harm is, and he does it mostly without realizing that it hurts. He cannot invent anything, he can only imitate; and it is easier to imitate evil than good. You can imitate war, but how are you going to imitate peace? So a boy passes his leisure in contriving mischief. If you get another fellow to walk into a wasp's camp, you can see him jump and hear him howl, but if you do not, then nothing at all happens. If you set a dog to chase a cat up a tree, then something has been done; but if you do not set the dog on the cat, then the cat just lies in the sun and sleeps and you lose your time. If a boy could find out some way of doing good, so that he could be active in it, very likely he would want to do good now and then; but as he cannot, he very seldom wants to do good.[31] [31] William Dean Howells: _A Boy's Town_. By courtesy of the publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York City. Copyright, 1890. XII. Does the style of the definition of moral atmosphere (page 9) fit well with the subject? Would the definition be more effective if written in a more formal style? Define: 1. The scholarly atmosphere of a university. 2. The business atmosphere of the Stock Exchange. 3. The holy atmosphere of a large church. 4. The inhuman atmosphere of an ordinary criminal court. 5. The human atmosphere of a reunion (of a class, a family, a group of friends). 6. The majestic atmosphere of Niagara Falls. 7. The beautiful atmosphere of a pond of skaters. {inspiring } 8. The {overpowering} atmosphere of a steel mill. {brutal } {beautiful } 9. The calm atmosphere of a dairy farm. XIII. Does the following selection serve to define _honor_ as too difficult of attainment, as too closely bound up with fighting? Is any definition of _privilege_ implied? Define honor as taught in a college and honor as taught in the business world. Can a State University afford to maintain the kind of honor that forces it to "remain loyal to unpopular causes and painful truths"? Is the honor that seeks "to maintain faith even with the devil" foolish? Write a report on the state of honor in your college or university such as Washington or Lincoln would have written after investigating conditions in the student politics of the institution, or conditions in examinations and quizzes. Honor, perhaps because it is associated in the public mind with old ideas of dueling and paying gambling debts, and in general with the habits, good and bad, of a privileged class, is not in high repute with a modern industrial community, where bankruptcy laws, the letter of the statute book, the current morality of an easy-going, good-natured, success-loving people, mark out a smoother path. But the business of a college is not to fit a boy for the world, but to fit him to mould the world to his ideal. Honor is not necessarily old-fashioned and antiquated; it will adapt itself to the present and to the future. If it is arbitrary, or at least has an arbitrary element, so are most codes of law. If honor belongs to a privileged class, it is because it makes a privileged class; a body of men whose privilege it is to speak out in the scorn of consequence, to keep an oath to their own hurt, to remain loyal to unpopular causes and painful truths, to maintain faith even with the devil, and not swerve for rewards, prizes, popularity, or any of the blandishments of success. Because it is arbitrary, because it has rules, it needs to be taught. To teach a code of honor is one of the main purposes of education; a college cannot say, "We teach academic studies," and throw the responsibility for honor on parents, on preliminary schools, on undergraduate opinion, on each boy's conscience. Honor is taught by the companionship, the standards, the ideals, the talk, the actions of honorable men; it is taught by honoring honorable failure and turning the back on all manner of dishonorable success.[32] [32] Henry Dwight Sedgwick: _The New American Type_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. XIV. Define, by showing the origin, any of the following: Highway Engineering, The County Agricultural Adviser, Customs Officer, A private secretary, The linotype machine, National public opinion, The Federal Reserve Board, The "Spoils System," The American Federation of Labor, American "Moral Leadership" in 1918, The Caste System, The mechanical stoker, The canal lock, The trial balance sheet, The Babcock Test. XV. Are the following statements true definitions? Wherein does their worth consist? What causes any weakness that they may have? 1. Life is one long process of getting tired. 2. Life is the distribution of an error--or errors. 3. Life is eight parts cards and two parts play; the unseen world is made manifest to us in the play. 4. Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. 5. The body is but a pair of pincers set over a bellows and a stewpan and the whole fixed upon stilts. 6. Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country. 7. Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both. 8. Going to your doctor is having such a row with your cells that you refer them to your solicitor. Sometimes you, as it were, strike against them and stop their food, when they go on strike against yourself. Sometimes you file a bill in chancery against them and go to bed.[33] [33] All these are from _The Note-Books of Samuel Butler_, published by A. C. Fifield, London. XVI. In the light of the following definition of _Superiority of Status_ write a definition of any of the following: Superiority of birth, Superiority of training, Superiority of vitality, Superiority of environment, Superiority of patronage. There is another sort of artificial superiority which also returns an artificial rent: the superiority of pure status. What are called "superiors" are just as necessary in social organization as a keystone is in an arch; but the keystone is made of no better material than any other parts of a bridge; its importance is conferred upon it by its position, not its position by its importance. If half-a-dozen men are cast adrift in a sailing-boat, they will need a captain. It seems simple enough for them to choose the ablest man; but there may easily be no ablest man. The whole six, or four out of the six, or two out of the six, may be apparently equally fit for the post. In that case, the captain must be elected by lot; but the moment he assumes his authority, that authority makes him at once literally the ablest man in the boat. He has the powers which the other five have given him for their own good. Take another instance. Napoleon gained the command of the French army because he was the ablest general in France. But suppose every individual in the French army had been a Napoleon also! None the less a commander-in-chief, with his whole hierarchy of subalterns, would have had to be appointed--by lot if you like--and here, again, from the moment the lot was cast, the particular Napoleon who drew the straw for the commander-in-chief would have been the great, the all-powerful Napoleon, much more able than the Napoleons who were corporals and privates. After a year, the difference in ability between the men who had been doing nothing but sentry duty, under no strain of responsibility, and the man who had been commanding the army would have been enormous. As "the defenders of the system of Conservatism" well know, we have for centuries made able men out of ordinary ones by allowing them to inherit exceptional power and status; and the success of the plan in the phase of social development to which it was proper was due to the fact that, provided the favored man was really an ordinary man, and not a duffer, the extraordinary power conferred on him did effectually create extraordinary ability as compared with that of an agricultural laborer, for example, of equal natural endowments. The gentleman, the lord, the king, all discharging social functions of which the laborer is incapable, are products as artificial as queen bees. Their superiority is produced by giving them a superior status, just as the inferiority of the laborer is produced by giving him an inferior status. But the superior income which is the appanage of superior status is not rent of ability. It is a payment made to a man to exercise normal ability, in an abnormal situation. Rent of ability is what a man gets by exercising abnormal ability in a normal situation.[34] [34] George Bernard Shaw: _Socialism and Superior Brains_. By courtesy of the publishers, John Lane Company. XVII. In the following selection how many definitions occur, or how many things are defined? Do you understand what the author says? How many words do you have to look up in the dictionary before you understand the article? Could the author have made the subject clear in a sensible extent of space? What would you say is the chief virtue of the selection? How is it gained? For what kind of audience was the article written? What was the author's controlling purpose? Point out how he attains it. Do you find any _pattern-designers_ among novelists, poets, architects, landscape gardeners? Name a novel, a poem, a building, a park, which is primarily a pattern-design. Name one which is not a pattern-design so much as a dramatic expression. Which is the more significant? Which is more difficult to make? Define: Futurist painting, Free verse, Social morality, in relation to their preceding forms. Explain, through definition, the controversy between Paganism and Christianity, between Monarchy and Democracy, between Classical Education and Industrial Education, between Party Politics and Independent Politics, between Established Religion and Non-Conformist Views. Music is like drawing, in that it can be purely decorative, or purely dramatic, or anything between the two.... You can compose a graceful, symmetrical sound-pattern that exists solely for the sake of its own grace and symmetry. Or you can compose music to heighten the expression of human emotion; and such music will be intensely affecting in the presence of that emotion, and utter nonsense apart from it. For examples of pure pattern-designing in music I should have to go back to the old music of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries ... designed to affect the hearer solely by its beauty of sound and grace and ingenuity of pattern; absolute music, represented to-day in the formal sonata and symphony.... The first modern dramatic composers accepted as binding the rules of good pattern-designing in sound; and this absurdity was made to appear practicable from the fact that Mozart had such an extraordinary command of his art that his operas contain numbers which, though they seem to follow the dramatic play of emotion and character, without reference to any other consideration whatever, are seen, upon examining them from the point of view of the absolute musician, to be perfectly symmetrical sound-patterns.... Even Mozart himself broke away in all directions, and was violently attacked by his contemporaries for doing so, the accusations levelled at him being exactly those with which the opponents of Wagner so often pester ourselves. Wagner completed the emancipation of the dramatic musician from these laws of pattern-designing; and we now have operas, and very good ones, too, written by composers not musicians in the old sense at all: that is, they are not pattern-designers; they do not compose music apart from drama. The dramatic development also touched purely instrumental music. Liszt tried hard to extricate himself from pianoforte arabesques, and become a tone poet like his friend Wagner. He wanted his symphonic poems to express emotions and their development. And he defined the emotion by connecting it with some known story, poem, or even picture: Mazeppa, Victor Hugo's Les Preludes, Kaulbach's Die Hunnenschlacht, or the like. But the moment you try to make an instrumental composition follow a story, you are forced to abandon the decorative pattern forms, since all patterns consist of some form which is repeated over and over again, and which generally consists in itself of a repetition of two similar halves. For example, if you take a playing-card (say the five of diamonds) as a simple example of pattern, you find not only that the diamond pattern is repeated five times, but that each established form of a symphony is essentially a pattern form involving just such symmetrical repetitions; and, since a story does not repeat itself, but pursues a continuous chain of fresh incident and correspondingly varied emotions, Liszt invented the symphonic poem, a perfectly simple and fitting common-sense form for his purpose, and one which makes Les Preludes much plainer sailing for the ordinary hearer than Mendelssohn's Melusine overture or Raff's Lenore or Im Walde symphonies, in both of which the formal repetitions would stamp Raff as a madman if we did not know that they were mere superstitions.[35] [35] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_, "Wagnerism." By courtesy of the publishers, Boni & Liveright. CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS Suppose that the president of a railroad asked you to report on the feasibility of a proposed line through a range of hills; or that you found it necessary to prove to an over-conservative farmer that he should erect a hollow-tile silo at once; or that your duty as chairman of the town playground committee led you to examine an empty lot for its possibilities; or that, as an expert in finance, you were trying to learn the cause of the deficit in a country club's accounts. In the first case you would examine the proposed route for its practicability, would estimate the grades to be reduced, would look into the question of drainage, would consider the possibility of landslides, would survey the quality of the road-bed: all with a view to making a complete report on the practicability of the route proposed. In the other cases you would determine the conditions in general that you confronted, would answer the questions: what is the value of a hollow-tile silo? why is this site suitable for a playground? what is wrong with the finances of this club? Such tasks as these occur in life all the time; in college they confront one whenever an inconsiderate instructor asks for a term paper on, say, "Conditions in New York that Made the Tweed Ring Possible," or "The Influence of the Great War on Dyestuffs," or "Tennyson's Early Training as an Influence on his Poetry," or some other subject. In every one of these cases the writer who attempts to answer the questions involved is writing analysis, for _Analysis is the breaking up of a subject into its component parts, seeing of what it is composed_. In every such case you would wish, first of all, to tell the truth. Of what use would your analysis be if you incorrectly estimated the drainage of the proposed railway route and the company had to expend thousands of dollars in fighting improper seepage? Unless the analysis was accurate, it would be useless or worse. But suppose that you told the truth about the site for the playground, its central position, its wealth of shade, its proper soil conditions, and yet forgot to take into account the sluggish, noisome stream that flowed on one side of the plot and bred disease? Your report would be valueless because it would be, in a vital point, quite lacking. In other words, it would be incomplete. For practical purposes it would therefore, of course, be untrue. If you wish to write an analysis, then, your path is straight, and it leads between the two virtues of truth and thoroughness. Your catechism should be: Have I hugged my fact close and told the truth about it?, and, Have I really covered the ground? The question of truth enters into every analysis; none may falsify. Completeness, on the other hand, is a more relative matter. In the report of a tariff commission it is essential; all the ground must be covered. In a thorough survey of Beethoven's music no sonata or quartette may be omitted. In determining the causes of an epidemic no clue is to be left unexamined until all possibilities have been exhausted. In the case of the term paper mentioned above, on the other hand, "Tennyson's Early Training as an Influence on his Poetry," not everything in his early life can be considered in anything short of a volume. In such a case you may well be puzzled what to do until you are suddenly cheered by the thought that your task is primarily one of interpretation, that what you are seeking is the _spirit_ of the training. There would seem, therefore, to be various degrees of completeness in analysis. On the basis of completeness, then, we may divide analysis into the two classes of the _Formal_ and the _Informal_. The Two Classes of Analysis Formal analysis is sometimes called _logical analysis_--that is, complete, as in the report of a tariff commission--because it continues its splitting into subheadings until the demands of the thought are entirely satisfied. Such thorough meeting of all demands might well occur in an analysis of trades-unions, or methods of heating houses, or such subjects. Informal analysis, on the other hand, which is sometimes called _literary analysis_, does not attempt to be so thorough, but aims rather at giving the core of the subject, at making the spirit of it clear to the reader. For example, Mr. P. E. More in an essay on Tennyson, which is primarily an informal analysis, makes one main point, that "Tennyson was the Victorian Age." This he divides into three headings: (1) Tennyson was humanly loved by the great Victorians; (2) Tennyson was the poet of compromise; (3) Tennyson was the poet of insight. Now in these three points Mr. More has not said all that he could say, in fact he has omitted many things that from some angle would be important, but he has said those things truthfully that are needed for a proper interpretation of the subject, for a sufficient illumination of it, for showing its spirit. It is, therefore, a piece of informal analysis. The two examples which follow illustrate formal and informal analysis, the first one classifying rock drills thoroughly, and the second very informally discussing some odds against Shakespeare. Hammer drills may be classed under several heads, as follows: (1) Those mounted on a cradle like a piston drill and fed forward by a screw; (2) those used and held in the hand; and (3) those used and mounted on an air-fed arrangement. The last two classes are often interchangeable. Mr. Leyner, though now making drills of the latter classes, was the pioneer of the large 3-inch diameter piston machine to be worked in competition with large piston drills. The smaller Leyner Rock Terrier drill was brought out for stopping and driving; it could not, apparently, compete with machines of other classes. When the drills are thus divided we have: 1. Cradle drills--Leyner, Leyner Rock Terrier, Stephens Imperial hammer drills and the Kimber. 2. Drills used only with air feed--Gordon drill and the large sizes of the Murphy, Little Wonder, and others. 3. Drills used held in the hand or with air feed--Murphy, Flottman, Cleveland, Little Wonder, Shaw, Hardy Nipper, Sinclair, Sullivan, Little Jap, Little Imp, Traylor, and others. Again, they may be divided into those that are valveless, with the differential piston or hammer itself acting as a valve. The Murphy, Sinclair, Little Wonder, Shaw, Little Imp, Leyner Rock Terrier, and Kimber drills belong to this class. The large Leyner drill is worked by a spool valve resembling that of the Slugger drill; the Flottman by a ball valve; the Little Jap by an axial valve; the Gordon drill, by a spool valve set at one end of the cylinder at right angles to it; the Waugh and Sullivan drills by spool valves set in the same axial line as the cylinder; the Hardy Nipper, and the Stephens Imperial hammer drills by an air-moved slide-valve set midway on the side of the cylinder; the Cleveland by a spool set towards the rear of the cylinder. They may again be divided into those drills in which the piston hammer delivers its blow on the end of the steel itself. A collar is placed on the drill to prevent its entering the cylinder. The other class has an anvil block or striking pin. This anvil block fits into the end of the cylinder between the piston and the steel. It receives and transmits the blow, and also prevents the drill end from entering the cylinder.[36] [36] Eustace M. Weston: _Rock Drills_. By courtesy of the publishers, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. Copyright. * * * * * Powerful among the enemies of Shakespeare are the commentator and the elocutionist; the commentator because, not knowing Shakespeare's language, he sharpens his faculties to examine propositions advanced by an eminent lecturer from the Midlands, instead of sensitizing his artistic faculty to receive the impression of moods and inflexions of being conveyed by word-music; the elocutionist because he is a born fool, in which capacity, observing with pain that poets have a weakness for imparting to their dramatic dialog a quality which he describes and deplores as "sing-song," he devotes his life to the art of breaking up verse in such a way as to make it sound like insanely pompous prose. The effect of this on Shakespeare's earlier verse, which is full of the naïve delight of pure oscillation, to be enjoyed as an Italian enjoys a barcarolle, or a child a swing, or a baby a rocking-cradle, is destructively stupid. In the later plays, where the barcarolle measure has evolved into much more varied and complex rhythms, it does not matter so much, since the work is no longer simple enough for a fool to pick to pieces. But in every play from _Love's Labour's Lost_ to _Henry V_, the elocutionist meddles simply as a murderer, and ought to be dealt with as such without benefit of clergy. To our young people studying for the stage I say, with all solemnity, learn how to pronounce the English alphabet clearly and beautifully from some person who is at once an artist and a phonetic expert. And then leave blank verse patiently alone until you have experienced emotion deep enough to crave for poetic expression, at which point verse will seem an absolutely natural and real form of speech to you. Meanwhile, if any pedant, with an uncultivated heart and a theoretic ear, proposes to teach you to recite, send instantly for the police.[37] [37] George Bernard Shaw: _Dramatic Opinions and Essays_. Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, publishers. Analyses are to be divided also upon the basis of whether the subject is an individual or a group of individuals, that is, whether the subject is, for example, the quality of patriotism, which is to be analyzed into its components, or, in the second place, shade trees, which are to be grouped into the classes which together constitute such trees. Of these two kinds of analysis we call the first _Partition_ and the second _Classification_. The logical process is the same in the two cases, in that it divides the subject; the difference lies in the fact that in the first case the subject is always single, though it may of course be complicated, and in the second it is always plural, and may contain a very large number of individuals, as for example the human race--all the billions of all the ages gone and yet to come. In this treatment of analysis you will find the main divisions made on the basis of formality and the matter of single or plural subject treated under each of the other headings. Formal Analysis Formal analysis, which requires completeness of division,--which is not well done until every individual case is accounted for, or, in Partition, every quality or factor or part,--is found in reports to corporations, in estimates of conditions for some society, in government documents, in textbooks, and in other kinds of writing where detailed and complete information is necessary for judgment. A report to the city of Chicago on the subject of the smoke nuisance will be valuable largely as it entirely covers the ground, discovers all the conditions that the city has to face. Such a report will be primarily a partition of the question, though it may employ classification of various like situations or conditions. Likewise an account of the game birds of North America will be a formal analysis only if every kind of game bird is given a place in the account. The object of formal classification and partition is to give information, to array facts completely. The following classification of oriental rugs, which in its course also employs definition, or a close approach to it, will be finally sufficient only if no rug can be found which is not included within the classes named. The partition of the character of Queen Elizabeth will be of lasting value as formal partition only if it really accounts for the total character of the subject. That it makes only two main divisions is in no way indicative of its completeness; the question is merely, are all the qualities included under those two headings? It is a common impression that oriental rugs are as difficult to know as the 320,000 specimens of plants, and the 20,000,000 forms of animal life that Herbert Spencer advised for the teaching of boys. This impression is wrong. There are only six groups or families of oriental rugs, and less than fifty common kinds. The novice can learn to distinguish the six families in sixty minutes. He would confuse them occasionally on so short acquaintance, but a college examiner would give him a passing grade. Persian rugs are the rugs that are profusely decorated with a great variety of flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional birds and animals, woven free hand, with purely decorative intent. India rugs are those in which flowers, leaves, vines, and occasional animals are woven as they appear in nature. Early Indian weavers transcribed flowers to rugs as if they were botanists; modern Indian weavers are copyists of Persian patterns and their copies are plainly not originals. In broad generalization, therefore, the two families of oriental rugs that are decorated almost exclusively with flowers have distinct styles that render their identification comparatively easy. The Turkoman and Caucasian families of oriental rugs also pair off by themselves. They are the rugs of almost pure geometric linear design. Turkoman rugs, comprising the products of Turkestan, Bokhara, Afghanistan, and Beluchistan, are red rugs with web or open ends, woven in the patterns of the kindergarten--squares, diamonds, octagons, etc. That wild tribes should dye their wools in the shades of blood and weave the designs of childhood is fitting and logical. Caucasian rugs differ from Turkoman rugs in being dyed in other colors than blood red, in omitting the apron ends, and in being more crowded, elaborate, and pretentious in geometric linear pattern. The Caucasian weaver's distinction as the oriental cartoonist, the expert in wooden men, women, and animals, is well deserved. He holds the oriental rug patent on Noah's ark designs. Incidentally Mount Ararat and Noah's grave, "shown" near Nakhitchevan, are located on the southern border of his country. Chinese and Turkish rugs pair off almost as logically as the other rug families, although they are totally unlike in appearance. They contain both geometric linear and floral designs; the designs of the very early rugs of both groups generally are geometric, and the later ones floral. But these facts are not identifying. Chinese rugs can be recognized instantly by their colors, which are determined by their backgrounds, the reverse of the Persian method, which is to make the design the principal color medium. The Chinese colors are probably best described as the lighter and softer colors of silk--dull yellows, rose, salmon red, browns, and tans, the design usually being blue. The Chinese were the original manufacturers and dyers of silk, and they applied their silk dyes to their rugs. Turkish rugs that are ornamented with flowers and leaves can be distinguished from Persian and Indian products by the ruler-drawn character of their patterns. A keen observer describes them as quasi-botanical forms angularly treated. Turkish rugs that contain the patterns common to the Caucasian and Turkoman families can be recognized by their brighter, sharper, and more contrasting colors. The key to the identification of this most difficult rug family is to be found in the Turkish prayer rugs. To know Turkish rugs, one must see many of them; to know the other families one need see only a few. Reduced to a minimum statement, the identification of the six oriental rug families amounts to this: Persian rugs--floral designs drawn free hand. India rugs--floral designs photographed and copied. Turkoman rugs--geometric linear design, blood red, web ends. Caucasian rugs--geometric linear designs, numerous blended colors. Chinese rugs--floral and geometric linear designs, silk colors. Turkish rugs--floral designs, angular, ruled; and geometrical designs, bright contrasting colors. To be able to identify an oriental rug as a particular kind of Persian, Indian, Turkish, Turkoman, Caucasian or Chinese weaving is somewhat more of an accomplishment. The way to begin is to study first the rugs that have distinct or fairly constant characteristics. Take Persian rugs, for example: Bijar--rugs as thick as two or even three ordinary rugs. Fereghan--small leaf design, usually with green border. Gorevan or Scrapi--huge medallions, strong reds and blues. Herat or Ispahan--intricate, stately design on claret ground. Hamadan--a camel hair rug. Kashan--dark, rich, closely patterned, extremely finely woven. Kermanshah--the "parlor" rug, soft cream, rose, and blue. Khorassan--plum colored, small leaf design, long, soft, wool. Kurd--colored yarn run through the end web. Meshed--soft rose and blue with silver cast. Polonaise--delicately colored antique silk rug. Saraband--palm leaf or India shawl design on rose or blue ground. Sehna--closest woven small rug, minute pattern. Shiraz--limp rug, the sides overcast with yarns of various colors. Tabriz--reddish yellow, the design sometimes resembling a baseball diamond. To extend this list would make wearisome reading. Let it suffice to indicate that many oriental rugs, like people, have marked facial distinctions, and that many others have marked peculiarities of body and finish, that make them easy to recognize. Ease of naming, however, ceases with distinct markings, and rugs that are out-and-out hybrids, the cross-bred products of wars, migrations, and trade, are not named, but attributed. Hybrid oriental rugs--the bane of the novice and the joy of the collector--are largely an epitome of the wars of Asia. Cyrus the Great, heading a host of Persians, conquered the Babylonians 500 years before Christ. Of course the Babylonians became interested in Persian rugs and appropriated some of their patterns. Two hundred years later Alexander the Great invaded Asia and conquered it, except the distant provinces of India and China. The Mohammedan Arabs mastered the Persians in the East and the Spaniards in the West in the sixth century. Genghis Khan, out of China with warriors as numerous as locusts, made a single nation of Central Asia in the thirteenth century; and Tamerlane later made subject farther dominions. Even 200 years ago the Afghans conquered the Persians; and as recently as 1771, 600,000 Tartars fled from eastern Russia to the frontiers of China under conditions to make DeQuincey's essay, "Revolt of the Tartars," a contribution to rug literature. The wonder is not, therefore, that Chinese patterns are found in Turkestan, Persian, and Turkish rugs; that Persian patterns are found in Indian, Caucasian and Turkish rugs; that Turkish-Mohammedan patterns reach from Spain to China; and that European designs are found wherever oriental invention bent the knee to imitation. The wonder is rather that there are so many oriental rugs with distinct or fairly constant characteristics.[38] [38] Arthur U. Dilley: "Oriental Rugs," in _The New Country Life_, November, 1917. By courtesy of the publishers, Doubleday, Page & Co. * * * * * She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But strangely in contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favour. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. "To see her was Heaven," Hatton told her, "the lack of her was hell." She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that the French Ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests, gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character, in fact, like her portrait, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her "sweet Robin," Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.[39] [39] J. R. Green: _Short History of the English People_. Informal Analysis The formal analyses are in general far less frequent than the informal, which are found constantly in the weekly and monthly magazines and in the editorials of our daily papers. These analyses aim at giving the core of the subject, the gist of the matter, with sufficient important facts or points as background. Thus you will read an account of our relations with Mexico during the revolution in that country. Not everything is said; only the vital things. A study of the character of Mr. Roosevelt or of Mr. Wilson, an article explaining the problems that had to be faced in the building of the Keokuk or the Shoshone dams, a treatment of the question of conscription in England--these and thousands of others flood upon us with the object of illuminating our approach to the subject, of interpreting for us the heart of the matter. Mr. More, in the essay already mentioned, says little about Tennyson's verse form, about his zeal for the tale of Arthur, about the influence upon him of the classics of Greece and Rome. Into a complete treatise these would of course enter; here Mr. More's object is not all-inclusiveness, as one should examine the Pyramids for not only their plan and size but also for their minute finish, their varying materials, their methods of jointure, and the thousand other details; rather he estimates what his subject is, as one should journey round the Pyramids, view them in general, find their significance, and discover the few essentials that make them not cathedrals, not Roman circuses, but Pyramids. In other words, interpretation is the object rather than completeness of fact. Obviously an informal analysis must be complete as far as it goes, must be complete for its author's purpose, is not good writing if it gives only a partial interpretation which gets nowhere. It is at once apparent, then, that the controlling purpose which has been discussed at length in an earlier chapter is in informal analysis of the utmost importance. Only as it is clearly held in mind will the author know when to stop, what to choose. In formal analysis, where his object is to say all that there is to say, he chooses and ceases to choose by the standard of completeness of fact; in informal analysis he must choose and cease to choose by the standard of whether he has accomplished the desired effect, made the desired interpretation. His analysis, therefore, is valuable only when he has chosen the proper interpretation and has made it effective and clear. If he wishes to analyze a period of history for the purpose of showing the romance of the period, he will choose and cease to choose largely in so far as his material helps to establish the romance, and he will not hesitate to neglect many a fact that would be otherwise important. In the following selection from George Eliot's _Mill on the Floss_ you will find an analysis of the effect of the Rhone scenery on the author written purposely with the intention of driving home the dreariness of the subject, and therefore with material chosen for that end: Journeying down the Rhone on a summer's day, you have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in certain parts of its course, telling how the swift river once rose, like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations whose breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, between the effect produced on us by these dismal remnants of commonplace houses, which in their best days were but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to our own vulgar era; and the effect produced by those ruins on the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such harmony with the green and rocky steeps, that they seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in the day when they were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance! If these robber barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them--they were forest boars with tusks, tearing and rending: not the ordinary domestic grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle--nay, of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave their Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the sacred East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry: they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an epoch. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life--very much of it--is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.[40] [40] George Eliot: _Mill on the Floss_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. Informal analysis is not only less complete, but also less strict in adherence to pure analysis alone. It employs whatever is of value, believing that the material, the message, is greater than the form. Outside really formal analysis, which is likely to be fairly dull to all except those who are eager for the particular information given, most analytical articles make free use of definition whenever it will serve well to aid the reader's understanding or to move his emotions toward a desired goal; of description if it, like definition, proves of value; even of anecdote and argument if these forms are the fittest instruments for the fight. Thus Hawthorne, analyzing English weather, does not hesitate to dress out his analysis in the charms of personal experience and anecdote and description, which in no way obscure the facts of the weather, but merely take away the baldness of a formal statement and add the relish of actual life. One chief condition of my enjoyment was the weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America. There never was such weather except in England, where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east wind between February and June, and a brown October and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable summer scattered through July and August, and the earlier portion of September, small in quantity, but exquisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmospherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent sombreness may have brought out those sunny intervals in such high relief that I see them, in my recollection, brighter than they really were: a little light makes a glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. The English, however, do not seem to know how enjoyable the momentary gleams of their summer are; they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside with red, perspiring faces, in a state of combustion and deliquescence; and I have observed that even their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the deepest shade, or standing midleg deep in pools and streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our own cows would deem little more than barely comfortable. To myself, after the summer heats of my native land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. It might be a little too warm; but it was that modest and inestimable superabundance which constitutes a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly enough. During my first year in England, residing in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, I could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the hearth; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendliness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, shadowy, seldom smiling summer; and in the succeeding years,--whether that I had renewed my fibre with English beef and replenished my blood with English ale, or whatever were the cause,--I grew content with winter and especially in love with summer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noontide sun came down more fervently than I found altogether tolerable; so that I was fain to shift my position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making myself a movable index of a sundial that reckoned up the hours of an almost interminable day. For each day seemed endless, though never wearisome. As far as your actual experience is concerned, the English summer day has positively no beginning and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains; you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quietude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched upon their tranquil lapse; and at length you become conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such season, hangs down a transparent veil through which the bygone day beholds its successor; or, if not quite true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly affirmed of the more northern parts of the island, that To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They exist together in the golden twilight, where the decrepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simultaneously touch them both with one finger of recollection and another of prophecy. I cared not how long the day might be, nor how many of them. I had earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and perturbation, and could have been content never to stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was the feeling of the moment; although the transitory, flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as allowing me much of the comfort of house and home, without any sense of their weight upon my back. The nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find tents ready pitched for us at every stage.[41] [41] Nathaniel Hawthorne: _Our Old Home_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. An extension of this willingness to make grist of whatever comes to the writer's mill lies in the close approach, at times, that analysis makes to the informal essay. Of course the line is difficult to draw--and perhaps not necessarily drawn--and most informal essays are to some extent, at least, analytical. The more you desire your analysis to become interesting, the more you wish to take hold of your reader, the more you will make use of the close approach unless your subject and its facts are of a kind to repel such intimacy. An analysis of the nebular hypothesis deals with facts of so august a nature, on so nearly an unimaginable plane, that intimacy seems out of place, impudent, like levity in cathedrals. But if you have such a subject as George Gissing[42] chose in the following analysis of the sportswoman's attitude and character, you may well, as he did, throw aside the formalities of expression and at once make truce of intimacy with your reader. So long as you do not obscure the facts of the analysis, make it unclear or blurred, so long you are safe. [42] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Spring." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. I found an article, by a woman, on "Lion Hunting," and in this article I came upon a passage which seemed worth copying: "As I woke my husband, the lion--which was then about forty yards off--charged straight towards us, and with my .303 I hit him full in the chest, as we afterwards discovered, tearing his windpipe to pieces and breaking his spine. He charged a second time, and the next shot hit him through the shoulder, tearing his heart to ribbons." It would interest me to look upon this heroine of gun and pen. She is presumably quite a young woman; probably, when at home, a graceful figure in drawing-rooms. I should like to hear her talk, to exchange thoughts with her. She would give one a very good idea of the matron of old Rome who had her seat in the amphitheatre. Many of those ladies, in private life, must have been bright and gracious, highbred and full of agreeable sentiment; they talked of art and of letters; they could drop a tear over Lesbia's sparrow; at the same time, they were connoisseurs in torn windpipes, shattered spines, and viscera rent open. It is not likely that many of them would have cared to turn their own hands to butchery, and, for the matter of that, I must suppose that our Lion Huntress of the popular magazine is rather an exceptional dame; but no doubt she and the Roman ladies would get on well together, finding only a few superficial differences. The fact that her gory reminiscences are welcomed by an editor with the popular taste in view is perhaps more significant than appears either to editor or public. Were this lady to write a novel (the chances are she will) it would have the true note of modern vigour. Of course her style has been formed by her favourite reading; more than probably, her ways of thinking and feeling owe much to the same source. If not so already, this will soon, I dare say, be the typical Englishwoman. Certainly, there is "no nonsense about her." Such women should breed a terrible race. Kinds of Informal Analysis _a._ _Enumeration_ Informal analysis may appear in various forms, not all of which are at once apparent as analysis until we disabuse our minds of thinking that analysis must be, always, complete in facts. For example, informal analysis often appears in the form of enumeration, in which the author "has some things to say"--always for a definite purpose--and says them in some reasonable order. Thus Mr. Herbert Croly, in his article "Lincoln as More than American," analyzes Lincoln's character as related to the characters of other Americans through the qualities of intellectuality, humanness, magnanimity, and humility. More might be said; the analysis is not complete in fact, but it serves the purpose of the author. It is distinctly in the enumerative order, the progression being determined by the controlling purpose of delineating Lincoln as worthy of not only respect but even true awe, the awe that we give only to those great souls who, in spite of all their mental supremacy, are yet beautifully humble. _b._ _Equation_ Informal analysis often appears in the form of equation: the subject of analysis is stated as equal to something else--a quality, an instrument from another field of human knowledge, the same thing in other more common or well-known words. For example, William James, in his essay "The Social Value of the College Bred," first states that the value of a college education is "to help you to know a good man when you see him," and then explains what he means by this phrase. This form of analysis, then, is usually in the nature of a double equation: _x_ is equal to _y_, which, in turn, can be split up into _a_, _b_, _c_. The method really consists in arriving at an easily comprehended statement of the significance of the subject through the medium of a more immediately workable or attractive or simple synonymous statement. It is an application of the old formula of going from the known to the unknown, except that in this case we proceed from the unknown to the known and then return to the unknown with increased light. _c._ _Statement of Significance_ A third form of informal analysis is the showing of the significance of the subject, its root meaning. In this case the writer attempts not so much to break the subject into its obvious parts as to set before the reader the meaning of it as a whole, in so short a compass, often, that it will not need further explanation, or if it does, that it may be then divided after the statement in easier form has been made. The following explanation of the philosophy of Nietzsche illustrates this form of analysis: The central motive of Nietzsche seems to me to be this. It is clear to him that the moral problem concerns the perfection, not of society, not of the masses of men, but of the great individual. And so far he, indeed, stands where the standard of individualistic revolt has so often been raised. But Nietzsche differs from other individualists in that the great object toward which his struggle is directed is the discovery of what his own individuality itself means and is. A Titan of the type of Goethe's or Shelley's Prometheus proclaims his right to be free of Zeus and of all other powers. But by hypothesis Prometheus already knows who he is and what he wants. But the problem of Nietzsche is, above all, the problem. Who am I, and, What do I want? What is clear to him is the need of strenuous activity in pressing on toward the solution of this problem. His aristocratic consciousness is the sense that common men are in no wise capable of putting or of appreciating this question. His assertion of the right of the individual to be free from all external restraints is the ardent revolt of the strenuous seeker for selfhood against whatever hinders him in this task. He will not be interrupted by the base universe in the business--his life-business--of finding out what his own life is to mean for himself. He knows that his own will is, above all, what he calls the will for power. On occasion he does not hesitate to use this power to crush, at least in ideal, whoever shall hinder him in his work. But the problem over which he agonizes is the inner problem. What does this will that seeks power genuinely desire? What is the power that is worthy to be mine?[43] [43] Josiah Royce: _Nietzsche_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company. _d._ _Relationship_ A fourth class of informal analytical writing is the showing the relationship that exists between two ideas or things, as cause and effect, as source and termination, as contrary forces, or as any relation that has real existence. Under this heading will be found the large group of articles that answer the question _why?_, as for example, "Why the Quebec Bridge Collapsed," "Causes of the Strike among the Garment Workers," "Popular Opinion as Affecting Government Action," and other such subjects. In the following analysis of the relation existing between human action as result, and impulse and desire as causes, you will find such an informal presentation of material. All human activity springs from two sources: impulse and desire. The part played by desire has always been sufficiently recognized. When men find themselves not fully contented, and not able instantly to procure what will cause content, imagination brings before their minds the thought of things which they believe would make them happy. All desire involves an interval of time between the consciousness of a need and the opportunity for satisfying it. The acts inspired by desire may in themselves be painful, the time before satisfaction can be achieved may be very long, the object desired may be something outside our own lives, and even after our own death. Will, as a directing force, consists mainly in following desires for more or less distant objects, in spite of the painfulness of the acts involved and the solicitations of incompatible but more immediate desires and impulses. All this is familiar, and political philosophy hitherto has been almost entirely based upon desire as the source of human actions. But desire governs no more than a part of human activity, and that not the most important but only the more conscious, explicit, and civilized part. In all the more instinctive part of our nature we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, not by desires for certain ends. Children run and shout, not because of any good which they expect to realize, but because of a direct impulse to running and shouting. Dogs bay the moon, not because they consider that it is to their advantage to do so, but because they feel an impulse to bark. It is not any purpose, but merely an impulse, that prompts such actions, as eating, drinking, love-making, quarrelling, boasting. Those who believe that man is a rational animal will say that people boast in order that others may have a good opinion of them; but most of us can recall occasions when we have boasted in spite of knowing that we should be despised for it. Instinctive acts normally achieve some result which is agreeable to the natural man, but they are not performed from desire for this result. They are performed from direct impulse, and the impulse often is strong even in cases in which the normal desirable result cannot follow. Grown men like to imagine themselves more rational than children and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from themselves how great a part impulse plays in their lives. This unconscious concealment always follows a certain general plan. When an impulse is not indulged in the moment in which it arises, there grows up a desire for the expected consequences of indulging the impulse. If some of the consequences which are reasonably to be expected are clearly disagreeable, a conflict between foresight and impulse arises. If the impulse is weak, foresight may conquer; this is what is called acting on reason. If the impulse is strong, either foresight will be falsified, and the disagreeable consequences will be forgotten, or, in men of heroic mold, the consequences may be recklessly accepted. When Macbeth realizes that he is doomed to defeat, he does not shrink from the fight; he exclaims:-- Lay on, Macduff, And damned be he that first cries, Hold, enough! But such strength and recklessness of impulse is rare. Most men, when their impulse is strong, succeed in persuading themselves, usually by a subconscious selectiveness of attention, that agreeable consequences will follow from indulgence of their impulse. Whole philosophies, whole systems of ethical valuation, spring up in this way; they are the embodiment of a kind of thought which is subservient to impulse, which aims at providing a quasi-rational ground for the indulgence of impulse. The only thought which is genuine is that which springs out of the intellectual impulse of curiosity, leading to the desire to know and understand. But most of what passes for thought is inspired by some non-intellectual impulse, and is merely a means of persuading ourselves that we shall not be disappointed or do harm if we indulge this impulse. When an impulse is restrained, we feel discomfort, or even violent pain. We may indulge the impulse in order to escape from this pain, and our action is then one which has a purpose. But the pain only exists because of the impulse, and the impulse itself is directed to an act, not to escaping from the pain of restraining the impulse. The impulse itself remains without a purpose, and the purpose of escaping from pain only arises when the impulse has been momentarily restrained. Impulse is at the basis of our activity, much more than desire. Desire has its place, but not so large a place as it is seemed to have. Impulses bring with them a whole train of subservient fictitious desires: they make men feel that they desire the results which will follow from indulging the impulses, and that they are acting for the sake of these results, when in fact their action has no motive outside itself. A man may write a book or paint a picture under the belief that he desires the praise which it will bring him; but as soon as it is finished, if his creative impulse is not exhausted, what he has done grows uninteresting to him, and he begins a new piece of work. What applies to artistic creation applies equally to all that is most vital in our lives: direct impulse is what moves us, and the desires which we think we have are a mere garment for the impulse. Desire, as opposed to impulse, has, it is true, a large and increasing share in the regulation of men's lives. Impulse is erratic and anarchical, not easily fitted into a well-regulated system; it may be tolerated in children and artists, but it is not thought proper to men who hope to be taken seriously. Almost all paid work is done from desire, not from impulse: the work itself is more or less irksome, but the payment for it is desired. The serious activities that fill a man's working hours are, except in a few fortunate individuals, governed mainly by purposes, not by impulses toward these activities. In this hardly any one sees an evil, because the place of impulse in a satisfactory existence is not recognized. An impulse, to one who does not share it actually or imaginatively, will always seem to be mad. All impulse is essentially blind, in the sense that it does not spring from any prevision of consequences. The man who does not share the impulse will form a different estimate as to what the consequences will be, and as to whether those that must ensue are desirable. This difference of opinion will seem to be ethical or intellectual, whereas its real basis is a difference of impulse. No genuine agreement will be reached, in such a case, so long as the difference of impulse persists. In all men who have any vigorous life, there are strong impulses such as may seem utterly unreasonable to others. Blind impulses sometimes lead to destruction and death, but at other times they lead to the best things the world contains. Blind impulse is the source of war, but it is also the source of science, and art, and love. It is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of impulse toward life and growth rather than toward death and decay. The complete control of impulse by will, which is sometimes preached by moralists, and often enforced by economic necessity, is not really desirable. A life governed by purposes and desires, to the exclusion of impulses, is a tiring life; it exhausts vitality, and leaves a man, in the end, indifferent to the very purposes which he has been trying to achieve. When a whole nation lives in this way, the whole nation tends to become feeble, without enough grasp to recognize and overcome the obstacles to its desires. Industrialism and organization are constantly forcing civilized nations to live more and more by purpose rather than impulse. In the long run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry up the springs of life, produces new impulse, not of the kind which the will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their effects than those which have been checked. Excessive discipline, especially when it has been imposed from without, often issues in impulses of cruelty and destruction; this is one reason why militarism has a bad effect on national character. Either lack of vitality, or impulses which are oppressive and against life, will almost always result if the spontaneous impulses are not able to find an outlet. A man's impulses are not fixed from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain wide limits, they are profoundly modified by his circumstances and his way of life. The nature of these modifications ought to be studied, and the results of such study ought to be taken account of in judging the good or harm that is done by political and social institutions.[44] [44] Bertrand Russell: _Why Men Fight_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Century Company, New York City. _e._ _Statement of a Problem_ A fifth form in which analysis often appears is as a statement of a problem. An engineer who is asked by a city to investigate the conditions that confront the municipality as regards water supply will have such a problem to state. The statement will presumably consist of several divisions. First of all, of course--and this will be essential in all such statements--will be an analysis of the conditions themselves. In this particular case he will find out how much water is needed, how great the present supply is, what sources are available for increased supply, what the character of the water in these other sources is, and anything else that may be of value to the city. If any former attempts at solution have been made, he may mention them. If he is asked to recommend a plan of procedure, he will make an analysis of the details of this plan and will present them. Now obviously the nature of the audience will determine somewhat the manner of approach to the conditions. If, for example, the problem is to be stated to the financial committee of the city, the angle of approach will be that of cost; if to a prospective constructing engineer, from that of difficulties of construction of reservoirs or from that of availability of sources. If you are to state the problem of lessening the illiteracy in a given neighborhood, you will approach the subject for the school committee from the angle, perhaps, of the establishment of night schools, or from that of the necessary welding of nationalities; for the charitable societies from that of the poverty that compels child labor in the community. And in the recommendations for meeting the conditions, if such recommendations are made, attention must be paid to the particular people who will read the analysis. Of course if you make an abstract, complete survey, you will cover the ground in whatever way seems most suitable. Such an analysis, when it is in the nature of a report, will presumably be in brief, tabulated form. If, on the other hand, it is not a report, the subject may be treated more informally, made more pleasing. The following statement of the problem of the development of power machinery is made rather formally from the angle of the constructive engineer with an eye also to the financial conditions. The problem of power-machinery development is, therefore, divisible into several parts: First, what processes must be carried out to produce motion against resistance, from the energy of winds, the water of the rivers, or from fuel. Second, what combinations of simply formed parts can be made to carry out the process or series of processes. These two steps when worked out will result in some kind of engine, but it may not be a good engine, for it may use up too much natural energy for the work it does; some part may break or another wear too fast; some part may have a form that no workman can make, or use up too much material or time in the making; in short, while the engine may work, it may be too wasteful, or do its work at too great a cost of coal or water, attendance in operation, or investment, or all these together. There must, therefore, be added several other elements to the problem, as follows: Third, how many ways are there of making each part, and which is the cheapest, or what other form of part might be devised that would be cheaper to make, or what cheaper material is there that would be equally suitable. Fourth, how sensitive to care are all these parts when in operation, and how much attendance and repairs will be required to keep the machine in good operating condition. Fifth, how big must the important parts of the whole machine be to utilize all the energy available, or to produce the desired amount of power. Sixth, how much force must each part of the mechanism sustain, and how big must it be when made of suitable material so as not to break. Seventh, how much work can be produced by the process for each unit of energy supplied.[45] [45] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press. Principles of Analysis The problem that confronts you, then, in either kind of analysis, however formal or informal it may be, is, How shall I go to work? The first necessity is the choosing of a basis for division of the subject, whether it be in classification or partition. The necessity for this arises from the demand of the human mind for logical consistency. Life seems often wildly inconsistent, but we demand that explanation of it or any phase of it be arranged according to what seems to us some logical law of progression, some consistent point of view. And in truth without some such law or basis the mind soon becomes hopelessly enmeshed and bewildered. I cannot expect my reader to understand my treatise on locomotive engines, my classification of them, if I regard them now as engines of speed, now as means of conveyance, now as potential destroyers of life, and now as instruments whereby capitalists become rich and workmen become poor. As often as I change my point of view, so often I shall be under the necessity of making a new arrangement of the engines, a new alignment. It is like skimming past a cornfield with the platoons of green spears constantly shifting their number, their direction, and their general appearance. If I station myself at one point, I can soon make reasonable estimates, but so long as I whirl from point to point my estimate must whirl likewise and I shall be confused rather than helped. If, then, you are to analyze, say, our present-day domestic architecture, it is not enough to heap together everything that occurs to you about houses: their size, material, color, arrangement, finish, beauty, convenience, situation as regards sidewalks, their heating and upkeep. To prevent your reader from becoming hopelessly muddled, from seeming to deal with the valley of the unorganized dry bones of fact, you must have some guiding principle, some basis, some point of view. Suppose that you take _beauty_ as your basis. Then at once you have a standard by which you can judge all houses, to which you can relate questions of position, arrangement, convenience, lighting, heating, etc. Each of these questions is now significant as affecting the cause of beauty. You could, of course, choose _convenience_ as your basis, to which, then, beauty would be subordinate as contributing or opposing. Asked to analyze the architecture of a railroad terminal, you will not do well to plant dynamite under it and make an architectural rummage sale of its parts; rather you will choose, perhaps, _serviceability_ as your basis, and will then examine tracks, offices, waiting rooms, etc. to see what the whole is. No part will thereby be overlooked; each will be significant, and the whole will be unified by your single point of view. An analysis of MacDowell's music might be based on _emotional power_; of the currency problem on that of _general distribution_; of universities on that of _proportion of cultural to so-called practical courses_. Notice, also, that the choosing of a basis of division is just as necessary in one kind of analysis as in another, that formality and informality do not affect the logic of the situation in the least, that whatever the subject or the proposed method of treatment, you must be consistent in your point of view, must make a pivot round which the whole can turn. Sometimes more than one principle will be necessary, in a complicated analysis, as in judging a route for a railway we saw the necessity for considering grades, drainage, landslides, etc., as we might interweave the bases of cost, beauty, convenience, etc., but--like the reins of the ten-span circus horses--all will be found to run back finally to the single driver--in the case of the railway, _practicability_. In classifying dredges, for example, we may use as basis the action of the machine upon the bottom of the body of water, that is, whether the action is continuous or intermittent; in this case we shall find four types of continuous dredges: the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring, and the pneumatic; and we shall find two classes of intermittent: the dipper and the grapple dredges. Or we may divide all dredges on the basis of whether they are self-propelling or non-propelling. Finally, we may take as basis for the classification the manner of disposing of the excavated materials, in which case we shall find several groups. In the following example we have two bases used for classifying clearing-houses. The use of more than one basis will depend on whether we can by such use make more easily clear to a reader the nature of the subject and on whether different readers will need different angles of approach. The clearing-houses in the United States may be divided into two classes, the sole function of the first of which consists in clearing-notes, drafts, checks, bills of exchange, and whatever else may be agreed upon; and the second of which, in addition to exercising the functions of the class just mentioned, prescribes rules and regulations for its members in various matters, such as the fixing of uniform rates of exchange, interest charges, collections, etc. Clearing-houses may also be divided into two classes with reference to the funds used in the settlement of balances: First, those clearing-houses which make their settlements entirely on a cash basis, or, as stated in the decision of the Supreme Court above referred to, "by such form of acknowledgment or certificate as the associated banks may agree to use in their dealings with each other as the equivalent or representative of cash"; and second, those clearing-houses which make their settlements by checks or drafts on large financial centers.[46] [46] James G. Cannon: _Clearing-Houses_. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., New York City. Copyright, 1900. Sometimes, also, the minor sections may have a different basis from the main one, a different principle of classification. For example, a general basis for an analysis of the Mexican situation during Mr. Wilson's administration might be _general world progress_. This might cover our immediate relations with Mexico, our less close relations with South America, and our rather more remote relations with Europe. The first division might then possibly choose for its principle _fundamental causes for inter-irritation_; the second, _our trade relations with South America_; and the third, the _possibility of trouble through the Monroe Doctrine_. All would unite under the one heading of general progress, and so long as they were kept distinct would be serviceable. For the uniting into one main principle is the important thing. It is by this, and this only, that the reader will easily receive a clear understanding of the subject. Having selected this unifying basis, you must then be careful lest your subdivisions be only the subject restated in other words. If you are analyzing a railroad route for practicability, do not name one division _general serviceability_, for you will merely have made a revolution of 360 degrees and be facing exactly as you faced before. In analyzing Scott's works for humor do not name one division _ability to see the funny side of life_, for again you will have said only that two equals two. Each section must be less than the whole. Even more caution is required to keep the divisions from overlapping. The man who wrote an enthusiastic account of the acting of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson with subheadings as follows: (1) emotional power, (2) effect on audience, (3) intellect, (4) appealing qualities, saw that his divisions--like a family of young kittens--overlapped and sprawled generally. When he had selected _moving power_ as his main principle, and had then divided the treatment into the following headings: (1) appearance, (2) voice, (3) general handling of the situation, (4) effect at the time, and (5) memories of the performance, he found that his kittens had become well-mannered little beasties and sat each in his place. The overlapping of subdivisions is likely to occur because of one or both of two causes: lack of clear thinking, and lack of clear expression. Be sure, then, first to cut neatly between parts in dividing your apple, and then to label each part carefully so that the reader will not say, "Why, three is just like two!" Finally, be sure that the sum of your divisions equals the whole. This means that in logical analysis you must continue the process of dividing until nothing is left. You must follow the old advice: "Cut into as small pieces as possible, and then cut each piece several times smaller!" Such would be the process in analyzing and classifying types of cathedral architecture; your work will not be complete until you have included all possible forms. The same would hold true in a thorough analysis of bridges; all forms would demand entrance. When you write informal or literary analysis, on the other hand, since here the object is illumination rather than exhaustion, almost suggestiveness rather than completeness, choose the significant vital divisions and let the rest go. This does not mean that in informal analysis you may be careless; "any old thing" is far from being the motto; strict thinking and shrewd selection are quite as necessary as in formal analysis. The point is that the divisions will be fewer in number, as in an article on the subject of the failure of freshmen in the first semester your object, in informal analysis, would be to group the causes, for the convenience of the reader, into a few general divisions which should give him a clear idea of the subject without necessitating long and painful reading. In literary analysis especially it is often well to express in one sentence the gist of your thought, as Mr. More says, "Tennyson was the Victorian Age." It is always well to be able to express this sentence. Of course care must be exercised not to make the structure of the article too evident by the presence of such a sentence, but its judicious use will help to unify the thought for the reader. For most minds analysis is difficult. Whatever you can do, therefore, to make it easy will be worth while in gaining success. EXERCISES I. Why, from the point of view of analysis, is it difficult to select a list of "the greatest ten" living men, or women? Make such a list and then examine its foundations. Is a similar list of novels or plays or symphonies as difficult to make? II. Use any of the following sentences as a nucleus sentence on which to build an informal analysis. 1. The attitude of scientific efficiency is incompatible with feelings of humanity. 2. A college career does not always develop, but in fact often kills, intellectual integrity. 3. The worst enemy of the American Public is the newspaper that for political or business reasons distorts news. 4. Studies are the least valuable of college activities except as they stimulate the imagination. 5. Our Country is so large that a citizen is really justified, mentally and morally, in being provincial. 6. The study of literature in college is, except for the person of no imagination, deadening to the spirit. 7. The fifteen-and twenty-cent magazine is a menace to American life in that its fiction grossly distorts the facts of life. 8. The farmer who wishes to keep his soil in good condition should use legumes as increasers of fertility. 9. The effect of acquisition of land property is always to drive the possessors into the Tory camp. 10. The engineer is a poet who expresses himself in material forms rather than words. III. Make a formal classification, in skeleton form, of any of the following subjects. Then determine what qualities the subject has that indicate how such a classification can be made interesting, either by material or treatment. Then write an analytical theme which shall thoroughly cover the skeleton classification and shall also be attractive. (Compare the classification of Rock Drills (page 115) and Oriental Rugs (page 119) to note the difference in the amount of interest.) 1. Building materials for houses. 2. China dinner-ware. 3. Forms of democratic government. 4. Methods of irrigation in the United States. 5. Types of lyric poetry. 6. Chairs. 7. Commercial fertilizers. 8. Tractors for the farm. 9. Contemporary philosophies of Europe and America. 10. American dances. 11. Elevators. 12. Filing systems. 13. Races of men in Europe. 14. Gas ranges. 15. Pianos. 16. Contemporary short stories of the popular magazines. Indicate, in any given subject, how many possible bases for classification you could choose, as, for example, you might classify chairs on the basis of comfort, expense, presence of rockers, upholstery, adaptation to the human figure, material for the seat, shape of back, etc. IV. Analyze any of the following problems, first without recommendation of solution, and second with recommendation as if you were making a report to a committee or employer or officer. 1. Summer work for college students. 2. Keeping informed of world affairs while doing one's college work faithfully. 3. "Outside activities" for college students. 4. Faculty or non-faculty control of college politics. 5. Choosing a college course with relation to intended career in life. 6. Selecting shrubbery for continuous bloom with both red and blue berries in winter. 7. The mail-order houses. 8. Preventing money panics. 9. Dye-manufacture in the United States. 10. Gaining foreign markets. 11. The farmer and the commission merchant. 12. The brand of flour selected for use in large hotels. 13. Color photography. 14. Wind pressure in high buildings. 15. Street pavement. 16. Electrification of railroads. 17. Heating system for an eight-room house. 18. Choice of cereal for children of six, nine, and eleven--two boys, one girl. 19. Lighting the farmhouse. 20. Creating a high class dairy or sheep herd. 21. Creating an apple (or other fruit) orchard. 22. Method of shipping potatoes to a distant point, in boxes, barrels, sacks. 23. Best use of a twenty-acre farm near a large city. 24. Investment of $500.00. 25. Best system of bookkeeping for the farmer. 26. Kind of life insurance for a man of twenty. 27. Location of a shoe factory with capital of $250,000.00. 28. Cash system in a large general store. 29. Reconciling Shakespeare's works with the known facts of his life. 30. The secret of Thomas Hardy's pessimism. 31. Reconciling narrow religious training with the increased knowledge derived from college. 32. The failure of college courses in English composition to produce geniuses. 33. The creation of a conscientious political attitude in a democracy. 34. Selection of $10,000 worth of books as the nucleus for a small town library. V. Decide upon a controlling purpose for an informal analysis of any of the following subjects, indicate how you hope to make the analysis interesting, state why you choose the basis that you do--and then write the theme. 1. Prejudices, Flirts, Entertainments, Shade-trees, Methods of advertising, Languages, Scholastic degrees, Systems of landscape gardening for small estates, Migratory song birds of North America, Laces. 2. Causes of the Return-to-the-Soil movement, Origins of our dairy cattle, Benefits of intensive agriculture, Imported plant diseases, Legumes. 3. Opportunities for the Civil (or Mechanical or Electrical, etc.) Engineer, Difficulties of modern bridge-building, The relation of the engineer to social movements, The contribution of the engineer to intellectual advance. 4. Changes in the United States system of public finance since Hamilton's time, The equitable distribution of taxation, The benefits of the Federal Reserve Movement in Finance, Forms of taxation, Systems of credit. 5. Possibilities for Physiological Chemistry, Obstacles to color photography, The chemistry of the kitchen, The future of the telescope, The battle against disease germs, Theories of the atom, Heredity in plants or animals, Edible fresh-water fish. 6. Bores, The terrors of childhood, The vanities of young men, Methods of coquetry,--of becoming popular,--of always having one's way, The idiosyncrasies of elderly bachelors, Books to read on the train, Acquaintances of the dining-car. VI. Write a 250 word analysis of whatever type you choose on any of the following subjects: The dishonesty of college catalogues, The prevalence of fires in the United States, Causes of weakness in I beams, Effect of fairy stories on children, Religious sectarianism, Public attitude toward an actress, The business man's opinion of the college professor, The tyranny of the teaching of our earliest years, The state of American forests, Municipal wastefulness, Opportunities for lucrative employment at ---- college or university, The effect of oriental rugs in a room, The attitude of people in a small town toward their young people in college, People who are desolate without the "Movies" four or five times a week. VII. Write a 1500-2000 word analytical theme on any of the following subjects: 1. The Responsibilities of Individualism. 2. American Slavery to the Printed Word. 3. The Ideal Vacation. 4. What Shall We Do with Sunday? 5. The Value of Reading Fiction. 6. Why I am a Republican, or Democrat, or Pessimist, or Agnostic, or Humanist, or Rebel in general, or Agitator or--whatnot? 7. The Classics and the American Student in the Twentieth Century. 8. The Chief Function of a College. 9. The Decline of Manners. 10. A Defense of Cheap Vaudeville. 11. The Workingman Should Know His Place and Keep It. 12. The Study of History as an Aid to a Critical Estimate of the Present. 13. The Relation of Friendship to Similarity in Point of View. 14. Intellectual Leadership in America. 15. The Present Situation in the World of Baseball. 16. The Reaction of War upon the Finer Sensibilities of Civilians. 17. Patriotism and Intellectual Detachment. 18. The Breeding Place of Social Improvements. 19. Organization in Modern Life. 20. The Conflict of Political and Moral Loyalty. 21. Why Has Epic Poetry Passed from Favor? 22. The Stability of American Political Opinion. 23. The Shifting Geography of Intellectual Leadership in the World. VIII. In the following selection what does Mr. Shaw analyze? On what basis? Is he thorough? If not, what does he omit? Does the omission, if there is any, vitally harm the analysis? Passion is the steam in the engine of all religious and moral systems. In so far as it is malevolent, the religions are malevolent too, and insist on human sacrifices, on hell, wrath, and vengeance. You cannot read Browning's Caliban upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island, without admitting that all our religions have been made as Caliban made his, and that the difference between Caliban and Prospero is not that Prospero has killed passion in himself whilst Caliban has yielded to it, but that Prospero is mastered by holier passions than Caliban's. Abstract principles of conduct break down in practice because kindness and truth and justice are not duties founded on abstract principles external to man, but human passions, which have, in their time, conflicted with higher passions as well as with lower ones. If a young woman, in a mood of strong reaction against the preaching of duty and self-sacrifice and the rest of it, were to tell me that she was determined not to murder her own instincts and throw away her life in obedience to a mouthful of empty phrases, I should say to her: "By all means do as you propose. Try how wicked you can be: it is precisely the same experiment as trying how good you can be. At worst you will only find out the sort of person you are. At best you will find that your passions, if you really and honestly let them all loose impartially, will discipline you with a severity which your conventional friends, abandoning themselves to the mechanical routine of fashion, could not stand for a day." As a matter of fact, we have seen over and over again this comedy of the "emancipated" young enthusiast flinging duty and religion, convention and parental authority, to the winds, only to find herself, for the first time in her life, plunged into duties, responsibilities, and sacrifices from which she is often glad to retreat, after a few years' wearing down of her enthusiasm, into the comparatively loose life of an ordinary respectable woman of fashion.[47] [47] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the publishers, Boni & Liveright. Analyze the relation of _sincerity_ to _teaching_, of _intellectual bravery_ to _reading_, of _subservience_ to _politics_, of _vitality_ to _creative writing_, of _broadmindedness_ to _social reform_, of _sympathy_ to _social judgment_. Rewrite Mr. Shaw's article so as to place the sentence which now begins the selection at the end. Is the result an improvement or a drawback? What difference in the reader might make this change advisable? IX. In the light of the following statement of the philosophy of Mr. Arthur Balfour, the English statesman, analyze, into one word if possible, the philosophy of Lincoln, of Bismarck, of Mr. Wilson, of Robert E. Lee, of Webster, of William Pitt, of Burke, of any political thinker of whom you know. In the same way analyze the military policy of Napoleon or Grant or any other general; the social philosophy of Jane Addams, Rousseau, Carlyle, Jefferson, or any other thinker; the creed of personal conduct of Browning, Whitman, Thackeray (as shown in _Vanity Fair_), or of any other person concerned with the individual. Analyze the effect of such a philosophy as Mr. Balfour's. Analyze the relation of such a philosophy as this to the actively interested personal conduct of the holder of it toward definite personal ends. Balfour is essentially a sceptic. He looks out on life with a mingled scorn and pity--scorn for its passionate strivings for the unattainable, pity for its meanness and squalor. He does not know the reading of the riddle, but he knows that all ends in failure and disillusion. Ever the rosy dawn of youth and hope fades away into the sadness of evening and the blackness of night, and out of that blackness comes no flash of revelation, no message of cheer. The Worldly Hope men set their hearts upon Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face Lighting a little Hour or two--is gone. Why meddle with the loom and its flying shuttle? We are the warp and weft with which the great Weaver works His infinite design--that design which is beyond the focus of all mortal vision, and in which the glory of Greece, the pomp of Rome, the ambition of Carthage, seven times buried beneath the dust of the desert, are but inscrutable passages of glowing color. All our schemes are futile, for we do not know the end, and that which seems to us evil may serve some ultimate good, and that which seems right may pave the path to wrong. In this fantastic mockery of all human effort the only attitude is the "wise passiveness" of the poet. Let us accept the irrevocable fate unresistingly. In a word, Drift. That is the political philosophy of Mr. Balfour.[48] [48] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. X. Analyze the method of treatment that the author uses in the following selections about King Edward VII and Mr. Thomas Hardy, and in the one just quoted about Mr. Balfour. Would the result in the reader's mind be as good, or better, if the author specified a larger number of qualities? Why? What feeling do you have as to the fairness of the three treatments? Does any one of the three seem to claim completeness? Which is most nearly complete? Write a similar analysis, reducing to one or two main qualities or characteristics, the American Civil War, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic Movement in Literature, the Celtic Spirit, the Puritan Spirit, Socialism, Culture. Now, King Edward is, above everything else, a very human man. He is not deceived by the pomp and circumstance in the midst of which it has been his lot to live, for he has no illusions. He is eminently sane. He was cast for a part in the piece of life from his cradle, and he plays it industriously and thoroughly; but he has never lost the point of view of the plain man. He has much more in common with the President of a free State than with the King by Divine right. He is simply the chief citizen, _primus inter pares_, and the fact that he is chief by heredity and not by election does not qualify his views of the reality of the position. Unlike his nephew, he never associates the Almighty with his right to rule, though he associates Him with his rule. His common sense and his gift of humor save him from these exalted and antiquated assumptions. Nothing is more characteristic of this sensible attitude than his love for the French people and French institutions. No King by "Divine right" could be on speaking terms with a country which has swept the whole institution of Kingship on to the dust-heap. And his saving grace of humor enables him to enjoy and poke fun at the folly of the tuft-hunter and the collector of Royal cherry stones. He laughingly inverts the folly. "You see that chair," he said in tones of awe to a guest entering his smoking room at Windsor. "That is the chair John Burns sat in." His Majesty has a genuine liking for "J. B." who, I have no doubt, delivered from that chair a copious digest of his Raper lecture, coupled with illuminating statistics on infantile mortality, some approving comments on the member for Battersea, and a little wholesome advice on the duties of a King. This liking for Mr. Burns is as characteristic of the King as his liking for France. He prefers plain, breezy men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when he inadvertently sat on it.[49] [49] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. Thomas Hardy lives in the deepening shadow of the mystery of this unintelligible world. The journey that began with the bucolic joy of _Under the Greenwood Tree_ has reached its close in the unmitigated misery of _Jude the Obscure_, accompanied by the mocking voices of those aerial spirits who pass their comments upon the futile struggle of the "Dynasts," as they march their armies to and fro across the mountains and rivers of that globe which the eye of the imagination sees whirling like a midge in space. Napoleon and the Powers! What are they but puppets in the hand of some passionless fate, loveless and hateless, whose purposes are beyond all human vision? O Immanence, That reasonest not In putting forth all things begot, Thou buildest Thy house in space--for what? O Loveless, Hateless!--past the sense Of kindly-eyed benevolence, To what tune danceth this Immense? And for answer comes the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic-- For one I cannot answer. But I know 'T is handsome of our Pities so to sing The praises of the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing That turns the handle of this idle Show. Night has come down upon the outlook of the writer as it came down over the somber waste of Egdon Heath. There is not a cheerful feature left, not one glint of sunshine in the sad landscape of broken ambitions and squalor and hopeless strivings and triumphant misery. Labor and sorrow, a little laughter, disillusion and suffering--and after that, the dark. Not the dark that flees before the cheerful dawn, but the dark whose greatest benediction is eternal nothingness. Other men of genius, most men of genius, have had their periods of deep dejection in which only the mocking voice of the Spirit Ironic answered their passionate questionings. Shakespeare himself may be assumed to have passed through the valley of gloom in that tremendous period when he produced the great tragedies; but he came out of the shadow, and _The Winter's Tale_ has the serenity and peace of a cloudless sunset. But the pilgrimage of Thomas Hardy has led us ever into the deeper shadow. The shades of the prison-house have closed around us and there is no return to the cheerful day. The journey we began with those jolly carol-singers under the greenwood tree has ended in the hopeless misery of Jude.[50] [50] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. XI. On what basis is the following analysis of the farmer's life made? Do you discover any overlapping of parts? Is the analysis so incomplete as to be of slight value? At what point can you draw the line between analysis and mere "remarks" about a subject? Over and above the hardiness which the farm engenders, and of a far higher quality, is the moral courage it calls into play. Courage is the elemental virtue, for life has been and will forever be a fight. A farmer's life is one incessant fight. Think what he dares! He dares to try to control the face of this planet. In order to raise his crops he pits himself against the weather and the seasons; he forces the soil to his wishes; he wars against the plant world, the bacterial world. Is not that a fight, looked at philosophically, to make one stand aghast? After I had been on the farm seven years, the tremendousness of the fight that my fellow farmers were waging disclosed itself to me with a force no figure of speech can convey. Until one can be brought to some realization of this aspect of the farmer's life, he has no adequate grounds for comprehending the discipline and development which is the very nature of the case that life must receive. I often contrast the life of the clerk at his books, or the mechanic at his bench, or the professional man at his desk, with the lot of the farmer. The dangers and uncertainties they confront seem to me extraordinarily mild compared with the risk the farmer runs. That the former will be paid for their work is almost certain; it is extremely uncertain whether the farmer will be paid for his. He must dare to lose at every turn; scarcely a week passes in which he does not lose, sometimes heavily, sometimes considerably. Those moments in a battle when it seems as if every plan had gone to smash, which so test the fortitude of a general, are moments which a farmer experiences more frequently and more strenuously than men in most occupations. If he sticks to his task successfully his capacity for courage must grow to meet the demands; if he will not stick, he is sifted out by force of circumstance, leaving the stronger type of man to hold the farm.[51] [51] Arthur M. Judy: _From the Study to the Farm_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company. Analyze the life of the iron-worker, the country doctor, the head-nurse of a city hospital, the college professor, the private detective. XII. Would you classify the following selection as formal or informal classification or partition? Write a similar treatment of fuel power, moral power, physical strength, intellectual power. Wherever rain falls streams will form, the water of which represents the concentrated drainage of all the land sloping toward that particular valley at the bottom of which the stream flows. This stream flow consists of the rainfall over the whole watershed less the amount absorbed by the earth or evaporated from the surface, and every such stream is a potential source of power. The possible water-power of a country or district is, therefore, primarily dependent on rainfall, but also, of course, on absorption and surface evaporation. In places where the land is approximately flat, the tendency to concentrate rainfall into streams would be small, as the water would tend to lie rather in swampy low pools, or form innumerable tiny, slowly moving brooks. On the contrary, if the country were of a rolling or mountainous character, there would be two important differences introduced. First, water would concentrate in a few larger and faster-moving streams, the water of which would represent the collection from perhaps thousands of square miles; and secondly, it would be constantly falling from higher to lower levels on its way to the sea. While, therefore, all streams are potential, or possible sources of power, and water-power might seem to be available all over the earth, yet, as a matter of fact, only those streams that are large enough or in which the fall of level is great enough, are really worth while to develop; and only in these districts where the rainfall is great enough and the earth not too flat or too absorbent, or the air too dry, may any streams of useful character at all be expected. The power represented by all the water of a stream, and its entire fall from the source to the sea, is likewise only partly available. No one would think of trying to carry water in pipes from the source of a stream a thousand miles to its mouth for the sake of running some water-wheels.[52] [52] Charles E. Lucke: _Power_. By courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press. XIII. For what kind of reader do you judge that the following partition of the orchestra was written? Is the partition complete? What is the basis on which it is made? How does it differ from an appreciative criticism of the orchestra as a musical instrument? (See chapter on _Criticism_.) Make a similar partition of the brass band, the feudal system, the United States Government, the United States Army, the Hague Conference, the pipe organ, the printing press, a canal lock, a Greek drama, a large modern circus, mathematics, etc. The modern orchestra is the result of a long development, which it would not be profitable to trace in this book. It is a body of instruments, selected with a view to their ability to perform the most complex music. It will be readily understood that such an instrumental body must possess a wide range of timbres, a great compass, extensive gradations of force, the greatest flexibility, and a solid sonority which can be maintained from the finest pianissimo to the heaviest forte. Of course the preservation of some of these qualities, such as flexibility and solidity, depend largely upon the skill of the composer, but they are all inherent in the orchestra. They are gained by the use of three classes of instruments, grouped under the general heads of wood, brass, and strings, which have special tone-colors and individuality when heard in their distinct groups, but which combine admirably in the ensemble. It is the custom to name the three groups in the order given because, for the sake of convenience, composers place the flute parts at the top of the page of the score where the wide margin gives room for their high notes. The other wood-wind instruments follow the flutes, so as to keep the wood-choir together. The brass is placed under the wood because its members are so often combined with some of the wood instruments in sounding chords. This brings the strings to the bottom of the page, the instruments of percussion (drums, cymbals, etc.) being inserted between them and the brass. The instruments of the conventional symphonic orchestra of the classic period, then, are flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons in the wood department, horns, trumpets, and trombones in the brass, and violins, violas, violoncellos, and double-basses for strings. Modern composers have added for special reasons the English horn, which is the alto of the oboe, the bass-clarinet, the contrabassoon (which sounds an octave lower than the ordinary bassoon), the bass-tuba, a powerful double-bass brass instrument, and the harp. The piccolo, a small, shrill flute sounding an octave higher than the ordinary flute, was introduced into the symphony orchestra by Beethoven, though it had frequently been used before in opera scores.[53] [53] W. H. Henderson: _What is Good Music_? By courtesy of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright, 1898. XIV. Criticize the following analysis of the indispensability of Law. Write an analysis of the necessity for conformity to current style in dress, the necessity for theaters, of the reason why ultimate democracy is inevitable for the whole world; of the inevitability of conflict between advancing thought and established religion; of the unavoidability of struggle between capital and labor. The truth is, laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date. You will ask me: "Why have them at all?" I will tell you. They are made necessary, though we all secretly detest them, by the fact that the number of people who can think out a line of conduct for themselves even on one point is very small, and the number who can afford the time for it is still smaller. Nobody can afford the time to do it on all points. The professional thinker may on occasion make his own morality and philosophy as the cobbler may make his own boots; but the ordinary man of business must buy at the shop, so to speak, and put up with what he finds on sale there, whether it exactly suits him or not, because he can neither make a morality for himself nor do without one. This typewriter with which I am writing is the best I can get; but it is by no means a perfect instrument; and I have not the smallest doubt that in fifty years' time authors will wonder how men could have put up with so clumsy a contrivance. When a better one is invented I shall buy it: until then, not being myself an inventor, I must make the best of it, just as my Protestant and Roman Catholic and Agnostic friends make the best of their imperfect creeds and systems. Oh, Father Tucker, worshiper of Liberty, where shall we find a land where the thinking and moralizing can be done without division of labor? Besides, what have deep thinking and moralizing to do with the most necessary and least questionable side of law? Just consider how much we need law in matters which have absolutely no moral bearing at all. Is there anything more aggravating than to be told, when you are socially promoted, and are not quite sure how to behave yourself in the circles you enter for the first time, that good manners are merely a matter of good sense, and that rank is but the guinea's stamp: the man's the gowd for a' that? Imagine taking the field with an army which knew nothing except that the soldier's duty is to defend his country bravely, and think, not of his own safety, nor of home and beauty, but of England! Or of leaving the traffic of Piccadilly or Broadway to proceed on the understanding that every driver should keep to that side of the road which seemed to him to promote the greatest happiness to the greatest number! Or of stage managing Hamlet by assuring the Ghost that whether he entered from the right or the left could make no difference to the greatness of Shakespeare's play, and that all he need concern himself about was holding the mirror up to nature! Law is never so necessary as when it has no ethical significance whatever, and is pure law for the sake of law. The law that compels me to keep to the left when driving along Oxford Street is ethically senseless, as is shown by the fact that keeping to the right serves equally well in Paris; and it certainly destroys my freedom to choose my side; but by enabling me to count on every one else keeping to the left also, thus making traffic possible and safe, it enlarges my life and sets my mind free for nobler issues. Most laws, in short, are not the expression of the ethical verdicts of the community, but pure etiquette and nothing else. What they do express is the fact that over most of the field of social life there are wide limits within which it does not matter what people do, though it matters enormously under given circumstances whether you can depend on their all doing the same thing. The wasp, who can be depended on absolutely to sting if you squeeze him, is less of a nuisance than the man who tries to do business with you not according to the custom of business, but according to the Sermon on the Mount, or than the lady who dines with you and refuses, on republican and dietetic principles, to allow precedence to a duchess or to partake of food which contains uric acid. The ordinary man cannot get through the world without being told what to do at every turn, and basing such calculations as he is capable of on the assumption that every one else will calculate on the same assumptions. Even your man of genius accepts a hundred rules for every one he challenges; and you may lodge in the same house with an Anarchist for ten years without noticing anything exceptional about him. Martin Luther, the priest, horrified the greater half of Christendom by marrying a nun, yet was a submissive conformist in countless ways, living orderly as a husband and father, wearing what his bootmaker and tailor made for him, and dwelling in what the builder built for him, although he would have died rather than take his Church from the Pope. And when he got a Church made by himself to his liking, generations of men calling themselves Lutherans took that Church from him just as unquestioningly as he took the fashion of his clothes from the tailor. As the race evolves, many a convention which recommends itself by its obvious utility to every one passes into an automatic habit like breathing. Doubtless also an improvement in our nerves and judgment may enlarge the list of emergencies which individuals may be entrusted to deal with on the spur of the moment without reference to regulations; but a ready-made code of conduct for general use will always be needed as a matter of overwhelming convenience by all members of communities. The continual danger to liberty created by law arises, not from the encroachments of Governments, which are always regarded with suspicion, but from the immense utility and consequent popularity of law, and the terrifying danger and obvious inconvenience of anarchy; so that even pirates appoint and obey a captain. Law soon acquires such a good character that people will believe no evil of it; and at this point it becomes possible for priests and rulers to commit the most pernicious crimes in the name of law and order. Creeds and laws come to be regarded as applications to human conduct of eternal and immutable principles of good and evil; and breakers of the law are abhorred as sacrilegious scoundrels to whom nothing is sacred. Now this, I need not tell you, is a very serious error. No law is so independent of circumstances that the time never comes for breaking it, changing it, scrapping it as obsolete, and even making its observance a crime. In a developing civilization nothing can make laws tolerable unless their changes and modifications are kept as closely as possible on the heels of the changes and modifications in social conditions which development involves. Also there is a bad side to the very convenience of law. It deadens the conscience of individuals by relieving them of the ethical responsibility of their own actions. When this relief is made as complete as possible, it reduces a man to a condition in which his very virtues are contemptible. Military discipline, for example, aims at destroying the individuality and initiative of the soldier whilst increasing his mechanical efficiency, until he is simply a weapon with the power of hearing and obeying orders. In him you have legality, duty, obedience, self-denial, submission to external authority, carried as far as it can be carried; and the result is that in England, where military service is voluntary, the common soldier is less respected than any other serviceable worker in the community. The police constable, who is a civilian and has to use his own judgment and act on his own responsibility in innumerable petty emergencies, is by comparison a popular and esteemed citizen. The Roman Catholic peasant who consults his parish priest instead of his conscience, and submits wholly to the authority of his Church, is mastered and governed either by statesmen and cardinals who despise his superstition, or by Protestants who are at least allowed to persuade themselves that they have arrived at their religious opinions through the exercise of their private judgment. The moral evolution of the social individual is from submission and obedience as economizers of effort and responsibility, and safeguards against panic and incontinence, to willfulness and self-assertion made safe by reason and self-control, just as plainly as his physical growth leads him from the perambulator and the nurse's apron strings to the power of walking alone, and from the tutelage of the boy to the responsibility of the man. But it is useless for impatient spirits (like you and I, for instance) to call on people to walk before they can stand. Without high gifts of reason and self-control: that is, without strong common-sense, no man yet dares trust himself out of the school of authority. What he does is to claim gradual relaxations of the discipline, so as to have as much liberty as he thinks is good for him, and as much government as he thinks he needs to keep him straight. If he goes too fast he soon finds himself asking helplessly, "What ought I to do?" and so, after running to the doctor, the lawyer, the expert, the old friend, and all the other quacks for advice, he runs back to the law again to save him from all these and from himself. The law may be wrong; but anyhow it spares him the responsibility of choosing, and will either punish those who make him look ridiculous by exposing its folly, or, when the constitution is too democratic for this, at least guarantee that the majority is on his side.[54] [54] George Bernard Shaw: _The Sanity of Art_. By courtesy of the publishers, Boni & Liveright. CHAPTER V MECHANISMS, PROCESSES, AND ORGANIZATIONS The problem of giving directions for making or doing something, or of explaining the working of an organization, is not always easy to solve. Most difficulties, however, occur through lack of considering just what the problem involves, and through lack of sufficiently simplifying the material. Thus, when you ask an old man in a strange city where the post-office is, he is likely to reply somewhat as follows: "You keep on just as you are going for a little ways, and then turn down a narrow street on the right and go along for four blocks, and then turn to your left and go until you come to a square, and then go across it and down a side street and through an office building, and then it's the stone building on the corner of the second street to your right." You stroke your chin, meditate a bit, and, if you are polite, thank your informant for his kind intentions. Then you ask the next person whom you meet to tell you where the post-office is. The old man meant well, of course, but he failed to simplify. So did the author of the little book that Johnny received for Christmas mean well when he explained how to make a beautiful chemical effect. But Johnny, who was a fairly impetuous youth, did not stop to read the footnote at the end which warned against working near a fire. When he was seraphically pouring his chemicals together near the old oil lamp in the "shop" there came a flash, a deafening roar--and little Johnny had no time either to examine footnotes or, after the smoke had cleared, for _post-mortem_ complaints. The trouble lay in the fact that the author did not give Johnny the necessary information at the essential time. It seems that neither piety nor wit will suffice to locate post-offices or direct experiments or explain machines. Better than either of these is the ability to make the mechanism, the process, the organization transparently clear, with each bit of information given at exactly the proper moment. For, since the object of such explanation as attempts to make clear is primarily information, the main quality of the writing should be clearness. Everything that stands in the way of this quality should be made to surrender to explanation. If the subject is itself interesting or remarkable, the facts may speak for themselves, as in an account of the nebular hypothesis; if the subject is merely common, as for example the force pump, the primary aim should be clearness. Pleasing presentation, however desirable, is secondary. No amount of pleasant reading on the subject of making photographs, the working of periscopes, the organization of literary societies will be of value if at the end the reader has not a well-ordered idea of how to go to work or of how the thing of which you treat is operated. General Cautions For these reasons certain principles of caution can be laid down. The first caution is, do not take too much for granted on the reader's part. First of all take stock of your reader and his knowledge of the subject and then write in accordance with your discoveries. If, in explaining the bicycle to a Fiji Islander, you fail to note that the two wheels are placed tandem rather than parallel, he may form a thoroughly queer notion of the machine. And your protest, "Why, I supposed he would _know that_!" is in vain. This caution does not mean that you must adopt a tone of condescension, must say, "Now children," and patter on, but that you will not omit any important part of the explanation unless you are sure that your reader is acquainted with it. The second caution, which is corollary with the first, is that you do not substitute for the gaps in the written information the silent knowledge that is in your own mind. The danger here lies in the fact that, knowing your subject well, you will write part of it and think the rest. Having for a long time practiced the high hurdles, for example, when you come to explain them you will run the paradoxical risk of being so thoroughly acquainted with the subject that you will actually omit much vital information and thus make your treatment thin. And the third caution is, avoid being over technical. An expert can always understand plain English; a layman, on the other hand, can soon become hopelessly bewildered in a sea of technicalities. Treatment of technicalities demands sense, therefore; when a term is reasonably common its presence can do no harm, but when a term is known only to the few, substitute for it, when writing for the many, plain English, or define your terms. Centralization Perhaps the greatest lack in expositions of this type is centralization. A reader rises from the account of a cream separator or a suspension bridge or the feudal system with the feeling that many cogs and wires and wheels and spouts and lords and vassals are involved, but without a clear correlation of all these elements into a clear and simple whole. Now a suspension bridge is much more organic than a scrap heap, and the feudal system than a city directory. It is for you as the writer to make this clear, to show that all the things are related, that they affect each other and interact. For this purpose you will find the greatest help in the device of ascertaining what the root principle is, the fundamental notion or purpose of the subject that you are explaining. For example, to make your reader see the relation of the various parts of the tachometer you should discover and present the fact that the machine relies primarily on the principle of centrifugal force as affecting the mercury that whirls as the automobile moves. Once this principle is grasped by the reader, the various parts of the mechanism assume their proper places and relations and become clear. Now obviously this root principle is to be sought _in the subject itself_; here is no place for an author to let his fancy roam where it will without keeping an eye steadily upon the machine or process. You are trying to explain the machine, not some vague or fanciful idea of what the machine might be if it were like what your fancy says; therefore, in the words of the good old advice, which comes handy in most writing, "keep your eye on the object," which in this case will be the machine or the process or the organization. And the more complicated the mechanism or process, the more necessary will be the discovery of the root principle--a printing machine, for instance, with its amazing complexity, will be helped wonderfully by such a device, and the reader will welcome the device even more than he would in an explanation of how, for example, a fountain pen works--though he will be glad for it in any case. This root principle, nucleus, core, kernel can often be stated in one sentence. You can say, for instance, in speaking of bridges like those across the East River, "A suspension bridge consists of a roadway hung by wires from huge cables which are anchored at the ends and are looped up over one or more high supports in the stream." This sentence may not be immediately and entirely clear, but it serves to show quickly what relations parts have to each other, and to it the reader may refer in his mind when detailed treatment of the maze of wires and bolts becomes bewildering. Often this sentence need not be expressed alone; it should always be thought out in the writer's mind. If it is expressed, such a sentence may stand at the beginning as a sort of quick picture, or it may come at the end as a collecting statement of what has preceded, or at any point where it seems to be of the most value to the reader. It may take various forms as, for example, it may state in essence how the machine or process works, is operated, or what it is for, or of what it consists. If it occurs at the end as a summary, it may be a summary of _facts_ in which the points made or the parts described are enumerated, or it may be a summary of _essence_, in which the significance or the principle of the thing is stated. In the following examples the sentence will be found near the beginning in both cases, and in the nature of a statement of the principle of operation. Of tools used for cutting, perhaps the most remarkable of all is the oxygen blow-pipe. This is a little tool something the shape of a pistol--which a workman can easily hold in one hand. It is connected by a flexible tube to a cylinder of compressed oxygen, and by another tube to a supply of coal-gas. Thus a jet of oxygen and a jet of coal-gas issue from the nozzle at the end of the blow-pipe, and, mingling there, produce a fine point of flame burning with intense heat. If this be directed upon the edge of a thick bar or plate of steel it will in a few seconds melt a tiny groove in it, and, if the pipe be moved along, that groove can be developed into a cut and in that way very thick pieces of steel can be severed quite easily. The harder the steel, too, the more easily it is cut, for hard steel contains more carbon than soft, and that has a tendency to burn with oxygen, actually increasing the heat of the flame. A bar of iron a foot long can be cut right down the center in fifty seconds. It is said that scientific burglars have been known to use blow-pipes to open safes with; but a very strange thing about them is that, while they will cut hard steel of almost any thickness almost like butter, they are completely baffled by a thin sheet of copper. The reason of this is that copper is such a good conductor of heat that the heat of the flame is conducted quickly away, and so the part in contact with the flame never becomes hot enough to melt.[55] [55] Thomas W. Corbin: _Engineering of To-day_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London. * * * * * There is another very efficient substitute for the dynamite cartridge, which may abolish blasting even in hard-rock mines. It is a hydraulic cartridge, or an apparatus that works on the principle of the hydraulic jack. Unlike dynamite, which consists of a lot of stored and highly concentrated energy that is let fly to do what destruction it may, the hydraulic cartridge is absolutely inert and devoid of potential energy when placed in the blast-hole. Only after it is in place is the energy applied to it. This it gradually accumulates until it acquires enough to burst open the rock without wasting a lot of energy in pulverizing it. The apparatus is under the direct control of the miner all the time. There is nothing haphazard about its operation. The cartridge consists of a strong steel cylinder, made in various sizes. Disposed at right angles to the length of the cylinder are a number of pistons, or rams, that may be forced out laterally by pumping water into the cylinder. The cartridge is introduced into the blast-hole with the rams retracted. Then a quick-action pump is operated to move the rams out so that they come in contact with the rock. After this, by means of a screw-lever a powerful pressure is exerted upon the water, which forces out the rams until the rock gives way under the strain.[56] [56] Taken from _The Century Magazine_ by permission of the publishers, The Century Co. Processes The development of this kind of exposition will vary somewhat according to the nature of the subject. If you are explaining a process--how to make a campfire, or how to find the width of an unbridged river, or how to make bread--you will naturally follow the chronological order and tell what to do first, what second, and so on. If several materials are to be used in the process, you may enumerate them all at the beginning, for collection, or state them piece by piece as they are needed. For example, you may say, "In making a kite you will need so many pieces of such wood of such and such sizes, with paper or cloth, strong twine, glue, nails, etc." You may cast the whole process into a personal mood by telling how some one, perhaps yourself, did it on a previous occasion. This method, if it is judiciously used, adds interest. You must take care not to seem to encumber obviously simple directions, however, with the machinery of personal narrative so that the whole account is longer than it should be. In case you are treating some process in which mistakes are easily made, you can often help the reader by showing how some one--preferably yourself--did it wrongly and thereby came to grief. Or you can state concisely what not to do if there is chance for mistake. In developing films, for example, you may warn the reader not to mix any of the Hypo with the Fixing Bath; in picking his apples not to break the twigs of the tree; in paddling a canoe through rapids not to become excited. Note how, in the account which follows of how to handle a punt, the author makes the material quite human and personal--to the reader's pleasure. You may get yourself a tub or a working-boat or a wherry, a rob-roy or a dinghy, for every craft that floats is known on the Thames; but the favorite craft are the Canadian canoe and the punt. The canoe you will be familiar with, but your ideas of a punt are probably derived from a farm-built craft you have poled about American duck-marshes--which bears about the same relationship to this slender, half-decked cedar beauty that a canal-boat bears to a racing-shell. During your first perilous lessons in punting, you will probably be in apprehension of ducking your mentor, who is lounging among the cushions in the bow. But you cannot upset the punt any more than you can discompose the Englishman; the punt simply upsets you without seeming to be aware of it. And when you crawl dripping up the bank, consoled only by the fact that the Humane Society man was not on hand with his boat-hook to pull you out by the seat of the trousers, your mentor will gravely explain how you made your mistake. Instead of bracing your feet firmly on the bottom and pushing with the pole, you were leaning on the pole and pushing with your feet. When the pole stuck in the clay bottom, of course it pulled you out of the boat. Steering is a matter of long practice. When you want to throw the bow to the left, you have only to pry the stern over to the right as you are pulling the pole out of the water. To throw the bow to the right, ground the pole a foot or so wide of the boat, and then lean over and pull the boat up to it. That is not so easy, but you will learn the wrist motion in time. When all this comes like second nature, you will feel that you have become a part of the punt, or rather that the punt has taken life and become a part of you. A particular beauty of punting is that, more than any other sport, it brings you into personal contact, so to speak, with the landscape. In a few days you will know every inch of the bottom of the Char, some of it perhaps by more intimate experience than you desire. Over there, on the other curve of the bend, the longest pole will not touch bottom. Fight shy of that place. Just beyond here, in the narrows, the water is so shallow that you can get the whole length of your body into every sweep. As for the shrubbery on the bank, you will soon learn these hawthorns, if only to avoid barging into them. And the Magdalen chestnut, which spreads its shade so beautifully above the water just beyond, becomes quite familiar when its low-reaching branches have once caught the top of your pole and torn it from your hands.[57] [57] John Corbin: _An American at Oxford_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. Mechanisms If you are explaining a mechanism, you may follow different orders. You may explain chronologically, showing what happens first, what next, and so on, as in the printing press you would show what happens first to the paper, and then what processes follow. Here you must be careful not to give a long list at the beginning of all the different parts of the machine. Such a list bewilders and is rarely of any real value. Instead of saying, for example, that a reaper and binder consists of a reel, a knife, a canvas platform and belt, etc., you will do well to simplify at the beginning, and say, perhaps, that from the front the machine looks like a dash with an inverted V at one end: thus: ____[Greek: L] and then go on to relate the various parts to this simple scheme. The brief paragraph which follows illustrates the principle in a slight space. The stone-boat is a peculiar vehicle incidental to America, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the water. It resembles a huge metal tray or shovel hauled by a team of horses. And its special path is as novel as the boat itself. It is only two wooden lines fashioned from tree-logs adzed roughly flat on the upper side, well greased, and laid promiscuously and roughly parallel on the ground. The stone is prized and levered on to the tray, and hauled with a speed, which, bearing in mind the primitive road, is astonishing, to the dump, where a sharp swing round on the part of the horses pitches the mass down the bank.[58] [58] F. A. Talbot: _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London. If you prefer, you can use, instead of the chronological order, the device of showing what the need was for the machine and how it fills the need, or what the object of the machine is and how it accomplishes that object. An explanation of the cotton gin might present the woeful waste of time before the gin was invented and then show how the invention annuls that waste. One of the periscope might state the object of invisible observation and then show how, by tubes and mirrors, this object is accomplished. Or finally, as a third general method, you may state the root principle and then expand in detail. With this scheme you might state that the piano is an instrument in which felt hammers strike metal strings that are stretched across a sounding board, and then go on to show the significance, as related to this notion, of keys, pedals, music rest, and other details. Often this method is the most helpful for a reader, since it gives him at once a nucleus of theory round which he can group the details with immediate or rapid understanding of their relations and significance. In so simple a machine as the ice cream freezer to introduce names like "dasher" without previous warning may result in momentary confusion, whereas if the principle is stated at the beginning, and the reader knows that the object is to bring the cream into contact with the coldest possible _surface_ so as to produce speed in freezing, the "dasher," when mentioned, is at once significant. The description and explanation of a track-layer, which follows, is so made as to be both clear and interesting. The track-layer is one of the most interesting tools with which the railway-builder carries out his epoch-making work. It is a cumbersome, ungainly, and fearsome-looking implement, but with a convincing, grim, and business-like appearance. From the front it resembles a gallows, and for this reason has earned the sinister sobriquet of "the gibbet" among certain members of the engineering fraternity. On the front of the truck there is a lofty rectangular scaffolding of rigid construction, strongly based and supported for the hard, heavy work it has to perform. A jib runs forward into the air from the bottom of either leg to meet at the outer extremity and to form a derrick. The car on which the structure is mounted carries a number of small steam-engines, each of which has to perform a particular function, while at the commanding point high up on the rectangular construction is a small bridge, from which the man in control of the machine carries out his various tasks and controls the whole machine. Ropes, hooks, and pulleys are found on every side, and though, from the cursory point of view, it appears an intricate piece of mechanism, yet its operation is absurdly simple. This machine constitutes the front vehicle of the train, with the bridge facing the grade and the projecting boom overhanging the track. Immediately behind are several trucks piled high with steel rails, fish-plates to secure connection between successive lengths of rails, spikes, and other necessaries. Then comes the locomotive, followed by a long train of trucks laden with sleepers. On the right-hand side of the train, level with the deck of the trucks, extends a continuous trough, with its floor consisting of rollers. It reaches from the rearmost car in the train to 40 or 50 feet in advance of the track-layer, the overhanging section being supported by ropes and tackle controlled from the track-layer truck whereby the trough can be raised and lowered as desired. The appliance is operated as follows. The engine pushes the fore-part of the train slowly forward until the end of the last rail laid is approached. The rollers in the trough, which is in reality a mechanical conveyor, are set in motion. Then the gangs of men stationed on the rear trucks with might and main pitch the bulky sleepers into the trough. Caught up by the rollers, the ties are whirled along to the front of the train, and tumble to the ground in a steady, continuous stream. As they emerge, they are picked up by another gang of men who roughly throw them into position on to the grade. Other members of the gang, equipped with axes and crowbars, push, pull, haul, and prize the ties into their relative positions and at equal distances apart. When thirty or forty sleepers have been deposited in this manner, a pair of steel rails are picked up by the booms from the trucks behind the track-layer, are swung through the air, and lowered. As they near the ground ready hands grasp the bar of steel, steady it in its descent, and guide it into its correct position. The gauge is brought into play dexterously, and before one can realize what has happened the men are spiking the pair of rails to the sleepers, have slipped the bolts into the fish-plates connecting the new rail with its fellow already in position, and the track-layer has moved slowly forward some 13 or 16 feet over a new unit of track, meanwhile disgorging further sleepers from the mouth of the trough. The noise is deafening, owing to the clattering of the weighty baulks of timber racing over the noisy rollers in the conveyor, the rattle of metal, and the clang-clang of the hammers as the men with powerful strokes drive home the spikes fastening the rail to its wooden bed, and the hissing and screeching of steam. Amid the silence of the wilderness the din created by the track-layer at work is heard for some time before you can gain a glimpse of the machine train. The men speak but little, for the simple reason that they could scarcely make themselves heard if they attempted conversation. Each moves with wonderful precision, like a part of an intricate machine. In this way the rail creeps forward relentlessly at a steady, monotonous pace. The lines of sleepers and rails on the track disappear with amazing rapidity, and the men engaged in the task of charging the conveyor-trough and swinging the rails forward, appear to be in a mad race with steam-driven machinery. The perspiration rolls off their faces in great beads, and they breathe heavily as they grasp and toss the weighty strips of timber about as if they were straws. There is no pause or diminution in their speed. If they ease up at all the fact becomes evident at the front in the course of a few seconds in a unanimous outcry from the gangs on the grade for more material, which spurs the lagging men on the trucks behind to greater effort. The only respite from the exhausting labor is when the trucks have been emptied of all rails or sleepers and the engine has to run back for a further supply, or when the hooter rings out the time for meals or the cessation of labor. The track-layer at work is the most fascinating piece of machinery in the building of a large railway. The steam-shovel may be alluring, and the sight of a large hill of rock being blown sky-high may compel attention, but it is the mechanical means which have been evolved to carry out the last phase--the laying of the metals--that is the most bewitching. One can see the railway growing in the fullest sense of the word--can see the thin, sinuous ribbon of steel crawling over the flat prairie, across spidery bridges, through ravine-like rock-cuts, gloomy tunnels, and along lofty embankments. Now and again, when the apparatus has secured a full complement of hands, and every other factor is conducive, the men will set to work in more deadly earnest than usual, bent on setting up a record. Races against time have become quite a craze among the crews operating the track-layer on the various railways throughout America, and consequently the men allow no opportunity to set up a new record, when all conditions are favorable, to slip by.[59] [59] F. A. Talbot: _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London. Organizations If you are explaining an organization you may again use the chronological order and show how the organization came about as it is, how for example the Federal Reserve Board was appointed for certain reasons each of which has its correspondent in the constitution of the board. Such a method is useful in explaining the feudal system, the college fraternity, the national convention of a political party. Or, finally, you can state the root idea, sometimes appearing as purpose or significance, and then expand it. A labor union, thus treated, is a body of men who individually have slight power of resisting organized capital, but can collectively obtain their rights and demands. Aids in Gaining Clearness Clearness then, through centralization, is the all-important necessity of expositions of this type. To aid in gaining this quality you will do well to avoid technical terms, as has already been mentioned. You can make use of graphic charts when they will be useful, so long as they are not merely a lazy device for escaping the task of writing clearly. Some machines, such as the printing press or the rock drill, defy explanation without charts and plates. Textbooks often wisely make use of this device. You can also use familiar illustrations, as the one here used of the reaper and binder or the one likening Brooklyn Bridge to a letter H with the sides far apart, the cross piece extended beyond the sides, and a cable looped over the tops of the sides. Such illustrations at the beginning of the whole or sections are useful in helping the reader to visualize. Another important aid to clearness is to take care that nothing is mentioned for which the way has not been prepared. Just as in a play we insist that the action of a character be consistent, that a good man do not suddenly commit wanton murder, and that the villain do not suddenly appear saintly, so we rightly demand that we be not suddenly confronted with a crank, wheel, office, or step in a process which bewilders us. You ought to write so that your reader will never pucker his brow and say, "What is this?" And when a detail has some special bearing, introduce it at the significant point. To have told little Johnny in the beginning that he must keep his chemicals away from flame would have avoided explosion and death; to declaim loudly after the explosion is of no value. And finally, from a purely rhetorical standpoint, make careful transition from section to section so that the reader will know exactly where divisions occur, and make liberal use of summaries whenever they may be useful without being too cumbersome. Notice how, in the following paragraph, the writer has given the gist of the machines so that, if he wishes to expand and make a full treatment, he will still have a nucleus which will considerably facilitate the reader's understanding. Continuous dredges are of four types--the ladder, the hydraulic, the stirring, and the pneumatic dredges. The ladder dredge excavates the bottom by means of a series of buckets running with great velocity along a ladder. The buckets scrape the soil at the bottom, raise the débris to the surface and discharge it into barges or conveyors so as to send it to its final destination. The hydraulic dredge removes the material from the bottom by means of a large centrifugal pump which draws the materials, mixed with water, into a suction tube and forces them to distant points by means of a long line of pipes. The stirring dredges are those employed in the excavation of soils composed of very finely divided particles; they agitate the soils and the material thus brought into suspension is carried away by the action or current of water. The pneumatic dredges are those in which the material from the bottom is forced into the suction tube and thence into the discharging pipe, by the action of continuous jets of compressed air turned upward into the tube.[60] [60] Charles Prelini: _Dredges and Dredging_. By courtesy of the publishers, D. Van Nostrand Company, New York City. Notice also the care with which the author of the paragraph which follows and explains the phonopticon states early in his treatment the scientific basis for the operation of the machine, without knowing which a reader would be hopelessly confused to understand how the machine could possibly do what the author says it does. The element selenium, when in crystalline form, possesses the peculiar property of being electro-sensitive to light. It is a good or bad conductor of electricity according to the intensity of the light that falls upon it, and its response to variations of illumination is virtually instantaneous. This interesting property has been utilized in a wide variety of applications, ranging from the transmission of a picture over a telegraph line to the automatic detection of comets; but by far the most marvelous application is that of the phonopticon.... It is an apparatus that will actually read a book or a newspaper, uttering a characteristic combination of musical sounds for every letter it scans. The principle of operation is not difficult to understand. A row of, say, three tiny selenium crystals is employed, each crystal forming part of a telephone circuit leading to a triple telephone-receiver. In each circuit there is an interrupter that breaks up the current into pulsations, or waves, of sufficient frequency to produce a musical note in the receiver. The frequency differs in the three circuits, so that each produces its characteristic pitch. Although the conductivity of selenium is increased by intensifying its illumination, the electrical connections in this apparatus are so chosen that while the crystals are illuminated no sounds are heard in the telephone, but when the crystals are darkened, there is an instant audible response. The apparatus is placed upon the printed matter that is to be read, with the row of crystals disposed at right angles to the line of type. The paper directly under the crystals is illuminated by a beam of light. This is reflected from the unprinted part of the paper with sufficient intensity to keep the telephone quiet, but when the crystals are moved over the black printing, the light is diminished, and the crystals lose their conductivity, causing the telephone to respond with a set of sounds which vary with the shape of the letter. Suppose the apparatus was being moved over the letter V, the upper crystal would encounter the letter first, then the middle one would respond, next the lower one would come into action for an instant, followed by a second response of the middle crystal and a final response of the upper crystal. A set of notes would be sounded somewhat after this fashion: _me_, _re_, _do_, _re_, _mi_. The sound combination with such letters as S and O is more complicated but it is distinguishable. When we read with the natural eye we do not spell out the words letter by letter, but recognize them by their appearance as a whole. In the same way with the mechanical eye entire words can be recognized after a little practice. * * * * * Of course the phonopticon is yet in the laboratory stages, but it offers every prospect of practical success, and its possibilities are untold. It is quite conceivable that the apparatus may be elaborated to such an extent that a blind man may see (by ear) where he is going. His world may never be bathed in sunshine, but he may learn to admire the beauties of nature as translated from light into music.[61] [61] Taken from _The Century Magazine_ by permission of the publishers, The Century Co. Aids in Gaining Interest If mere clearness alone were the only quality to strive for, this kind of writing might remain, however useful, eternally dull except to one who is vitally interested in the facts, however they are treated. But for this there is no need; no reason exists why you should not make this kind of writing attractive. For you can, in addition to making a machine clear, endow it with life; in addition to enumerating the steps in a process, make it a fascinating adventure. Suppose that you are explaining how to learn to swim--is not the thought of waving one's arms and legs in dreamy or frantic rhythm as he lies prone across the piano bench humorous? Why, then, exclude the humor? And is not the person who is trying to learn much alive, with the pit of his stomach nervously aware of the hardness of the bench? Why, then, make him a wooden automaton, or worse, a dead agent? So long as you do not obscure the point that the reader should note, all the life, all the humor of which you and the process are capable should be introduced. Just so with a machine. You can explain the engine of an airship so that the reader will exclaim, "I see"; what you ought to do is so to explain the engine that he will say, "I see, and bless you, I'd like to see one go!" You ought to make the beautiful efficiency, the exquisite humming life of the thing, its poise, its athletic trimness so take hold of the reader that his imagination will be fired, his interest thoroughly aroused. Now this you cannot do by thrusting in extraneous matter to leaven the lump. Webster in the Senate did not introduce vaudeville to enliven his _Reply to Hayne_, but he found in the subject itself the interest. First of all, then, study your machine, your process, your organization, until you see what its quality is, its spirit, until you are yourself aware of its life, and then make this live for your reader. A railroad locomotive should be made thrilling with its pomp and power, a military movement should be made an exquisitely quick piece of living constructive work, a submarine should have all the craft and the romance of a haunting redskin, the roasting of a goose should be made a process to rouse the joys of gluttony forevermore. Now to do this will require exercise of the imagination, and if you find yours weak your first duty is to develop it. If it is strong and active, on the other hand, allow it free play, only watching lest it may obscure the subject--for clearness is always first. There need, however, be no discrepancy between the two qualities. The following extract from an essay by Mr. Dallas Lore Sharp illustrates the possibilities of both interest and truth. ANY CHILD CAN USE IT THE PERFECT AUTOMATIC CARPET-LAYER No more carpet-laying bills. Do your own laying. No wrinkles. No crowded corners. No sore knees. No pounded fingers. No broken backs. Stand up and lay your carpet with the Perfect Automatic. Easy as sweeping. Smooth as putting paper on the wall. You hold the handle and the Perfect Automatic does the rest. Patent Applied For. Price ---- --but it was not the price! It was the tool--a weird hybrid tool, part gun, part rake, part catapult, part curry-comb, fit apparently for almost any purpose, from the business of blunderbuss to the office of an apple-picker. Its handle, which any child could hold, was somewhat shorter and thicker than a hoe-handle, and had a slotted tin barrel on its ventral side along its entire length. Down this barrel, their points sticking through the slot, moved the tacks in single file to a spring-hammer close to the floor. This hammer was operated by a lever or tongue at the head of the handle, the connection between the hammer at the distal end and the lever at the proximal end being effected by means of a steel-wire spinal cord down the dorsal side of the handle. Over the fist of a hammer spread a jaw of sharp teeth to take hold of the carpet. The thing could not talk; but it could do almost anything else, so fearfully and wonderfully was it made. As for laying carpets with it, any child could do that. But we didn't have any children then, and I had quite outgrown my childhood. I tried to be a boy again just for that night. I grasped the handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, the crouching hammer sprang, and-- And then I lifted up the Perfect Automatic to see if the tack went in,--a simple act that any child could do, but which took automatically and perfectly all the stretch out of the carpet; for the hammer did not hit the tack; the tack really did not get through the trap; the trap did not open the slot; the slot--but no matter. We have no carpets now. The Perfect Automatic stands in the garret with all its original varnish on. At its feet sits a half-used can of "Beesene, the Prince of Floor Pastes."[62] [62] Dallas Lore Sharp: _The Hills of Hingham_, "The Dustless Duster." Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. Besides the devices that have been mentioned you can use that of making the agents in the action definite, real persons, and you can make a process seem to be actually going on before the eyes of the reader. You can suffuse the whole theme with a human spirit, for everything has a human significance if only you will find it. Finally, use tact in approaching your reader. Do not "talk down" to him, and do not over-compliment his intelligence or wheedle him. Rather regard him as a person desirous of knowing, your subject as a thing capable of interest, and yourself as a really enthusiastic devotee. Take this attitude, and as long as you make clear, so long your chances for success will be good. EXERCISES I. 1. Indicate other practical root principles beside the one mentioned which a theme on any of the following subjects might well try to express. 1. How to teach a dog tricks--the patience required. 2. How to learn to swim--the humor, or the grim determination. 3. How to manage an automobile--the cool-headedness required. 4. How to find the trouble with a balky engine--the careful, patient, unangered searching. 5. How to make an exquisite angel cake--the delicacy necessary. 6. A steel mill--the power displayed. 7. The aeroplane motor--its concentrated energy. 8. The reaper and binder--the coöperation of parts. 9. The camera--its sensitiveness. 10. The adding machine--the uncanny sureness of it. 11. The United States Supreme Court--its deliberateness. 12. The feudal system--its picturesque injustice. 13. The college literary society--its opportunities. 14. The Grange--its sensible usefulness. 15. The Federal Reserve Board--its safety. 2. Make two or more outlines for each subject, choosing your material to indicate different root principles. Wherein does the difference in material consist? How much material is common to all the outlines on the same subject? Is this common material made of essential or non-essential facts? II. Find some simplifying device such as the one suggested for the reaper and binder, for any of the following mechanisms, and indicate how you would relate the parts of the machine to the device. 1. A concrete mixer. 2. A derrick. 3. A vacuum cleaner. 4. A lawn-mower. 5. A rock-crusher. 6. A pile-driver. 7. A Dover egg-beater. 8. A hay-tedder. 9. A printing-press. 10. An apple-sorter. III. State, _in one complete sentence_, the nucleus from which a theme treatment of any of the following subjects would grow. Be sure that this sentence is sufficiently inclusive, has much meat. Mr. Wilson, in writing of the National House of Representatives, evidently had a sentence like the following in mind: "The House of Representatives is an efficient business body the work of which is accomplished largely through committees, and centralized round a powerful speaker." 1. The operation of a sewing machine. 2. The explanation of a pulley. 3. The explanation of a cream separator. 4. The principle of the fireless cooker. 5. The principle of the steam turbine. 6. The principle of the bread mixer. 7. The principle of the piano. 8. The principle of the electric car. 9. The principle of the steel construction of sky scrapers. 10. The principle of the metal lathe. 11. The Interstate Commerce Commission. 12. The college fraternity. 13. A national political convention. 14. The Roman Catholic Church, or any other church. 15. The modern orchestra. 16. The Boy Scout Movement. 17. The International Workers of the World. 18. An American State University. 19. A stock exchange. 20. A national bank. 21. How to play tennis. 22. How to detect the tricks of fakirs at county fairs. 23. How to make a symmetrical load of hay. 24. How to run "the quarter." 25. How to pack for camping. 26. How to rush a freshman. 27. How to make money from poultry. 28. How to make a successful iron casting. 29. How to plan a railroad terminal yard. 30. How to use the slide rule. IV. The Track Layer (page 166). 1. In view of the fact that the text suggests avoidance of a beginning list of parts of a machine, what is your opinion of the list in this selection? Could the explanation have been made as well without this list? Better? 2. Would this explanation be as well done if the author began with hearing the machine at a distance, and then approached, described the appearance of the machine, and finally stated its principle? Does the method, the order, have any really close connection with the value of the explanation? V. Write themes on the following subjects, bearing in mind that the _facts_ of the subject remain constant even though the readers may vitally differ and therefore need widely varying treatments. 1. The adding machine. a. For a business man who wishes to reduce expenses in his office. b. For a woman who has worked painfully at figures in an office for thirty years and regards the process of "figuring" as sacred. c. For a person who says, "I just never could get figures straight anyway!" 2. The typewriter. a. For a person who complains that people haven't brains enough to read his "perfectly plain handwriting." b. For a person who thinks that the clicking sound of the machine will be terribly disagreeable. c. For an old gentleman who for years clung to the use of a quill, and has only within a few years brought himself to use a fountain pen. 3. Fruit farming (limited to one kind of fruit). a. For a city man of not too robust health but of considerable wealth who wishes a reasonably quiet pleasant existence. b. For a young man who has just inherited 150 acres of fine apple land but is half inclined toward becoming a bank clerk. c. For a person who has read Burroughs and thinks that the poetic appeal of fruit trees and birds must be delightful. 4. The Process of Canvassing for a Book. a. For a college student who wishes to make much money. b. For a person who always buys books from canvassers and whom you wish to enlighten as to their methods. c. For a young man who possesses a glib tongue which he wishes to turn to good financial use. 5. The Commission Form of City Government. a. For a man who wishes to improve the régime in his city. b. For a person who contends that our municipal government is hopelessly behind that of European cities. c. For a politician of doubtful character who has served several terms as mayor under the old system. 6. The Hague Peace Conference. a. For a person who declares that international coöperation is impossible. b. For a person who is seeking a precedent for a "League to Enforce Peace." c. For a militarist. VI. Compare the two selections which follow, and determine which is the more interesting, and why. Would the kind of treatment that the second receives be fitting for the first? Rewrite each, in condensed form, in the style of the other. It will, I believe, be more interesting if, instead of talking of launches in general, I describe the launch of the great British battleship _Neptune_ which I witnessed recently at the famous naval dockyard at Portsmouth. It will, however, be necessary to commence with a short general explanation. As we already know, the keel of a vessel is laid upon a row of blocks, and from the keel it grows upwards plate by plate. As it thus gets higher and higher it has to be supported laterally, in order to keep it in an upright position, and for this reason strong props or shores are placed along the sides at frequent intervals. Now it is easy to see that the vessel cannot move until these shores have been taken away, yet, if they are removed, what is to prevent the ship from falling over? This dilemma is avoided by putting the vessel on what is called a cradle. It is to my mind best described by comparison with a sledge. A sledge has a body on which the passenger or load is placed, while under it are runners, smooth strips which will slide easily over the slippery surfaces of the snow, and finally there is the smooth snow to form the track. In the same way the ship, when it starts on its first journey, rests upon the body of the cradle, which in turn rests upon "runners" which slide upon the "launching ways," the counterpart of the smooth snow. These "ways" are long narrow timber stages, one on each side of the ship and parallel with the keel. They are several feet wide, and long enough to reach right down into the water. Needless to say, they are very strong, and the upper surface is quite smooth so that the runners will slide easily, and there is a raised edge on each to keep them from gliding off sideways. Grease and oil are plentifully supplied to these ways, and then the "runners" are placed upon them. These, too, are formed of massive baulks of timber, and their underside is made smooth so as to present as good a sliding surface as possible to the "ways." Finally upon the runners is built up the body of the cradle itself. Timber is again the material, and it is carefully fitted to the underside of the ship so that, when the weight is transferred from the blocks under it to the cradle, it will rest evenly and with the least possible strain; for it must be borne in mind that a ship is designed to be supported on the soft even bed which the water affords and not on a timber framework. There is a danger, therefore, of the hull becoming distorted while resting upon the cradle, so it is stayed and strengthened inside with temporary timber work. So far all seems easy, but the weight of the ship is still on the blocks, while the cradle is as yet doing practically nothing. There remains the stupendous task of transferring the weight of the ship, thousands of tons, from one to the other. How can it be done? This is left until the morning of the day appointed for the launch, and it is then done by a method which is quite startling in its simplicity. The power to be obtained by means of a wedge has been known for ages, yet it is that simple device which enables this seemingly impossible work to be accomplished with ease. Between the "runners," as I have termed them, and the body of the cradle itself, a large number of wedges are inserted, perhaps as many as a thousand. But of course they cannot be driven one at a time, as a single wedge would simply crush into the timber without lifting the cradle at all; they are therefore all driven at once. An army of men are employed, and they all stand with heavy hammers ready to strike. At the sound of a gong a thousand hammers fall as one, and a thousand wedges begin to raise the ship with the cradle on it. Then a second sound on the gong, and a second time a thousand hammers strike together; then again and again, until all the wedges have been driven home and the weight of the ship has been lifted partly off the blocks on to the cradle. Then the blocks are gradually removed, a proceeding which is rendered easy by the fact that it has for one of the layers which compose it a pair of wedges which can be easily withdrawn so as to leave all the other timbers free. There are an enormous number of these blocks to be removed from under a big ship, and the operation takes considerable time. They are removed, too, gradually, so that the whole of the weight of the ship, which will ultimately rest upon the cradle, may come on to it by degrees, and so if there should be anything wrong--with the cradle, for instance--the operation of removing the blocks could be suspended before it had gone too far; for the engineer, though he sometimes does very daring things, and none more daring than the launching of a big ship, is really a very cautious man, and always likes to keep on the safe side. At Portsmouth there is an old custom in connection with the removal of the blocks from under the ship which prescribes that the men shall sing at their work. This is a matter in which they take a pride, so that while the blocks are being taken away sounds of excellent male voice part-singing float out from the invisible "choir" underneath the ship. The removal of the blocks is so arranged that it shall be completed just before the time for the ceremony, since when they are all gone the ship is all "alive," straining, as it were, to get away down the slippery ways into the water, and a very slight mishap would be sufficient to bring about a premature launch. Indeed, during these last moments the vessel is only held back by a few blocks left under the bow--it must be understood that a ship commences its career by entering the water _backwards_--and one timber prop on each side, called the "dog-shores." These "dog-shores" are, in effect, huge catches which keep the ship from moving, and which are released at the right moment by the falling of two weights. The launch of the _Neptune_ took place at eleven o'clock in the morning, and for an hour or so previously spectators had been assembling. Picture to yourself a great steel vessel--merely the hull, of course--500 feet long and as high as a three-story house. Close to the bow is a gaily decorated platform, crowded with people, while thousands occupy stands on either side, and still more stand on the open ground and on every point from which a view can be obtained. On the bow of the vessel there is hung a festoon of flowers with a bottle of wine concealed in it, while round the bow passes a cord, the ends of which are supporting the weights which hang just over the dog-shores. As the clock strikes, the lady who is to perform the ceremony, a royal duchess, arrives upon the scene and takes her place on the elevated platform close to the bow of the ship. A short religious service is conducted by the chaplain of the dockyard assisted by the choir of the dockyard church, and then the duchess leans forward, takes hold of the wine bottle suspended by the floral festoon, draws it towards her and lets it go again. As the bottle swings back and dashes to pieces against the steel stem of the vessel, she says, "Success to the _Neptune_ and all who sail in her." Then an official steps forward with a mallet and chisel. The former he hands to the lady, while the latter he holds with its edge upon the cord. Now is the critical moment, and among all the thousands of spectators not a sound is to be heard. A few blows of the mallet upon the chisel and the cord is severed; exactly at the same moment the two weights fall, the dog-shores are knocked out of the way, and the great vessel begins slowly and majestically to glide down to the water. The few remaining blocks under the bow are pulled over by the motion of the ship, and fall with a crash, which is soon drowned by the cheers of the people and sounds of patriotic airs played by the band. There are a large number of sailors and workmen upon the ship, and as soon as she is in the water they drop the anchors and bring her to rest, while tugs rush to her and take her in tow to the dock where she is to be fitted up. But what becomes of the cradle? It is made in two halves, the part on each side being connected to that on the other by chains passing under the keel, and in these chains there is a connection which can be released by pulling a cord from the deck of the ship. When the ship has reached the water, therefore, and the cradle has done its work, the cord is pulled and the two halves of the cradle, being mainly of timber, float off, to be captured and towed back to shore. The grease upon the launching ways and cradle is melted by the heat due to friction, and much of it is to be found floating upon the water immediately after the launch, so numbers of small boats immediately put off and men with scoops collect it.[63] [63] Thomas W. Corbin: _Engineering of To-day_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London. * * * * * The word _head_ affords a good example of radiation. We may regard as the central meaning that with which we are most familiar,--a part of the body. From this we get (1) the "top" of anything, literally or figuratively, whether it resembles a head in shape (as the head of a cane, a pin, or a nail), or merely in position of preëminence (as the head of a page, the head of the table, the head of the hall); (2) figuratively, "leadership," or concretely, "a leader" (the head of the army, the head of the school); (3) the "head" of a coin (the side on which the ruler's head is stamped); (4) the "source" of a stream, "spring," "well-head," "fountain-head"; (5) the hydraulic sense ("head of water"); (6) a "promontory," _as Flamborough Head_, _Beechy Head_; (7) "an armed force," a "troop" (now obsolete); (8) a single person or individual, as in "five head of cattle"; (9) the "main points," as in "the heads of a discourse" (also "notes" of such points); (10) mental power, "intellectual force." Here again there is no reason for deriving any of our ten special senses from any other. They are mutually independent, each proceeding in a direct line from the central primary meaning of head. The main process of radiation is so simple that it is useless to multiply examples. We may proceed, therefore, to scrutinize its operations in certain matters of detail. In the first place, we observe that any derived meaning may itself become the source of one or more further derivatives. It may even act as a center whence such derivatives radiate in considerable numbers, precisely as if it were the primary sense of the word. Thus, in the case of _head_, the sense of the "top" of anything immediately divides into that which resembles a human head in (1) shape, or (2) position merely. And each of these senses may radiate in several directions. Thus from (1) we have the head of a pin, of a nail, of a barrel, of an ulcer, "a bud" (in Shakespeare); from (2) the head of a table, of a hall, of a printed page, of a subscription-list. And some of these meanings may also be further developed. "The head of the table," for instance, may indicate position, or may be transferred to the person who sits in that position. From the head of an ulcer, we have the disagreeable figure (so common that its literal meaning is quite forgotten), "to come to a head," and Prospero's "Now does my project gather to a head," in _The Tempest_. Sense No. 2, the "forefront" of a body of persons, the "leader," cannot be altogether separated from No. 1. But it may come perfectly well from the central meaning. In every animal but man the head actually precedes the rest of the body as the creature moves. At all events, the sense of "leadership" or "leader" (it is impossible to keep them apart) has given rise to an infinity of particular applications and idiomatic phrases. The head of a procession, of an army, of a class, of a revolt, of a "reform movement," of a new school of philosophy--these phrases all suggest personal leadership, but in different degrees and very various relations to the persons who are led, so that they may all be regarded as radiating from a common center. By a succession of radiations the development of meanings may become almost infinitely complex. No dictionary can ever register a tithe of them, for, so long as a language is alive, every speaker is constantly making new specialized applications of its words. Each particular definition in the fullest lexicon represents, after all, not so much a single meaning as a little group of connected ideas, unconsciously agreed upon in a vague way by the consensus of those who use the language. The limits of the definition must always be vague, and even within these limits there is large scope for variety. If the speaker does not much transgress these limits in a given instance, we understand his meaning. Yet we do not and cannot see all the connotations which the word has in the speaker's mind. He has given us a conventional sign or symbol for his idea. Our interpretation of the sign will depend partly on the context or the circumstances, partly on what we know of the speaker, and partly on the association which we ourselves attach to the word in question. These considerations conduct us, once more, to the principle on which we have so often insisted. Once more we are forced to admit that language, after all, is essentially poetry. For it is the function of poetry, as Sainte-Beuve says, not to tell us everything, but to set our imaginations at work: "La poésie ne consiste pas à tout dire, mais à tout faire rêver." Besides the complexity that comes from successive radiation, there is a perpetual exchange of influences among the meanings themselves. Thus when we speak of a man as "the intellectual head of a movement," _head_ means "leader" (No. 3), but has also a suggestion of the tenth sense, "mind." If two very different senses of a word are present to the mind at the same moment, the result is a pun, intentional or unintentional. If the senses are subtly related, so that they enforce or complement each other, our phrase becomes imaginatively forcible, or, in other words, recognizable poetry as distinguished from the unconscious poetry of language. So, too, the sudden re-association of a derived sense with the central meaning of a word may produce a considerable change in effect. _Head_ for "leader" is no longer felt as metaphorical, and so of several other of the radiating senses of this word. Yet it may, at any moment, flash back to the original meaning, and be revivified as a conscious metaphor for the nonce. "He is not the _head_ of his party, but their mask"; "The leader fell, and the crowd was a body without a _head_." Radiation is a very simple process, though its results may become beyond measure complicated. It consists merely in divergent specialization from a general center. It is always easy to follow the spokes back to the hub.[64] [64] Greenough and Kittredge: _Words and Their Ways in English Speech_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. Write a theme on any of the following subjects, adapting your style to the character of the subject--formal or informal, impersonal or personal, etc. In each of these subjects discover the root principle which will serve as your controlling object, and state it in a sentence. State also how you expect to make the theme interesting. 1. How to handle a swarm of bees. 2. How a publicity campaign is managed. 3. The process of inoculation. 4. The process of fumigation. 5. How an ingot of steel is made. 6. The physiological process of stimulation. 7. The process of reforming criminals. 8. How to break into society. 9. How to memorize a long sonata. 10. How to make a well. 11. The process of civilization. 12. How a locomotive is assembled. 13. How a torpedo is launched. 14. How good literary taste is acquired. 15. The process of naturalization. 16. The process of simplification in language. 17. The process of organizing a "clean up" campaign. 18. How big steel beams are put in place on the twentieth story. 19. The process of fertilization of land. 20. The process of inoculating land for alfalfa. 21. The process of making a trial balance sheet. 22. How to audit the accounts of a club, store, treasurer, or organization. 23. The process of pasteurization. 24. The process of modulation in music. 25. How to fire a blast furnace. VII. Write the material contained in the explanations of the blow-pipe and the hydraulic cartridge (page 161) in the more picturesque form of a personal experience, showing how you, or some one, used the mechanism for a particular purpose. Which method of treatment is more effective? Why? Would you be willing to lay down a general rule about the method of treatment? If not, why not? VIII. Use the method employed to explain dredges (page 170) to write a theme that shall discriminate briefly the various types of the following: 1. Valves. 2. Tractors. 3. Egg-beaters. 4. Styles in landscape painting. 5. Systems of bookkeeping. 6. Methods of learning a foreign language. 7. Churns. 8. Methods of packing apples. IX. In the following selection you will find an account of how an engineering problem was solved. With this as a model, write an account of any of the following: 1. The Shoshone, or Keokuk, or Roosevelt Dam. 2. The Panama Canal. 3. The Cape Cod Canal. 4. The Chicago Drainage Canal. 5. The Chicago Breakwater. 6. The Galveston Sea Wall. 7. The Key West Railroad. 8. The Mississippi Levees. 9. An Army Cantonment. 10. A Shipyard. 11. A Big City Subway. 12. Some Development in Your Own Town. The construction of the reservoirs and aqueduct for bringing a daily supply of five hundred million gallons into New York from the Catskill Mountains has involved engineering work of great magnitude, and in some cases of considerable perplexity and difficulty. As it turned out, the most serious problem was encountered at the Hudson River, where the engineers had to determine upon the best method for conducting the water past that great natural obstacle. Four alternative plans were considered: first, to lay steel pipes in trenches dredged across the river bottom; second, to drive a tunnel through the glacial deposit in the river bottom; third, to carry the aqueducts across the river on a bridge; and lastly, to build a huge inverted siphon at a depth sufficient to bring it entirely within the solid underlying rock. The last was the plan adopted. To determine the depth and character of the rock, fifteen vertical holes were drilled from the surface of the river, and two inclined holes, of different degrees of inclination, were driven from each shore. Six of the vertical holes reached bed rock, and one of them in the center of the river reached an ultimate depth of 768 feet, when it had to be abandoned without reaching bed rock. This boring developed the fact that the present Hudson River flows in an old glacial gorge which has been filled up with deposits of silt, sand, gravel, clay, and boulders to a depth of over 800 feet. Now it was realized that a deep-pressure tunnel, to be perfectly reliable, must lie in absolutely sound and unfissured rock; and since it was impossible to test the rock by vertical borings made from scows anchored in the river, the engineers determined to explore the underlying material by means of inclined borings driven from either shore. Accordingly, two shafts were sunk to a depth of between two and three hundred feet, and from them two diamond drill borings were started, which ultimately crossed at a depth of 1500 feet below the surface of the river. A good rock was found at that level. To make the survey more reliable, a second pair of holes was drilled at a less inclination, which crossed at a depth of 950 feet below the river surface. The rock was found to be perfectly satisfactory, and such water as was found was limited in extent and due to well-understood geologic causes. It was therefore determined to sink the east and west shafts to a depth of from 1150 to 1200 feet below ground surface, and connect them by a tunnel 3022 feet in length at a depth of 1100 feet below the river surface. The shafts have been sunk, that on the West Shore to 1153 feet, the East Shore shaft to 1185 feet, and the boring of the tunnel toward the center of the river has made good progress, the easterly section having advanced at the present writing about 260 feet, and the westerly section 170 feet from their respective shafts. Both the shafts and the tunnel will be lined with a high grade of Portland cement concrete which will give them a finished internal diameter of 14 feet. The aqueduct reaches the Hudson River at an elevation of 400 feet above mean water level. Hence the total head of water is about 1500 feet, and the total pressure on each square foot of the tunnel is 46 1/2 tons, which is balanced with a wide margin of safety by the weight of the super-incumbent mass of rock, silt, and water.[65] [65] "The Catskill Water Supply Tunnel," in the _Scientific American_, vol. 104. By courtesy of The Scientific American Publishing Company. X. In the following account of an emotional and mental process what root principle do you find? Does the author show traces of influence from the intended readers, the American public? Does the author take too much for granted in the reader, or not enough? Does she show tact in approaching the reader? Write the account in an impersonal, abstract way, as if you were reporting "a case" for a statistician, and then give your estimate of the two. What light does your estimate throw upon the advice to make the actors in a process specific? How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade. When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child's story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George and Martha Washington, till I could see them with my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I was beside the Great. As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in Polotzk--all my world, in fact--strove together, by example and precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it, was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really admired, like my Uncle Solomon, and Cousin Rachel, were those who preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks. What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright good if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled about and picked up such things, like one's uncles and cousins. But a human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant, all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George Washington; for I was not brave--I was afraid to go out when snowballs whizzed--and I could never be the First President of the United States. So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. But the twin of my new-born humility, paradoxical as it may seem, was a sense of dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends who were notable people by the old standards,--I had never been ashamed of my family,--but this George Washington, who died long before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were Fellow Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow Citizens in the patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew from my father how he was a Citizen, through the process of naturalization, and how I also was a citizen, by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was a Fellow Citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me; and at the same time it sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct myself as befitted a Fellow Citizen. Before books came into my life, I was given to star-gazing and day-dreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alternations of the sun and stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the common after school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence rails, my pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the tread of Heroes. What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by _my country_. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each other--all this it was that made _my country_. It was not a thing that I _understood_; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say "my country" and _feel_ it, as one felt "God" or "myself." My teacher, my schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself could not mean more than I when they said "my country," after I had once felt it. For the Country was for all the Citizens, and I _was a Citizen_. And when we stood up to sing "America," I shouted the words with all my might. I was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my newfound country. "I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills." Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square--all was hallowed ground to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in honor of Washington's Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing "The Star-Spangled Banner." If the doors happened to open, and the chorus broke out unveiled-- "O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?" delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with suppressed enthusiasm.[66] [66] Mary Antin: _The Promised Land_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. Write an account of any of the following processes _as processes_. 1. The high school "star" learns in college that other bright people exist. 2. The first realization of death. 3. Becoming loyal to a school. 4. Discovering pride of ancestry. 5. Finding that classical music is interesting. 6. A despised person becomes, on acquaintance, delightful. 7. Becoming reconciled to a new town, or system of government, or catalogue system in a library. 8. Learning that not everything was discovered by an American. 9. Becoming aware that there is a life of thought. 10. Becoming reconciled to a great loss of money or friends. 11. Deciding upon a new wall-paper. 12. Fitting into the town circles after a year away at college. 13. Discovering that some beliefs of childhood must be abandoned. 14. Perceiving that you really agree with some one with whom you have been violently squabbling. 15. The literary person finds attractiveness in engineering and agriculture--and vice versa. 16. Working out a practical personal philosophy of life. 17. Finding a serious motive in life. 18. Determining upon a tactful approach to a "touchy" person. 19. Acquiring the college point of view in place of the high-school attitude. 20. Discovering one's provincialism. 21. Discovering one's racial or national loyalty. 22. Finding out that the world does not depend on any individual, but goes ahead, whether he lives or dies. CHAPTER VI CRITICISM Few of us pass a day without answering such questions as, "What do you think of the Hudson car?" or, "How did Kreisler's playing strike you?" or, "What is your opinion of the work of Thackeray or Alice Brown or Booth Tarkington?" or, "Do you like the X disc harrow?" When we are among intimate friends we give our opinions, based on our personal reaction to the subject of inquiry or on our impartial estimate of it as an automobile, a musical performance, a collection of books, or an agricultural machine. Many of us give a large space in our conversation to such estimates on all conceivable subjects. And, for purposes of insignificant conversation, there is no reason why we should not. Accused of making "Criticism" in the formal sense, however, many of us should recoil with terrified denial. But that is exactly what we are doing, whether we praise or blame, accept or reject, so long as we base our opinion on sincere personal or sound principles, we criticize. _For criticism is the attempt to estimate the worth of something--object or idea--either abstractly on a basis of principles and relations, or personally on the basis of our reactions to the subject of criticism._ That is, we may, for example, criticize the roads of New York State on the basis of what a road is for and how well these roads serve their purpose, or we may take as basis the inspiration, the keen ecstasy that we feel as we skim over the smooth boulevard. So long as our notions of good roads are sound, so long as we react sensibly, with balance, to the smooth rounding way, we make good criticism, we judge the worth of the subject of criticism and find it either good or bad. It is to be noted that this criticism is something more than mere comment, than mere off-hand remarks. The old saying is, "Anybody can say _something_ about _anything_!" An off-hand utterance _may_ tell the truth; we cannot be sure that it will. Only when we have a well-considered basis of either principle or personal feeling can we be at all certain of our opinions. Now the range in which our opinions, our criticisms, may be expressed, is as wide as human thought and accomplishment. We sometimes think of criticism as being confined to literature and art, and speak of literary criticism, musical criticism, dramatic criticism, and art criticism, as if these were all. The term criticism has actually been so restricted in common practice that unless otherwise noted it is taken for granted as applying to these subjects. But criticism is much more comprehensive than such restriction indicates: any object or subject is capable of criticism. Just as we might arrive at the conclusion that Booth Tarkington's stories about Penrod are either good or bad, so we might say that a make of piano, a type of bridle, a new kind of fertilizer, a method of bookkeeping, a recipe for angel cake is good or is sufficient or is valueless. We might have--in fact we do have--Engineering Criticism, Carpenter Criticism, Needlework Criticism, Poultry Criticism, and as many kinds as there are classes of subjects. In this treatment we shall use the term in this broad sense and include all subjects in our scope. Of course we are to remember that the criticism becomes of more value as the subject of criticism is of more moment: criticism of the drama is nobler, perhaps, than criticism of egg beaters and picture hooks. We must also remember that the less high orders of criticism are neither useless nor undesirable but often most helpful. Requirements demanded of the Critic Since, then, the brand of the critic is on us all, since we practice the habit, consciously or not, most of the time, and since the range is so wide, no reason exists why we should be terrified at the thought of writing criticism, of making formal estimate. Certain requirements are demanded, to be sure; not every one can dive into the sea of criticism without making an awkward splash and receiving a reddening smart. But these requirements are in no way beyond the possibility of acquiring by any one who will set himself to the task. _a._ _Ability to analyze_ In the first place, a critic must have the power to analyze. We have seen that analysis consists in breaking a subject into its components, in discovering of what it is made. This is the first great necessity in criticizing. You wish, for example, to make a criticism of a new rifle for your friends. It is not enough that you should with gusto enunciate, "It's just great!" "Oh, it's fine, fine and dandy!" "Golly but it's a good one!" Your friends are likely to ask "Why?" or to say, "The gentleman doth protest too much!" If, on the other hand, you remark that the rifle is admirable because of its sights, its general accuracy, its cartridge chamber, its comparative freedom from recoil, then you will be giving your friends definite and useful criticism, for you will have analyzed the virtue of the object into its components. Now this necessity for analysis exists in criticism of literature and art just as in criticism of rifles. Before you can properly estimate the value of a novel or a play you must divide the impression it makes into the various heads, such as emotional power, convincingness in the message of the book or play, truth to life, and whatever heading you may think necessary. Until you do this your impressions, your judgments will of necessity be vague and dim in their outlines, and though they may seem to be comprehensive, will be found actually to be insufficient to give your reader or listener a firm notion of the subject--he will have no nucleus of thought round which his total estimate will center. As soon, however, as you analyze, and make definite, so soon he will receive real enlightenment. In the following account of the work of James Russell Lowell at the Court of Saint James we find at once this careful breaking of the subject into parts which can be treated definitely. Had the writer merely uttered general impressions of the diplomacy of our ambassador we who read should have been comparatively unhelped. To those who hold the semi-barbarous notion that one of the duties of a foreign minister is to convey a defiant attitude toward the people to whom he is accredited--that he should stick to his post, to use the popular phrase, "with his back up," and keep the world that he lives in constantly in mind that his countrymen are rough, untamable, and above all things quarrelsome, Mr. Lowell has not seemed a success. But to them we must observe, that they know so little of the subject of diplomacy that their opinion is of no sort of consequence. The aim of diplomacy is not to provoke war, but to keep the peace; it is not to beget irritation, or to keep it alive, but to produce and maintain a pacific temper; not to make disputes hard, but easy, to settle; not to magnify differences of interest or feeling, but to make them seem small; not to win by threats, but by persuasion; not to promote mutual ignorance, but mutual comprehension--to be, in short, the representative of a Christian nation, and not of a savage tribe. No foreign minister, it is safe to say, has ever done these things so successfully in the same space of time as Mr. Lowell. If it be a service to the United States to inspire Englishmen with respect such as they have never felt before for American wit and eloquence and knowledge, and thus for American civilization itself, nobody has rendered this service so effectually as he has done. They are familiar almost _ad nauseam_ with the material growth of the United States, with the immense strides which the country has made and is making in the production of things to eat, drink, and wear. What they know least of, and had had most doubts about, is American progress in acquiring those gifts and graces which are commonly supposed to be the inheritance of countries that have left the ruder beginnings of national life far behind, and have had centuries of leisure for art, literature, and science. Well, Mr. Lowell has disabused them. As far as blood and training go, there is no more genuine American than he. He went to England as pure a product of the American soil as ever landed there, and yet he at once showed English scholars that in the field of English letters they had nothing to teach him. In that higher political philosophy which all Englishmen are now questioning so anxiously, he has spoken not only as a master, but almost as an oracle. In the lighter but still more difficult arts, too, which make social gatherings delightful and exciting to intellectual men, in the talk which stimulates strong brains and loosens eloquent tongues, he has really reduced the best-trained and most loquacious London diners-out to abashed silence. In fact, he has, in captivating English society,--harder, perhaps, to cultivate, considering the vast variety of culture it contains, than any other society in the world,--in making every Englishman who met him wish that he were an Englishman too, performed a feat such as no diplomatist, we believe, ever performed before.[67] [67] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_. _b._ _Knowledge of the General Field_ Besides the ability to analyze the critic must have some knowledge of the general field in which the subject lies. For a man who has never thought about musical form to attempt criticism of a sonata is foolish--he can at best merely comment. It is this fact that vitiates much of the cracker-barrel criticism of the country store--subjects are estimated about which the critic is largely ignorant. When an uneducated person makes shrewd comment, as he often does, on a play, he will usually be found to have criticized a character such as he has known or the outcome of a situation the like of which he is familiar with rather than the play as a whole. Now perfect criticism would demand perfect knowledge, but since that is impossible, a good working knowledge will suffice, the wider the better. Knowledge of the general principles of piano playing will enable a critic to estimate, in the large, the work of a performer; he cannot criticize minutely until he has added more detailed knowledge to his mental equipment. _c._ _Common Sense_ However much knowledge and ability to analyze a critic may have, he is a will-o'-the-wisp unless he have common sense and balance. Since a critic is in many ways a guide, he must guard as sacred his ability to see the straight road and to refuse the appeal of by-paths, however attractive. As critic, you must not be overawed by a name, be it of artist or manufacturer, nor allow much crying of wares in the street to swerve you from your fixed determination to judge and estimate only on the worth of the subject _as you find it_. This is far from meaning that the critic should give no weight to the opinions of others; you should always do that; but, having examined the subject, and knowing your opinions, you should then speak the truth as you see it. Your one final desire should be to go to the heart of the matter accurately, and then to state this clearly. And just as you do not blindly accept a great name, so do not be wheedled by gloss and appearance, but keep a steady aim for the truth. _d._ _Open-mindedness_ Finally, this balance, this passion for the truth, will lead the critic to strive always for open-mindedness. "I would rather be a man of disinterested taste and liberal feeling," wrote Hazlitt, "to see and acknowledge truth and beauty wherever I found it, than a man of greater and more original genius, to hate, envy, and deny all excellence but my own...." And he was right when he said it: the willingness to accept a new idea or object if it is worthy, whether it go against the critic's personal desires or not, is one of the great qualities that he will find indispensable. "I never heard of such a thing!" is not a sufficient remark to condemn the thing. In fact, almost a sufficient answer to such an exclamation would be, "Well, what of it?" or, "'T is time you did." Methods of Criticism Armed with open-mindedness, then, with balance and common sense, with knowledge of the field, and with ability to analyze, you are ready to begin. What method shall you pursue? Though no absolutely sharp line can be drawn between kinds of criticism, we may treat of three that are fairly distinct: the historical method, the method by standards, and the appreciative. In most criticism we are likely to find more than one method employed, often all three. You need not confine yourself to one any more than a carpenter need refuse to use any but one tool, but for purposes of comprehension and presentation we shall keep the three here fairly distinct. We shall examine the three now, briefly, in the order named. _a._ _The Historical Method_ Suppose that you are asked to criticize one of Cooper's novels, say _The Last of the Mohicans_. You find in it red men idealized out of the actual, red men such as presumably never existed. You may, then, in disgust throw the book down and damn it with the remark, "The man does not tell the truth!" But you will not thereby have disposed of Cooper. Much better it would be to ask, How came this man to write thus? When did he write? For whom? How did men at that time regard the Indian? In answering these questions you will relate Cooper's novel to the time in which it was written, you will see that before that time the Indian was regarded with unmixed fear, as too often since with contempt, and that at only that time could he have been idealized as Cooper treats him. You would relate the novel to the whole movement of Sentimentalism, which thought that it believed the savage more noble than civilized man, and you would then, and only then, get a proper perspective. Your original judgment, that Cooper's Indians are not accurate portraits of their kind, would not be modified; for the whole work, however, you would have a new attitude. In the same way, asked for an opinion of the old-style bicycle with enormous front wheel and tiny trailer, you would not summarily reply, "I prefer a chainless model of my own day," but would discover the place that the old style occupied in the total development of the bicycle, would look at it as related to the preceding absence of any bicycle, and would see that, though it may to-day be useless, in its time it was remarkable. Likewise you will discover that the old three-legged milking stool has been in immemorial use in rude byres and stables, since three points--the ends of the legs--always make a firm plane, which four points do not necessarily do. And one hundred years hence, when a critic comes to judge the nature faking of the early twentieth century, he will relate this sentimental movement to the times in which it appeared, and, though he may well finally be disgusted, he will understand what the thing was and meant, how it came about, what causes produced it. Illustration of the value of this method is found in the following historical account of the American business man. To a European this man sometimes is inexplicable--until he reads some illuminating setting forth of the facts as here. As long as the economic opportunities of American life consisted chiefly in the appropriation and improvement of uncultivated land, the average energetic man had no difficulty in obtaining his fair share of the increasing American economic product; but the time came when such opportunities, although still important, were dwarfed by other opportunities, incident to the development of a more mature economic system. These opportunities which were, of course, connected with the manufacturing, industrial, and technical development of the country, demanded under American conditions a very special type of man--the man who would bring to his task not merely energy, but unscrupulous devotion, originality, daring, and in the course of time a large fund of instructive experience. The early American industrial conditions differed from those of Europe in that they were fluid, and as a result of this instability, extremely precarious. Rapid changes in markets, business methods, and industrial machinery made it difficult to build up a safe business. A manufacturer or a merchant could not secure his business salvation, as in Europe, merely by the adoption of sound conservative methods. The American business man had greater opportunities and a freer hand than his European prototype; but he was too beset by more severe, more unscrupulous, and more dangerous competition. The industrious and thrifty farmer could be fairly sure of a modest competence, due partly to his own efforts, and partly to the increased value of his land in a more populous community; but the business man had no such security. In his case it was war to the knife. He was presented with choice between aggressive daring business operations, and financial insignificance or ruin. No doubt this situation was due as much to the temper of the American business man as to his economic environment. The business man in seeking to realize his ambitions and purposes was checked neither by government control nor social custom. He had nothing to do and nothing to consider except his own business advancement and success. He was eager, strenuous, and impatient. He liked the excitement and risk of large operations. The capital at his command was generally too small for the safe and conservative operation of his business; and he was consequently obliged to be adventurous, or else to be left behind in the race. He might well be earning enormous profits one year and be skirting bankruptcy the next. Under such a stress conservatism and caution were suicidal. It was the instinct of self-preservation, as well as the spirit of business adventure, which kept him constantly seeking for larger markets, improved methods, or for some peculiar means of getting ahead of his competitors. He had no fortress behind which he could hide and enjoy his conquests. Surrounded as he was by aggressive enemies and undefended frontiers, his best means of security lay in a policy of constant innovation and expansion. Moreover, even after he had obtained the bulwark of sufficient capital and more settled industrial surroundings, he was under no temptation to quit and enjoy the spoils of his conquests. The social, intellectual, or even the more vulgar pleasures, afforded by leisure and wealth, could bring him no thrill which was anything like as intense as that derived from the exercise of his business ability and power. He could not conquer except by virtue of a strong, tenacious, adventurous, and unscrupulous will; and after he had conquered, this will had him in complete possession. He had nothing to do but to play the game to the end--even though his additional profits were of no living use to him.[68] [68] Herbert Croly: _The Promise of American Life_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Company, New York City. In criticizing literature and art this method is often difficult, for we must take into account race, geography, and other conditions. We must see that only in New England, of all the sections of the United States, could Hawthorne have written, that Tolstoi could not have written in Illinois as he did in Russia, that Norse Sagas could not have appeared among tropical peoples, that among the French alone, perhaps, could Racine have come to literary power as he did. And in examining the work of two writers who treat the same subject in general, as Miss Jewett and Mrs. Freeman treat New England life, we shall find the influence of ancestry and environment and training largely determining, on the one hand the quaint fine sunshine, on the other hand the stern hard Puritanism. We shall also have to learn what incidents in an author's life have helped to determine his point of view, how early poverty, or sorrow, or a great experience of protracted agony or joy have made him sympathetic, or how aristocratic breeding and the early introduction into exclusive circles have made him naturally unresponsive to some of the squalor, the sadness of lowly life. We shall perceive that the early removal of Scott to the country began his intense love for Scottish scenery and history, that the bitter laughter of Byron's mother turned part of the poet's nature to gall. In other words, when we are dealing with the exquisitely fine products of impassioned thought we have a difficult task because so many influences mold these thoughts, so many lines of procedure are determined by conditions outside the particular author or artist, all of which must be considered if we wish our work to be really of value. The following illustration shows in brief space the attempt to link a movement in literature to the times in which it appeared, to show that it is naturally a product of the general feeling of the times. Yet, after all, it is not the theories and formulæ of its followers that differentiate the "new poetry"; the insistence upon certain externalities, the abandonment of familiar traditions, even the new spirit of the language employed, none of these are more than symptoms of the deep inner mood which lies at the roots of the whole tendency. This tendency is in line with the basic trend of our times, and represents the attempt in verse, as in many other branches of expression, to cast off a certain passionate illusionment and approach the universe as it actually is--the universe of science, perhaps, rather than that of the thrilled human heart. This is the kernel of the entire new movement, as has already been clearly pointed out by several writers on the subject. Everywhere in the new verse we are conscious of a certain objective quality, not the objective quality of _The Divine Comedy_ or _Faust_, which is achieved by the symbolic representation in external forms of inner spiritual verities, but an often stark objectivity accomplished by the elimination of the feeling human medium, the often complete absence of any personal reaction. We are shown countless objects and movements, and these objects and movements are glimpsed panoramically from the point of view of outline, color, and interrelation, as through the senses merely; the transfiguring lens of the soul is seldom interposed or felt to be present. To the "new poet" the city street presents itself in terms of a series of sense-impressions vividly realized, a succession of apparently aimless and kaleidoscopic pageantries stripped of their human significance and symbolic import. They have ceased to be signs of a less outward reality, they have become that reality itself--reality apprehended from a singly sensuous standpoint untainted by any of the human emotions of triumph or sorrow, pity or adoration. Love is thus frequently bared of its glamour and death of its peculiar majesty, which may now be regarded as deceitful and fatuous projections of the credulous soul, and not to be tolerated by the sophisticated mood of the new and scientific poet, for it is exactly with these beautiful "sentimentalities" that the analytic mind of science is not concerned.[69] [69] From _Scribner's Magazine_, September, 1917. By courtesy of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright, 1917. This method seeks, then, to place a work, whether of art or science or industry, in its place in the whole course of development of such ideas. It examines causes such as commercial demands, general prosperity, war, and only after this examination gives the work its estimate of value. Now this method may seem uninteresting, dry, dull. Not always does it escape this blame. For it is inevitably impersonal, it looks at the thing perhaps coldly--at least without passion. But in so doing, and in considering the precedents and surroundings of the object of criticism, it largely escapes the superficiality of personal whim, and it avoids silly reaction to unaccustomed things. Much of our empty criticism of customs in dress and manners of architecture such as that of Southern California, of other religions such as those of the Chinese and the Hindoos, would be either done away or somewhat modified if we used this method. One reason, perhaps, why the Goths destroyed the beautiful art works of Rome was the fact that they had not the critical spirit, did not relate these works to their development and race. Of course there were other reasons. By linking the object of criticism to the race as a whole, by seeing how and why it became created, the critic is largely broadened and the reader is kept from superficiality. Moreover, when this method is not too abstractly pursued, it gives to things, after all, a human meaning, for it links them to humanity. That it may be misleading in literature and art is obvious, for a creation may be accounted for in an attractive way as the result of certain forces that had their beginnings in sense and wisdom, and so be made to seem admirable, whereas it really has little worth on a basis of lasting usefulness and significance. But, properly and thoroughly used, this method, even though it gives us an account of a work rather than finally settling its value, scatters away the vague mists of superficial generalization and drives deeply into causes and results. _b._ _The Method by Standards_ As the historical method is generally impersonal, objective, so is the method of criticizing by standards. In using this method we try to determine whether the object of criticism fulfills the demands of its type, whether its quality is high or low. For example, we thus judge a tennis court as to its firm footing, its softness, its retention of court lines, its position as regards the sun. In all these qualities an ideal tennis court would be satisfactory; the question is, is this one. So a headache powder should relieve pain without injuring with evil drugs; if this one does, we shall not condemn it. If the rocks in a landscape painting look like those which the heroic tenor in grand opera hurls aside as so much "puffed wheat," we must condemn the artist, for rocks should look solid. An evangelist should have certain qualities of piety and reverence, and should accomplish certain lasting results; we shall judge Billy Sunday, for example, according to whether he does or does not fulfill these demands. Likewise a lyric poem should have certain qualities of freshness, grace, passion, by which we rate any given lyric. In fact, we ask, in any given case, does this work do what such a thing is supposed to do, does it have the qualities that such a thing is supposed to have? And on our answer will depend our judgment. This is the kind of criticism that business men use constantly; they rate a cash system or a form of order blank or an arrangement of counters in a store on the basis of the presence or absence of the qualities that distinguish an ideal system, blank, arrangement. In the following example we have a combination of the historical and the standards methods, finally accounting for and judging the value of the common kinds of cargo steamers. A trip round any busy seaport will show the reader, if he has not noticed it already, that there are many different types of the ordinary cargo steamer. The feature which displays the difference most noticeably is the arrangement of the structures on the deck, and it may be reasonably asked why there are these varieties, and how it is that a common type has not come to be agreed upon. The answer to that question is that the differences are not merely arbitrary, but are due to a variety of influences, and it will be interesting to look briefly at these, as the reader will then be able, the next time he sees a cargo steamer, to understand something of the ideas underlying its design. The early steamers had "flush" decks, which means that the deck ran from end to end without any structures of considerable size upon it; a light bridge was provided, supported upon slender uprights, for "lookouts" purposes, and that was all. On the face of it this seems a very simple and admirable arrangement. It had many disadvantages, however, as we shall see. In the first place, it permitted a wave to come on board at the bow and sweep right along the deck, often doing great damage. This was mitigated somewhat by building the ships with "shear," that is, with a slope upwards fore and aft, so as to make the ends taller than the middle. That, however, was not sufficient, so ships were built with an upper deck, so that the bow should be high enough to cut through the waves instead of allowing the water to come on board. Owing, however, to the method by which the tonnage of a ship is reckoned, as will be explained later, that had the effect of adding largely to the tonnage _on which dues have to be paid_ without materially increasing the carrying capacity of the ship. The difficulty was therefore got over in this way. The bow was raised and covered in, forming what is known as a "top-gallant forecastle," which not only had the effect of keeping the water off the deck, but provided better accommodation for the crew as well. That did not provide, however, against a wave overtaking the ship from the rear and coming on board just where the steering wheel was, so a hood or covering over the wheel became usual, called the "poop." Nor did either of these sufficiently protect that very important point, the engine-room. For it needs but a moment's thought to see that there must be openings in the deck over the engines and boilers, and if a volume of water should get down these, it might extinguish the fires and leave the ship helpless, absolutely at the mercy of the waves. The light navigating bridge was therefore developed into a substantial structure the whole width of the ship, surrounding and protecting the engine-and-boiler-room openings, and incidentally providing accommodation for the officers. Ships of this type answered very well indeed, for if a wave of exceptional size should manage to get over the forecastle, the water fell into the "well" or space between the forecastle and bridge-house, and then simply ran overboard, so that the after part of the ship was kept dry. Then troubles arose with the loading. The engines, of course, need to be in the center, for they represent considerable weight, which, if not balanced, will cause one end of the ship to float too high in the water. Thus the hold of the ship is divided by the engine-room into two approximately equal parts, but out of the after-hold must be taken the space occupied by the tunnel through which the propeller shaft runs, from the engine to the screw. Thus the capacity of the after-hold becomes less than the forward one, and if both are filled with a homogeneous cargo such as grain (and, as we shall see presently, such a cargo must always entirely fill the hold), the forward part of the ship would float high in the water. The trouble could not be rectified by placing the engines further forward, for then the ship would not float properly when light. Shipowners overcame this trouble, however, by raising the whole of the "quarter-deck"--the part of the deck, that is, which lies behind the after end of the "bridge-house"--and by that means they made the after-hold deeper than the other. Thus the commonest type of all, the "raised quarter-deck, well-decker," came into existence, a type of which many examples are to be seen on the sea.[70] [70] Thomas W. Corbin: _Engineering of To-day_. By courtesy of the publishers, Seeley, Service & Co., London. In the following paragraphs Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury of Yale University criticizes the use of final e in English words. You will note that he uses a combination of the historical method and the method by standards. There seems to be something peculiarly attractive to our race in the letter _e_. Especially is this so when it serves no useful purpose. Adding it at random to syllables, and especially to final syllables, is supposed to give a peculiar old-time flavor to the spelling. For this belief there is, to some extent, historic justification. The letter still remains appended to scores of words in which it has lost the pronunciation once belonging to it. Again, it has been added to scores of others apparently to amplify their proportions. We have in our speech a large number of monosyllables. As a sort of consolation to their shrunken condition an _e_ has been appended to them, apparently to make them present a more portly appearance. The fancy we all have for this vowel not only recalls the wit but suggests the wisdom of Charles Lamb's exquisite pun upon Pope's line that our race is largely made up of "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease." The belief, in truth, seems to prevail that the final _e_ is somehow indicative of aristocracy. In proper names, particularly, it is felt to impart a certain distinction to the appellation, lifting it far above the grade of low associations. It has the crowning merit of uselessness; and in the eyes of many uselessness seems to be regarded as the distinguishing mark of any noble class, either of things or persons. Still, I have so much respect for the rights of property that it seems to me every man ought to have the privilege of spelling and pronouncing his own name in any way he pleases. The prevalence of this letter at the end of words was largely due to the fact that the vowels, _a_, _o_, and _u_ of the original endings were all weakened to it in the break-up of the language which followed the Norman conquest. Hence, it became the common ending of the noun. The further disappearance of the consonant _n_ from the original termination of the infinitive extended this usage to the verb. The Anglo-Saxon _tellan_ and _helpan_, for instance, after being weakened to _tellen_ and _helpen_, became _telle_ and _helpe_. Words not of native origin fell under the influence of this general tendency and adopted an _e_ to which they were in no wise entitled. Even Anglo-Saxon nouns which ended in a consonant--such, for instance, as _hors_ and _mús_ and _stán_--are now represented by _horse_ and _mouse_ and _stone_. The truth is, that when the memory of the earlier form of the word had passed away an _e_ was liable to be appended, on any pretext, to the end of it. The feeling still continues to affect us all. Our eyes have become so accustomed to seeing a final e which no one thinks of pronouncing, that the word is felt by some to have a certain sort of incompleteness if it be not found there. In no other way can I account for Lord Macaulay's spelling the comparatively modern verb _edit_ as _edite_. This seems to be a distinction peculiar to himself. * * * * * In the chaos which came over the spelling in consequence of the uncertainty attached to the sound of the vowels, the final _e_ was seized upon as a sort of help to indicate the pronunciation. Its office in this respect was announced as early as the end of the sixteenth century; at least, then it was announced that an unsounded _e_ at the end of a word indicated that the preceding vowel was long. This, it need hardly be said, is a crude and unscientific method of denoting pronunciation. It is a process purely empirical. It is far removed from the ideal that no letter should exist in a word which is not sounded. Yet, to some extent, this artificial makeshift has been, and still is, a working principle. Were it carried out consistently it might be regarded as, on the whole, serving a useful purpose. But here, as well as elsewhere, the trail of the orthographic serpent is discoverable. Here as elsewhere it renders impossible the full enjoyment of even this slight section of an orthographic paradise. Here, as elsewhere, manifests itself the besetting sin of our spelling, that there is no consistency in the application of any principle. Some of our most common verbs violate the rule (if rule it can be called), such as _have_, _give_, _love_, _are_, _done_. In these the preceding vowel is not long but short. There are further large classes of words ending in _ile_, _ine_, _ite_, _ive_, where this final _e_ would serve to mislead the inquirer as to the pronunciation had he no other source of information than the spelling. Still, in the case of some of these words, the operation of this principle has had, and is doubtless continuing to have, a certain influence. Take, for instance, the word _hostile_. In the early nineteenth century, if we can trust the most authoritative dictionaries, the word was regularly pronounced in England as if spelled hós-t[)i]l. So it is to-day in America. But the influence of the final _e_ has tended to prolong, in the former country, the sound of the preceding _i_. Consequently, a usual, and probably the usual, pronunciation there is hos-t[=i]le. We can see a similar tendency manifested in the case of several other adjectives. A disposition to give many of them the long diphthongal sound of the _i_ is frequently displayed in the pronunciation of such words as _agile_, _docile_, _ductile_, _futile_, _infantile_. Save in the case of the last one of this list, the dictionaries once gave the _ile_ nothing but the sound of _il_; now they usually authorize both ways. Were the principle here indicated fully carried out, pronunciations now condemned as vulgarisms would displace those now considered correct. In accordance with it, for instance, _engine_, as it is spelled, should strictly have the _i_ long. One of the devices employed by Dickens in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ to ridicule what he pretended was the American speech was to have the characters pronounce _genuine_ as _gen-u-[=i]ne_, prejudice as _prej-u-d[=i]ce_, _active_ and _native_ as _ac-t[=y]ve_ and _na-t[=i]ve_. Doubtless he heard such pronunciations from some men. Yet, in these instances, the speaker was carried along by the same tendency which in cultivated English has succeeded in turning the pronunciation _hos-t[)i]l_ into _hos-t[=i]le_. Were there any binding force in the application of the rule which imparts to the termination _e_ the power of lengthening the preceding vowel, no one would have any business to give to it in the final syllable of the words just specified any other sound than that of "long i." The pronunciations ridiculed by Dickens would be the only pronunciations allowable. Accordingly, the way to make the rule universally effective is to drop this final _e_ when it does not produce such an effect. If _genuine_ is to be pronounced _gen-u-[)i]n_, so it ought to be spelled.[71] [71] Thomas R. Lounsbury: _English Spelling and Spelling Reform_. By courtesy of the publishers, Harper & Brothers, New York City. Copyright. Now it is evident that unless the critic's standards are fair and sensible, unless they are known to be sound and essential, his criticism is likely to be valueless. If my ideas of the qualities of ideal tennis courts are erratic or queer, my judgment of the individual court will be untrustworthy. Your first duty as critic, then, is to look at your standards. In judging such things as ice cream freezers, motorcycles, filing systems, fertilizers, rapid-firing guns, and other useful devices, you will find no great difficulty in choosing your standards. When you come to literature and the arts, however, you find a difficult task. For who shall say exactly what a lyric poem shall do? Or who shall bound the field of landscape painting? No sooner does Reynolds begin painting, after he has formulated the laws of his art and stated them with decision, than he violates them all. No sooner did musicians settle just what a sonata must be than a greater musician appeared who transcended the narrower form. Moreover, in the field of literature and the arts we often find great difficulty in surmounting the cast of our individual minds; we like certain types and are unconsciously led to condemn all others. The great critic rises superior to his peculiar likes and prejudices, but most of us are hindered by them. One great benefit to be derived from writing this particular kind of criticism is in gaining humility--humility at the greatness of some of the works of the past, before which, when we really look at them, we are moved to stand uncovered, and humility at the lack of real analysis that we have made before we attempt the criticism, and finally humility at the tremendous effort we must make to write criticism at all worthy of the subjects. But the difficulty of writing such criticism well should make you exert yourself to the utmost to acquire skill before you attempt this form. This method, like the historical, makes against superficiality, for it necessitates real knowledge of the class to which the object of criticism belongs, the purposes of the class, its bearings, and then a sure survey of the individual itself. And in forcing the critic to examine his standards to determine their fairness and soundness it makes against hasty judgment. Properly used, this method should result in something like finality of judgment. _c._ _The Appreciative Method_ There come occasions when you are not primarily interested in the historical significance of the subject of criticism, and when you are indifferent to objective standards, when, in fact, you are almost wholly interested in the _individual_ before you, in what it is or in the effect it has on you. You rather _feel_ toward it than care to make a cold analysis of it; you are moved by it, are conscious of a personal reaction to it. In such cases you will make use of what is called appreciative criticism. This method consists in interpreting, often for one who does not know the work, the value of the work, the good things in it, either as they appear to one who studies or as they affect the critic. After reading a new book, for example, or attending a concert, or driving a wonderfully smooth running automobile, or watching the team work in a football game, you are primarily interested in the phenomena shown as they are in their picturesque individuality or in your own emotional reaction to them. In the following example George Gissing makes an appreciative criticism of English cooking, not by coldly tracing the historical influences that have made this cooking what it is, nor by subjecting it to certain fixed standards to which admirable cooking should attain, but rather by telling us what English cooking is and by giving us the flavor of his own emotional delight in it. As so often when my praise has gone forth for things English, I find myself tormented by an after-thought--the reflection that I have praised a time gone by. Now, in this matter of English meat. A newspaper tells me that English beef is non-existent; that the best meat bearing that name has merely been fed up in England for a short time before killing. Well, well; we can only be thankful that the quality is still so good. Real English mutton still exists, I suppose. It would surprise me if any other country could produce the shoulder I had yesterday. Who knows? Perhaps even our own cookery has seen its best days. It is a lamentable fact that the multitude of English people nowadays never taste roasted meat; what they call by that name is baked in the oven--a totally different thing, though it may, I admit, be inferior only to the right roast. Oh, the sirloin of old times, the sirloin which I can remember, thirty or forty years ago! That was English, and no mistake, and all the history of civilization could show nothing on the tables of mankind to equal it. To clap that joint into a steamy oven would have been a crime unpardonable by gods and men. Have I not with my own eyes seen it turning, turning on the spit? The scent it diffused was in itself a cure for dyspepsia. It is a very long time since I tasted a slice of boiled beef; I have a suspicion that the thing is becoming rare. In a household such as mine, the "round" is impracticable; of necessity it must be large, altogether too large for our requirements. But what exquisite memories does my mind preserve! The very coloring of a round, how rich it is, yet how delicate, and how subtly varied! The odor is totally different from that of roast beef, and yet it is beef incontestable. Hot, of course, with carrots, it is a dish for a king; but cold it is nobler. Oh, the thin broad slice, with just its fringe of consistent fat! We are sparing of condiments, but such as we use are the best that man has invented. And we know _how_ to use them. I have heard an impatient innovator scoff at the English law on the subject of mustard, and demand why, in the nature of things, mustard should not be eaten with mutton. The answer is very simple; this law has been made by the English palate--which is impeccable. I maintain it is impeccable. Your educated Englishman is an infallible guide to all that relates to the table. "The man of superior intellect," said Tennyson--justifying his love of boiled beef and new potatoes--"knows what is good to eat"; and I would extend it to all civilized natives of our country. We are content with nothing but the finest savours, the truest combinations; our wealth, and happy natural circumstances, have allowed us an education of the palate of which our natural aptitude was worthy. Think, by the bye, of those new potatoes, just mentioned. Our cook, when dressing them, puts into the saucepan a sprig of mint. This is genius. No otherwise could the flavour of the vegetable be so perfectly, yet so delicately, emphasized. The mint is there, and we know it; yet our palate knows only the young potato.[72] [72] Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Winter." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. Appreciative criticism may on the one hand approach criticism by standards, since, for example, to praise a pianist for melting his tones one into another implies that such melting is a standard. It may, again, consist largely in telling what the thing _is_, as to say that the Progressive Party was one that looked forward rather than backward, planned reforms for the people, insisted on clean politics, etc. It may, in the third place, consist in giving a transcript of the writer's feelings as he is in the presence of the subject of criticism, as one might picture the reaction of inspiration to a view from a mountain peak, or express his elation in listening to a famous singer, or show his wild enthusiasm as he watches his team slowly fight its way over the goal line. In all three of these cases the criticism answers the question, "What does this work seem to be, what do I find in it, and wherein do I think it is good?" That is appreciative criticism. Now since you can adequately estimate in this way only when you are aware of the qualities of the subject, the first requirement for success in this kind of criticism is keen and intelligent sympathy with the work, an open-minded, sensible hospitality to ideas and things. If I am quite unmoved by music, I cannot make reliable appreciative criticism of it. If I have no reaction to the beauty of a big pumping station, when asked for criticism of it, I shall perforce be silent. If my mind is closed to new ideas, I can never "appreciate" a new theory in science, in sociology, in art or in religion. In the next place, I must refrain from morbid personal effusion. Certain of our sentimental magazines have published, at odd times, extremely personal rhapsodies about symphonies and poems. The listener has been "wafted away," has heard the birdies sing, the brooks come purling over their stones, has seen the moon come swimming through the clouds--but the reader of such criticism need not be too harshly censured if he mildly wonders whether the critic ought not to consult a physician. Sometimes this fault occurs through the endeavor to make the criticism attractive, one of the strong demands of the appreciative kind. Since the personal note exists throughout, and since you wish to make your reader attracted to the object that you criticize, your writing should be as pleasing as is legitimately possible. Allow yourself full rein to express the beauties of your subject with all the large personal warmth of which you are capable, with as neatly turned expression as you can make, always remembering to keep your balance, to avoid morbidness in any form. It is in this way that you will give to your criticism one of its most valued qualities, appealing humanness. Less final, perhaps, in some ways, than the historical method or the method by standards, the appreciative is likely to be of more immediate value in re-creating the work for your reader, in giving him a real interpretation of it. And this method, like the other two, fights against superficiality. Such a silly saying--silly in criticism--as "I like it but I don't know why" can have no place here. One may well remember the answer attributed to the artist Whistler, when the gushing woman remarked, "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like!" "So, Madam, does a cow!" If you guard against the morbid or sentimental effusive style, and really tell, honestly and attractively, what you find good in the subject, your criticism is likely to be of value. Note that in the selection which follows, though the author feels strongly toward his subject, he does not fall, at any time, into gushing remarks that make a reader feel sheepish, but rather keeps a really wholesome tone throughout. To-day I have read _The Tempest_. It is perhaps the play that I love best, and, because I seem to myself to know it so well, I commonly pass it over in opening the book. Yet, as always in regard to Shakespeare, having read it once more, I find that my knowledge was less complete than I supposed. So it would be, live as long as one might; so it would ever be, whilst one had the strength to turn the pages and a mind left to read them. I like to believe that this was the poet's last work, that he wrote it in his home in Stratford, walking day by day in the fields which had taught his boyhood to love rural England. It is ripe fruit of the supreme imagination, perfect craft of the master hand. For a man whose life business it has been to study the English tongue, what joy can there be to equal that of marking the happy ease wherewith Shakespeare surpasses, in mere command of words, every achievement of these even, who, apart from him, are great? I could fancy that, in _The Tempest_, he wrought with a peculiar consciousness of this power, smiling as the word of inimitable felicity, the phrase of incomparable cadence, was whispered to him by the Ariel that was his genius. He seems to sport with language, to amuse himself with new discovery of its resources. From king to beggar, men of every rank and of every order of mind have spoken with his lips; he has uttered the lore of fairyland; now it pleases him to create a being neither man nor fairy, a something between brute and human nature, and to endow its purposes with words. Those words, how they smack of the warm and spawning earth, of the life of creatures that cannot rise above the soil! We do not think of it enough; we stint our wonder because we fall short in appreciation. A miracle is worked before us, and we scarce give heed; it has become familiar to our minds as any other of nature's marvels, which we rarely pause to reflect upon. _The Tempest_ contains the noblest meditative passage in all the plays; that which embodies Shakespeare's final view of life, and is the inevitable quotation of all who would sum the teachings of philosophy. It contains his most exquisite lyrics, his tenderest love passages, and one glimpse of fairyland which--I cannot but think--outshines the utmost beauty of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_; Prospero's farewell to the "elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves." Again a miracle; these are things which cannot be staled by repetition. Come to them often as you will, they are ever fresh as though new minted from the brain of the poet. Being perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which arises from the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so entirely savoured as to leave no pungency of gusto for the next approach. Among the many reasons which make me glad to have been born in England, one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother tongue. If I try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the laboring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a sense of chill discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to think that I can read Homer, and, assuredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I; but can I for a moment dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his word is to me as to him who walked by the Hellenic shore when Hellas lived? I know that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than a faint and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for its blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the world's primeval glory. Let every land have joy of its poet; for the poet is the land itself, all its greatness and its sweetness, all that incommunicable heritage for which men live and die. As I close the book, love and reverence possess me. Whether does my full heart turn to the great Enchanter, or to the Island upon which he has laid his spell? I know not. I cannot think of them apart. In the love and reverence awakened by this voice of voices, Shakespeare and England are but one.[73] [73] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Summer." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. Practical Helps We have said that criticism of literature and art seems to be more difficult than criticism of machines and buildings and commercial systems. It is. Literature and art, as being the expression of the high thought of the human heart about the world, man, and his relations to the world, demand in a critic who attempts to estimate them at least some underlying philosophy of life, at least some insight into the affairs of the human soul. And such philosophy, such insight, does not come without being eagerly sought or without much thinking. I can soon tell whether a force pump is efficient; I may for some time pause before I estimate a picture or a lyric poem. For the field of the pump is small and definite, its relations are simple, whereas the lyric is intimately bound up with the whole of life. But we need not, therefore, despair of writing criticism of literature and art. The more sensible thing is to simplify our task. This we can do, in large measure, by asking the famous three questions of Coleridge: First, What did the author intend to do? second, How did he accomplish his purpose, well or ill? third, Was the purpose worth striving for? These three questions, sensibly considered and properly answered, will make a by no means paltry criticism. Still the problem remains, how shall I write this criticism, whatever method I may be pursuing. Certain points of advice may be of use. In the first place, be sure of your attitude, that it is fair and sincere, that it is honest and as unprejudiced as possible. Then do not browbeat your reader into accepting this attitude. Allow him the right to make final decision, and, moreover, credit him with the right to some brains--he will be thus much happier. In the second place, be sure that you know what you are talking about, that you are sure of the _facts_, whether you treat literature or machinery or government or rotation of crops. Without proper facts you can never reach a sound conclusion. And "keep your eye on the object." In no kind of writing is there a greater tendency to fritter off into related subjects which are still not exactly the one in hand. Be sure that you write about the subject, then, and not about some other. In the next place, since many remarks apply equally well to a host of subjects, as, for instance, that it is "efficient" or "inspiring," aim first of all, before you write a word, to find the one characteristic that your subject possesses that distinguishes it from others. Ask yourself wherein it is itself, wherein it differs from other like things, what it is without which this particular subject would not be itself. And having determined this point, be sure to make your reader see it. Whatever else you do, prize that characteristic as the jewel of your criticism's soul, and so sharply define, limit, characterize that your reader's impression will be not the slightest blurred. A student whose theme in criticism received from the instructor the verdict that it was not distinguishing, that it might apply as well to another poet, replied that the theme had originally been written about another, and in the press of circumstance had been copied with only a change in the title. The point is that the criticism had not been a good estimate of the original subject. It was worthless in both cases, because it was not distinguishing. Finally, when you come to the expression, be sure that what you say means something, and that you know what it means. Ask yourself, "What does this mean that I have written?" and, if you have to admit that you do not know, in all conscience suppress it. Avoid the stock phrases that are colorless. You can fling "interesting" at almost any book, or its opposite, "stupid," just as you can apply "true to life," "good style," "suggestive," "gripping," "vital," "red-blooded," "imaginative," and hosts of other words and phrases equally well to scores of subjects. The reviewer through whose mind a constant stream of subjects passes, is forced to fall into this cant unless he be a genius, but you have no business to do so. The trouble here, again, is in not knowing exactly what you wish to say and are saying, lack of thorough knowledge of your subject, for you do not know it until you have reached its heart. The result of half-knowledge is always flabbiness and ineffectiveness. Be careful, moreover, in making the structure of your total criticism, especially in criticism by standards, that you do not make the form of your work seem mechanical and wooden. Do not, for example, except in a report, give a dry list of the qualities which the subject should possess, and then one by one apply them to see if it will pass muster. Such writing may be true, but it is awkward. The form of critical writing should be as neat as that of any other kind of writing. And in all your attitude and expression try to treat the subject as far as possible in its relation to humanity, to keep it from being a mere abstraction, to make it seem of real significance to the lives of men, if possible to the life of your reader. The value of writing criticism should by this time be apparent. It forces our minds out of the fogginess of vague thinking, it makes us see things sharply, it guides us away from the taint of superficiality, it makes a solid base for our opinions. Through criticism we discover why we are interested, and then naturally we desire more interest, and by feeding grow to a larger appreciation and conception of the realm in which our minds are at work. We thus do away with the mere chance whim of like and dislike, and understand why we like what we do. In other words, criticism increases our intelligent reaction to life. EXERCISES I. Mr. Lowell's Work in England (page 193). 1. By what standards is the work of Lowell as United States Minister to England criticized? 2. Do these standards exhaust the qualifications of an admirable minister? 3. If not, what other standards would you suggest? 4. What is the _controlling purpose_ of the criticism? 5. In view of this _controlling purpose_, are the standards which the criticism includes sufficient? 6. Write a similar criticism on any of the following subjects: The presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. The presidency of Woodrow Wilson. The work of Mr. Goethals on the Panama Canal. The career of Mr. Bryce as British Ambassador to the United States. The career of James J. Hill, or of Cecil Rhodes, as Empire-builders. 7. Write a historical criticism of Lowell's career in England, _accounting for_ the attitude he assumed as determined by the understanding of America which the English nation of the time had, and by Lowell's character. II. The American Business Man (page 197). 1. Criticize any of the following by accounting for their rise and their characteristics: The athletic coach in American colleges. The present-day university president. The "information" man at the railway station. The county adviser in agriculture. The reference librarian. The floorwalker in department stores. 2. Write an appreciative criticism of the American Business Man as he might seem to an Englishman on his first trip to America; as he might seem to Plato; to Napoleon; to the poet Shelley; to Shakespeare; to a Turkish rug merchant. III. The "New Poetry" (page 200). 1. Is this criticism fair and unbiased? 2. What attitude does the author try to create in the reader? How would the choice of material have differed had the author desired an opposite effect? 3. Criticize, by relating to the times in which the subject appeared, the following: Cubist Art, Sentimentalism, The Renaissance of Wonder, The Dime Novel, The Wild-West Moving Picture Film. IV. Cargo Steamers (page 203). 1. Criticize, by the method used in this example: Gang Plows, Electric Street Cars, Football Fields, Art Galleries (their architecture), Adding Machines, Systems of Bookkeeping. V. The English Language (page 205). 1. Criticize, by the method of standards, the following: American Costumes as Candidates for Universal Use, The Metric System, The American Monetary System, The Gary Schools, The Civic Center Idea. VI. English Cooking (page 210). 1. If Gissing had been criticizing English cooking from the point of view of a dietitian, what standards would he have chosen? 2. Criticize modern American cooking by showing its rise and the influences that have controlled it. 3. Write an appreciative criticism of any of the following subjects: Thanksgiving Dinner in the Country, A "Wienie Roast," The First Good Meal after an Illness, The Old Swimmin' Hole, The Fudge that Went Wrong, American Hat Trimming, The Florist's Shop, Grandmother's Garden, The Old Orchard. VII. The Tempest (page 213). 1. Does Gissing here allow his natural bias as an Englishman to sway him too much? Do you know as much about _The Tempest_, from this criticism, as you would like to? 2. Criticize, _as an American_, with yet due restraint: Lincoln's Addresses, Mr. Wilson's Leadership in Idealism, Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," MacDowell's "Indian Suite" or "Sea Pieces" or "Woodland Sketches," St. Gaudens' "Lincoln," O. Henry's Stories of New York, John Burroughs' Nature Essays, Patrick Henry's Speeches, Mrs. Wharton's Short Stories. VIII. Make a list of trite or often used expressions that you find in criticisms in the weekly "literary" page of an American newspaper. Try to substitute diction that is more truly alive. IX. When next you hear a symphony, listen so that you can write an Appreciative Criticism. Then look up the history of symphonic music and the life of the composer, and write a Historical Criticism. Do this with any piano composition which you admire. X. Rock Drills. Tappet valve drills were the earliest design made for regular work, and are now the only type really suitable for work with steam, as the condensation of the steam interferes with other valve actions. They have also special advantages for certain work which have prevented them from becoming obsolete. The valve motion is positive and not affected by moisture in compressed air. The machine will keep on boring a hole that may offer great frictional resistance where some other drills would stick. Disadvantages. These drills cannot deliver a perfectly "free" or "dead" blow. In other words, there is always some exhaust air from the front of the piston, caught between it and the cylinder by the reversal of the valve just before the forward stroke is finished. In some ground this is by no means a defect, for where the ground is dead or sticky this cushion helps to "pick the drill up" for a rapid and sure return stroke, preventing its sticking and insuring a maximum number of blows per minute. The length of stroke must be kept long enough for the movement of the piston to knock over the valve. The valve on the Rio Tinto machine is a piston, or spool valve; on other machines the valve is of the plain D-slide valve type. The Rand "giant" drill has a device to reduce the total air pressure on the back of the valve. This of course makes the valve take up its own wear and form its own bearing surface, thus reducing leakage. The seats generally require periodical cleaning and are raised to give material to allow "scraping up." Where the lubrication is deficient, as it generally is, the coefficient of friction may reach 25 per cent, especially in the presence of grit. Taking a valve area of 6 sq. in. exposed to 80-lb. pressure, it might require a force of 120 lbs. to move the valve. This means that the blow struck by the piston is retarded to a corresponding degree, and in some cases the valve tends to wear its seat into an irregular surface. Some writers have contended that the turning movement of the piston is also hindered; but as the blow of the tappet occurs at the beginning and end of the stroke, while the turning movement is a positive and continuous one along all the length of the back stroke, this effect is not noticeable. As the tappet is struck 400 to 600 times per minute, the wear and stress is great. Specially hardened surfaces on pistons and tappets are needed as well as large wearing surfaces, or renewable bushings, for the tappet to rock on. When wear takes place the throw of the valve is reduced; cushioning becomes greater and the stroke is shortened. The resistance and pressure of the tappet tends to throw increased and unequal wear on the opposite side of the cylinder.[74] [74] Eustace M. Weston: _Rock Drills_. By courtesy of the publishers, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. 1. If you were writing an appreciative criticism of the working of a rock drill, how would you change the style of writing? 2. Write a criticism by standards of the Water-Tube Boiler, of the Diesel Engine, of Oil as Fuel for Ships, of one particular make of Corn Planter or Wheel Hoe, or Piano, or Motorcycle, or Machine Gun, or Mining Explosive, or of one method of Advertising, or of the German Army, or of the Dreadnaught as a Fighting Machine. XI. Jingo Morality. Captain Mahan's chosen example is the British occupation of Egypt. To discuss the morality of this, he says, is "as little to the point as the morality of an earthquake." It was for the benefit of the world at large and of the people of Egypt--no matter what the latter might think about it, or how they would have voted about it--and that is enough. Tacitly, he makes the same doctrine apply to the great expansion of the foreign power of the United States, which he foresees and for which he wants a navy "developed in proportion to the reasonable possibilities of the future political." What these possibilities are he nowhere says, and he gives the reader no chance of judging whether they are reasonable or not. But he speaks again and again of the development of the nation and of national sentiment as a "natural force," moving on to its desired end, unconscious and unmoral. What he says of British domination over Egypt, Captain Mahan would evidently and logically be ready to say of American domination of any inferior power--that it has no more to do with morality than an earthquake. Of course, this really means the glorification of brute force. The earthquake view of international relations does away at once with all questions of law and justice and humanity, and puts everything frankly on the basis of armor and guns. Finerty could ask no more. No one could accuse Captain Mahan of intending this, yet he must "follow the argument." He speaks approvingly of international interference with Turkey on account of the Armenian atrocities. But has not the Sultan a complete defense, according to Captain Mahan's doctrine? Is he not an earthquake, too? Are not the Turks going blindly ahead, in Armenia, as a "natural force," and is anybody likely to be foolish enough to discuss the morality of a law of nature? Of course, the powers tell the Sultan that he is no earthquake at all, or, if he is, that they will bring to bear upon him a bigger one which will shake him into the Bosphorus. But if there is no question of morality involved, the argument and the action are simply so much brute force; and that, we say, is what Captain Mahan's doctrine logically comes to. Another inadvertent revelation of the real implications of his views is given where he is dwelling on the fact that "the United States will never seek war except for the defense of her rights, her obligations, or her necessary interests." There is a fine ambiguity about the final phrase, but let that pass. No one can suspect that Captain Mahan means to do anything in public or private relations that he does not consider absolutely just. But note the way the necessity of arguing for a big navy clouds his mind when he writes of some supposed international difficulty: "But the moral force of our contention might conceivably be weakened, in the view of an opponent, by attendant circumstances, _in which case our physical power to support it should be open to no doubt_." That is to say, we must always have morality and sweet reasonableness on our side, must have all our quarrels just, must have all the precedents and international law in our favor, but must be prepared to lick the other fellow anyhow, if he is so thick-headed and obstinate as to insist that morals and justice are on _his_ side. This earthquake and physical-power doctrine is a most dangerous one for any time or people, but is peculiarly dangerous in this country at this time. The politicians and the mob will be only too thankful to be furnished a high-sounding theory as a justification for their ignorant and brutal proposals for foreign conquest and aggression. They will not be slow, either, in extending and improving the theory. They will take a less roundabout course than Captain Mahan does to the final argument of physical power. If it comes to that in the end, what is the use of bothering about all these preliminaries of right and law? They will be willing to call themselves an earthquake or a cyclone, if only their devastating propensities can be freely gratified without any question of morals coming in. With so many signs of relaxed moral fiber about us, in public and in private life, it is no time to preach the gospel of force, even when the preacher is so attractive a man and writer as Captain Mahan.[75] [75] Gustav Pollak: _Fifty Years of American Idealism_. Houghton Mifflin Company. By courtesy of _The Nation_. 1. In the light of this criticism, write an estimate, on the standard of high moral international relations, of Mr. Wilson's policy toward Mexico. 2. Write a criticism by standards of the remark of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. George Creel that they are thankful that England, that America, were _not_ prepared for war in 1914. 3. Write an appreciative criticism of Captain Mahan's doctrine from the point of view of a man who thumps his chest and cries "America über Alles!" Compare the sanity of your criticism with that of the article above. 4. Would the criticism of Captain Mahan's doctrine be sounder if he had been a German? 5. Criticize the statement that what young people need is industrial education, something to teach them how to earn a living. Then criticize the other statement that the necessary thing is to make young people into fine personalities, into true gentlemen and gentlewomen. XII. Vegetarianism. There is to me an odd pathos in the literature of vegetarianism. I remember the day when I read these periodicals and pamphlets with all the zest of hunger and poverty, vigorously seeking to persuade myself that flesh was an altogether superfluous, and even repulsive, food. If ever such things fall under my eyes nowadays, I am touched with a half humorous compassion for the people whose necessity, not their will, consents to this chemical view of diet. There comes before me the vision of certain vegetarian restaurants, where, at a minimum outlay, I have often enough made believe to satisfy my craving stomach; where I have swallowed "savory cutlet," "vegetable steak," and I know not what windy insufficiencies tricked up under specious names. One place do I recall where you had a complete dinner for sixpence--I dare not try to remember the items. But well indeed do I see the faces of the guests--poor clerks and shopboys, bloodless girls and women of many sorts--all endeavoring to find a relish in lentil soup and haricot something-or-other. It was a grotesquely heart-breaking sight. I hate with a bitter hatred the names of lentils and haricots--those pretentious cheats of the appetite, those tabulated humbugs, those certificated aridities calling themselves human food! An ounce of either, we are told, is equivalent to--how many pounds? of the best rump-steak. There are not many ounces of common sense in the brain of him who proves it, or of him who believes it. In some countries, this stuff is eaten by choice; in England only dire need can compel to its consumption. Lentils and haricots are not merely insipid; frequent use of them causes something like nausea. Preach and tabulate as you will, the English palate--which is the supreme judge--rejects this farinaceous makeshift. Even as it rejects vegetables without the natural concomitant of meat; as it rejects oatmeal-porridge and griddle-cakes for a midday meal; as it rejects lemonade and ginger-ale offered as substitutes for honest beer. What is the intellectual and moral state of that man who really believes that chemical analysis can be an equivalent for natural gusto?--I will get more nourishment out of an inch of right Cambridge sausage; aye, out of a couple of ounces of honest tripe; than can be yielded me by half a hundredweight of the best lentils ever grown.[76] [76] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Winter." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. 1. Write a criticism by standards of this appreciative criticism. Is Gissing fair or sensible in his attitude? 2. Write an appreciative criticism of Feminism, Temperance, Socialism, Open-Air Sleeping, The Bahai Movement in America, Community Singing, The Moving Picture as Substitute for the Novel, Drinks that Do Away with Coffee, Systems for Growing Strong without Effort. 3. How far ought a writer to allow purely _personal_ reaction to determine his judgment in criticism? XIII. Emerson's Literary Quality. Emerson's quality has changed a good deal in his later writings. His corn is no longer in the milk; it has grown hard, and we that read have grown hard too. He has now ceased to be an expansive, revolutionary force, but he has not ceased to be a writer of extraordinary gripe and unexpected resources of statement. His startling piece of advice, "Hitch your wagon to a star," is typical of the man, as combining the most unlike and widely separate qualities. Because not less marked than his idealism and mysticism is his shrewd common sense, his practical bent, his definiteness,--in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast. He is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,--the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he husbands himself,--what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as he says, and not down! How alert, how attentive; what an inquisitor; always ready with some test question, with some fact or idea to match or verify, ever on the lookout for some choice bit of adventure or information, or some anecdote that has pith and point! No tyro basks and takes his ease in his presence, but is instantly put on trial and must answer or be disgraced. He strikes at an idea like a falcon at a bird. His great fear seems to be lest there be some fact or point worth knowing that will escape him. He is a close-browed miser of the scholar's gains. He turns all values into intellectual coin. Every book or person or experience is an investment that will or will not warrant a good return in ideas. He goes to the Radical Club, or to the literary gathering, and listens with the closest attention to every word that is said, in hope that something will be said, some word dropped, that has the ring of the true metal. Apparently he does not permit himself a moment's indifference or inattention. His own pride is always to have the ready change, to speak the exact and proper word, to give to every occasion the dignity of wise speech. You are bartered with for your best. There is no profit in life but in the interchange of ideas, and the chief success is to have a head well filled with them. Hard cash at that; no paper promises satisfy him; he loves the clink and glint of the real coin. His earlier writings were more flowing and suggestive, and had reference to larger problems; but now everything has got weighed and stamped and converted into the medium of wise and scholarly conversation. It is of great value; these later essays are so many bags of genuine coin, which it has taken a lifetime to hoard; not all gold, but all good, and the fruit of wise industry and economy.[77] [77] John Burroughs: _Birds and Poets_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. 1. Would you describe this as appreciative criticism or criticism by standards? If it is appreciative, has it any of the value that we commonly attribute to criticism by standards? Why? If it is criticism by standards, does it approach the appreciative? Why? 2. Criticize, in the method that Mr. Burroughs uses, the literary quality and message of Carlyle, Walt Whitman, William James, John Dewey, Macaulay, Hawthorne, Arnold Bennett, and others. 3. Criticize, in the same manner, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the Cathedral of Rheims, the Parthenon, the Capitol at Washington, Michigan Boulevard in Chicago, the Skyline of Lower New York, the Sweep of the Mississippi River, the Quality of Niagara Falls, the Quality of Harold Bell Wright's Works. Of course any other individual can be substituted for any of these. XIV. Military Drill. A lettered German, speaking to me once of his year of military service, told me that, had it lasted but a month or two longer, he must have sought release in suicide. I know very well that my own courage would not have borne me to the end of the twelvemonth; humiliation, resentment, loathing, would have goaded me to madness. At school we used to be "drilled" in the playground once a week; I have but to think of it, even after forty years, and there comes back upon me that tremor of passionate misery which, at the time, often made me ill. The senseless routine of mechanical exercise was in itself all but unendurable to me; I hated the standing in line, the thrusting out of arms and legs at a signal, the thud of feet stamping in constrained unison. The loss of individuality seems to me sheer disgrace. And when, as often happened, the drill-sergeant rebuked me for some inefficiency as I stood in line, when he addressed me as "Number Seven!" I burned with shame and rage. I was no longer a human being; I had become part of a machine, and my name was "Number Seven." It used to astonish me when I had a neighbor who went through the drill with amusement, with zealous energy. I would gaze at the boy, and ask myself how it was possible that he and I should feel so differently. To be sure, nearly all my schoolfellows either enjoyed the thing, or at all events went through it with indifference; they made friends with the sergeant, and some were proud of walking with him "out of bounds." Left, right! Left, right! For my own part, I think I have never hated man as I hated that broad-shouldered, hard-visaged, brassy-voiced fellow. Every word he spoke to me I felt as an insult. Seeing him in the distance, I have turned and fled, to escape the necessity of saluting, and, still more, a quiver of the nerves which affected me so painfully. If ever a man did me harm, it was he; harm physical and moral. In all seriousness I believe that some of the nervous instability from which I have suffered from boyhood is traceable to those accursed hours of drill, and I am very sure that I can date from the same wretched moments a fierceness of personal pride which has been one of my most troublesome characteristics. The disposition, of course, was there; it should have been modified, not exacerbated.[78] [78] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Spring." By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City. 1. Draw up a list of the headings that might appear in a criticism of military drill by standards, in a criticism by the historical method, and in a less purely personal appreciative criticism than the example here. Which of the criticisms, as judged from these headings, would be of most value to a reader of intelligence? 2. In a subject like this is so strong a personal reaction justified? Is it possibly of real value? Does the criticism prove anything about military drill? 3. Write an appreciative criticism of a thoroughly personal nature of any of the following: Carpentry, Rug-beating, Chapel-attendance, Memorizing Poetry, Repairing Automobiles in the Mud, Fishing in the Rain, Cleaning House, Getting up Early, Being Polite to People Whom You Dislike, Being Made to Do One's Duty, College Politics. XV. National Sentiment. National sentiment is a fact and should be taken account of by institutions. When it is ignored, it is intensified and becomes a source of strife. It can be rendered harmless only by being given free play so long as it is not predatory. But it is not, in itself, a good or admirable feeling. There is nothing rational and nothing desirable in a limitation of sympathy which confines it to a fragment of the human race. Diversities of manners and customs and traditions are on the whole a good thing, since they enable different nations to produce different types of excellence. But in national feeling there is always latent or explicit an element of hostility to foreigners. National feeling, as we know it, could not exist in a nation which was wholly free of external pressure of a hostile kind. And group feeling produces a limited and often harmful kind of morality. Men come to identify the good with what serves the interest of their own group, and the bad with what works against those interests, even if it should happen to be in the interest of mankind as a whole. This group morality is very much in evidence during war, and is taken for granted in men's ordinary thought. Although almost all Englishmen consider the defeat of Germany desirable for the good of the world, yet most of them honor a German fighting for his country, because it has not occurred to them that his action ought to be guided by a morality higher than that of the group. A man does right, as a rule, to have his thoughts more occupied with the interests of his own nation than with those of others, because his actions are more likely to affect his own nation. But in time of war, and in all matters which are of equal concern to other nations and to his own, a man ought to take account of the universal welfare, and not allow his survey to be limited by the interest, or supposed interest, of his own group or nation.[79] [79] Bertrand Russell: _National Independence and Internationalism_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company. 1. Write a criticism of any of the following, judging by the results produced: School Spirit, Capitalism, Living in a Small Town, National Costume, Giving up One's Patriotism, Family Loyalty, Race Loyalty, Class Distinction, Restriction of Reading to the authors of One Nation. 2. Would Mr. Russell's criticism be of more value if it showed more emotion, if it were less detached? Can a writer profitably criticize such a reality as _national sentiment_ without introducing emotion? XVI. A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities. The reason is obvious. When we speak of a free government, we mean a government in which the sovereign power is divided, in which a single decision is not absolute, where argument has an office. The essence of the _gouvernement des avocats_, as the Emperor Nicholas called it, is, that you must persuade so many persons. The appeal is not to the solitary decision of a single statesman,--not to Richelieu or Nesselrode alone in his closet,--but to the jangled mass of men, with a thousand pursuits, a thousand interests, a thousand various habits. Public opinion, as it is said, rules; and public opinion is the opinion of the average man. Fox used to say of Burke, "Burke is a wise man, but he is wise too soon." The average man will not bear this: he is a cool, common person, with a considerate air, with figures in his mind, with his own business to attend to, with a set of ordinary opinions arising from and suited to ordinary life. He can't bear novelty or originalities; he says, "Sir, I never heard of such a thing _before_ in my life," and he thinks this a _reductio ad absurdum_. You may see his taste by the reading of which he approves. Is there a more splendid monument of talent and industry than the _Times_? No wonder that the average man--that any one--believes in it. As Carlyle observes: "Let the highest intellect, able to write epics, try to write such a leader for the morning newspapers: it cannot do it; the highest intellect will fail." But did you ever see anything there that you had never seen before? Out of the million articles that every one has read, can any one person trace a single marked idea to a single article? Where are the deep theories and the wise axioms and the everlasting sentiments which the writers of the most influential publication in the world have been the first to communicate to an ignorant species? Such writers are far too shrewd. The two million or whatever number of copies it may be they publish, are not purchased because the buyers wish to know the truth. The purchaser desires an article which he can appreciate at sight; which he can lay down and say, "An excellent article, very excellent--exactly my own sentiments." Original theories give trouble; besides, a grave man on the Coal Exchange does not desire to be an apostle of novelties among the contemporaneous dealers in fuel,--he wants to be provided with remarks he can make on the topics of the day which will not be known _not_ to be his, that are not too profound, which he can fancy the paper only reminded him of. And just in the same way, precisely as the most popular political paper is not that which is abstractly the best or most instructive, but that which most exactly takes up the minds of men where it finds them, catches the fleeting sentiment of society, puts it in such a form as society can fancy would convince another society which did not believe; so the most influential of constitutional statesmen is the one who most felicitously expresses the creed of the moment, who administers it, who embodies it in laws and institutions, who gives it the highest life it is capable of, who induces the average man to think, "I could not have done it any better if I had had time myself." It might be said that this is only one of the results of that tyranny of commonplace which seems to accompany civilization. You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor. What law is so cruel as the law of doing what he does? What yoke is so galling as the necessity of being like him? What espionage of despotism comes to your door so effectually as the eye of the man who lives at your door? Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits. Of course, if we do not, no formal ban issues; no corporeal pain, no coarse penalty of a barbarous society is inflicted on the offender: but we are called "eccentric"; there is a gentle murmur of "most unfortunate ideas," "singular young man," "well-intentioned, I dare say; but unsafe, sir, quite unsafe." The prudent of course conform: The place of nearly everybody depends on the opinion of every one else. There is nothing like Swift's precept to attain the repute of a sensible man, "Be of the opinion of the person with whom at the time you are conversing." This world is given to those whom this world can trust. Our very conversation is infected: where are now the bold humor, the explicit statement, the grasping dogmatism of former days? they have departed, and you read in the orthodox works dreary regrets that the art of conversation has passed away. It would be as reasonable to expect the art of walking to pass away: people talk well enough when they know to whom they are speaking; we might even say that the art of conversation was improved by an application to new circumstances. "Secrete your intellect, use common words, say what you are expected to say," and you shall be at peace; the secret of prosperity in common life is to be commonplace on principle. Whatever truth there may be in these splenetic observations might be expected to show itself more particularly in the world of politics: people dread to be thought unsafe in proportion as they get their living by being thought to be safe. "Literary men," it has been said, "are outcasts"; and they are eminent in a certain way notwithstanding. "They can say strong things of their age; for no one expects they will go out and act on them." They are a kind of ticket-of-leave lunatics, from whom no harm is for the moment expected; who seem quiet, but on whose vagaries a practical public must have its eye. For statesmen it is different: they must be thought men of judgment. The most morbidly agricultural counties were aggrieved when Mr. Disraeli was made Chancellor of the Exchequer: they could not believe he was a man of solidity, and they could not comprehend taxes by the author of "Coningsby" or sums by an adherent of the Caucasus. "There is," said Sir Walter Scott, "a certain hypocrisy of action, which, however it is despised by persons intrinsically excellent, will nevertheless be cultivated by those who desire the good repute of men." Politicians, as has been said, live in the repute of the commonalty. They may appeal to posterity; but of what use is posterity? Years before that tribunal comes into life, your life will be extinct; it is like a moth going into chancery. Those who desire a public career must look to the views of the living public; an immediate exterior influence is essential to the exertion of their faculties. The confidence of others is your _fulcrum_: you cannot--many people wish you could--go into Parliament to represent yourself; you must conform to the opinions of the electors, and they, depend on it, will not be original. In a word, as has been most wisely observed, "under free institutions it is necessary occasionally to defer to the opinions of other people; and as other people are obviously in the wrong, this is a great hindrance to the improvement of our political system and the progress of our species."[80] [80] Walter Bagehot: "The Character of Sir Robert Peel," _Works_, vol. III. Travelers Insurance Company, Hartford, Conn. 1. Apply Bagehot's criticism of the effects of a democratic average to the fate of Socrates, Jesus, Columbus, Galileo, Roger Williams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln. Do your results justify Bagehot's statements? 2. If Bagehot's theory is true, how do you account for any advance in a democracy, for woman suffrage, for example, or the election of senators by popular vote, or the inaugurating of an income tax? 3. Apply his remarks about literary men to the career of Thomas Carlyle, Heine, Galsworthy, and others who have criticized their times. 4. Does the Christian religion tend to make a man act on his own original ideas? XVII. Do you believe the following statement by a well-known musical critic? If the statement is true, how far is it possible to extend it, to how many forms of art or business? While the lover of music may often be in doubt as to the merit of a composition, he need never be so in regard to that of a performance. Here we stand on safe and sure ground, for the qualities that make excellence in performance are all well known, and it is necessary only that the ear shall be able to detect them. There may, of course, be some difference of opinion about the reading of a sonata or the interpretation of a symphony; but even these differences should be rare. Differences of judgment about the technical qualities of a musical performance should never exist. Whether a person plays the piano or sings well or ill is not a question of opinion, but of fact. The critic who is acquainted with the technics of the art can pronounce judgment upon a performance with absolute certainty, and there is no reason in the world why every lover of music should not do the same thing. There should not be any room for such talk as this: "I think Mrs. Blank sang very well, didn't you?" "Well, I didn't like it much." And there should be no room for the indiscriminate applause of bad performances which so often grieve the hearts of judicious listeners. Bad orchestral playing, bad piano playing, bad singing are applauded every day in the course of the musical season by people who think they have a right to an opinion. I repeat that it is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact; and a person might just as well express the belief that a short fat man was finely proportioned as to say that an ill-balanced orchestra was a good one, and he might as well say that in his opinion a fire-engine whistle was music as to say that a throaty voice-production was good singing.[81] [81] W. H. Henderson: _What is Good Music_? By courtesy of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright, 1898. CHAPTER VII THE INFORMAL ESSAY It is a fine thing to be serious, to draw one's self up to a formal task of explaining a machine or analyzing an idea or criticizing a novel; and it is just as fine, and often more pleasurable, to banish the grim seriousness of business and take on pliancy, smile at Life--even though there be tears--and chuckle at Care. Life is more than mere toil; there are the days of high feast and carnival, the days of excursion, and then the calm quiet days of peaceful meditation, sometimes even the days of gray sadness shot through with the crimson thread of sacrifice and sorrow. Often in the least noisy days we see most clearly, with most balance, and with the keenest humor, the finest courage. Like an athlete who cannot be forever in the life of stern rigor but must stray at times into the ways of the drawing-room and the library, so we at times take our ways into the realm of whim and sparkle and laughter, of brooding contemplation, of warm peace of soul. "I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters," says Hazlitt, and, "Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner--and then to thinking!" In such moods we look for a good friend to talk with, and when the friend is not at hand--why, we may write informal essays to make record of our thoughts and feelings. For the Informal Essay is the transcript of a personal reaction to some phase or fact of life, personal because the author does not regard life with the cold eye of the scientific thinker, and because he does not, on the other hand, insist, as does the reformer, that others than himself accept the views he sets forth. He will not force his belief upon others, will not even hold it too feverishly himself, but, if we cannot accept, will even smile urbanely--though he may think we are quite wrong--and bow, and go his own way. The greatest charm of the informal essay is its personal nature. There is little, if indeed anything, personal about the analysis of problems or situations, slight revelation of the author in a treatise on dietetics or party politics or bridge building. This kind of writing is essentially the writing of our business. "But what need of ceremony among friends?" Lamb asks, and hits the heart of the informal essay. We are with friends, and with them, if the mood is on us, we chat about the delights of munching apples on snappy October mornings, or the humor of the scramble for public office, or the romance of spanning a stream in the hills, or, at times, the mysteries of life and death. And then the chat is thoroughly personal, we feel no grim duty, but only the quiet pleasure of uttering whatever we may think or feel, about things in which we find our personal interests aroused. It is as the counterpart in literature of such talk in living that the informal essay reveals the personal note, is really the lyric of prose. For the informal essay does not affirm, "This must be done!" or, "I will defend this with my life!" or, "This is undeniable truth!" Rather it says, "This is how I feel about things to-day," and if the essayist be aware that he has not always felt thus, that he may even feel differently again, he is unabashed. He will make you his confidant, will tell you what he thinks and how he feels, will banish the cold front of business, and will not be secretive and niggardly of himself, but only duly reticent. As soon as we turn to informal essays we find this personal note. Here is Cowley's essay "Of Myself," frankly telling of his life. Our eye falls upon Hazlitt's words, "I never was in a better place or humor than I am at present for writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good before me, and therefore I will attempt it." Such intimacy, such personal contact is to be found only in the informal essay. Only in a form of writing that we frankly acknowledge as familiar would Samuel Johnson write "The Scholar's Complaint of His Own Bashfulness." And once in the writing, the author cannot keep himself out. Steele, not Addison, wrote the words, "He is said to be the first that made Love by squeezing the Hand"--honest, jovial, garrulous Dick Steele, thinking, perhaps, of his "Darling Prue." If, then, you have some random ideas that interest you, if the memory of your kite-flying days comes strong upon you, or of your early ambitions to be a sailor or a prima donna, if you can see the humor of rushing for trains or eluding taxes, or reciting without study, if you feel keenly the joy of climbing mountains, or canoeing, or gardening, or fussing with engines, or making things with hammer and nails or flour and sugar, if you see the beauty in powerful machinery or in the deep woods and streams and flowers, or the patient heroism--modest heroism--of the men in "Information" booths at railway stations, if you find pathos in the world, or humor, or any personal significance, and are able to understand without being oppressed with seriousness or poignant reality, even of humor,--if you remember or see or feel such things, and wish to talk quite openly about them as they appeal to you, write an informal essay. Now you can write a personal essay that will be enjoyable only if your personality is attractive. And you cannot draw a reader to you unless you have a keen reaction to the facts of life. Writing informal essays is impossible for the man whose life is neutral, who goes unseeing, unhearing through the world; it is most natural to the man who touches life at many points and touches with pleasure. Those magic initials, R. L. S., which the world, especially the young world, loves, mean to us a personality that reveled in playing with lead soldiers, in hacking a way through the tropical forests of Samoa, in pursuing streams to their sources, in cleaning "crystal," in talking with all living men, in reading all living books, in whiling the hours with his flageolet. "I have," says Lamb, "an almost feminine partiality for old china." We think, perhaps, of Bacon as a cold austere figure, until we know him, but is he cold when, writing of wild thyme and water mints he says, "Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread" of sniffing their sweet fragrance? And is a man uninterested who writes, "I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night"? When we consider the loves of that bright flower of English young manhood, Rupert Brooke, we can the more keenly feel the loss that the essay, as well as poetry, had in his untimely death. These have I loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faëry dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamplight; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such-- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;-- All these have been my loves.[82] [82] Rupert Brooke: _Collected Poems_. By courtesy of the publishers, John Lane Company. Lamb's young Bo-bo was in the right of it, the right frame of mind, when he cried, "O, father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats!" The true writer of informal essays can see that Card Catalogues are humorous, that The Feel of Leather Covered Books is sufficiently interesting to deserve treatment, that Shaving, and Going to Bed Last, and Wondering if the Other Man Knows More, and Manners, and Politeness, and The Effect of Office-holding upon Personality, and Intellectual Deviltry, and The Humility of Sinners, and The Arrogance of Saints, and The Joys of Calling Names, and City Chimney-pots, and The "Woman's Page," and Keeping Up, and The Pleasures of Having a Besetting Sin, and The Absurdities of Education, and When Shakespeare Nods, and thousands of other subjects are all waiting to have their essays. Can there be any possible interest in a carpet layer? Mr. Dallas Lore Sharp, as we have seen,[83] finds it quite wonderful. Is he not to be envied that his reaction was too keen to leave the tool lifeless? An informal essayist would even, we think, find taste in the white of an egg. And without this delight in life his essays will not be read, for they will not present a pleasing personality, and the life of the essay is its personal note. [83] See Chapter V. A personality that is quite alive and thoroughly interested in all sorts of things almost necessarily sees the concrete. Most informal essays are full of individual instances, of anecdotes and scraps from life. The author of "The Privileges of Age" in the _Atlantic Monthly_ does not vaguely talk about age in general. She begins, "I have always longed for the privileges of age--since the days when it seemed to me that the elderly people ate all the hearts out of the watermelons," and she continues with the misfortunes of being young, "In coaching, our place was always between the two fattest! O Isabella is thin! She can sit there!" In sheer delight at the memory Hazlitt writes, "It was on the tenth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn of Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." So Addison, when he will tell us of Sir Roger de Coverley, confides to us his habit of standing up in church service, even in prayer time, to look round him and see if all his tenants are there, or shows him calling out lustily to John Matthews, "to mind what he was about and not disturb the congregation" when John was kicking his heels for diversion. Concrete again, is Sir Roger's remark at the theater, "And let me tell you ... though he speaks but little, I like the old Fellow in Whiskers as well as any of them." All such detailed bits of life the essayist relishes, and in turn they enrich his personality and make him able to give the personal note that is the heart of the informal essay. This mood of human interest is illustrated, of course, by other writers than the informal essayists. The historian Parkman filled his volumes with the intimate details of personal experience that keep them warm and forever alive. As distinct from the dry-as-dust chroniclers, who eschew all of the throbbing incidents of life, he was eager to include whenever inclusion would help the reader's true imagination, such details as that, back in colonial times, the thunderous praying of a member of the General Court of Massachusetts, who had retired to his room for Heavenly counsel, revealed the secret of the proposed attack upon the fortress of Louisbourg to a landlady--and hence to all the world. Nor does he fail to mention that when the Grand Battery at Louisbourg was captured, William Tufts, of Medford, a lad of eighteen, climbed the flagstaff with his red coat in his teeth and made it fast to the pole for a flag. As we read Parkman's words, we can feel his heart glow with the joy of the climbing lad, we know that in the historian there was beating the throb of human love such as would have made him an admirable essayist had he turned his hand to the form. If, then, you feel like confidential writing, what may your subjects be? Essayists have written about three main classes of subjects: first always, people, their glory, their pathos, their sadness, and their whims; second, nature as it appeals to the writers in a personal way, reflecting their joys and sorrows, or contributing to their sense of pleasure, beauty, and companionship in the world; and third, matters of science, industry, art, literature, as the essayists think these affect the emotions of humanity. If you are in wonderment and desire to speak of the bravery of men fighting the battle of life, you may write with Stevenson the somber but inspiring "Pulvis et Umbra." If you are tempted to smile at the tendency of people to announce beliefs militantly, you may write with Mr. Crothers "On Being a Doctrinaire." If man's ceaseless quest of the perfect appeals, you may write with Mr. Sharp "The Dustless Duster." The interesting old custom of having an awesome "spare chamber," the hurly-burly and humor of moving, the fascinating process of shaving that Grandfather performs on Sunday, the ways in which some people make themselves lovable, others hateful, others pitiful, and still others ridiculous--these are your rightful field if you but care to use them. The informal essayist loves humanity not blindly but wisely. "There is something about a boy that I like," Charles Dudley Warner wrote, and thereby proved himself worthy to write such essays. Lamb, thinking of chimney-sweeps, cries out, "I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks--poor blots--innocent blacknesses." Nor is the essayist restricted to the lives of others; the true informal essayist never forgets his own boyhood. The swimming and fishing larks, the tramp for the early chestnuts, the machines that you built at ten years, the tricks you played on friends and enemies, human and four-footed--these await your essay. Especially your grown-up self offers a fertile meadowland of essays. What are your hobbies--and have you any follies? If you can but poke fun at yourself, we will listen. Finally, if you have an interesting acquaintance, a rosy corner grocer, or a maiden aunt of the old school, or a benignant grandfather, or a quaint laundress, or "hired man," or anybody who is worth the words--and who is not?--and who really interests you, you may make a character sketch. Thus Stevenson in "A Scotch Gardener," Leigh Hunt in "The Old Lady," "The Old Gentleman," "The Maidservant," and John Brown in "Jeems the Doorkeeper." Remember only one thing--you must, for some reason, see attractiveness in the character, even the paradoxical attractiveness of repulsion. Remember that Hazlitt wrote an essay on "The Pleasures of Hating." When people do not offer subjects, turn to nature, as Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Sharp and John Muir have turned in our day, and as others have turned at times ever since there was an essay. Do you admire the cool deep woods, the songs of the thrushes, the clouds that roll into queer shapes, the endlessly talking brooks, the bugs that strive and fight and achieve, the queer hunted live things that you see everywhere? There is your essay. Mr. Warner wrote a delightful series about gardening in which he makes fun--partly of himself, partly of nature. Richard Jefferies found a subject in "July Grass." Mr. Belloc gives the spirit of the primeval currents of air that bore the ships of our forefathers in his essay, "On a Great Wind." California sequoias, red-eyed vireos, the pig in his pen, the silly hens in their yard, friendly dogs, a group of willows, a view from a mountain-top, trees that rush past as you skim the road in your car, there's hardly a phase of nature that does not offer an essay, have you but the eyes to see and the heart to warm. One caution must be given. This kind of essay will try to lure you into words that seem poetic but really lie; beware that you tell the truth, for a sunset, glorious though it is, is still a sunset. For the higher imaginative flights we reserve our verse. On the other hand, scientific analysis is not for the essay; it is too impersonal. Nature, as seen in the informal essay, is the nature of emotion that keeps its balance through humor and sanity. Do not, then, write an essay about nature unless you are sure of your balance, unless you are sure that you can tell the truth. But the essayist does not stop with the creations in nature; he goes on to the works of man. He sees the exquisite beauty of a deftly guided mathematical problem, the answer marshaled to its post in order, he feels the exultation of a majestic pumping station, he knows the wonder of the inspiration of artists. As you pass the steel skeleton of the skyscraper, or see the liner gliding up the harbor, or thrill to the locomotive that paws off across the miles, or stand in awe and watch the uncanny linotype machine at its weird mysteries, you may find your subject all ready for the expression. Mr. Joseph Husband finds the romance of these.[84] Books, too, chats with your favorite authors, trips through art galleries, listening to concerts, finding the wonders of the surgeon,--all these, as they appeal to you, as you react to them, as they disclose a meaning, are fit subjects for your essay. Thus Mr. Crothers writes in "The Hundred Worst Books." [84] _America at Work._ Men, nature, things, all are at your beck if you but keenly feel their appeal, if you have an honest thought about them. As you treat them do not hesitate to use the word "I"; in the essay we expect the word, we look for it, we miss it when it eludes us, for the great charm of the informal essay is its personal note, its revelation of the heart of the writer. Since the essay is urbanely personal, it does not take itself too seriously. Our definition declared that the essayist will not try to force his views upon his reader nor hold them too feverishly himself. If you are militant about a subject, you should write, not an informal essay, but a treatise or an argument in which full play will be given to your cudgels. If you violently believe in woman-suffrage--as you well may--so that you can be only dead-serious about it, do not write an informal essay. For the essay aims at the spirit as well as the intellect, hopes to create a glow in the reader as well as to convince him of a truth. You should write an informal essay when you are in the mood of Sir Roger de Coverley as he remarked, "There is much to be said on both sides." This does not mean that you should write spinelessly--not in the least; it means only that you should be an artist rather than a blind reformer. Sometimes the mind wishes to go upon excursion, to give play to the "wanton heed and giddy cunning" that are in the heart. The essay, says Richard Middleton, "should have the apparent aimlessness of life, and, like life, its secret purpose." It may be mere "exuberant capering round a discovered truth," to borrow Mr. Chesterton's phrase. Again, it may feel the length of the shadows, the cold breath of the mists of the still, unpierced places. The essay does not deny the shadows; it rather believes in riding up to the guns with a smile and the gesture of courtesy. It sees the truth always, but it also prefers not to be a pest in declaring the truth disagreeably. "Therefore we choose to dally with visions." Many an informal essay has been written on "Death," but not in the mood of the theologian. The essay has about it the exquisite flavor of personality such as we find in the cavalier lads who rode to feasting or to death with equal grace and charm. The real essay ought not to leave its reader uncomfortable; it leaves to the militant writers to work such mischief. Do not, therefore, ever allow your essay to become a sermon, for to the sermon there is only one side. And do not try to wrench a moral from everything. If you do, the moral will be anæmic and thin. Do not, after watching brooks, be seized with a desire to have your reader "content as they are." Nor, after the locomotive has melted into the distance shall you buttonhole your reader and bid him, like the engine, be up and doing! Better is it to play pranks with respectability and logic. Stevenson's ability to write charming essays came partly from the fact that, as Barrie has said of him, "He was the spirit of boyhood tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelling it to come back and play." Mr. Chesterton often inspires us to do some really new thinking by his ridiculous contentions. Where but in the essay could a man uphold the belief that Faith is Nonsense and perhaps Nonsense is Faith? In fact, humor is always present in the informal essay. It may be grave or even sad, it is never really boisterous, it is best subtle and quiet, but of whatever kind it should be present. Meredith said "humor is the ability to detect ridicule of those we love without loving them the less." Note, in the light of these words, John Brown's description of his friend Jeems: "Jeems's face was so extensive, and met you so formidably and at once, that it mainly composed his whole; and such a face! Sydney Smith used to say of a certain quarrelsome man, 'His very face is a breach of the peace.' Had he seen our friend's he would have said that he was the imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on business in a blue greatcoat." Lamb had the gentle humor in exquisite degree, kindly and shrewd. When the little chimney-sweep laughed at him for falling in the street Lamb thought, "there he stood ... with such a maximum of glee and minimum of mischief, in his mirth--for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it--that I could have been content, if the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and mockery till midnight." The humor is often ironic, frequently dry and lurking, but kindly still, for the essayist loves his fellow man. Since the essay is not super-serious, it need not be too conscientiously thorough and exhaustive. It must, to be sure, have some point, some core of thought, must meditate, but it need not reach a final conclusion. It often believes, with Stevenson, that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive," and it spends its time on the pleasant way. It takes conclusions about as seriously as we take them when we sit with pipe and slippers by the fireside and chat. Its view of the subject is limited also. It is not a piece of research, it need not cover the whole ground with all the minutiæ. The essayist, first of all, will admit that he does not say all that might be said. Very likely he will declare that he is merely making suggestions rather than giving a treatment. Think how endless a real treatise on old china would be, and then how brief and sketchy Lamb's essay is. The beauty of writing an informal essay is that you can stop when you please, you do not feel the dread command of the subject. Just as the conclusion may be dodged, so the strict laws of rhetoric may be winked at. De Quincey remarks, "Here I pause for a moment to exhort the reader ... etc.," and for a whole page talks about a different subject! But we do not mind, for, as has been said of him--and the remark is equally true of many essayists--he is like a good sheep dog, he makes many detours, may even disappear behind a knoll, but finally he will come eagerly and bravely back with his flock and guide the sheep home. Digressions are allowable, so long as safe return is made. The formlessness of the essay is to be held by an invisible web that is none the less binding, like the bonds of the Fenris wolf. We may go round the subject or stand off and gaze at it, may introduce anecdotes, bits of conversation, illustrations of various sorts, may even cast the essay largely in narrative form, so long as at the heart of it there is our idea. "You may tack and drift, only so you tack and drift round the buoy." Hazlitt, in "On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," uses much conversation. Thackeray, in "Tunbridge Toys," clings to the narrative medium. Mr. Richard Burton, in the foreword to his _Little Essays in Literature and Life_, sums up the informal essay thus: The way of the familiar essay is one, of the formal essay another. The latter is informational, it defines, proves; the former, seeking for friendlier and more personal relations with the reader, aims at suggestion, stimulation. The familiar essay can be an impressionistic reflection of the author's experience in the mighty issues of living, or it may be the frank expression of a mere whim. It should touch many a deep thing in a way to quicken the sense of the charm, wonder, and terror of the earth. The essayist can fly high, if he but have wings, and he can dive deeper than any plummet line of the intellect, should it happen that the spirit move him. It is thus the ambition of the familiar essayist to speak wisdom albeit debonairly, to be thought-provoking without heaviness, and helpful without didacticism. Keenly does he feel the lachrymæ rerum, but, sensible to the laughing incongruities of human expression, he has a safeguard against the merely solemn and can smile at himself or others, preserving his sense of humor as a precious gift of the high gods. And most of all, he loves his fellow men, and would come into fellowship with them through thought that is made mellow by feeling....[85] [85] Richard Burton: _Little Essays in Literature and Life_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Century Company, New York City. And so we return to our definition: the essay is the transcript of personal reaction to some phase or fact of life, not weighted with an over-solemn feeling of responsibility, charged with never-failing balance and humor and liberty to wander without necessarily arriving, frankly individual in its treatment of life, life as it seems to the writer, whether the essay be about people or things or nature. Of the length of the essay we may not be too definite. It may be only a page in duration; it may cover fifty. When the writer has said what he wishes to say, he blithely ceases, and leaves the work to the reader. In style all the graces, all the lightness, the daintiness, the neatness that he can command the author uses. He loves words for their sound, their suggestiveness, their color. And since he is frequently expressing a mood, he will, so far as he can, adapt the style to the mood. So Lamb, in the exquisite reverie, "Dream Children," casts his vision into the dreamy cadence that lures us into his very mood. So, finally, Mr. Belloc, describing the wind, says: When a great wind comes roaring over the eastern flats toward the North Sea, driving over the Fens and the Wingland, it is like something of this island that must go out and wrestle with the water, or play with it in a game or battle; and when, upon the western shores, the clouds come bowling up from the horizon, messengers, out-riders, or comrades of the gale, it is something of the sea determined to possess the land. The rising and falling of such power, its hesitations, its renewed violence, its fatigue and final repose--all these are symbols of a mind; but more than all the rest, its exultation! It is the shouting and hurrahing of the wind that suits a man.[86] [86] Hilaire Belloc: "On a Great Wind." _From First and Last._ By courtesy of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. THE PRIVILEGES OF AGE[87] [87] From The Contributors' Club. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company. I have always longed for the privileges of age,--since the days when it seemed to me that the elderly people ate all the hearts out of the watermelons. Now it suddenly occurs to me that I am at last entitled to claim them. Surely the shadow on the dial has moved around it, the good time has come, and the accumulated interest of my years shall be mine to spend. Have you not had the same experience? For many years, as you may have noticed, the majority of the inhabitants of the earth were old. Even those persons over whom we were nominally supposed to exercise a little brief authority were older than we, and we approached the dragons of our kitchen with a deprecating eye. But now the majority has moved behind us; most people, even some really quite distinguished people, are younger than we. No longer can we pretend that our lack of distinction is due to immaturity. No longer can we privately assure ourselves that some day we, too, shall do something, and that it is only the becoming modesty of youth which prevents our doing it at once. One thing, willy-nilly, we have done,--or rather nature has done it for us. She is like von Moltke. "Without haste, without rest," is her motto, and knowing our tendency to dally, she quietly takes matters into her own hands. Suddenly, unconscious of the effort, we awake one morning and find ourselves old. If we can only succeed in being old enough, we shall also be famous, like old Parr, who never did anything, so far as I am aware, but live to the age of one hundred and forty-five. In order properly to appreciate our present privileges, let us consider the days of old and the years that are past. It was in the time before motors, and we rode backwards in the carriage. We did not like to ride backwards. In traveling, we were always allotted the upper berths. There was no question about it. We couldn't expect our venerable aunt, or our delicate cousin, or our dignified grandmother to swing up into an upper berth, could we? And in those days they cost just as much as lower ones and we paid our own traveling expenses. How expert we grew at swinging up and swinging down! Naturally the best rooms at the hotels went to the elder members of the party. In coaching, our place was always between the two fattest! "O Isabella is thin! she can sit there!" And what did we ask in return for these many unnoticed renunciations? Only the privilege of getting up at five to go trout-fishing, or the delight of riding all morning cross-saddle to eat a crumby luncheon in a buggy forest at noon. We wondered what the others meant when they said that the beds were not comfortable, and we marveled why the whole machinery of heaven and earth should be out of gear unless, at certain occult and punctually recurring hours, they had a cup of tea. And why was it necessary to make us unhappy if they didn't have a cup of tea? Young people are supposed to be mannerly, at least they were in my day, but old people may be as rude as they please, and no one reproves them. If they do not like a thing, they promptly announce the fact. The privilege of self-expression they share with the very young. Which reminds me, I detest puddings. Henceforth I shall decline to eat them, even in the house of my friends. Mine is the prerogative no longer to dissemble, for hypocrisy is abhorrent to the members of the favored class to which I now belong. They are like a dear and honored servitor of mine who used, on occasion, to go about her duties with the countenance of a thunderstorm. "Elizabeth," said I, once, reprovingly, "you should not look so cross." "But Miss Isabella," she remarked with reason, "if you don't _look_ cross when you _are_ cross, how is any one to know you are cross?" Speaking of thunderstorms, I am afraid of them. I have always been afraid since the days when I used to hide under the nursery table when I felt one coming. But was I allowed to stay under the table? Certainly not. All these years have I maintained a righteous and excruciating self-control. But old ladies are afraid and unashamed. I have heard of one who used to get into the middle of a featherbed. I shall not insist on the featherbed, but I shall close the shutters and turn on the lights and be as cowardly as I please. The two ends of life, infancy and age, are indulged in their little fancies. For a baby, we get up in the night to heat bottles, and there are certain elderly clergymen whose womenkind always arise at four in the morning to make coffee for them. That is not being addicted to stimulants. But the middle span of life is like a cantilever bridge: if it can bear its own weight it is expected to bear anything that can possibly be put upon it. "Old age deferred" has no attractions for me. I decline to be middle-aged. I much prefer to be old. Youth is haunted by misgivings, by hesitancies, by a persistent idea that, if only we dislike a thing enough, there must be some merit in our disliking it. Not so untrammeled age. From now on, I practice the philosophy of Montesquieu and pursue the general good by doing that which I like best. Absolutely and unequivocally, that which I like best. For there is no longer any doubt about it: I have arrived. I do not have to announce the fact. Others realize it. My friends' daughters give me the most comfortable chair. They surround me with charming, thoughtful, delicate little attentions. Mine is the best seat in the motor, mine the host's arm at the feast, mine the casting vote in any little discussion. O rare Old Age! How hast thou been maligned! O blessed land of privilege! True paradise for the disciples of Nietzsche, where at last we dare appear as selfish as we are! A BREATH OF APRIL[88] [88] John Burroughs: _Leaf and Tendril_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. These still, hazy, brooding mid-April mornings, when the farmer first starts afield with his plow, when his boys gather the buckets in the sugar-bush, when the high-hole calls long and loud through the hazy distance, when the meadow-lark sends up her clear, silvery shaft of sound from the meadow, when the bush sparrow trills in the orchard, when the soft maples look red against the wood, or their fallen bloom flecks the drying mud in the road,--such mornings are about the most exciting and suggestive of the whole year. How good the fields look, how good the freshly turned earth looks!--one could almost eat it as does the horse;--the stable manure just being drawn out and scattered looks good and smells good; every farmer's house and barn looks inviting; the children on the way to school with their dinner-pails in their hands--how they open a door into the past for you! Sometimes they have sprays of arbutus in their button-holes, or bunches of hepatica. The partridge is drumming in the woods, and the woodpeckers are drumming on dry limbs. The day is veiled, but we catch such glimpses through the veil. The bees are getting pollen from the pussy-willows and soft maples, and the first honey from the arbutus. It is at this time that the fruit and seed catalogues are interesting reading, and that the cuts of farm implements have a new fascination. The soil calls to one. All over the country, people are responding to the call, and are buying farms and moving upon them. My father and mother moved upon their farm in the spring of 1828; I moved here upon mine in March, 1874. I see the farmers, now going along their stone fences and replacing the stones that the frost or the sheep and cattle have thrown off, and here and there laying up a bit of wall that has tumbled down. There is a rare music now in the unmusical call of the phoebe-bird--it is so suggestive. The drying road appeals to one as it never does at any other season. When I was a farm-boy, it was about this time that I used to get out of my boots for half an hour and let my bare feet feel the ground beneath them once more. There was a smooth, dry, level place in the road near home, and along this I used to run, and exult in that sense of light-footedness which is so keen at such times. What a feeling of freedom, of emancipation, and of joy in the returning spring I used to experience in those warm April twilights! I think every man whose youth was spent on the farm, whatever his life since, must have moments at this season when he longs to go back to the soil. How its sounds, its odors, its occupations, its associations, come back to him! Would he not like to return again to help rake up the litter of straw and stalks about the barn, or about the stack on the hill where the grass is starting? Would he not like to help pick the stone from the meadow, or mend the brush fence on the mountain where the sheep roam, or hunt up old Brindle's calf in the woods, or gather oven-wood for his mother to start again the big brick oven with its dozen loaves of rye bread, or see the plow crowding the lingering snowbanks on the side-hill, or help his father break and swingle and hatchel the flax in the barnyard? When I see a farm advertised for rent or for sale in the spring, I want to go at once and look it over. All the particulars interest me,--so many acres of meadow-land, so many of woodland, so many of pasture--the garden, the orchard, the outbuildings, the springs, the creek--I see them all, and am already half in possession. Even Thoreau felt this attraction, and recorded in his Journal: "I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms with a view to purchasing, if not paying for them." Blessed is the man who loves the soil! THE AMATEUR CHESSMAN[89] [89] By Frances Lester Warner, from "The Point of View" in _Scribner's Magazine_. I used to envy chess-players. Now I play. My method of learning the game was unprincipled. I learned the moves from the encyclopædia, the traditions from "Morphy, On Chess," and the practice from playing with another novice as audacious as I. Later, finding some people who could really play, I clove to them until they taught me all that I could grasp. My ultimate ambition is, I suppose, the masterly playing of the game. Its austere antiquity rebukes the mildest amateur into admiration. I therefore strive, and wistfully aspire. Meanwhile, however, I am enjoying the gay excitement of the unskilled player. There is nobody like the hardy apprentice for getting pleasure out of chess. We find certain delights which no past-master can know; pleasures exclusively for the novice. Give me an opponent not too haughty for my unworthy steel, one who may perhaps forget to capture an exposed bishop of mine, an opponent who, like me, will know the early poetry of mad adventure and the quiet fatalism of unexpected defeat. With this opponent I will engage to enjoy three things which, to Mr. Morphy, immortality itself shall not restore--three things: a fresh delight in the whimsical personality of the various chessmen; the recklessness of uncertainty and of unforeseen adventure; the unprecedented thrill of checkmating my opponent by accident. Mr. Morphy, I admit, may perhaps have retained through life a personal appreciation of the characters of the pieces: the conservative habits of the king; the politic, sidelong bishop; the stout little roundhead pawns. But since his forgotten apprenticeship he has not known their many-sided natures. To Mr. Morphy they long since became subject--invariably calculable. With a novice, the men and women of the chess-board regain their individuality and their Old World caprices, their mediæval greatness of heart. Like Aragon and the Plantagenets, they have magnificent leisure for the purposeless and aimless quest. The stiff, kind, circular eyes of my simple boxwood knight stare casually about him as he goes. Irresponsibly he twists among his enemies, now drawing rein in the cross-country path of an angry bishop, now blowing his horn at the very drawbridge of the king. And it is no cheap impunity that he faces in his errant hardihood. My opponent seldom lapses. My knights often die in harness, all unshriven. That risk lends unfailing zest. Most of all, I love my gentle horsemen. My opponent, too, has her loyalties, quixotic and unshaken. Blindly, one evening, I imperiled my queen. Only the opposing bishop needed to be sacrificed to capture her. The spectators were breathless at her certain fate. But my opponent sets high value upon her stately bishop. Rather this man saved for defense than risked for such a captive, feminist though she be, and queen. With ecclesiastical dignity the bishop withdrew, and my queen went on her tranquil way. Of all the men, the king reveals himself least readily. A noncommittal monarch at best. At times imperial and menacing, my king may conquer, with goodly backing from his yeomen and his chivalry. Sometimes, again, like Lear, he is no longer terrible in arms, his royal guard cut down. And at his death he loves always to send urgently for his bishop, who is solacing, though powerless to save. All this is typical of our second pleasure, the exhilaration of incautious and unpremeditated moves. Inexplicable, for example, this pious return of the outbound bishop at the last battle-cry of the king. At times, however, a move may well be wasted to the end that all may happen decently and in order. My opponent shares with me this respect for ceremony. Together we lament the ruins when a lordly castle falls. Our atrocities are never heartless; we never recriminate. My opening moves, in general, are characterized by no mean regard for consequences. Let my men rush forth to the edge of the hostile country. Once there, there will be time enough to peer about and reconnoitre and see what we shall see. Meanwhile, the enemy is battering gloriously at my postern-gate, but at least the fight is on! Part of our recklessness in these opening moves consists in our confidential revelations to each other of all our plans and disquieting problems. "This needn't worry you at present," I remark, planting my castle on an irrational crag. "I'm only putting it there in _case_." That saves much time. My opponent might otherwise have found it necessary to waste long minutes in trying to fathom the unknowable of my scheme. Without this companionable interchange chess is the most lonely of human experiences. There you sit, a being solitary and unsignaled--a point of thought, a mere center of calculation. You have no partner. All the world is canceled for the time, except, perched opposite you, another hermit intellect implacably estranged and sinister. Oh, no! As yet we discuss our plots. Poor journeymen players of the royal game! Strange clues to character appear around the friendly chess-board. There is the supposedly neutral observer of the game, who must murmur warnings or lament the ill-judged moves; without him, how would life and chess be simplified? There is the stout-hearted player who refuses to resign though his defeat is demonstrably certain, but continues to jog about the board, eluding actual capture; in life would he resign? There is the player who gives little shrieks at unexpected attacks; the player who explains his mistakes and what he had intended to do instead; the player who makes no sign whether of gloating or of despair. Most striking of all is the behavior of all these when they face the necessity of playing against the handicap of past mistakes; a wrong move may never be retracted by the thoroughbred. No apology, no retracting of the path; we must go on as if the consequences were part of our plan. It lures to allegory, this checkered board, these jousts and far crusades. Then, on to checkmate, the most perfect type of utter finality, clear-cut and absolute. Shah-mat! Checkmate! The king is dead. In most conclusions there is something left ragged; something still in abeyance, in reserve. Here, however, is no shading, no balancing of the scales. We win, not by majority, as in cards; success or failure is unanimous. There was one ballot, and that is cast. No matter how ragged the playing that went before, the end of a game of chess is always perfect. It satisfies the spirit. Always at last comes contentment of soul, though it be our king that dies. The following subjects are suggested as suitable for treatment in informal essays. They can, in many cases, be changed to suit individual experience, can be made either broader or more restricted. Perhaps they will suggest other somewhat similar but more usable subjects. PEOPLE 1. The Pleasures of Selfishness. 2. Wondering if the Other Person Knows More. 3. Pipe and Slippers and Dreams. 4. Middle-aged Kittens. 5. Being "Tough." 6. Early Rising. 7. Scientific Eating. 8. The Joys of the Straphanger. 9. Vicarious Possessions in Shop Windows. 10. Shopping with the Bargain Hunter. 11. New Year's Resolutions. 12. The Gossip of the Waiting-Room (of a Railroad Station, Doctor's Office, etc.). 13. The Stimulation of Closet Skeletons. 14. Planning Houses. 15. Keeping an Expense Book. 16. The Millinery of the Choir. 17. The Joys of Being Profane before the Consciously Pious. 18. "Darius Greens." 19. Tellers of Dreams. 20. Making the Most of Misfortunes. 21. The Moral Value of Carrying a Cane. 22. Souvenir Hunting. 23. The Person Who Has Always Had "The Same Experience Myself." 24. Prayer-meeting Courtships. 25. The Exhaustion of Repose. 26. "See the Birdie, Darling!" 27. Politeness to Rich Relatives. 28. "It must be so; I Read it in a Book!" 29. "Anyway," as Stevenson said, "I did my darndest." 30. The Moral Rigor of the Nightly Setting-up Exercises. 31. "Hooking Rides." 32. A Society to Forbid Learning to Play the Trombone (or Cornet or Piano or anything else). 33. A Sophomore for Life. 34. Country Auctions. 35. The Virtues of Enviousness. 36. The Melancholy of Old Bachelors. 37. Village "Cut-ups." 38. Early Assurances of Doleful Dying. 39. Failing, to make Money, through Failure to make Money. 40. People who never Did Wrong as Children. 41. "Just Wait till I'm Grown-up!" 42. Philosophers' Toothaches. 43. The Morality of Stubbing One's Toe in the Dark. 44. The Dolefulness of Celebrations. 45. What to Do with Bores. 46. The Young and the Still-young Woman. 47. The Satisfaction of Intolerance. 48. The Struggle to be an "Intellectual." 49. Church Socials. 50. The Revelations of Food Sales. 51. White-haired Enthusiasm. 52. "I have It in my Card Index." 53. The Rigors of Shaving. 54. The Right to a "Beauty Box." 55. "Hopelessly Sane." 56. The "Job" After Graduation. 57. The Stupidity of Heaven. 58. The Boon Companions of Hell. 59. People Who Remember When You Were "Only So High!" 60. Being a Gentleman though Rich. 61. Great Men One Might Wish to Have Thrashed. 62. The Awful Servant. 63. Morality When the Thermometer Reads 95°. 64. The Technique of Teas. 65. Dangers of Criticism. 66. Starvation or a New Cook? 67. Superior Profanity. 68. The Logic of the Movies. 69. The "Woman's Page." 70. The Neatness of Men. 71. On Taking Off One's Hat. 72. Fashions in Slang. 73. Ambitions at Thirteen. 74. The Joys of Whittling. 75. Learning, without Education. THINGS 1. Individuality in Shoes. 2. Alarm Clocks. 3. Rail Fences. 4. Chimney Pots. 5. Illuminated Mottoes. 6. "Fresh Paint." 7. Social Caste of Tombstones. 8. The Lure of Banks. 9. The Witchery of Seed Catalogues. 10. Colonial Windows. 11. Fishing Tackle in the Attic in January. 12. The Invitation of the Label. 13. Stolen Umbrellas. 14. The Dolefuless of the Comic Supplement. 15. The Humorousness of Card Catalogues. 16. The Sweets and Dregs of Tin Roofs. 17. The Tyranny of Remembered Melodies. 18. Friendly Old Clothes. 19. The Age of the Pennant. 20. The Upper Berth. 21. Bills in Dining Cars. 22. Pound Cake. 23. The Toothsome Drumstick. 24. Cravats One Might Wish to Have Worn. 25. Spite Fences. 26. Personality of Teapots. 27. "All You Have to Do Is--" 28. Smoke on the Skyline. 29. The First Long Trousers. 30. The New Pipe. 31. The Old Springboard. 32. Drinking Fountains. 33. The Work-savers--now in the Attic. 34. Candlesticks. 35. The Cantankerousness of Gas Engines. 36. Weeds. 37. The Pride of Uniforms. 38. Leather-covered Books. 39. The Pursuit of Oriental Rugs. 40. Wedding Presents. 41. Bird Baths. 42. The Charm of Oil-Heaters. 43. The Coquetry of Gift Shops. 44. The Passing of the Hitching Post. 45. Names One Might Wish to Have Had. 46. Hall Bedrooms. 47. The Lure of Historic Tablets. 48. The Futility of Diaries. 49. Squeaking Boards at Midnight. 50. The Caste of Letter Heads. NATURE 1. Walking in the Rain. 2. Skylines. 3. The Personified Trees of Childhood. 4. Coffee in the Woods. 5. The Psychology of Hens. 6. The Humanity of Barnyards. 7. The Smell of Spring. 8. The Perfume of Bonfires. 9. The Sounds of Running Water. 10. Tracks in the Snow. 11. The Spectrum of Autumn. 12. The Mellowness of Gardens. 13. The Clamor of the Silent Stretches. 14. The Innocent Joy of Not Knowing the Birds. 15. The Rigors of the Sleeping Porch. 16. Inspiration of Mountain-tops. 17. Noises on Cold Winter Nights. 18. Cherries or Robins? 19. The Airedale Pal. 20. Snakes I Have Never Met. 21. The Exhilaration of Winds. 22. Spring Fever. 23. The Philosophy of Campfires. 24. Birds in a City Yard. 25. The Majesty of Thunderstorms. 26. The Music of Snow Water. 27. Hedges. 28. Mountain Springs. 29. The Deep Woods. 30. Summer Clouds. 31. The Companionable Birds. 32. The Dignity of Crows. 33. Trout Pools. 34. Muskrat Trails. 35. The First Flowers of Spring. 36. The Squirrels in the Park. 37. The Dry Sounds in Nature. 38. The Honk of the Flying Wedge. 39. The Pageant of the Warblers. 40. The Challenge of Crags and Ledges. 41. The White-birch Country. 42. Apple Blossom Time. 43. The Majesty of Rivers. 44. Old Orchards. 45. Dried Herbs. 46. Friendly Roadside Bushes. 47. The Exultant Leap of Waterfalls. 48. The Wind in Hemlock, Pine, and Spruce. 49. Tree Houses. 50. The Collection of Pressed Flowers. CHAPTER VIII EXPOSITORY BIOGRAPHY Biography is of three kinds. First there is the purely dramatic, such as we find in the plays of Shakespeare, Barrie, and others, and often in novels of the more dramatic kind, which sets the subject to marching up and down before our eyes, with the gestures and the speech of life. Such biography sometimes covers a whole life, more often only a fraction from which we are to judge of the whole. From this kind of biography we draw our own conclusions of the hero; the producer sweeps aside the curtain, displays his people, bows, and leaves us to our comment. This is a most stimulating form of writing. The reader vicariously treads the Roman Forum, or fights under the banner of the great Alfred, or perhaps jostles in the surge of politics, or dreams an artist's dream, or even performs the humble chores of a lonely farmhouse. The personalities may never have lived except in the writer's brain, yet who that has read of Colonel Newcome ever lets fade from his list of friends that delightful gentleman? Who that has once met Falstaff forgets the roaring, jolly old knave? Stevenson gave witness that almost more than from any one else his courage and good cheer in dark days had caught fire from the personality of Shakespeare's heroine Rosalind. If these persons of the imagination can stimulate, how much more ought the subjects of the other two forms of biography to fire the brain, for they are usually taken from real life, are people who have faced the actual problems such as the reader is meeting, people who have perhaps flamed in a glorious career from birth to death or perhaps have gone quietly all their days. The second form of biography is purely analytical. It watches its subject, follows him through life, and only after this study sets down its words, which aim to state for the reader the meaning of the life. Such biography is illustrated in the brief analyses of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Hardy on page 148. Here the author is the logical thinker who draws the conclusions of careful meditation and says: such was the significance of this man, this woman. The third kind of biography, the expository, the kind with which we are here concerned, attempts to combine the other two, hopes to present the pageant of life which the hero lived, and especially to make an estimate of its importance, its significance. Some novels approach this form when the author stops, as Thackeray often does, to comment on the meaning of his people and their deeds. This kind of biography attempts to accomplish what Carlyle thought should be attempted, the ability to say, "There is my hero, there is the physiognomy and meaning of his appearance and transit on this earth; such was he by nature, so did the world act on him, so he on the world, with such result and significance for himself and us." The Problem The primary object of expository biography is so to build up before the reader's eyes the figure of the hero, so to cast against the background of life the warm personality, so to recreate the lineaments and so to give perspective to the whole that the reader will know the hero, will be able to grasp his hand as a fellow human being with the game of life to play, and will be aware of the significance of the personality to his times and to the reader himself. To _paint the man_ is the pleasurable adventure before the writer. Sir Christopher Wren bade us, if we wished a memorial of him, to "look around" upon the arches and the high dim places of his cathedral. So the writer of expository biography must plant himself in the deeds and desires of his hero, must gaze steadily into his eyes until he discovers the center of his being, and must then set down the words, which, if well enough chosen, wisely enough fitted, will outlast the toughest stone. It is in lack of true comprehension of the hero's life that so many expository biographies fail to inspire the reader, in the failure to remember that the writer is not merely "silently expressing old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times," but is trying to catch and record a living force, to live as long as men understand it and are moved by it. The chief duty of the biographer, then, is to discover the life-problem of his hero, to understand it, to learn how the hero came by it, how he tried to solve it, and what its significance is. Now this is much more easily accomplished with the personalities who have closed their span of existence than with those whom we know still living, with their answer to their problem yet incomplete. Few of us have what Mary Lamb said she possessed, "a knack I know I have of looking into peoples' real character and never expecting them to act out of it--never expecting another to do as I would in the same case." All the facts of personality, the hints and gleams and shadows, bewilder us at times with our friends, and we regret the lack of perspective that reveals the central life-problem. But when we turn to Julius Cæsar, to Jeanne d'Arc, to George Washington, or to some humble dweller of past days, we can see the life whole, can discover the heredity, the natural endowment, the surroundings, the changing deeds and the shifting acquaintances and friends that determined for the hero what the life-problem should be. With the truly remarkable advantage, then, of this central conception, we can fall into cadence with the stride of our hero marching against his problem and can picture forth the struggle and its significance. In every biography there is this problem. Your hero is at "that game of consequences to which we all sit down, the hanger-back not least," as Stevenson called life, and the manner in which the hero perceives the "imperious desires and staggering consequences" will determine the flavor of his life. To turn to Stevenson himself we find a white-hot flame of romance cased in a feeble wraith of a body, the heart of the man daring all things, romping through life a deathless youth before the problem of adjustment between body and spirit. Or take the compounding of that tremendous figure, George Washington--adamant integrity, the zeal which, if unchecked, would often have brought the house tumbling about his ears, the endless capacity for indignation, and with these the patience that left men well-nigh dazed and the self-control that made him god-like. Set him in the midst of the hurly-burly of a young nation as doubtful of itself as youth, as eager, as impetuous, as contradictory, with the forces of the Old World pitted against it and with many traitors in its fold. Then conceive the problem of forming wise conjunction between vision and accomplishment, between desire and restraint, and the life of the man is at once unified, centered, illuminated, and made significant. The same result follows searching to the heart of any hero, high or low, and failure thus to reach the heart causes the pallid uninteresting heaping of details that mean nothing to the reader. No architect can glorify the horizon with the silhouette of a cathedral, nor can he even give a meaning to his accumulation of stone and mosaic and mortar, if he heaps here a pile and there a pile, rears here a chapel, somewhere else as fancy directs lays out an aisle, with no central problem of relationship. Nor can you dignify your hero's nature with a mere basket collection of the flying chips of life--a deed here, a word there, a desire at another time. First, then, discover the problem that your hero faced in the relation of his character to itself and to its times. The Chief Aid in Solving the Problem To discover the problem, really to understand it, requires as your chief tool imaginative sympathy. Without this your writing will leave your hero as flat and shiny as any conscientiously laundered piece of linen. You are to picture him in relief, in the round, to make him live again, step down from his pedestal, and put his shoulder alongside ours and speak to us. We read in a history that faces the necessity of condensation how William the Conqueror "consolidated his domains"--and it means nothing at all to us of stimulating individual value. We do not think of the recalcitrant underlings whose necks he had to force to bow, of the weary eyes that gladly closed at the end of a terrible day's work, of the frequent desire, which at times must be suppressed, perhaps at times gratified, to run a sword through an opposing subject. We forget, in other words, that William was a man, a personality, a bundle of nervous reactions and desires. But the writing fails, as biography, unless we do remember these things. It is in the discovery and understanding of these details and in combining them into a personality that our sympathy is required. No one should set pen to paper in the service of biography who has not a lively personal interest in his hero, who has not an open, loving feeling for him--saint or villain whichever he may be--and desires to make his reader, in turn, _feel_ the hero's personality. The ideal biographer is he who can peep out through the eyes of his hero at the sights which he saw, can feel the surge of ambition, of love, of hate, the quickening of the heart at success, and the cold pallor of defeat. We have seen a grown person watch with cold eyes a child who wrestles with a problem of digging a ditch or building a dam or making a harness for the dog, gradually lose the coldness of indifference, forget the gulf of years, kindle to the problem, and finally with delight catch up spade or leather and give assistance. Until you feel a similar thrill of sharing experience with your hero, do not write about him. Most of us really have this interest but we browbeat ourselves into a belief that a biography, especially an expository biography, must be dull. And, sad though we may be to admit it, most such biographies written for courses in literature or history, are--well, plain stupid. The lives are, to use Samuel Johnson's words, "begun with a pedigree and ended with a funeral," and the dull stretch between is a mere series of events which find unity only in that they all happen to the same person. Such writing is, truly, inexcusable; it is like the railway journey of the unfortunate soul who sees nothing but the clambering aboard and then the folding of the hands for a long dull jouncing until lethargy can be thrown off and it is time to clamber down again. Had the traveler but the insight, or the inclination, he would perceive that his journey is a high adventure spiced with a delicious flavor of challenge and reply. Just so you may find that the writing of expository biography has the charm of life itself. The patient clerk bends over his record sheet and attests the arrival, the departure, of lifeless baggage tossed from hand to hand, from car to car, piled up, taken down and set finally to rest at its destination. But you deal not with lifeless baggage but with the fascinating compound of flesh and blood, of desire and of will, that changes the face of the world. No mere matter-of-fact attitude here, but the perpetual wonder and joy at the turns and flashes of human personality. Rather than be a matter-of-fact man Lamb wisely preferred being a "matter-of-lie" man; the writer of expository biography finds that his material is of such a nature as to be more interesting even than lies. As Sir Thomas Browne said of his not remarkable life, "which to relate were not a history but a piece of poetry and would sound to common ears a fable." Most of us find that the most fascinating study for man is Man. Not only do we believe that "man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave," but that while alive he is more alluring than anything else. We might conceivably even argue that Socrates advised "Know thyself" out of fear lest our curiosity about our fellows absorb all our effort. But so great is our fear of the formality of biography that we often belie our sympathy and think that only the large dim figures of the past, kings and potentates, who stride through mighty events, are possible for treatment. Our fear is false. Stevenson was again correct in saying, "The man who lost his life against a hen roost is in the same pickle with the man who lost his life against a fortified place of the first order." No life ever existed--absolutely not one--that was not capable of an absorbing expository biography. The true biographer never takes the point of view of the philosopher who said, "Most men and women are merely one couple more." Rather he knows that, however slight in the sweeping cycle of time a stick of striped candy may be, to the child who drops it into the gutter it is of more weight than a royal scepter. He knows, too, that the ordinary, respectable citizen, one of the "common people," though he never is subject to scandal like a villain and never molds kingdoms like the great figures of history, is nevertheless, in his quiet sphere, a fit hero for biography. He sees that to such a person the gaining, through patient years of toil, of a little homestead, is as great a victory as for an emperor to conquer a country, that to be elected moderator of the town meeting or president of the "literary club" is a large adventure. Barrie had the imagination to see that the day when the six haircloth chairs entered his mother's parlor as the culmination of a long campaign, was a day to her of thrilling adventure, of conquest, of triumph. And yet we are afraid that biography ought to be dull! Fear of the formality of writing is often the cause of our making expository biography a mere combination of the succession of events which history shows and a few dull comments about the subject, instead of a real interpretation illuminated with the magic of sympathetic understanding. With this fear upon us we write as awkwardly, as lifelessly, as we deport ourselves at a reception where we forget the pulse of humanity and are clutched by the fear of--we know not what. Such a fear would palsy the hand of him who should attempt to weave even the treasury of facts in the following statement with an estimate of their significance. Writing of General Judah P. Benjamin, of the American Civil War, Mr. Gamaliel Bradford says: Benjamin was a Jew. He was born a British subject. He made a brilliant reputation at the Louisiana Bar and was offered a seat in the United States Supreme Court. He became United States senator. When his state seceded, he went with it, and filled three cabinet positions under the Confederacy. He fell with the immense collapse of that dream fabric. Then, at the age of fifty-four, he set himself to build up a new fortune and a new glory, and he died one of the most successful and respected barristers in London.[90] [90] Gamaliel Bradford: _Judah P. Benjamin_. By courtesy of The Atlantic Monthly Company. But with fear thrown off, with enthusiastic desire really to understand sympathetically, we find no lack of interest. To any one the terrible storm in the harbor of Apia, when ships were wrecked like straws and lives were spilled out by scores, would offer material because of the horror of the events. But only with imaginative sympathy could we write an expository biography of a humble "Jackie" on a United States boat in the harbor. With such sympathy, as we read that after the gruelling agony of long fruitless fighting against the storm the sailors of the United States Steamship _Trenton_, which was pounding its wooden hull to splinters on the reef, climbed into the rigging and cheered while the more lucky British boat _Calliope_ steamed past on her way to safety in the open sea, we are thrilled with the fact that of those gallant seamen every one is worthy of record. Some quiet lad from perhaps a white farmhouse tucked into a little valley, who was honestly doing his duty and hoping for the glory of the time when he should be a petty officer, now while the teeth of death are already bared gloriously lifts up his young voice in gallant recognition of his more successful fellows of the _Calliope_! And yet the official record of the event would imply no possibility of finding romance in this humble individual life. The "meanest flower that blows" moved the poet's heart; we need not be poets, but only sympathetic human beings, with the great gift of comradeship, to be moved by even the lowliest man or woman. And the objection that rises unbidden and declares us unfit to write expository biography because we have not ourselves known great men is false. Quite truly Carlyle demolishes such objection: "What make ye of Parson White of Selborne? He had not only no great men to look on, but not even men; merely sparrows and cockchafers; yet has he left us a _Biography_ of these; which, under its title _Natural History of Selborne_, still remains valuable to us; which has copied a little sentence or two _faithfully_ from the Inspired Volume of Nature, and is itself not without inspiration. Go ye and do likewise." Certainly if you face the setting forth of the life of some large figure of the past you have a fascinating pageant to unriddle, to centralize. And just as surely if you turn to the familiar figures of your home town, of your family history, and really lay your spirit alongside, you will find deep significance for yourself and for your reader. For every human being has its Waterloo. Sometimes we play Wellington, sometimes Bonaparte, but whether winning or losing we all tread the same way, and the fight is as significant to each as ever the victory or defeat of Waterloo was to Wellington or Napoleon. The Process of Solving the Problem With this great requisite of imaginative sympathy that sees value in all human beings, then, we set out on our chief task, to find the life-problem of our particular hero. This necessitates definition and analysis. Somehow we must find the sphere in which our hero moved, the group to which he belonged, and must then discover the qualities that he showed in the group which made him a real individual. Such definition and analysis will appear when we examine the character of the hero and the events in his life. 1. Defining the Character In placing the subject of biography in a group we must take care to unify the character and at the same time to escape making him merely typical. A biography is a portrait, and if it omits the peculiar lineaments that distinguish the hero from all others, if it overlooks the little details of personality, it is valueless, and certainly uninteresting. The names of characters in old dramas, such as _Justice Clement_, _Justice Shallow_, _Fastidious Brisk_, _Sir Politick Would-be_, and of some of Scott's characters such as _Poundtext_, _Rev. Gabriel Kettledrummle_, _Mr. Holdenough_, indicate the central point of view of the characters but do not individualize them. Before we are really interested in these people we must see the personal traits that give charm. The unifying and centralizing of the character will be accomplished through discovering the fundamental nature. When Cavour wrote, "I am a son of Liberty, and it is to her that I owe all that I am," he classified himself at once through revealing the inner heart of his being. Mr. George Whibley gives both outward action and inward attitude when he writes, "George Buchanan was the type and exemplar of the wandering Scot." So a writer in the New York _Nation_[91] classifies William James by finding the controlling motives of his life. "He was a force of expansion, not a force of concentration. He 'opens doors and windows,' shakes out a mind that has long lain in the creases of prejudice. He is the most vital and gifted exemplar of intellectual sympathy." Again, Mr. Bradford, in characterizing General Sherman, writes, "Sherman is like one of our clear blue January days, with a fresh north wind. It stimulates you. It inspires you. But crisp, vivid, intoxicating as it is, it seems to me that too prolonged enjoyment of such weather would dry my soul till the vague fragrance of immortality was all gone out of it." And when some one asked Goldsmith, referring to Boswell, "Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" Goldsmith replied, "He is not a cur, he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." Each of these characterizations classifies the subject; no one of them makes him a distinct personality, for thousands have been wandering Scots, forces of expansion, burs. The typifying is of great value in establishing the central point of view of the subject, but it cannot be left to stand alone in a real portrait. [91] Vol. 94, p. 363. It is necessary that we define our hero by determining the class to which he belongs, but such definition brings a great danger, the danger of making a warped interpretation. At once we must take care, when we discover the type of a man, not to overwork the type qualities, not to make everything conform to this inner core, whether the detail properly fits or not. For example, once we have called a man a _liberal_ we shall need to guard against denying the conservative acts which are in themselves contradictory of the general nature though in the large they fuse with it. Such a tag is likely, if not guarded against, to make the writer the victim of a kind of color-blindness in character, so that he can see only the crimson of _liberal_, the lavender of _conservative_. In a sentence like the following there lurks the possibility of overworking a point of view, of riding rough-shod over details that do not immediately swing into line. Speaking of General Hooker, "General Walker observes shrewdly, 'He was handsome and picturesque in the extreme, but with a fatally weak chin' ... Bear it in mind in our further study." Spontaneity of reaction to the hero is in possible danger of extinction when the biographer has solidly set down the class name. The same danger is at hand when we find and state the controlling motive of the hero's life, as when we say that he was primarily ambitious, or exhibited above everything else courage. We need be careful lest trivial matters be made to appear ambitious, thrillingly courageous, and lest we deny what seems contradictory. In the following characterization of the historian Green by his friend the Rev. Mr. Haweis we find no such cramping effect, but a welling forth of creative impression that makes Green live before our eyes. That slight nervous figure, below the medium height; that tall forehead, with the head prematurely bald; the quick but small eyes, rather close together; the thin mouth, with lips seldom at rest, but often closed tightly as though the teeth were clenched with an odd kind of latent energy beneath them; the slight, almost feminine hands; the little stoop; the quick alert step; the flashing exuberance of spirits; the sunny smile; the torrent of quick invective, scorn, or badinage, exchanged in a moment for a burst of sympathy or a delightful and prolonged flow of narrative--all this comes back to me vividly! And what narrative, what anecdote, what glancing wit! What a talker! A man who shrank from society, and yet was so fitted to adorn and instruct every company he approached, from a parochial assembly to a statesman's reception! But how enchanting were my walks with him in the Victoria Park, that one outlet of Stepney and Bethnal Green! I never in my life so lost count of time with any one before or since.... I have sometimes, after spending the evening with him at my lodgings, walked back to St. Philip's Parsonage, Stepney, towards midnight, talking; then he has walked back with me in the summer night, talking; and when the dawn broke it has found us belated somewhere in the lonely Mile End Road, still unexhausted, and still talking.[92] [92] Haweis: _Music and Morals_. By courtesy of the publishers, Longmans, Green & Co., New York City. But when we have inveighed as much as we need against the dangers of classification, we must swing round to the first statement that for unifying the character and giving it fundamental significance such classification is of great importance. Merely to find the type to which a character belongs is not sufficient; such a process leaves the character stamped, to be sure, but without interest. We care for living people not chiefly because of their type but because of their individuality, the little traits that set them apart from their fellows. The next step, therefore, is to discover and reveal the individuality. The type to which a character belongs is shown by the large sweep of his whole life; his individuality is revealed often most clearly in the slight incidents by the way. For this reason the personal anecdote assumes importance as adding both interest and completeness that consists in filling in the broad expanses of the portrait with the lines of individual expression. This does not mean that all anecdotes are of value for expository biography; only those which are truly in the stream of personality, which help to establish either the type or the individual. The whimsical nature of the little incident which Mr. George Whibley[93] relates of the "scoundrel" Tom Austin is of value not because it makes a picturesque note at a hanging, but because it really helps to establish the full picture of the man: "When Tom Austin was being haltered for hanging, the Chaplain asked him had he anything to say. 'Only, there's a woman yonder with some curds and whey, and I wish I could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged, because I don't know when I shall see any again.'" It is easily said that Lincoln was a great democratic soul and a great humorist. These are two useful tags. But when we know that to the Englishman who remarked, "In England, you know, no gentleman blacks his own shoes," he replied, "Whose does he black, then?" we feel the peculiar tang of the Lincoln personality along with the type qualities of democrat and humorist. After we have classified Washington as an austere, cold, unemotional being, we find both corrective for a too narrow classification, and insight into the peculiar qualities of the man when we read how he swore "like an angel from Heaven" on the famous occasion of the encounter with Lee. For the anecdote is, we see, really in the main flow of Washington's nature. General Wolfe is tagged as a romantic young warrior but takes on both interest and personality when we read of his repeating Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" as his men silently rowed him to the battle on the Heights of Abraham. The personality of Madame de Staël's father is largely illuminated when we learn that though the little daughter sat primly at table as long as her mother remained in the room, as soon as she retired, with a cry of delight the child flung her napkin at her father's head. Anecdote is highly useful so long as we remember that it is not for adornment but for revelation, not primarily for interest--though that is an important function--but rather for proving in dramatic particular the quality which we claim for our hero. Properly chosen anecdotes should be the high lights in the proof of qualities which the writer's exposition establishes in more sober manner. And of course they also serve to show the differentia which make the character an individual, and thus help to complete the definition. [93] _A Book of Scoundrels._ 2. Analyzing the Character _a._ _Heredity_ When once we have defined the character, have found its class and to some extent its differentia, we can by analysis add to our comprehension of it and to the distinguishing personal traits. We must break up the character and see its manifestations and the results of the influences that molded it. Heredity at once demands recognition. It is not insignificant that Emerson was the descendant of a long line of New England clergymen. The bravery of Stevenson is accounted for partly by the doughty old builder of lighthouses, his grandfather Robert Stevenson. Descent holds often, apparently, a guiding rein in directing a character into its life-problem. Emerson's problem was comparatively simplified, so far as personal integrity concerned him, for he was by nature good. Lowell testified that it was perfectly natural for himself to turn to literature, since in his childhood he had become so accustomed to the smell of Russia leather in the bindings of his father's books. The following sentence[94] shows the grip of descent through the centuries which is not disguised by the man's name: "The Mr. Balfour of those days has been altogether outgrown by the Admiralty First Lord of the existing coalition, a Balfour in name only, in breadth of shoulders, thickness of frame, heaviness of jaw, and proportions of forehead a Cecil marvelously recalling, not only his illustrious uncle, but that relative's Elizabethan ancestors." "Men are what their mothers made them," says Emerson. "You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber." Partly, at least, the life-problem is determined by the heredity; to each there is but one future, "and that is already determined in his lobes and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form," to quote Emerson again even though he lays undue stress, perhaps, upon the power of descent. In the paragraph which follows you will find an interesting account of the ancestry of O. W. Holmes, with a statement also of the essential quiet of his life, which is nevertheless so often thought of as worthy of biographical treatment. [94] T. H. S. Escott: _Great Victorians_. T. Fisher Unwin, London. Dr. Holmes came of this good, old, unmixed New England stock that ran back to Hell on the one side in the severest orthodoxy and up to Heaven on the other in large liberality. He discovered that the title deeds were all in Heaven--while all other claims were by squatters' rights outside the Garden of Eden. So Dr. Holmes grew into a Unitarian and proceeded to cultivate the descent which lies outside Paradise. His father was a minister, so beautiful in countenance, Holmes tells us, that he could never have believed an unkind thing, and his mother of different line was a Liberal by descent. Holmes was born, too, to the conflicting traditions of Yale and Harvard; but beyond being born, practically nothing ever happened to him afterwards. He had a little group of friends who were actually companions. During his whole life, except the two years of medical study in Europe in the beginning of his career, and the "hundred days in Europe" celebrated in one of his later books, he was never further away from Boston, for the most part, than Salem or Beverly, that Beverly, to which he referred in replying to a friend who had addressed a letter to him from "Manchester-by-the-Sea," as "Beverly-by-the-Depot." He went some summers to Pittsfield where he had a summer house, and where the sparkling Berkshire air seemed to suit his effervescent mind. But he was never "quite at home beyond the smell of the Charles River."[95] [95] Thomas R. Slicer: _From Poet to Premier_. By courtesy of the publishers, The Grolier Society, London. _b._ _Interests_ Then when your hero grows up, what are his interests? To what profession or kind of work does he turn? Where does he find the satisfaction for his energy that searches an outlet? Does he, like Thomas Carlyle, try one and another profession only to fail and be driven, finally, into the one work in which he could find the answer to the life-problem that his personality presents? When his profession is chosen, what are his interests? Does he work out his problem in a narrowly restricted field, or does he call in the powers of a wide range of significant pursuits? No expository biography of Leonardo da Vinci can overlook the astounding breadth of the man's activity, especially as shown in the remarkable document which he presented to Ludovico Sforza arranging his attainments under nine different headings in military engineering and adding a tenth for civil engineering and architecture,--and finally throwing in, as a suggestion, his worth as painter and sculptor! There were the compounds of a life-problem sufficiently complex to satisfy the most captious. Or if the hero never moves from a tiny hamlet, treads only one path--as Pericles is said to have done between house and office during the great days of his power--the fact is significant. The grasp of ideas within whatever field the hero may choose is also important. The distinction between the personality that is merely efficient in handling facts, and the personality that dominates the facts and drives them at his bidding, that shows real power, has direct bearing on the nature and the solution of the life-problem. _c._ _Beliefs_ Nor can you overlook the hero's beliefs, whether in ethics or religion, in politics, in the laws of society. In the analysis of Mr. Balfour, on page 148, at once is apparent the large influence on his answer that is caused by his sophistication. The bravery of the Stoic, the voluptuous sentimentality of many religious people of modern times, vitally affect the nature of the character which possesses them. If your hero is by nature an aristocrat, if his sympathies are limited to the few choice people of the world, his life-problem is radically different from that of the natural democrat like Abraham Lincoln. Finally, whatever ideas he may hold about the relation in society of man to man, of man to woman, will inevitably influence his solution of his particular question, just as his beliefs are themselves partly determined by his physical being. _d._ _Friends_ Closely allied with his beliefs will be his choice of friends. Has he the gift of familiarity, or does he struggle in vain to break through the bars of personality, or is he terrified at the gulf between himself and another? Does he regard friends as useful instruments, as pleasant companions, or as objects of devoted affection? And how do his friends react to him? It is worth remembering that the boy Tennyson wrote, in grief, "Byron is dead!"--not only the boy but the older poet is illuminated by the words. Stephen A. Douglas holding Lincoln's hat beside the platform while the Gettysburg Address was being delivered showed not only the mellowness of his own nature but the commanding power of friendship that Lincoln possessed. The number of friends and the range of their activity--whether selected from all sections of human activity or from the hero's own more limited field--are important. _e._ _Deeds_ Finally, the deeds of the hero are of the greatest significance in indicating how he met his life-problem. Did he "greet the unknown with a cheer" or did he like a doubtful bather shrink back from plunging into the stream of activity? Were his deeds actuated by generous motives, or by petty? "If," says Stevenson, "it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are only silly fellows after all." Macbeth strode through large events, as did Robert E. Lee, yet the dominating motives were quite different, and these motives throw the utmost light on the fundamentals of character. Before you write, then, first define your hero, find his type and his individuality, and then analyze his character to determine his descent, his intellectual interests, his beliefs, his friends, and his deeds. And remember that these are not in water-tight compartments, separated from each other, but that they fuse together to make the personality, to create the life-problem, and to answer it. The Use of Events in the Life Dramatic biography is almost wholly the moving events of life. The evil of cheap fiction is partly that it will be nothing but events, that only dust will be raised, no meaning found. Expository biography may err in the opposite direction and exclude the "moving show," become only abstract analysis and definition. You must guard against this, because absence of events both complicates the writer's task and makes his success with the reader more problematic. Moreover, since so largely the positive personality of the hero will express itself in action, since largely through events we shall discover what the life-problem is and especially how it is met, to omit the flow of events is to lame the interpretation. All readers, it is well to remember, have the child's desire for more than mere information about the machine; they wish to "see it go." The vitality of fiction is always increased by dramatic presentation. Since you have a real character to make vital, bring to your writing the devices that make characters real. Carlyle[96] well characterizes the denatured style of treating living beings: [96] Thomas Carlyle: "Biography," in _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. Those modern Narrations, of the Philosophic kind, where "Philosophy, teaching by Experience," has to sit like owl on housetop, _seeing_ nothing, _understanding_ nothing, uttering only, with solemnity enough, her perpetual and most wearisome hoo-hoo:--what hope have we, except the for the most part fallacious one of gaining some acquaintance with our fellow-creatures, though dead and vanished, yet dear to us; how they got along in those old days, suffering and doing; to what extent, and under what circumstances, they resisted the Devil and triumphed over him, or struck their colors to him, and were trodden under foot by him; how, in short, the perennial Battle went, which men name Life, which we also in these new days, with indifferent fortune have to fight, and must bequeath to our sons and grandsons to go on fighting.... _a._ _Choice of Events_ The question at once arises, what events shall the writer select? The total course is mapped for you: there is the pedigree, there the birth, and finally there the funeral. These are inescapable. Just so, for most heroes, marriage. But to choose only those facts that are common to all, to make your hero do only the conventionally unavoidable things, will leave him without personality. The question is, what did he do that was peculiar to himself, what reaction to life did he alone, of all the myriads, make? It is true that most men and women spend their time at their profession or appointed task, whatever it may be, but what the reader cries for is _how_ did they spend their time and energy? It is not sufficient that you tell your reader that Robert Franz labored at his profession of music. What you must do is to show how, in poverty, which, but for the inexhaustible kindness of Liszt, would have been unrelieved, with total deafness upon him, with his musician's-fingers twisted and useless with paralysis, and with only slight recognition from the world for his efforts, he quite beautifully subordinated his own personality for the sake of his art and for years labored in unremunerative love at the unwritten harmonies of Bach and Handel that the public might have complete realization of the otherwise crippled productions. When you tell that, your reader will understand _Robert Franz_, not merely a somebody. Choose, then, the events that all share in common if they are of value in giving a framework for your narrative presentation, but especially choose those events that in their nature illuminate the personality and complement your analysis. We think of events as being public. There is also the hero's private life. Often, especially with the more humble heroes, the home life is more important than the public deeds, brings out more clearly the real man than any amount of marching in the market place or discussing in the public square. The incident related of Robert E. Lee when he was President of Washington College is more revealing, almost, of his greatness of heart than a far more important deed of the great General. When a sophomore to whom Lee had recommended more intense application to work, with the warning of possible failure, remarked, "But, General, you failed," Lee quietly replied, "I hope that you may be more fortunate than I." To neglect either public or private life makes the biography less valuable; light upon the personality from whatever honest source is to be eagerly sought. _b._ _Relation of Events to Personality_ With your choice made, you yet face the difficulty of uniting events and personality. It is not that you have parallel lines, one of action and one of character; the two lines join and become one. You have the choice of observing the personality through the medium of events, or events through the medium of personality. Of the two, the latter is to be preferred. To understand the personality we heed to know whether it controls and directs events, or merely receives them. Into every life a large measure of chance enters. Does the personality merely receive the events, or does it master chance? Suppose that the following analysis[97] of two widely different characters is correct, just: [97] Amiel's _Journal_. Mozart--grace, liberty, certainty, freedom, and precision of style, and exquisite and aristocratic beauty, serenity of soul, the health and talent of the master, both on a level with his genius; Beethoven--more pathetic, more passionate, more torn with feeling, more intricate, more profound, less perfect, more the slave of his genius, more carried away by his fancy or his passion, more moving, and more sublime than Mozart.... One is serene, the other serious.... The first is stronger than destiny, because he takes life less profoundly; the second is less strong, because he has dared to measure himself against deeper sorrows.... In Mozart the balance of the whole is perfect, and art triumphs; in Beethoven feeling governs everything and emotion troubles his art in proportion as it deepens it. Now we know that Mozart's attitude toward patrons was sweetly deferential and graceful, whereas Beethoven rushed into the courtyard of his patron Prince Lobkowitz, shouting, "Lobkowitz donkey! Lobkowitz donkey!!" and when, in the company of Goethe, he once met an archduke, though Goethe made a profound bow with bared head, Beethoven reached up, jammed his hat down tighter upon his head, and, rigidly erect, stalked by without recognition of rank. These actions of Beethoven are emotionally tempestuous. We have our choice of interpreting them as resulting from his personality or of determining his personality as revealed by the deeds. In general it is better to view deeds and events in the light of personality. _c._ _Relation to Society and Times_ Events happen to more than the hero alone; he is a member of society. It is necessary, therefore, to link the events of his life to the current of his times, to fit him into the background against which his life was played. How was he affected, what influence did he exert, what offices or positions of trust did he hold? Often, of course, estimate of the personality will be considerably determined by his relations with his contemporaries. You need to bear two cautions in mind: first, not to misjudge a man because moral or social standards have shifted since his times; and second, not to introduce so much matter about his relationships as to obscure the outlines of his personality or as to relegate him to less than the chief position. Imaginative sympathy will be sufficient to prevent the first. If you really look through your hero's eyes at the life that he saw, with his standards in mind, though you may have to condemn his attitude from a more modern point of view, you will be able to see that his deeds are quite comprehensible, that perhaps, had you been in his place, you would have acted likewise. We no longer decorate important bridges with the heads of criminals set on pikes, as our ancestors did, nor do we burn supposed witches. But though we condemn Edward the First of England for the one and the Salem Puritans for the other, we can still love both Edward and the Puritans--if we have imaginative sympathy. The second caution requires simply that you make your hero dominate the scene. Now this is not an easy task when you are reviewing, in many pages, the gorgeous pageant of an age. We can easily imagine that if Parr had written the Life of Johnson which he said would have been so much superior to that by Boswell, and had included the threatened "view of the literature of Europe," the poor old hero would have been roughly jostled away behind the furniture. Mr. Barrett Wendell paid Carlyle a tribute of the highest kind in writing of his _Frederick the Great_: Such a mass of living facts--for somehow Carlyle never lets a fact lack life--I had never seen flung together before; and yet the one chief impression I brought away from the book was that to a degree rare in even small ones it possessed as a whole the great trait of unity. In one's memory, each fact by and by fell into its own place; the chief ones stood out; the lesser sank back into a confused but not inextricable mass of throbbing vitality. And from it all emerged more and more clearly the one central figure who gave his name to the whole--Frederick of Prussia. It was as they bore on him from all quarters of time and space, and as he reacted on them far and wide, that all these events and all these people were brought back out of their dusty graves to live again.[98] [98] Barrett Wendell: _English Composition_. By courtesy of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York City. Copyright, 1891. Make your hero stand near the footlights, then, and take care that he be not in the shadows of the wings. _d._ _Rhetorical Value of Events_ From a purely rhetorical point of view the inclusion of the events in the hero's life is important because it offers a useful structural scheme for the writing, the chronological order. The exact succession of events need not be followed, surely; sometimes the intended effect will demand a reversal of actual order, but the relation in time will be found valuable for showing the growth of personality, of intellectual grasp, of influence upon the world. Do not, then, neglect the active life of your hero. By presenting it you will find the task of composition lightened, you will help to establish the personality, and you will give to the writing the dramatic vitality that is so much desired by the reader. The Problem of Telling the Truth However imaginatively sympathetic you may be in interpreting your hero, however carefully you may try to find his life-problem, and however well you may attempt to define and analyze his personality, you will be confronted with one almost insuperable problem--how to tell the truth. In no form of exposition is this problem more difficult. For we are more moved by human personality than by anything else, more "drawn to" a person than to a machine, more affected by the comparatively parallel problem of another human being than by the inanimate existence of wood and steel. Long observation and study of our heroes seems often to make us even less fitted to estimate their worth, for we reach the state of companionship with them where we resent any fact that does not tally with our formed judgment, and are tempted to exclude it. Mr. Gamaliel Bradford divides biographers into "those who think they are impartial and those who know they are not." Partiality operates, of course, both for and against personalities. To quote Mr. Bradford again, "Gardiner, for all his fairness, obviously praises the Puritans because they were Puritans, the Cavaliers although they were Cavaliers." Adulation and damnation are the logical extremes which result from a too operative blind spot on the retina of judgment. You must remember and cling to the fact that no man is perfect and no man wholly bad. Much as Boswell loved Johnson he had the good sense to write, of his biography, "And he will be seen as he really was, for I profess to write, not his panegyric, which must be all praise, but his Life; which, great and good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect." George Washington has terribly suffered in the estimates of later times because of the desire to make him perfect. The true expository biographer will conceal nothing that is significant, whether he wishes, in spite of himself, perhaps, that it did not exist. The best cure for the errors of falsity from over-love or over-condemnation is still sane imaginative sympathy. Stevenson made perhaps the greatest personal triumph in his portraiture when he drew Weir of Hermiston, the dour old "hanging judge" who so outraged by his life all the author's feelings and is yet so presented that the reader loves him despite his inhumanity, really perceives that an honest, even if tough, heart beat in his breast. Another safeguard is absence of desire to make rhetorical effect. An aureole is picturesque, horns and hoofs add piquancy; the hand itches to deck the hero as saint or to fit him out as devil. But you must subordinate any such cheap desire, must write with the restraint that comes from seeing your hero steady and seeing him whole. Balance is the golden word. "This thing is true," wrote Emerson, "but that is also true." The vulgarity of the superlatives of political campaigns has no place in your pages. This imaginatively sympathetic attitude must not rely on itself alone, but must employ the other safeguard against untruth, must passionately pursue facts, and facts, and still facts to make the conception of the hero complete and to give the writing that so much desired quality of fullness. The very greatest care is necessary to determine what facts are true and what are fallacious. You are largely at the mercy of your second or third or tenth-hand sources when you write of historical characters. When your hero is a living person you must challenge the report of your own senses and general experience lest you admit what is false or omit what is significant. The Danger of Making a "Lesson" And when you have assembled all your facts, and have determined upon your interpretation of the hero, take the greatest caution that you do not try to make the life a "lesson." Presumably a child never more earnestly desires to commit murder than when some little Willie or Susie has been held up as a model. If Willie and Susie escape with only kicked shins, they may count luck benevolent. Your duty is to understand and love, not to preach about the character. You are to give us an estimate of the great adventure of this person through life, and leave to us to make the moral, if any is to be made. If the life has a message, the reader will catch it; if it has not, silence is virtuous. The Rhetorical Form Finally, the rhetorical problem of forming your material presents itself. First of all do not forget that all the charms of style of which you are capable should be summoned to your aid. Since you deal with the fascinating subject of human personality your writing should not be dull. All too many biographical essays begin stupidly. When a first sentence reads, "Augustine was born at Tagaste, near Carthage (about forty miles south of it), North Africa, November 13, A.D. 354, seven years after the birth of Chrysostom," a reader hardly finds a warmly inviting gleam in the writer's eye; he continues to read only if he brought determination with him. But when Mr. Charles Whibley begins, of Captain Hind, "James Hind, the Master Thief of England, the fearless Captain of the Highway, was born at Chipping Norton in 1618"; or of Haggart, "David Haggart was born at Canonmills, with no richer birthright than thievish fingers and a left hand of surpassing activity"; or of Sir Thomas Overbury, "Thomas Overbury, whose haggard ghost still walks in the secret places of the Tower, was born a squire's son, in 1581,"--when he uses such sentences to introduce the hero to the reader, the ejaculatory "Eh?" takes voice and the reader canters down the new delightful lane where a finger beckons. Whether you use anecdote, or quotation, or important fact, or statement of birth, or description, let your beginning invite and not dismay. The chief structural problem is, without doubt, to fuse the analyzed elements of deeds and friends and interests and others into one organic whole. If you use the chronological sequence of events, which has already been discussed, showing how each event or group of events indicates the character, you will have an easily followed plan. Such a plan, or that of treating the whole life from the point of view of the central, controlling motive, is the ideal method. If you choose to unify the whole by showing how events, friends, interests of various kinds, and the other manifestations of the hero's life all establish the central motive, you will have a more difficult, though more elastic form. With this plan you can distribute the details in the points where they will be of most value, can, for example, indicate a change in the hero's nature by approaching through an event, a friendship, a turning of tastes in reading or in general interests. The difficulty here lies in the tendency toward such dispersion of details as to destroy unity even though to gain this is the chief intention. In the face of this difficulty you may use a third method, which is likely to be less pleasing, less artistic, but more easily applied. You can divide your material under the headings "events," "friends," "heredity," "interests," and then can treat each group, by itself, from the central point of view. This is a useful method, and in complicated lives it is sometimes the only method that is reasonably easy to handle. Closely similar to this method is that of dividing your material under the headings of the ways in which your hero affected his times, the ways in which he was known. Thus you might treat of the reputation as converser, as organizer, as literary man, as public servant, as friend of the poor, or whatever heading your hero's life affords. Whatever method you may employ, you should remember that a human life does not appear in separate, distinct phases, that a man does not seem to be now this, now that, but rather all details, of whatever nature, mingle and fuse into a unit, however complicated it may be. You should attempt, then, to make one main thread, of however many colors it may be woven, rather than a series of parallel threads. Note how Thackeray neatly unites various phases and forms of interest in Goldsmith's life,[99] so neatly that as you casually read you are not aware of the diversity of material--though it is there--but think rather of the total effect. [99] At the end of the chapter. If, then, you assume the attitude of imaginative sympathy, and study your hero until you know what his particular life-problem was, what his type and what his individuality, and with love and yet restraint make your estimate, aiming at truth to character and to facts of his life, you will produce writing that will be more than a mere scholar's document, writing that will warm the heart of your reader to a new personality and will be a friend of a winter evening fireside. OLIVER GOLDSMITH[100] [100] William Makepeace Thackeray: _The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, publishers. "Jeté sur cette boule, Laid, chétif et souffrant; Étouffé, dans la foule, Faute d'être assez grand; "Une plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit. Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante, Chante, pauvre petit. "Chanter, ou je m'abuse, Est ma tâche ici-bas. Tous ceux qu'ainsi j'amuse, Ne m'aimeront-ils pas?" In these charming lines of Béranger,[101] one may fancy described the career, the suffering, the genius, the gentle nature of Goldsmith, and the esteem in which we hold him. Who of the millions whom he has amused doesn't love him? To be the most beloved of English writers, what a title that is for a man! A wild youth, wayward, but full of tenderness and affection, quits the country village where his boyhood has been passed in happy musing, in idle shelter, in fond longing to see the great world out of doors, and achieve fame and fortune; and after years of dire struggle and neglect and poverty, his heart turning back as fondly to his native place as it had longed eagerly for change when sheltered there, he writes a book and a poem, full of the recollections and feelings of home; he paints the friends and scenes of his youth, and peoples Auburn and Wakefield with remembrances of Lissoy. Wander he must, but he carries away a home-relic with him, and dies with it on his breast. His nature is truant; in repose it longs for change,--as on the journey it looks back for friends and quiet. He passes to-day in building an air-castle for to-morrow, or in writing yesterday's elegy; and he would fly away this hour, but that a cage and necessity keep him. What is the charm of his verse, of his style and humor?--his sweet regrets, his delicate compassion, his soft smile, his tremulous sympathy, the weakness which he owns? Your love for him is half pity. You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon save the harp on which he plays to you and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the tents or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty. With that sweet story of "The Vicar of Wakefield" he has found entry into every castle and hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy or hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him, and undergone the charm of his delightful music. [101] For translation, see page 296. Goldsmith's father was no doubt the good Doctor Primrose, whom we all of us know. Swift was yet alive, when the little Oliver was born at Pallas, or Pallasmore, in the county of Longford, in Ireland. In 1730, two years after the child's birth, Charles Goldsmith removed his family to Lissoy, in the county Westmeath, that sweet "Auburn" which every person who hears me has seen in fancy. Here the kind parson brought up his eight children; and loving all the world, as his son says, fancied all the world loved him. He had a crowd of poor dependants besides those hungry children. He kept an open table, round which sat flatterers and poor friends, who laughed at the honest rector's many jokes, and ate the produce of his seventy acres of farm. Those who have seen an Irish house in the present day can fancy that one at Lissoy. The old beggar still has his allotted corner by the kitchen turf; the maimed old soldier still gets his potatoes and buttermilk; the poor cottier still asks his honor's charity and prays God bless his reverence for the sixpence; the ragged pensioner still takes his place by right of sufferance. There's still a crowd in the kitchen, and a crowd round the parlor table; profusion, confusion, kindness, poverty. If an Irishman comes to London to make his fortune, he has a half-dozen of Irish dependants who take a percentage of his earnings. The good Charles Goldsmith left but little provision for his hungry race when death summoned him; and one of his daughters being engaged to a Squire of rather superior dignity, Charles Goldsmith impoverished the rest of his family to provide the girl with a dowry. The small-pox, which scourged all Europe at that time, and ravaged the roses off the cheeks of half the world, fell foul of poor little Oliver's face when the child was eight years old, and left him scarred and disfigured for his life. An old woman in his father's village taught him his letters, and pronounced him a dunce. Paddy Byrne, the hedge-schoolmaster, then took him in hand; and from Paddy Byrne he was transmitted to a clergyman at Elphin. When a child was sent to school, in those days, the classic phrase was that he was placed under Mr. So-and-So's _ferule_. Poor little ancestors! it is hard to think how ruthlessly you were birched, and how much of needless whipping and tears our small forefathers had to undergo! A relative--kind Uncle Contarine--took the main charge of little Noll; who went through his school-days righteously doing as little work as he could, robbing orchards, playing at ball, and making his pocket-money fly about whenever fortune sent it to him. Everybody knows the story of that famous "Mistake of a Night," when the young schoolboy, provided with a guinea and a nag, rode up to the "best house" in Ardagh, called for the landlord's company over a bottle of wine at supper, and for a hot cake for breakfast in the morning,--and found, when he asked for the bill, that the best house was Squire Featherstone's, and not the inn for which he mistook it. Who does not know every story about Goldsmith? That is a delightful and fantastic picture of the child dancing and capering about in the kitchen at home, when the old fiddler gibed at him for his ugliness, and called him Æsop; and little Noll made his repartee of:-- "Heralds proclaim aloud this saying: See Æsop dancing and his monkey playing." One can fancy a queer, pitiful look of humor and appeal upon that little scarred face, the funny little dancing figure, the funny little brogue. In his life and writings, which are the honest expression of it, he is constantly bewailing that homely face and person; anon he surveys them in the glass ruefully, and presently assumes the most comical dignity. He likes to deck out his little person in splendor and fine colors. He presented himself to be examined for ordination in a pair of scarlet breeches, and said honestly that he did not like to go into the Church because he was fond of colored clothes. When he tried to practise as a doctor, he got by hook or by crook a black velvet suit, and looked as big and as grand as he could, and kept his hat over a patch on the old coat. In better days he bloomed out in plum-color, in blue silk, and in new velvet. For some of those splendors the heirs and assignees of Mr. Filby, the tailor, have never been paid to this day; perhaps the kind tailor and his creditor have met and settled their little account in Hades. They showed until lately a window at Trinity College, Dublin, on which the name of _O. Goldsmith_ was engraved with a diamond. Whose diamond was it? Not the young sizar's, who made but a poor figure in that place of learning. He was idle, penniless, and fond of pleasure; he learned his way early to the pawn-broker's shop. He wrote ballads, they say, for the street-singers, who paid him a crown for his poem; and his pleasure was to steal out at night and hear the verses sung. He was chastised by his tutor for giving a dance in his rooms, and took the box on the ear so much to heart that he packed up his all, pawned his books and little property, and disappeared from college and family. He said he intended to go to America; but when his money was spent, the young prodigal came home ruefully, and the good folks there killed their calf (it was but a lean one) and welcomed him back. After college he hung about his mother's house, and lived for some years the life of a buckeen,--passed a month with this relation and that, a year with one patron, and a great deal of time at the public-house. Tired of this life, it was resolved that he should go to London, and study at the Temple; but he got no farther on the road to London and the woolsack than Dublin, where he gambled away the fifty pounds given him for his outfit, and whence he returned to the indefatigable forgiveness of home. Then he determined to be a doctor, and Uncle Contarine helped him to a couple of years at Edinburgh. Then from Edinburgh he felt that he ought to hear the famous professors of Leyden and Paris, and wrote most amusing pompous letters to his uncle about the great Farheim, Du Petit, and Duhamel du Monceau, whose lectures he proposed to follow. If Uncle Contarine believed those letters; if Oliver's mother believed that story which the youth related, of his going to Cork with the purpose of embarking for America, of his having paid his passenger money and having sent his kit on board, of the anonymous captain sailing away with Oliver's valuable luggage in a nameless ship, never to return,--if Uncle Contarine and the mother at Ballymahon believed his stories, they must have been a very simple pair, as it was a very simple rogue indeed who cheated them. When the lad, after failing in his clerical examinations, after failing in his plan for studying the law, took leave of these projects and of his parents and set out for Edinburgh, he saw mother and uncle, and lazy Ballymahon, and green native turf and sparkling river for the last time. He was never to look on Old Ireland more, and only in fancy revisit her. "But me not destined such delights to share, My prime of life in wandering spent and care, Impelled, with steps unceasing, to pursue Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view That like the circle bounding earth and skies Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies; My fortune leads to traverse realms alone, And find no spot of all the world my own." I spoke in a former lecture of that high courage which enabled Fielding, in spite of disease, remorse, and poverty, always to retain a cheerful spirit and to keep his manly benevolence and love of truth intact,--as if these treasures had been confided to him for the public benefit, and he was accountable to posterity for their honorable employ; and a constancy equally happy and admirable I think was shown by Goldsmith, whose sweet and friendly nature bloomed kindly always in the midst of a life's storm and rain and bitter weather. The poor fellow was never so friendless but he could befriend some one; never so pinched and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he could give that, and make the children happy in the dreary London court. He could give the coals in that queer coal-scuttle we read of to his neighbor; he could give away his blankets in college to the poor widow, and warm himself as he best might in the feathers; he could pawn his coat, to save his landlord from jail. When he was a school-usher he spent his earnings in treats for the boys, and the good-natured schoolmaster's wife said justly that she ought to keep Mr. Goldsmith's money as well as the young gentlemen's. When he met his pupils in later life, nothing would satisfy the Doctor but he must treat them still. "Have you seen the print of me after Sir Joshua Reynolds?" he asked of one of his old pupils. "Not seen it! Not bought it! Sure, Jack, if your picture had been published, I'd not have been without it half-an-hour." His purse and his heart were everybody's, and his friend's as much as his own. When he was at the height of his reputation, and the Earl of Northumberland, going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, asked if he could be of any service to Doctor Goldsmith, Goldsmith recommended his brother and not himself to the great man. "My patrons," he gallantly said, "are the booksellers, and I want no others." Hard patrons they were, and hard work he did; but he did not complain much. If in his early writings some bitter words escaped him, some allusions to neglect and poverty, he withdrew these expressions when his Works were republished, and better days seemed to open for him; and he did not dare to complain that printer and publisher had overlooked his merit or left him poor. The Court's face was turned from honest Oliver; the Court patronized Beattie. The fashion did not shine on him; fashion adored Sterne; fashion pronounced Kelly to be the great writer of comedy of his day. A little--not ill-humor--but plaintiveness--a little betrayal of wounded pride which he showed renders him not the less amiable. The author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ had a right to protest when Newbery kept back the manuscript for two years; had a right to be a little peevish with Sterne,--a little angry when Colman's actors declined their parts in his delightful comedy, when the manager refused to have a scene painted for it and pronounced its damnation before hearing. He had not the great public with him; but he had the noble Johnson and the admirable Reynolds and the great Gibbon and the great Burke and the great Fox,--friends and admirers illustrious indeed, as famous as those who, fifty years before, sat round Pope's table. Nobody knows, and I dare say Goldsmith's buoyant temper kept no account of, all the pains which he endured during the early period of his literary career. Should any man of letters in our day have to bear up against such, Heaven grant he may come out of the period of misfortune with such a pure, kind heart as that which Goldsmith obstinately bore in his breast! The insults to which he had to submit were shocking to read of,--slander, contumely, vulgar satire, brutal malignity, perverting his commonest motives and actions. He had his share of these; and one's anger is roused at reading of them, as it is at seeing a woman insulted or a child assaulted, at the notion that a creature so very gentle and weak, and full of love, should have to suffer so. And he had worse than insult to undergo,--to own to fault, and deprecate the anger of ruffians. There is a letter of his extant to one Griffiths, a bookseller, in which poor Goldsmith is forced to confess that certain books sent by Griffiths are in the hands of a friend from whom Goldsmith had been forced to borrow money. "He was wild, sir," Johnson said, speaking of Goldsmith to Boswell, with his great, wise benevolence and noble mercifulness of heart,--"Dr. Goldsmith was wild, sir; but he is no more." Ah! if we pity the good and weak man who suffers undeservedly, let us deal very gently with him from whom misery extorts not only tears but shame; let us think humbly and charitably of the human nature that suffers so sadly and falls so low. Whose turn may it be to-morrow? What weak heart, confident before trial, may not succumb under temptation invincible? Cover the good man who has been vanquished,--cover his face and pass on. For the last half-dozen years of his life Goldsmith was far removed from the pressure of any ignoble necessity, and in the receipt, indeed, of a pretty large income from the booksellers, his patrons. Had he lived but a few years more, his public fame would have been as great as his private reputation, and he might have enjoyed alive part of that esteem which his country has ever since paid to the vivid and versatile genius who has touched on almost every subject of literature, and touched nothing that he did not adorn. Except in rare instances, a man is known in our profession and esteemed as a skilful workman years before the lucky hit which trebles his usual gains, and stamps him a popular author. In the strength of his age and the dawn of his reputation, having for backers and friends the most illustrious literary men of his time, fame and prosperity might have been in store for Goldsmith had fate so willed it, and at forty-six had not sudden disease taken him off. I say prosperity rather than competence; for it is probable that no sum could have put order into his affairs, or sufficed for his irreclaimable habits of dissipation. It must be remembered that he owed £2000 when he died. "Was ever poet," Johnson asked, "so trusted before?" As has been the case with many another good fellow of his nation, his life was tracked and his substance wasted by crowds of hungry beggars and lazy dependents. If they came at a lucky time (and be sure they knew his affairs better than he did himself, and watched his pay-day), he gave them of his money; if they begged on empty-purse day, he gave them his promissory bills, or he treated them to a tavern where he had credit, or he obliged them with an order upon honest Mr. Filby for coats,--for which he paid as long as he could earn, and until the shears of Filby were to cut for him no more. Staggering under a load of debt and labor; tracked by bailiffs and reproachful creditors; running from a hundred poor dependents, whose appealing looks were perhaps the hardest of all pains for him to bear; devising fevered plans for the morrow, new histories, new comedies, all sorts of new literary schemes; flying from all these into seclusion, and out of seclusion into pleasure,--at last, at five-and-forty death seized him and closed his career. * * * * * The younger Colman has left a touching reminiscence of him: "I was only five years old," he says, "when Goldsmith took me on his knee one evening whilst he was drinking coffee with my father, and began to play with me,--which amiable act I returned, with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very smart slap on the face: it must have been a tingler, for it left the marks of my spiteful paw on his check. This infantile outrage was followed by summary justice, and I was locked up by my indignant father in an adjoining room to undergo solitary imprisonment in the dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably, which was no bad step toward my liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me might be likely to set me free for the purpose of abating a nuisance. "At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy; and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly molested by assault and battery. It was the tender-hearted Doctor himself, with a lighted candle in his hand and a smile upon his countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my petulance. I sulked and sobbed as he fondled and soothed, till I began to brighten. Goldsmith seized the propitious moment of returning good-humor, when he put down the candle and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened to be in the room, and a shilling under each: the shillings, he told me, were England, France, and Spain. 'Hey, presto cockalorum!' cried the Doctor; and lo, on uncovering the shillings, which had been dispersed each beneath a separate hat, they were all found congregated under one! I was no politician at five years old, and therefore might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but as also I was no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure.... From that time, whenever the Doctor came to visit my father, 'I plucked his gown to share the good man's smile; a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends and merry playfellows. Our unequal companionship varied somewhat as to sports as I grew older; but it did not last long: my senior playmate died in his forty-fifth year, when I had attained my eleventh.... In all the numerous accounts of his virtues and foibles, his genius and absurdities, his knowledge of nature and ignorance of the world, his 'compassion for another's woes' was always predominant; and my trivial story of his humoring a forward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence." Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain, if you like,--but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph, and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it. His humor delighting us still, his song fresh and beautiful as when he first charmed with it, his words in all our mouths, his very weaknesses beloved and familiar,--his benevolent spirit seems still to smile upon us, to do gentle kindnesses, to succor with sweet charity; to soothe, caress, and forgive; to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. EXERCISES I. List the chief qualities that you find in some historic figure, such as Oliver Cromwell, Louis XIV, Alexander Hamilton. Then make a chronological list of the dates in the life. Compare the two lists and determine how many members of the second list need to be included to make an expository account intelligible. Do you find other members which, though not really necessary, are so interesting as to be worth including? Can you establish any final general law about the relation of dates and qualities? Make the same experiment upon the life of some one of your acquaintances. II. What was the character of Michael Henchard, the chief figure in Thomas Hardy's novel _The Mayor of Casterbridge_, that enabled him to write the following as his epitaph? On the basis of the epitaph write a life of Michael Henchard. _Michael Henchard's Will_ That Elizabeth--Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. & that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. & that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. & that nobody is wished to see my dead body. & that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. & that no flours be planted on my grave. & that no man remember me. To this I put my name. Michael Henchard. III. Write an obituary notice of an acquaintance of yours; of the political "boss" of your town, county, state; of Abraham Lincoln; of Ulysses S. Grant before he awoke to his opportunities, in the Civil War, and another of him at the time of his death; of Theodore Roosevelt before he formed the Progressive Party and another of him after the election of 1916. Try in each case to give the reader a knowledge of the character and of the events in the life. IV. How much basis have you for making an estimate of the people of whom the following were said, if you limit your knowledge to the remark? 1. "To know her was a liberal education." 2. "He was the homeliest man that came up before Troy." 3. "No man ever came out of his presence without being braver than when he went in." 4. "He never said a stupid thing and never did a wise one." 5. "He was a very perfect gentle knight." 6. "I never knew him to do a mean act." What conclusion do you draw as to the usefulness of general remarks about character? V. What relation do you find between personality and character? On which can you more surely depend for making a just estimate? Which do contemporaries of a subject for biography usually emphasize? VI. Explain how the mistake was possible by which Daniel Webster's celebrated _Seventh of March Speech_ was interpreted at the time of delivery as a betrayal of Webster's principles, although later it was regarded as a speech of real integrity. VII. Explain how a man like Thomas Jefferson can be regarded by many as a great statesman and by others, such as Mrs. Gertrude Atherton for example, as a disgustingly vulgar person, almost a rascal. What light does your explanation throw upon the duties and dangers of writing biography? VIII. What light do the following remarks throw upon the speakers? How much justification would you feel in using the remarks as basis for biographical estimate? 1. "I would rather be right than President!" 2. "The state? I am the state!" 3. "The public be damned!" 4. "If they appoint me street scavenger I will so dignify the office by dutiful service that every one will clamor for it." 5. "Gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying." 6. "When you find something that you are afraid to do, do it at once!" 7. "I never asked a favor of any man." 8. "We haven't begun to fight!" IX. Make the outline for an expository biography of one of the large figures of history, including the important events and showing the relations with contemporaries and the effect upon them. Then make a similar outline for the biography of some comparatively humble person of whom you know who has affected a more restricted group of contemporaries. Compare the two with a view to making this statement: As the great man was to his large group, so the lesser man was to his smaller group. What light does this shed on the individual life without regard to station in society? X. Write a life of Napoleon from the point of view of Wellington, of Prince Metternich, of Louis Philippe; a life of Robert Burns from the point of view of a country parson, of François Villon (supposing that Villon knew Burns), of William Shakespeare; a life of Michael Angelo from the point of view of an art student, of a humble worshiper in St. Peter's; a life of Richard Croker from the point of view of a ward boss, of a widow who has received coal for years from Tammany Hall, of an old-time gentleman in New York City; a life of Andrew Carnegie from the point of view of a laborer in the steel mills, of a spinster librarian in a small quiet town, of a college senior who is a member of the I.W.W., of a holder of shares in the steel trust; a life of Edison from the point of view of an artist who prefers candles to electricity, of a farmer's wife who no longer has to clean a multitude of lamps; a life of Jane Addams from the point of view of a political gangster, of a poor Italian woman whom Miss Addams has befriended, of a college girl who has a vision of woman's larger usefulness. XI. Write the life of a man who has just been elected to some office of prominence, such as a seat in the state senate or perhaps to the national house of representatives, and who is expected by all his friends and acquaintances to make a brilliant record. Then write another of the same man who has ignominiously failed to meet expectations and who has come back to his home town with a ruined reputation. Try to take the point of view of a person who does not know that the career is to fail, and then see how you will modify the whole account in the second life. XII. What is the central motive in Goldsmith's life as found by Thackeray? How does he bring out his conception of Goldsmith? Make an outline of the article in which you will list the various events in Goldsmith's life. Make another outline to show wherein the character and quality of the man are shown. Is enough given in each case to make sufficient knowledge on the reader's part? Do you think that Thackeray overemphasizes the sentimental appeal of Goldsmith's weaknesses and his mellow kindness? Do you find any element of information about the man conspicuously lacking, as, for instance, a statement of Goldsmith's friendships, his effect upon his times, or his beliefs? Is there any lack of imaginative sympathy on the part of Thackeray? Suppose that an efficient business man had written the article, would Goldsmith's lack of responsibility have escaped so easily? In the light of your answer to the preceding question do you think that the article is really fair? _Translation of Béranger's poem_ (page 285) Cast upon this ball, plain, insignificant and suffering; choked in the crowd, through not being tall enough; my lips utter a piteous complaint. God says to me, "Sing, child, sing." To sing, or I mistake, is my task here below. Will not all those whom I thus amuse love me? CHAPTER IX THE GATHERING OF MATERIAL FOR WRITING Two main sources exist from which you can get the material for expository themes: books, including magazines and papers; and lectures or interviews of any kind. Libraries differ greatly in the degree of convenience, and some lecturers are much more readily intelligible than others, and their lectures much more easily codified in notes. Even the most conveniently arranged library, with the most accommodating librarian, is rather formidable unless one knows the method of approach. And until one has thought out the problem of taking notes from lectures, even the most intelligible speaker presents great difficulties. Perhaps a few words here will be of some use in unriddling the mysteries. First of all a word needs to be said about the greatest slavery of modern times--slavery to the printed word. "I read it in a book!" is still for many people sufficient reason for believing anything, however untrue, illogical, impossible it may be. It is well to remember that nearly everybody writes books and yet very few of us are wise. Obviously, not everything can be authoritative, especially when it is contradicted in the next book. A reader without a good steadying sense of balance, a shrewd determination to weigh what he reads and judge of its value for himself is as helpless as a man in a whirlpool. You need not be too stiff-necked toward a book, need not deny for the mere sake of denial, but you do need to stand off and regard every book with reasonable caution. Sometimes you can see for yourself that what is said is not true. Sometimes you can at once feel that the spirit of the book is unsafe, wild, unthinking. Sometimes you will detect at once a blinding prejudice. Then be cautious. If the subject is unknown to you, so that you have no safe basis for judgment about it, you are, to look the matter squarely in the face, at the mercy of the book. But shrewd inquiries as to the author's reputation, his opportunities for knowledge of the subject, and an ever-watchful eye for reasonableness and good judgment, will save you from many mistakes. And always remember that the mere fact of a statement's being in print does not make it more true than it was when merely oral. Don't, then, believe a printed statement which you would hotly deny if you heard it from the lips of some one. It is a matter of intellectual self-respect to read and judge, not to read and blindly swallow. Whether you read or listen, you will need to make notes. It would be delightful if our flattering feeling that we can remember whatever we read or hear were true--the trouble is, it is not. It is better to play safe and have the record in notes, than to be too independent and find a blank in your mind when time to write arrives. The chief virtue in note-taking is economy. Economy saves time, space, effort. The three interweave and are inextricable, in the total, but may be somewhat distinguished. As to time: there is no virtue whatever in slaving for hours over notes that need only a few minutes. Notes are tools: their object is temporary, to be of service for composition or future reference; they are not an object in themselves. Do not worship them. On the other hand, since dull tools will not cut, don't slight them. No greater pity can exist than for the pale student who wrinkles her brow--it usually is _her_ brow--and attempts to make of notes a complete transcription of a lecture or a book, with each comma and every letter in proper sequence joined--only to pack the notes away in a box in the attic--or perhaps burn them! A builder who should have too meticulous care for his scaffolding is in danger of never seeing his building completed. Notes seek essentials, and therefore time should not be wasted on non-essentials. But, since slovenly, ill-assorted, illegible notes require extraordinary time for deciphering and arranging, it is of the greatest importance that you conserve your future minutes by making your notes neat, ordered, legible. Any abbreviations that you can surely remember are most useful. A complete sentence--which really has no special need for completeness--that you cannot read is worthless, but a few words that indicate the gist of the thought, and are immediately legible, are most valuable. Moreover, if you take time enough for every word, you are in danger of becoming so engrossed in penmanship as to lose the broad sweep of the lecture or book. Notes must drive toward unity and away from chaos. Your first principle, then, should be to set down neatly what will be of real service, and let the rest go. As to space--any one who has made manuscripts from notes has learned how irritating, how bewildering a huge mass of material can be. Some subjects require such a mass, and in such a case the note-taker will use as much space as he needs. But economy, which is the cardinal virtue, will require as little diffusion, as great concentration as possible. If you can succeed in including everything of value on one sheet, instead of scattering it over several, you are to be congratulated. Only, be sure that you do not neglect something of real value. You can often save much space and effort and the use of stores of connecting words and phrases if you will indent and subordinate sub-topics so that the eye will show the relation at once. Such practice is admirable mental training, also, for it teaches the listener or reader to keep his brain detached for seeing relationships, for grasping the parts in relation to the whole and to each other. If interesting remarks which do not bear directly upon the main subject attract with sufficient intensity to make record worth while, set them down in brackets, to indicate their nature. Remembering, then, that a concentrated barrage is of more value in attack than scattered fire, use as little space as may suffice for the essentials. That is the second principle. As to effort, remember that the old sea-captain whose boat was so leaky that he declared he had pumped the whole Atlantic through it on one voyage would have entered port more easily with a better boat. If you do not take time and pains for grouping and ordering as you make your notes, be sure that you will have much pumping to do when the article is to be made. Grouping and ordering require concentration in reading or listening--but there is no harm in that. You ought to be able to write one thing and listen to another at the same time. Watch especially for any indication in a lecture of change in topic. And don't be bothered by the demands of formal rhetoric: if a complete sentence stands in your way, set your foot on it and "get the stuff." And, of course, avoid a feverish desire to set down every word that may be uttered; any one who has seen the notebooks of students in which reports of lectures begin with such records as "This morning, in pursuance of our plan, we shall consider the topic mentioned last time, namely,--etc." become aware of the enormous waste of energy that college students show. Essentials, set down in athletic leanness--that is the ideal. In taking notes from books, people differ greatly. Some use a separate slip for each note, and much can be said in commendation of this system. Some are able to heap everything together and then divine where each topic is. In any case, strive for economy, catch the "high spots," and as far as possible keep like with like, notes on the same topic together. It is always well, often imperative, to jot down the source of each note, so that you can either verify or later judge of the value in the light of the worth of the source. Note-taking, in other words, is a matter of brains and common sense: brains to see what is important, and sense to see that neatness and order are essential to true economy, the great virtue of notes. With the best of intentions, then, you enter the library. Since each library is arranged on a somewhat individual scheme, and different collections have different materials, you will need to examine the individual library. A wise student will inquire at the desk for any pamphlet that may help to unriddle the special system. Librarians are benevolent people, do not wish to choke you, and are glad to answer any reasonable question. If your questions are formless, if you really do not know what you want, sit down on the steps and think it over until you do, and then enter boldly and politely ask for information. Don't, if you wish to learn about ship subsidies, for example, stroll in and inquire for "Some'n 'bout boats?" The complimentarily implied power of reading your mind is not especially welcome to even a librarian who is subject to vanity--and incidentally he may think that you are irresponsible. Any one who has been connected with a college library knows that the notorious questions such as "Have you Homer's Eyelid?" are not uncommon--and seldom bring desired results. Since you have entered for information, summon all your resourcefulness to try every possibility before you agree that there is no help for you there. You can use the Card Catalogue, the Reference Books, the Indexes, Year-Books and Magazine Guides, and finally, if every other source fails, can lay your troubles before the librarian--but not until you have fought bravely. Too many students are faint-hearted: if they wish for information about, let us say, employers' liability, and do not at once find a package of information ready-wrapped, they sigh, and then smile, and then brightly inform the instructor, "The library hasn't a single word about that subject!" The Card Catalogue does not list employers' liability, let us say, and you do not know any authors who have written on the subject. Do not despair; look up _insurance_, _workmen_, _accidents_, _social legislation_, _government help_, and other such titles until your brain can think of nothing more. Only then resort to outside help. The Card Catalogue will contain a card for each book in the library: if you know the title, look for it. If you know the author but not the title, look for the "author card." If you know neither author nor title, look for the general subject heading. For each book will usually have the three cards of subject, author, and title. If the subject is a broad one, such, for example, as _Engineering_, do not set yourself the task of looking through every card, but, if you wish for a treatise on the history of engineering, look for the word _History_, in the engineering cards, and then examine what books may be collected under that heading. If you find cross references, that is, a recommendation to "see" other individual cards, or other subject headings, do not overlook the chance to gain added information. Most of us too often forget the encyclopædias. If the catalogue has been exhausted, then see what the encyclopædias may contain. Look in the volume that contains the index, first, for often a part of an article will tell you exactly what you wish, but the article as a whole will not be listed under the subject that you are seeking. The _Encyclopædia Britannica_, the _New International_, the _Nelson's Loose Leaf_ will be of service on general topics. For agriculture consult _Bailey's Encyclopædia_. For religion see the _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_ (Scribner), the _Jewish Encyclopædia_, the _New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge_ (Funk and Wagnalls), the _Catholic Encyclopædia_ (Robert Appleton). For dictionaries you will find the _Murray's New English Dictionary_, often called the _Oxford Dictionary_, _The Standard Dictionary_, _The Century_, _Webster's New International_, _Black's Law Dictionary_ and others. Often you will wish to find contemporary, immediate material. The magazines are regularly catalogued in the _Reader's Guide_, month by month, with a combined quarterly and yearly and then occasional catalogue, with the articles listed under the subject and the title or author. Use your resourcefulness here, as you did in the card catalogue, and do not give up. _Poole's Index_ will also help. Many annuals are of value. The _World Almanac_ has a bewildering mass of information, as does the _Eagle Almanac_ for New York City and Long Island especially. The _Canadian Annual Review_, the _Statesman's Year-Book_, _Heaton's Annual_ (Canadian), the _New International Year Book_, which is "a compendium of the world's progress for the year," the _Annual Register_ (English), the _Navy League Annual_ (English, but inclusive), and the _American Year-Book_, among others, will be of service. Often these books will give you the odd bit of information that you have hunted for in vain elsewhere. For engineering, the _Engineering Index_ (monthly and collected) is useful. For biography you will find Stephen's _Dictionary of National Biography_ useful, and Lamb's _Biographical Dictionary of the United States_. Do not forget the _Who's Who_, the _Who's Who in America_, and the corresponding foreign books for brief information about current people of note. For what may be called scattered information you can go to the _American Library Association Index_ to general literature, _The Information Quarterly_ (Bowker), _The Book Review Digest_ (Wilson), _The United States Catalog_ (with its annual _Cumulative Book Index_), and the (annual) _English Catalogue of Books_. In using a book, employ the Table of Contents and the Index to save time. For example, you will thus be referred to page 157 for what you want. If instead you begin to hunt page by page, you will find that after you have patiently run your eyes back and forth over the first 156 pages, your brain will be less responsive than you would wish when you finally arrive at page 157. Moreover, there is all that time lost! Often individual libraries have compiled lists of their own books on various subjects. If you can find such lists, use them. In other words, the search for material and the taking of notes is a matter of strategy: it requires that the seeker use his wits, plan his campaign, find what is available, and in the briefest time compatible with thoroughness assimilate whatever of it is of value. Caution and indefatigable zeal and resourcefulness--these are almost sure to win the day. INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS Amiel's _Journal_, "Mozart and Beethoven", 277-278 Antin, Mary, _The Promised Land_, "The Making of an American", 186-189 _Atlantic Monthly_, The Contributor's Club, "The Privileges of Age", 245-247 Aumonier, Stacy, "Solemn-Looking Blokes" (_Century Magazine_), 29-33 Bagehot, Walter, _Works_, vol. III, "A Constitutional Statesman", 227-229 Belloc, Hilaire, _First and Last_, "On a Great Wind", 244 Bradford, Gamaliel, _Confederate Portraits_, "Judah P. Benjamin", 264 Brooke, Rupert, _Collected Poems_, "The Great Lover", 234-235 Bullard, F. Lauriston, _Famous War Correspondents_, "A Definition of the Correspondent", 78 Burdick, Francis M, _The Essentials of Business Law_-- "Definition of the Clearing-House", 76 "Definition of Sale", 105 Burroughs, John, _Birds and Bees_, "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee", 48-55 Outline of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee", 64-66 _Birds and Poets_, "Emerson's Literary Quality", 224 _Leaf and Tendril_, "A Breath of April", 247-249 Burton, Richard, _Little Essays in Literature and Life_, "The Nature of the Informal Essay", 243-244 Butler, Samuel, _The Note-Books of Samuel Butler_, "A Group of Definitions", 109 Cannon, J. G, _Clearing-Houses_, "Classification of Clearing-Houses", 140 Carlyle, Thomas, _Essay on Biography_, Selection from, 275-276 Sartor Resartus, "The Entepfuhl Road", 40 _Century Magazine_, "The Hydraulic Cartridge", 161-162 "The Phonopticon", 171-172 Corbin, John, _An American at Oxford_, "How to Handle a Punt", 163-164 Corbin, T. W, _Engineering of To-day_, "Cargo Steamers", 203-205 "The Oxygen Blow-Pipe", 161 "Launching the Neptune", 178-181 Cram, R. A., _The Heart of Europe_, "Definition of the Heart", 104 Croly, Herbert, _The Promise of American Life_, "The American Business Man", 197-199 Dilley, Arthur U, _Oriental Rugs_, "A Classification of Rugs", 119-122 Eliot, George, _The Mill on the Floss_, "The Scenery of the Rhone", 124-125 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, _Conduct of Life_, "Fate", 27-28; 36-37 _Nature, Addresses, and Lectures_, "A Definition of Conservative and Innovator", 93-95 _Society and Solitude_, "Definition of Civilization in America", 98-99 Escott, T. H. S, _Great Victorians_, "Balfour", 271 Gardiner, A. G., _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_, "Balfour", 148 "King Edward VII", 148-149 "Lord Morley", 19 "Thomas Hardy", 149-150 Garland, Hamlin, _A Son of the Middle Border_, a sentence from, 45 Gissing, George, _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_-- "Apples for Diet", 21-22 "A Definition of Art", 7 "A Definition of Poverty", 84-85 "English Cooking", 210-211 "Military Drill", 225-226 "The Sportswoman", 128-129 "The 'Tempest'", 213-214 "Vegetarianism", 222-223 Green, J. R., _Short History of the English People_, "Estimate of the Character of Elizabeth", 122-123 Greenough and Kittredge, _Words and Their Ways in English Speech_, "The Process of Radiation", 181-183 Haweis, Rev. Mr., _Music and Morals_, "The Character of J. R. Green", 268-269 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, _Our Old Home_, "English Weather", 126-128 Henderson, W. H., _What is Good Music_-- "Criticism of Musical Performances", 230 "The Modern Orchestra", 152-153 Howells, W. D., _A Boy's Town_, "The Difference Between Boys and Men", 107 Hungerford, Edward, _The Personality of American Cities_, "Boston", 68-69 Judy, A. M., _From the Study to the Farm_, "The Farmer's Life", 150-151 Lounsbury, T. R., _English Spelling and Spelling Reform_, "Final e", 205-208 Lucke, C. E., _Power_, "The Mechanical Engineer", 98 "The Problem of Power Machinery", 137 "Water Power", 151-152 Masefield, John, _Gallipoli_, "The Horror of the Fight", 69-70 Morley, John, _Miscellanies_, vol. I, "The Distinction Between the Poetic and the Scientific Spirit", 105-106 Morman, J. B., _The Principles of Rural Credit_, "Amortization", 85-86 Pollak, Gustav, _Fifty Years of American Idealism_-- "Jingo Morality", 220-222 "Lowell at St. James", 193-194 "Moral Atmosphere", 91-93 "Responsible Statesman", 87 Prelini, Charles, _Dredges and Dredging_, "The Operation of Dredges", 170 Royce, Josiah, "Nietzsche" (_Atlantic Monthly_), 131 Russell, Bertrand, _National Independence and Internationalism_-- "National Sentiment", 226-227 "State and Nation", 89-90 _Why Men Fight_, "Impulse and Desire", 132-135 Sainte-Beuve, "Definition of a Classic", 91 _Scientific American_, "The Catskill Water Supply", 185-186 _Scribner's Magazine_, The Point of View, "The New Poetry", 200-201 Sedgwick, H. D., _The New American Type_, "Honor", 108 Shakespeare, William, _King Henry IV_, "Bardolph on 'Accommodate'", 81-82 Sharp, Dallas Lore, _The Hills of Hingham_, "The Carpet Layer", 173-174 Shaw, G. B., _Dramatic Opinions and Essays_-- "The Odds Against Shakespeare", 116-117 _Sanity of Art_, "Definition of Artist", 103 "Indispensability of Law", 153-156 "Passion", 146-147 "Pattern Designers and Dramatic Composers", 111-112 _Society and Superior Brains_-- "Ability that Gives Value for Money", 85 "Superiority of Status", 109-110 Slicer, T. R., _From Poet to Premier_, "O. W. Holmes", 272 Standard Dictionary, Definition of "Correspondent", 78 Stevenson, R. L., "Pulvis et Umbra", 55-57 "The sun upon my shoulders", 45 Talbot, F. A., _The Making of a Great Canadian Railway_-- "The Stone Boat", 165 "The Track Layer", 166-168 Taylor, B. L., _The Line o' Type Column_, "Highbrow," etc., 102 Thackeray, W. M., _The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_, "Oliver Goldsmith", 285-294 Warner, Frances L., "The Amateur Chessman" (From The Point of View, _Scribner's Magazine_), 249-252 Webster's New International Dictionary, Definition of "Art", 6 A series of definitions, 100-101 Wendell, Barrett, _English Composition_, "Carlyle's Frederick the Great", 279-280 Weston, E. M., _Rock Drills_, "Hammer Drills", 115-116 "Tappet Valve Drills", 219-220 Wister, Owen, _Quack Novels and Democracy_, "The Quack Novel", 88-89 INDEX Ability of the critic to analyze, 192-194. Adaptation of treatment to subject, 6. Addison, Joseph, 233-236. Aids in gaining clearness in Mechanisms, Processes, and Organizations, 169-172. Aids in gaining interest in Mechanisms, Processes, and Organizations, 172-175. Aids in solving the problem in Expository Biography, 261-265. Amiel, Frederic, 277. Amount of expository writing, 2. Analysis, 8, 113-143; definition of, 113; enumeration as one kind of informal analysis, 129; equation as one kind of informal analysis, 130; formal analysis, 118; informal analysis, 129-137; kinds of analysis, the two, 115-118; kinds of informal analysis, 129-137; object of informal analysis, 124; the principles of analysis, 138-143; relationship as a form of informal analysis, 131; statement of a problem as a form of informal analysis, 136; statement of significance as a form of informal analysis, 130; the two virtues of analysis, 114. Analyzing the character in Expository Biography, 270-275. Antin, Mary, 189. Appreciative method of criticism, 209-215. Aumonier, Stacy, 29. Bagehot, Walter, 229. Balfour, Arthur James, 273. Barrie, Sir J. M., 241, 263. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 278. Belloc, Hilaire, 239, 244. Biography, Expository, 257-296; aid in solving the problem of, 261-265; analyzing the character of the hero, 270-275; beliefs of the hero, 273; choice of events in hero's life for, 276-277; defining the hero's character, 266-270; deeds of the hero, 274; events in hero's life, use of, 275-280; friends of the hero, 274; heredity of the hero, 270-272; interests of the hero, 272; kinds of, 257; lesson, danger of making one, 282; life problem of the hero, 258-260; object of expository biography, 258; problem, the chief, of expository biography, 258-261; problem of telling the truth, 280-281; process of solving the problem, 266-274; relation of events to personality, 277-278; relation of hero to society and times, 278-280; rhetorical form of expository biography, 282-285; rhetorical value of events, 280. B. L. T., 102. Boswell, James, 267, 279, 281. Bradford, Gamaliel, 264, 267, 281. Breadth of interest in writer of Informal Essays, 233-234. Brooke, Rupert, 234. Brooks, Sidney, 43. Brown, John, 238, 241. Browne, Sir Thomas, 262. Bullard, F. Lauriston, 78. Burdick, Francis M., 76, 105. Burroughs, John, 40, 41, 47, 224, 238, 247. Burton, Richard, 243. Butler, Samuel, 109. Byron, Lord, 200, 274. Cannon, J. G., 140. Carlyle, Thomas, 40, 258, 265, 272, 275, 279. Catalogs, use of, 301-302. Cause for stupidity in expository writing, 4, 25. Cause, method of showing, in definition, 97. Cautions about definitions, 80. Cavour, 266. Centralization, finding the root principle in mechanisms, etc., 159-162. Chesterton, Gilbert, 240, 241. Cicero, 12. Classification, 8, 117. Clearness: aids in gaining, 169-172; in explaining mechanisms, etc., 157, 162. Coleridge, Samuel T., 215. Comparison and contrast, method of in defining, 86. Controlling purpose: definition of, 16; emotional reaction to, 26-33; practical use of, 39-47; proper use of, 33-38; source of, 16-26; source of in reader's attitude, 22-25; source of in subject, 16-18; source of in writer's attitude, 18-22; stated in one sentence, 37; value, relative, of sources for, 25. Cooper, James F., 196. Corbin, John, 164. Corbin, T. W., 161, 181, 205. Cowley, 232. Cram, Ralph Adams, 104. Critic, the: ability to analyze, 192-194; common sense, 195; knowledge of the general field of criticism, 194-195; open-mindedness, 195-196. Criticism, 190-217; ability to analyze, possessed by the critic, 192-194; common sense of critic, 195; criticism and comment, 91; definition of, 190; diction in, 216-217; knowledge of general field, possessed by critic, 194-195; methods: appreciative, 209-215; historical, 196-202; standards, 202-209; open-mindedness of critic, 195-196; practical helps for writing, 215-217; range of criticism, 191. Croly, Herbert, 129, 199. Crothers, S. M., 237, 240. Da Vinci, Leonardo, 273. Deeds of hero in Expository Biography, 274. Defining the character of the hero in Expository Biography, 266-270. Definition of analysis, 113; of criticism, 190; of informal essay, 231. Definition: 8, 73-112; cautions, general, about, 80; definition of, 73; differentia and genus, 77; difficulty in discovering genus, 74; methods of defining: of comparison or contrast, 86; of division, 90; of elimination, 95; of illustration, 83; of repetition, 93; of showing origin, cause, and effect, 97; process of definition, 74; restricting the genus, 77; two classes of, 78. Demosthenes, 12. De Quincey, 242. Dictionaries, use of, 302. Dilley, Arthur U., 122. Douglas, Stephen A., 274. Economy, in note-taking, 298-299. Edwards, Jonathan, 27. Elimination as a method in definition, 95. Eliot, George, 124-125. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1, 27, 93, 95, 98, 224, 271, 282. Emotions, the, and the controlling purpose, 26-33. Encyclopædias, use of, 302. Enumeration as a form of informal analysis, 129. Equation as a form of informal analysis, 130. Escott, T. H. S., 271. Essay. _See_ Informal Essay. Events in hero's life for expository biography, 275-280. Exposition: amount of, 2; answers questions, 1, 2; causes for stupidity in writing exposition, 4, 25; emotions and exposition, 27; problem, the, in writing, 11; success of, 12; task of, 9-10; truth of, 7. Formal analysis, 118. Franz, Robert, 276. Freeman, Mrs. M. E. W., 199. Friends of the hero in expository biography, 274. Gardiner, A. G., 19, 148, 149, 150. Garland, Hamlin, 45. Gissing, George, 7, 21, 84, 103, 128, 209, 214, 223, 226. Goethe, Johann, 270. Goldsmith, Oliver, 267, 284, 285. Gray, 270. Green, J. R., 28, 268. Greenough and Kittredge, 183. Hardy, Thomas, 294. Haweis, the Rev. Mr., 268. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 126. Hazlitt, 195, 231, 232, 236, 238, 243. Henderson, W. H., 153, 230. Henry, Patrick, 12. Heredity in expository biography, 270-272. Historical method of criticism, 196-202. Holmes, O. W., 271-272. Howells, W. D., 107. Humor in the informal essay, 241-242. Hungerford, Edward, 69. Hunt, Leigh, 238. Husband, Joseph, 239. Huxley, Thomas, 44. Illustration as a method of definition, 83. Imaginative sympathy in expository biography, 261-265. Informal analysis, 123-138. Informal Essay, 231-244; breadth of interest in author of, 233-234; definition of, 231; humor in, 241-242; nature as subject for, 238-239; not too exhaustive, 242; not too serious, 240-242; not too rhetorically strict, 242-243; people as subjects for, 237-238; personal nature, 232-233; range of subject, 237; things as subjects for, 239-240. Interest in writing, 2; aids to gain, in mechanisms, processes and organizations, 172-175; of two kinds, 3; relation to underlying thought, 8. Interpreting and reporting, 5. James, William, 4, 44, 266. Jefferies, Richard, 239. Jewett, Miss S. O., 199. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 81, 233. Judicial criticism, here treated as criticism by standards, 202-209. Judy, A. M., 151. Labouchere, Henry, 9. Lamb, Charles, 6, 26, 232, 235, 242, 262. Lamb, Mary, 259. Lee, Robert E., 274, 277. Libraries: catalogues of, 301-302; dictionaries, 302; encyclopædias, 302; use of, 301-304. Lincoln, Abraham, 2, 16, 87, 269, 270. Liszt, Franz, 276. Lounsbury, Thomas, 205. Lowell, J. R., 271. Lucke, C. E., 98, 137, 152. Masefield, John, 69, 70, 71. Materials: ordering of, 41-47; selecting of, 39-41. Mechanisms, 157-175; aids for gaining clearness, 169-172; aids for gaining interest, 172-175; cautions, 158-159; centralization, 159-162; expression of root principle in one sentence, 160-161; necessity for clearness, 157-158; orders to be followed, 164-168. Meredith, George, 241. Methods, in criticism: appreciative, 209-215; historical, 196-202; standards, 202-209; in definition: comparison and contrast, 86; division, 90; elimination, 95; illustration, 83; origin, cause, and effect, 97; repetition, 93. Middleton, Richard, 240. More, P. E., 115, 123. Morley, John, 18, 105-106. Morman, J. B., 85. Mozart, W. A., 277. Notes: care in taking, 300; economy the chief virtue, 298-299; methods of taking, 300; space of notes, 299-300. Order of Material, 41-47. Organizations: 157-162 (general discussion), 168-169; aids to clearness, 169-172; aids to interest, 172-175. Parkman, Francis, 236. Parr, 279. Partition, 8, 117. People as subjects for informal essays, 237-238. Pericles, 273. Poe, E. A., 12. Pollak, Gustav, 86, 93, 194, 222. Prelini, Charles, 170. Problem, statement of a, in informal analysis, 136. Problem of expository biography, 248-261. Processes: 157-162 (general discussion), 162-164; aids to gaining clearness in, 169-172; aids to gaining interest in, 172-175. Relation of events to personality in expository biography, 277-278. Relation of hero to society and times in expository biography, 278-280. Repetition as a method in definition, 93. Reporting vs. interpreting, 5. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 208. Rhetorical strictness absent in informal essay, 242-243. Rhetorical value of events in expository biography, 280. Royce, Josiah, 131. Russell, Bertrand, 90, 135, 227. Sainte-Beuve, 91. Scott, Sir Walter, 200. Sedgwick, H. D., 108. Selection of material, 39-41. Shakespeare, William, 12, 60, 81, 257. Sharp, Dallas Lore, 173, 174, 237, 238. Shaw, G. B., 85, 102, 110, 112, 117, 146, 147, 156. Sidney, Sir Philip, 9. Significance, statement of, as form of informal analysis, 130. Slavery to printed word, 297. Slicer, T. R., 277. Smith, Sydney, 241. Socrates, 263. Sources of the controlling purpose, 16, 26. Standards, criticism by, 202-209. Steele, Richard, 232. Stevenson, R. L., 6, 41, 45, 55, 58, 66, 237, 238, 241, 257, 259, 260, 263, 271, 274, 281. Strategy, the problem of, in writing, 11. Sympathy, imaginative, in expository biography, 261-265. Taft, Wm. H., 46. Talbot, F. A., 165, 168. Taylor, Bert Lester, 102. Tennyson, Alfred, 26, 274. Thackeray, Wm. M., 258, 284. Truth, as related to interest, 7-8. Unification, 13-14. Warner, C. D., 238, 239. Warner, Frances L., 249. Webster, Daniel, 173. Weston, E. M., 116, 220. Whibley, Charles, 266, 269, 283. Whistler, 212. Wilson, Woodrow, 12, 176. Wister, Owen, 89. Transcriber's Note Obvious typographical errors were repaired, as listed below. Other apparent inconsistencies or errors have been retained. Missing, extraneous, or incorrect punctuation has been corrected. Most of the inconsistent hyphenation has been retained as many appear in quoted passages. Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=). Although oe ligatures have been expanded, other diacritical marks are enclosed by square brackets. For example, [)i] represents a breve over the letter i, and [=y] represents a macron over the letter y. Page 87, "wihe" changed to "with". (The value of this method lies in its liveliness and the ease with which it makes an idea comprehended.) Page 97, "aboveall" changed to "above all" for consistency. (And above all, he will never forget the gleam of idealism that he received in the old halls, the vision of his chance to serve his fellows.) Page 203, "froward" changed to "forward". (... and my trivial story of his humoring a forward child weighs but as a feather in the recorded scale of his benevolence.) 
43435	----	Transcriber's note. Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. Variable spelling has been retained. A list of the changes made can be found at the end of the book. In the Index of Scenes, clarendon typeface is indicated as bold. Sidenotes are presented [within square brackets]. Mark up: _italic_ =bold= SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST _MOULTON_ London HENRY FROWDE [Illustration] OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C. SHAKESPEARE AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST A POPULAR ILLUSTRATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM BY RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY (EXTENSION) LECTURER IN LITERATURE Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1885 [_All rights reserved_] PREFACE. I HAVE had three objects before me in writing this book. The first concerns the general reader. 'No one needs assistance in order to perceive Shakespeare's greatness; but an impression is not uncommonly to be found, especially amongst English readers, that Shakespeare's greatness lies mainly in his deep knowledge of human nature, while, as to the technicalities of Dramatic Art, he is at once careless of them and too great to need them. I have endeavoured to combat this impression by a series of Studies of Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist. They are chiefly occupied with a few master-strokes of art, sufficient to illustrate the revolution Shakespeare created in the Drama of the world--a revolution not at once perceived simply because it had carried the Drama at a bound so far beyond Dramatic Criticism that the appreciation of Shakespeare's plays was left to the uninstructed public, while the trained criticism that ought to have recognised the new departure was engaged in clamouring for other views of dramatic treatment, which it failed to perceive that Shakespeare had rendered obsolete. While the earlier chapters are taken up with these Studies, the rest of the work is an attempt, in very brief form, to present Dramatic Criticism as a regular Inductive Science. If I speak of this as a new branch of Science I am not ignoring the great works on Shakespeare-Criticism which already exist, the later of which have treated their subject in an inductive spirit. What these still leave wanting is a _recognition_ of method in application to the study of the Drama: my purpose is to claim for Criticism a position amongst the Inductive Sciences, and to sketch in outline a plan for the Dramatic side of such a Critical Science. A third purpose has been to make the work of use as an educational manual. Shakespeare now enters into every scheme of liberal education; but the annotated editions of his works give the student little assistance except in the explanation of language and allusions; and the idea, I believe, prevails that anything like the discussion of literary characteristics or dramatic effect is out of place in an educational work--is, indeed, too 'indefinite' to be 'examined on.' Ten years' experience in connection with the Cambridge University Extension, during which my work has been to teach literature apart from philology, has confirmed my impression that the subject-matter of literature, its exposition and analysis from the sides of science, history, and art, is as good an educational discipline as it is intrinsically valuable in quickening literary appreciation. There are two special features of the book to which I may here draw attention. Where practicable, I have appended in the margin references to the passages of Shakespeare on which my discussion is based. (These references are to the Globe Edition.) I have thus hoped to reduce to a minimum the element of personal opinion, and to give to my treatment at least that degree of definiteness which arises when a position stands side by side with the evidence supporting it. I have also endeavoured to meet a practical difficulty in the use of Shakespeare-Criticism as an educational subject. It is usual in educational schemes to name single plays of Shakespeare for study. Experience has convinced me that methodical study of the subject-matter is not possible within the compass of a single play. On the other hand, few persons in the educational stage of life can have the detailed knowledge of Shakespeare's plays as a whole which is required for a full treatment of the subject. The present work is so arranged that it assumes knowledge of only five plays--_The Merchant of Venice_, _Richard III_, _Macbeth_, _Julius Cæsar_, and _King Lear_. Not only in the Studies, but also in the final review, the matter introduced is confined to what can be illustrated out of these five plays. These are amongst the most familiar of the Shakespearean Dramas, or they can be easily read before commencing the book; and if the arrangement is a limitation involving a certain amount of repetition, yet I believe the gain will be greater than the loss. For the young student, at all events, it affords an opportunity of getting what will be the best of all introductions to the whole subject--a thorough knowledge of five plays. In passing the book through the press I have received material assistance from my brother, Dr. Moulton, Master of the Leys School, and from my College friend, Mr. Joseph Jacobs. With the latter, indeed, I have discussed the work in all its stages, and have been under continual obligation to his stores of knowledge and critical grasp in all departments of literary study. I cannot even attempt to name the many friends--chiefly fellow-workers in the University Extension Movement--through whose active interest in my Shakespeare teaching I have been encouraged to seek for it publication. RICHARD G. MOULTON. _April, 1885._ CONTENTS. =INTRODUCTION.= PLEA FOR AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE OF LITERARY CRITICISM. =PART FIRST.= SHAKESPEARE CONSIDERED AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST, _IN TEN STUDIES_. I. THE TWO STORIES SHAKESPEARE BORROWS FOR HIS 'MERCHANT OF VENICE.' PAGE _A Study in the Raw Material of the Romantic Drama_. 43 II. _How Shakespeare Improves the Stories in the Telling_. _A Study in Dramatic Workmanship_. 58 III. HOW SHAKESPEARE MAKES HIS PLOT MORE COMPLEX IN ORDER TO MAKE IT MORE SIMPLE. _A Study in Underplot_. 74 IV. A PICTURE OF IDEAL VILLANY IN 'RICHARD III.' _A Study in Character-Interpretation_. 90 V. 'RICHARD III': HOW SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY. _A Study in Plot_. 107 VI. HOW NEMESIS AND DESTINY ARE INTERWOVEN IN 'MACBETH.' _A further Study in Plot_. 125 VII. MACBETH, LORD AND LADY. _A Study in Character-Contrast_. 144 VIII. JULIUS CÆSAR BESIDE HIS MURDERERS AND HIS AVENGER. _A Study in Character-Grouping_. 168 IX. HOW THE PLAY OF 'JULIUS CÆSAR' WORKS UP TO A CLIMAX AT THE CENTRE. _A Study in Passion and Movement_. 185 X. HOW CLIMAX MEETS CLIMAX IN THE CENTRE OF 'LEAR.' _A Study in more complex Passion and Movement_. 202 =PART SECOND.= SURVEY OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE. XI. TOPICS OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM. 227 XII. INTEREST OF CHARACTER. 237 XIII. INTEREST OF PASSION. 246 XIV. INTEREST OF PLOT. 268 INTRODUCTION. _PLEA FOR AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE OF LITERARY CRITICISM._ INTRODUCTION. [_Proposition._] IN the treatment of literature the proposition which seems to stand most in need of assertion at the present moment is, _that there is an inductive science of literary criticism_. As botany deals inductively with the phenomena of vegetable life and traces the laws underlying them, as economy reviews and systematises on inductive principles the facts of commerce, so there is a criticism not less inductive in character which has for its subject-matter literature. * * * * * [_Presumption in favour of inductive literary criticism._] The presumption is clearly that literary criticism should follow other branches of thought in becoming inductive. Ultimately, science means no more than organised thought; and amongst the methods of organisation induction is the most practical. To begin with the observation of facts; to advance from this through the arrangement of observed facts; to use _à priori_ ideas, instinctive notions of the fitness of things, insight into far probabilities, only as side-lights for suggesting convenient arrangements, the value of which is tested only by the actual convenience in arranging they afford; to be content with the sure results so obtained as 'theory' in the interval of waiting for still surer results based on a yet wider accumulation of facts: this is a regimen for healthy science so widely established in different tracts of thought as almost to rise to that universal acceptance which we call common sense. Indeed the whole progress of science consists in winning fresh fields of thought to the inductive methods. [_Current conceptions of criticism coloured by notions other than inductive._] Yet the great mass of literary criticism at the present moment is of a nature widely removed from induction. The prevailing notions of criticism are dominated by the idea of _assaying_, as if its function were to test the soundness and estimate the comparative value of literary work. Lord Macaulay, than whom no one has a better right to be heard on this subject, compares his office of reviewer to that of a king-at-arms, versed in the laws of literary precedence, marshalling authors to the exact seats to which they are entitled. And, as a matter of fact, the bulk of literary criticism, whether in popular conversation or in discussions by professed critics, occupies itself with the merits of authors and works; founding its estimates and arguments on canons of taste, which are either assumed as having met with general acceptance, or deduced from speculations as to fundamental conceptions of literary beauty. [_Criticism judicial and inductive. The two distinguished._] It becomes necessary then to recognise two different kinds of literary criticism, as distinct as any two things that can be called by the same name. The difference between the two may be summed up as the difference between the work of a _judge_ and of an _investigator_. The one is the enquiry into what ought to be, the other the enquiry into what is. Judicial criticism compares a new production with those already existing in order to determine whether it is inferior to them or surpasses them; criticism of investigation makes the same comparison for the purpose of identifying the new product with some type in the past, or differentiating it and registering a new type. Judicial criticism has a mission to watch against variations from received canons; criticism of investigation watches for new forms to increase its stock of species. The criticism of taste analyses literary works for grounds of preference or evidence on which to found judgments; inductive criticism analyses them to get a closer acquaintance with their phenomena. Let the question be of Ben Jonson. Judicial criticism starts by holding Ben Jonson responsible for the decay of the English Drama. Inductive criticism takes objection to the word 'decay' as suggesting condemnation, but recognises Ben Jonson as the beginner of a new tendency in our dramatic history. But, judicial criticism insists, the object of the Drama is to pourtray human nature, whereas Ben Jonson has painted not men but caricatures. Induction sees that this formula cannot be a sufficient definition of the Drama, for the simple reason that it does not take in Ben Jonson; its own mode of putting the matter is that Ben Jonson has founded a school of treatment of which the law is caricature. But Ben Jonson's caricatures are palpably impossible. Induction soon satisfies itself that their point lies in their impossibility; they constitute a new mode of pourtraying qualities of character, not by resemblance, but by analysing and intensifying contrasts to make them clearer. Judicial criticism can see how the poet was led astray; the bent of his disposition induced him to sacrifice dramatic propriety to his satiric purpose. Induction has another way of putting the matter: that the poet has utilised dramatic form for satiric purpose; thus by the 'cross-fertilisation' of two existing literary species he has added to literature a third including features of both. At all events, judicial criticism will maintain, it must be admitted that the Shakespearean mode of pourtraying is infinitely the higher: a sign-painter, as Macaulay points out, can imitate a deformity of feature, while it takes a great artist to bring out delicate shades of expression. Inductive treatment knows nothing about higher or lower, which lie outside the domain of science. Its point is that science is indebted to Ben Jonson for a new species; if the new species be an easier form of art it does not on that account lose its claim to be analysed. The critic of merit can always fall back upon taste: who would not prefer Shakespeare to Ben Jonson? But even from this point of view scientific treatment can plead its own advantages. The inductive critic reaps to the full the interest of Ben Jonson, to which the other has been forcibly closing his eyes; while, so far from liking Shakespeare the less, he appreciates all the more keenly Shakespeare's method of treatment from his familiarity with that which is its antithesis. [_The two criticisms confused:_] It must be conceded at once that both these kinds of criticism have justified their existence. Judicial criticism has long been established as a favourite pursuit of highly cultivated minds; while the criticism of induction can shelter itself under the authority of science in general, seeing that it has for its object to bring the treatment of literature into the circle of the inductive sciences. [_conception of critical method limited to judicial method._] It is unfortunate, however, that the spheres of the two have not been kept distinct. In the actual practice of criticism the judicial method has obtained an illegitimate supremacy which has thrown the other into the shade; it has even invaded the domain of the criticism that claims to be scientific, until the word _criticism_ itself has suffered, and the methodical treatment of literature has by tacit assumption become limited in idea to the judicial method. [_Partly a survival of Renaissance influence:_] Explanation for this limited conception of criticism is not far to seek. Modern criticism took its rise before the importance of induction was recognised: it lags behind other branches of thought in adapting itself to inductive treatment chiefly through two influences. The first of these is connected with the revival of literature after the darkness of the middle ages. The birth of thought and taste in modern Europe was the Renaissance of classical thought and taste; by Roman and Greek philosophy and poetry the native powers of our ancestors were trained till they became strong enough to originate for themselves. It was natural for their earliest criticism to take the form of applying the classical standards to their own imitations: [_and its testing by classical models._] now we have advanced so far that no one would propose to test exclusively by classical models, but nevertheless the idea of _testing_ still lingers as the root idea in the treatment of literature. Other branches of thought have completely shaken off this attitude of submission to the past: literary criticism differs from the rest only in being later to move. This is powerfully suggested by the fact that so recent a writer as Addison couples science in general with criticism in his estimate of probable progress; laying down the startling proposition that 'it is impossible for us who live in the later ages of the world to make observations in criticism, in morality, _or in any art or science_, which have not been touched upon by others'! [_Partly the methods of journalism have invaded systematic criticism._] And even for this lateness a second influence goes far to account. The grand literary phenomenon of modern times is journalism, the huge apparatus of floating literature of which leading object is to review literature itself. The vast increase of production consequent upon the progress of printing has made production itself a phenomenon worthy of study, and elevated the sifting of production into a prominent literary occupation; by the aid of book-tasters alone can the ordinary reader keep pace with production. It is natural enough that the influence of journalism should pass beyond its natural sphere, and that the review should tend to usurp the position of the literature for which reviewing exists. Now in journalism testing and valuation of literary work have a real and important place. It has thus come about that in the great preponderance of ephemeral over permanent literature the machinery adapted to the former has become applied to the latter: methods proper to journalism have settled the popular conception of systematic treatment; and the bias already given to criticism by the Renaissance has been strengthened to resist the tendency of all kinds of thought towards inductive methods. [_The limitation defended: theory of taste as condensed experience._] History will thus account for the way in which the criticism of taste and valuation tends to be identified with criticism in general: but attempts are not wanting to give the identification a scientific basis. Literary appreciation, it is said, is a thing of culture. A critic in the reviewer's sense is one who has the literary faculty both originally acute and developed by practice: he thus arrives quickly and with certainty at results which others would reach laboriously and after temporary misjudgments. Taste, however arbitrary in appearance, is in reality condensed experience; judicial criticism is a wise economy of appreciation, the purpose of which is to anticipate natural selection and universal experience. He is a good critic who, by his keen and practised judgment, can tell you at once the view of authors and works which you would yourself come to hold with sufficient study and experience. [_The theory examined. The judicial spirit a limit on appreciation._] Now in the first place there is a flaw in this reasoning: it omits to take into account that the judicial attitude of mind is itself a barrier to appreciation, as being opposed to that delicacy of receptiveness which is a first condition of sensibility to impressions of literature and art. It is a matter of commonest experience that appreciation may be interfered with by prejudice, by a passing unfavourable mood, or even by uncomfortable external surroundings. But it is by no means sufficient that the reader of literature should divest himself of these passive hindrances to appreciation: poets are pioneers in beauty, and considerable activity of effort is required to keep pace with them. Repetition may be necessary to catch effects--passages to be read over and over again, more than one author of the same school to be studied, effect to be compared with kindred effect each helping the other. Or an explanation from one who has already caught the idea may turn the mind into a receptive attitude. Training again is universally recognised as a necessity for appreciation, and to train is to make receptive. [_On the other hand sympathy the great interpreter._] Beyond all these conditions of perception, and including them, is yet another. It is a foundation principle in art-culture, as well as in human intercourse, that _sympathy is the grand interpreter_: secrets of beauty will unfold themselves to the sunshine of sympathy, while they will wrap themselves all the closer against the tempest of sceptical questionings. Now a judicial attitude of mind is highly unreceptive, for it necessarily implies a restraint of sympathy: every one, remarks Hogarth, is a judge of painting except the connoisseur. The judicial mind has an appearance of receptiveness, because it seeks to shut out prejudice: but what if the idea of judging be itself a prejudice? On this view the very consciousness of fairness, involving as it does limitation of sympathy, will be itself unfair. In practical life, where we have to act, the formation of judgments is a necessity. In art we can escape the obligation, and here the judicial spirit becomes a wanton addition to difficulties of appreciation already sufficiently great; the mere notion of condemning may be enough to check our receptivity to qualities which, as we have seen, it may need our utmost effort to catch. So that the judicial attitude of mind comes to defeat its own purpose, and disturbs unconsciously the impression it seeks to judge; until, as Emerson puts it, 'if you criticise a fine genius the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and instead of the poet are censuring your caricature of him.' [_The theory refuted by experience: the history of criticism a triumph of authors over critics._] But the appeal made is to experience: to experience let it go. It will be found that, speaking broadly, _the whole history of criticism has been a triumph of authors over critics_: so long as criticism has meant the gauging of literature, so long its progress has consisted in the reversal of critical judgments by further experience. I hesitate to enlarge upon this part of my subject lest I be inflicting upon the reader the tedium of a thrice-told tale. But I believe that the ordinary reader, however familiar with notable blunders of criticism, has little idea of that which is the essence of my argument--the degree of regularity, amounting to absolute law, with which criticism, where it has set itself in opposition to freedom of authorship, has been found in time to have pronounced upon the wrong side, and has, after infinite waste of obstructive energy, been compelled at last to accept innovations it had pronounced impossible under penalty of itself becoming obsolete. [_Case of the Shakespearean Drama: retiring waves of critical opposition._] Shakespeare-criticism affords the most striking illustration. Its history is made up of wave after wave of critical opposition, each retiring further before the steady advance of Shakespeare's fame. They may almost be traced in the varying apologetic tones of the successive _Variorum_ editors, until Reed, in the edition of 1803, is content to leave the poet's renown as established on a basis which will 'bid defiance to the caprices of fashion and the canker of time.' [I. _Unmeasured attack._] The first wave was one of unmeasured virulent attack. Rymer, accepted in his own day as the champion of 'regular' criticism, and pronounced by Pope one of the best critics England ever had, says that in Tragedy Shakespeare appears quite out of his element: His brains are turned; he raves and rambles without any coherence, any spark of reason, or any rule to control him or set bounds to his phrensy. The shouting and battles of his scenes are necessary to keep the audience awake, 'otherwise no sermon would be so strong an opiate.' Again: In the neighing of an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively an expression, and, may I say, more humanity, than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare. The famous Suggestion Scene in _Othello_ has, in Rymer's view, no point but 'the mops, the mows, the grimace, the grins, the gesticulation.' On Desdemona's O good Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again? he remarks that no woman bred out of a pig-stye would talk so meanly. Speaking of Portia he says, 'she is scarce one remove from a natural, she is own cousin-german, of one piece, the very same impertinent flesh and blood with Desdemona.' And Rymer's general verdict of _Othello_--which he considers the best of Shakespeare's tragedies--is thus summed up: There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of comical wit, some show and some mimicry to divert the spectators: but the tragical part is plainly none other than a bloody farce, without salt or savour. In the eighteenth century Lord Lansdowne, writing on 'Unnatural Flights in Poetry,' could refuse to go into the question of Shakespeare's soliloquies, as being assured that 'not one in all his works could be excused by reason or nature.' The same tone was still later kept up by Voltaire, who calls Shakespeare a writer of monstrous farces called tragedies; says that nature had blended in him all that is most great and elevating with all the basest qualities that belong to barbarousness without genius; and finally proceeds to call his poetry the fruit of the imagination of an intoxicated savage. [2. _The Shakespearean Drama held inadmissible, yet attractive._]--Meanwhile a second wave of opinion had arisen, not conceiving a doubt as to the total inadmissibility of the Shakespearean Drama, yet feeling its attraction. This is perhaps most exactly illustrated in the forgotten critic Edwards, who ruled that 'poor Shakespeare'--the expression his own--must be excluded from the number of good tragedians, yet 'as Homer from the Republic of Plato, with marks of distinction and veneration.' But before this the more celebrated dramatists of the Restoration had shown the double feeling in the way they reconstructed Shakespeare's plays, and turned them into 'correct' dramas. Thus Otway made the mediæval Capulets and Montagus presentable by giving them a classical dress as followers of Marius and Sulla; and even Dryden joined in a polite version of _The Tempest_, with an original touch for symmetry's sake in the addition to the heroine Miranda, a maid who had never seen a man, of a suitable hero, a man who had never seen a maid. [3. _The Shakespearean Drama admitted with excuses._]--Against loud abuse and patronising reconstruction the silent power of Shakespeare's works made itself more and more felt, and we reach a third stage when the Shakespearean Drama is accepted as it stands, but with excuses. Excuse is made for the poet's age, in which the English nation was supposed to be struggling to emerge from barbarism. Heywood's apology for uniting light and serious matter is allowed, that 'they who write to all must strive to please all.' Pope points out that Shakespeare was dependent for his subsistence on pleasing the taste of tradesmen and mechanics; and that his 'wrong choice of subjects' and 'wrong conduct of incidents,' his 'false thoughts and forced expressions' are the result of his being forced to please the lowest of the people and keep the worst of company. Similarly Theobald considers that he schemed his plots and characters from romances simply for want of classical information. [4. _The Shakespearean Drama not felt to need defence as a whole, but praised and blamed in its parts._]--With the last name we pass to yet another school, with whom Shakespeare's work as a whole is not felt to need defence, and the old spirit survives only in their distribution of praise and blame amongst its different parts. Theobald opens his preface with the comparison of the Shakespearean Drama to a splendid pile of buildings, with 'some parts finished up to hit the taste of a connoisseur, others more negligently put together to strike the fancy of a common beholder.' Pope--who reflects the most various schools of criticism, often on successive pages--illustrates this stage in his remark that Shakespeare has excellences that have elevated him above all others, and almost as many defects; 'as he has certainly written better so he has perhaps written worse than any other.' Dr. Johnson sets out by describing Shakespeare as 'having begun to assume the dignity of an ancient'--the highest commendation in his eyes. But he goes on to point out the inferiority of Shakespeare's Tragedy to his Comedy, the former the outcome of skill rather than instinct, with little felicity and always leaving something wanting; how he seems without moral purpose, letting his precepts and axioms drop casually from him, dismissing his personages without further care, and leaving the examples to operate by chance; how his plots are so loosely formed that they might easily be improved, his set speeches cold and weak, his incidents imperfectly told in many words which might be more plainly described in few. Then in the progress of his commentary, he irritates the reader, as Hallam points out, by the magisterial manner in which he dismisses each play like a schoolboy's exercise. [5. _Finally criticism comes round entirely to Shakespeare._]--At last comes a revolution in criticism and a new order of things arises: with Lessing to lead the way in Germany and Coleridge in England, a school of critics appear who are in complete harmony with their author, who question him only to learn the secrets of his art. The new spirit has not even yet leavened the whole of the literary world; but such names as Goethe, Tieck, Schlegel, Victor Hugo, Ulrici, Gervinus suggest how many great reputations have been made, and reputations already great have been carried into a new sphere of greatness, by the interpretation and unfolding of Shakespeare's greatness: not one critic has in recent years risen to eminence by attacking Shakespeare. [_Other examples._] And the Shakespearean Drama is only the most illustrious example of authors triumphing over the criticism that attempted to judge them. [_Milton._] It is difficult for a modern reader to believe that even Rymer could refer to the _Paradise Lost_ as 'what some are pleased to call a poem'; or that Dr. Johnson could assert of the minor poems of Milton that they exhibit 'peculiarity as distinguished from excellence,' 'if they differ from others they differ for the worse.' He says of _Comus_ that it is 'inelegantly splendid and tediously instructive'; and of _Lycidas_, that its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, its numbers unpleasing, that 'in this poem there is no nature for there is no truth, there is no art for there is nothing new,' that it is 'easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting,'--after which he goes through the different parts of the poem to show what Milton should have done in each. Hallam has pointed out how utterly impotent Dr. Johnson has been to fix the public taste in the case of these poems; yet even Hallam could think the verse of the poet who wrote _Paradise Lost_ sufficiently described by the verdict, 'sometimes wanting in grace and almost always in ease.' [_Shakespeare's Sonnets._] In the light of modern taste it is astonishing indeed to find Steevens, with his devotion of a lifetime to Shakespeare, yet omitting the Sonnets from the edition of 1793, 'because the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed would not compel readers into their service.' [_Spenser._] It is equally astonishing to find Dryden speaking of Spenser's 'ill choice of stanza,' and saying of the _Faerie Queene_ that if completed it might have been more of a piece, but it could not be perfect, because its model was not true: an example followed up in the next century by a 'person of quality,' who translated a book of the _Faerie Queene_ out of its 'obsolete language and manner of verse' into heroic couplets. [_Gray._] I pass over the crowd of illustrations, such as the fate of Gray at the hands of Dr. Johnson, [_Keats._] of Keats at the hands of monthly and quarterly reviewers, [_Waverley Novels._] or of the various Waverley Novels capriciously selected by different critics as examples of literary suicide. But we have not yet had time to forget how Jeffrey--one of the greatest names in criticism--set in motion the whole machinery of reviewing in order to put down Wordsworth. [_Wordsworth._] Wordsworth's most elaborate poem he describes as a 'tissue of moral and devotional ravings,' a 'hubbub of strained raptures and fantastical sublimities': his 'effusions on ... the physiognomy of external nature' he characterises as 'eminently fantastic, obscure, and affected.' Then, to find a climax, he compares different species of Wordsworth's poetry to the various stages of intoxication: his Odes are 'glorious delirium' and 'incoherent rapture,' his Lyrical Ballads a 'vein of pretty deliration,' his _White Doe_ is 'low and maudlin imbecility.' Not a whit the less has the influence of Wordsworth deepened and solidified; and if all are not yet prepared to accept him as the apostle of a new religion, yet he has tacitly secured his place in the inner circle of English poets. In fine, the work of modern criticism is seriously blocked by the perpetual necessity of revising and reversing what this same Jeffrey calls the 'impartial and irreversible sentences' of criticism in the past. And as a set-off in the opposite scale only one considerable achievement is to be noted: [_Robert Montgomery._] that journalism afforded a medium for Macaulay to quench the light of Robert Montgomery, which, on Macaulay's own showing, journalism had puffed into a flame. [_Defeat of criticism in the great literary questions._] It is the same with the great literary questions that have from time to time arisen, the pitched battles of criticism: as Goldsmith says, there never has been an unbeaten path trodden by the poet that the critic has not endeavoured to recall him by calling his attempt an innovation. [_Blank verse._] Criticism set its face steadily from the first against blank verse in English poetry. The interlocutors in Dryden's _Essay on the Drama_ agree that it is vain to strive against the stream of the people's inclination, won over as they have been by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher; but, as they go on to discuss the rights of the matter, the most remarkable thing to a modern reader is that the defence of blank verse is made to rest only on the colloquial character of dramatic poetry, and neither party seems to conceive the possibility of non-dramatic poetry other than in rhyme. Before Dryden's _Essay on Satire_ the _Paradise Lost_ had made its appearance; but so impossible an idea is literary novelty to the 'father of English criticism' that Dryden in this Essay refuses to believe Milton's own account of the matter, saying that, whatever reasons Milton may allege for departing from rhyme, 'his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent, he has neither the ease of doing it nor the graces of it.' To one so steeped in French fashions as Rymer, poetry that lacks rhyme seems to lack everything; many of Shakespeare's scenes might, he says, do better without words at all, or at most the words set off the action like the drone of a bagpipe. Voltaire estimates blank verse at about the same rate, and having to translate some of Shakespeare's for purposes of exact comparison, he remarks that blank verse costs nothing but the trouble of dictating, that it is not more difficult to write than a letter. Dr. Johnson finds a theoretic argument in the unmusical character of English poetry to prove the impossibility of its ever adapting itself to the conditions of blank verse, and is confident enough to prophesy: 'poetry may subsist without rhyme, but English poetry will not often please.' Even Byron is found only one degree more tolerant than Dryden: he has the grace to except Milton from his dictum that no one ever wrote blank verse who could rhyme. Thus critical taste, critical theory, and critical prophecy were unanimous against blank verse as an English measure: for all that it has become the leading medium of English poetry, and a doubter of to-day would be more likely to doubt the permanence of English rhyme than of English blank verse. [_The 'three unities':_] As to the famous 'three unities,' not only the principles themselves, but even the refutation of them has now become obsolete. Yet this stickling for the unities has been merely the chief amongst many examples of the proneness the critical mind has exhibited towards limiting literary appreciation and production by single standards of taste. [_and limitations by still narrower classical standards._] The same tone of mind that contended for the classical unities had in an earlier generation contended for the classical languages as the sole vehicle of literary expression, and the modern languages of Europe had to assert their rights by hard fighting. In Latin literature itself a more successful attempt has been made to limit taste by the writers of a single period, the Augustan age, and so construct a list of Latin poets which omits Lucretius. And for a short period of the Renaissance movement the limitation was carried further to a single one of the Augustan writers, and 'Ciceronianism' struggled hard against the freedom of style it chose to nickname 'Apuleianism,' till it fell itself before the laughter of Erasmus. [_Criticism failing to distinguish the permanent and transitory._] It would seem almost to be a radical law of the critical temperament that admiration for the past paralyses faith in the future; while criticism proves totally unable to distinguish between what has been essential in the greatness of its idols and what has been as purely accidental as, to use Scott's illustration, the shape of the drinking-glass is to the flavour of the wine it contains. And if criticism has thus failed in distinguishing what is permanent in past literature, it has proved equally mistaken in what it has assumed to be accidental and transitory. Early commentators on Shakespeare, whatever scruples they may have had upon other points, had no misgivings in condemning the irregularities of his English and correcting his grammar. This was described as obsolete by Dryden half a century after the poet's death; while it is delicious to hear Steevens, in the Advertisement to his edition of 1766, mentioning that 'some have been of opinion that even a particular syntax prevailed in the time of Shakespeare'--a novel suggestion he promptly rejects. If the two could have lived each a century later, Dryden would have found Malone laying down that Shakespeare had been the great purifyer and refiner of our language, and Steevens would have seen Shakespeare's grammar studied with the same minuteness and reduced to the same regular form as the grammar of his commentators and readers; while one of the most distinguished of our modern grammarians, instituting a comparison between Elizabethan and nineteenth century English, fancies the representative of the old-fashioned tongue characterising current speech in the words of Sebastian: Surely It is a sleepy language! [_Critical works where inductive retain their force, where judicial have become obsolete._] The critics may themselves be called as chief witnesses against themselves. Those parts of their works in which they apply themselves to analysing and interpreting their authors survive in their full force: where they judge, find fault, and attempt to regulate, they inevitably become obsolete. Aristotle, the founder of all criticism, is for the most part inductive in his method, describing poetry as it existed in his day, distinguishing its different classes and elements, and tabulating its usages: accordingly Aristotle's treatise, though more than two thousand years old, remains the text-book of the Greek Drama. In some places, however, he diverges from his main purpose, as in the final chapter, in which he raises the question whether Epic or Tragic is more excellent, or where he promises a special treatise to discuss whether Tragedy is yet perfect: here he has for modern readers only the interest of curiosity. Dr. Johnson's analysis of 'metaphysical poetry,' Addison's development of the leading effects in _Paradise Lost_, remain as true and forcible to-day as when they were written: Addison constructing an order of merit for English poets with Cowley and Sprat at the head, Dr. Johnson lecturing Shakespeare and Milton as to how they ought to have written--these are to us only odd anachronisms. It is like a contest with atomic force, this attempt at using ideas drawn from the past to mould and limit productive power in the present and future. The critic peers into the dimness of history, and is found to have been blind to what was by his side: Boileau strives to erect a throne of Comedy for Terence, and never suspects that a truer king was at hand in his own personal friend Molière. It is in vain for critics to denounce, their denunciation recoils on themselves: the sentence of Rymer that the soul of modern Drama was a brutish and not a reasonable soul, or of Voltaire, that Shakespeare's Tragedy would not be tolerated by the lowest French mob, can harm none but Rymer and Voltaire. If the critics venture to prophesy, the sequel is the only refutation of them needed; if they give reasons, the reasons survive only to explain how the critics were led astray; if they lay down laws, literary greatness in the next generation is found to vary directly with the boldness with which authors violate the laws. If they assume a judicial attitude, the judgment-seat becomes converted into a pillory for the judge, and a comic side to literary history is furnished by the mockery with which time preserves the proportions of things, as seen by past criticism, to be laid side by side with the true perspective revealed by actual history. In such wise it has preserved to us the list of 'poets laureate' who preceded Southey: Shadwell, Tate, Rowe, Eusden, Cibber, Whitehead, Warton, Pye. It reveals Dryden sighing that Spenser could only have read the rules of Bossu, or smitten with a doubt whether he might not after all excuse Milton's use of blank verse 'by the example of Hannibal Caro'; Rymer preferring Ben Jonson's _Catiline_ to all the tragedies of the Elizabethan age, and declaring Waller's _Poem on the Navy Royal_ beyond all modern poetry in any language; Voltaire wondering that the extravagances of Shakespeare could be tolerated by a nation that had seen Addison's _Cato_; Pope assigning three-score years and ten as the limit of posthumous life to 'moderns' in poetry, and celebrating the trio who had rescued from the 'uncivilised' Elizabethan poetry the 'fundamental laws of wit.' These three are Buckingham, Roscommon, and Walsh: as to the last of whom if we search amongst contemporary authorities to discover who he was, we at last come upon his works described in the _Rambler_ as 'pages of inanity.' [_In actual practice criticism is found to have gradually approached induction._] But in the conflict between judicial criticism and science the most important point is to note how the critics' own ideas of criticism are found to be gradually slipping away from them. Between the Renaissance and the present day criticism, as judged by the methods actually followed by critics, has slowly changed from the form of laying down laws to authors into the form of receiving laws from authors. [_Five stages. 1. Idea of judging solely by classical standards._] The process of change falls into five stages. In its first stage the conception of criticism was bounded by the notion of comparing whatever was produced with the masterpieces and trying it by the ideas of Greek and Roman literature. Boileau objected to Corneille's tragedies, not because they did not excite admiration, but because admiration was not one of the tragical passions as laid down by Aristotle. To Rymer's mind it was clearly a case of classical standards or no standards, and he describes his opponents as 'a kind of stage-quacks and empirics in poetry who have got a receipt to please.' And there is a degree of _naïveté_ in the way in which Bossu betrays his utter unconsciousness of the possibility that there should be more than one kind of excellence, where, in a passage in which he is admitting that the moderns have as much spirit and as lucky fancies as the ancients, he nevertheless calls it 'a piece of injustice to pretend that our new rules destroy the fancies of the old masters, and that they must condemn all their works who could not foresee all our humours.' Criticism in this spirit is notably illustrated by the Corneille incident in the history of the French Academy. The fashionable literary world, led by a Scudéry, solemnly impeach Corneille of originality, and Richelieu insists on the Academy pronouncing judgment; which they at last do, unwillingly enough, since, as Boileau admitted, all France was against them. The only one that in the whole incident retained his sense of humour was the victim himself; who, early in the struggle, being confronted by critics recognising no merit but that of obedience to rules, set himself to write his _Clitandre_ as a play which should obey all the rules of Drama and yet have nothing in it: 'in which,' he said, 'I have absolutely succeeded.' [2. _Recognition of modern as illegitimate merit._]--But this reign of simple faith began to be disturbed by sceptical doubts: it became impossible entirely to ignore merit outside the pale of classical conformity. Thus we get a Dennis unable to conceal his admiration for the daring of Milton, as a man who knew the rules of Aristotle, 'no man better,' and yet violated them. Literature of the modern type gets discussed as it were under protest. Dr. Johnson, when he praises Addison's _Cato_ for adhering to Aristotle's principles 'with a _scrupulousness_ almost unexampled on the English stage,' is reflecting the constant assumption throughout this transitional stage, that departure from classical models is the result of carelessness, and that beauties in such offending writers are lucky hits. The spirit of this period is distinctly brought out by Dr. Johnson where he 'readily allows' that the union in one composition of serious and ludicrous is 'contrary to the rules of criticism,' but, he adds, 'there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.' [3. _Modern standards of judging side by side with ancient._]--Once admitted to examination the force of modern literature could not fail to assert its equality with the literature of the ancients, and we pass into a third stage of criticism when critics grasp the conception that there may be more than one set of rules by which authors may be judged. The new notion made its appearance early in the country which was the main stronghold of the opposite view. Perrault in 1687 instituted his 'Parallels' between the ancients and the moderns to the advantage of the latter; and the question was put in its naked simplicity by Fontenelle, the 'Nestor of literature,' when he made it depend upon another question, 'whether the trees that used to grow in our woods were larger than those which grow now.' Later, and with less distinctness, English criticism followed the lead. Pope, with his happy indifference to consistency, after illustrating the first stage where he advises to write 'as if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line,' and where he contends that if the classical authors indulge in a licence that licence becomes a law to us, elsewhere lays down that to apply ancient rules in the treatment of modern literature is to try by the laws of one country a man belonging to another. In one notable instance the genius of Dr. Johnson rises superior to the prejudices of his age, and he vindicates in his treatment of Shakespeare the conception of a school of Drama in which the unities of time and place do not apply. But he does it with trembling: 'I am almost frightened at my own temerity; and when I estimate the fame and the strength of those who maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence.' [4. _Conception of criticism as judging begins to waver:_]--Criticism had set out with judging by one set of laws, it had come to judge by two: the change began to shake the notion of _judging_ as the function of criticism, and the eyes of critics came to be turned more to the idea of literary beauty itself, as the end for which the laws of literary composition were merely means. Addison is the great name connected with this further transitional stage. We find Addison not only arguing negatively that 'there is sometimes a greater judgment shown in deviating from the rules of art than in adhering to them,' [_changing to the search for beauties:_] but even laying down as a positive theory that the true function of a critic is 'to discover the concealed beauties of a writer'; while the practical illustration of his theory which he gave in the case of the _Paradise Lost_ is supposed to have revolutionised the opinion of the fashionable reading-public. [5. _and finally to investigation of laws in literature as it stands._]--Addison was removed by a very little from the final stage of criticism, the conception of which is perhaps most fully brought out by Gervinus, where he declares his purpose of treating Shakespeare as the 'revealing genius' of his department of art and of its laws. Thus slowly and by gradual stages has the conception of criticism been changing in the direction of induction: starting from judgment by the laws of the ancient classics as standards beyond which there is no appeal, passing through the transitional stage of greater and greater toleration for intrinsic worth though of a modern type, to arrive at the recognition of modern standards of judgment side by side with ancient; again passing through a further transitional stage of discrediting judgment altogether as the purpose of criticism in favour of the search for intrinsic worth in literature as it stands, till the final conception is reached of analysing literature as it stands for the purpose of discovering its laws in itself. The later stages do not universally prevail yet. But the earlier stages have at all events become obsolete; and there is no reader who will not acquiesce cheerfully in one of the details Addison gives out for his ideal theatre, by which Rymer's tragedy _Edgar_ was to be cut up into snow to make the Storm Scene in Shakespeare's _Lear_. * * * * * [_Separateness of the two criticisms._] It may be well to recall the exact purpose to which the present argument is intended to lead. The purpose is not to attack journalism and kindred branches of criticism in the interests of inductive treatment. It would be false to the principles of induction not to recognise that the criticism of taste has long since established its position as a fertile branch of literature. Even in an inductive system journalism would still have place as a medium for fragmentary and tentative treatment. Moreover it may be admitted that induction in its formal completeness of system can never be applied in practical life; and in the intellectual pursuits of real life trained literary taste may be a valuable acquisition. What is here attacked is the mistake which has identified the criticism of taste and valuation with the conception of criticism as a whole; the intrusion of methods belonging to journalism into treatment that claims to be systematic. [_Criticism of taste belongs to creative literature:_] So far from being a standard of method in the treatment of literature, criticism of the reviewer's order is outside science altogether. It finds its proper place on the creative side of literature, as a branch in which literature itself has come to be taken as a theme for literary writing; it thus belongs to the literature treated, not to the scientific treatment of it. [_as the lyrics of prose._] Reviews so placed may be regarded almost as the lyrics of prose: like lyric poems they have their completeness in themselves, and their interest lies, not in their being parts of some whole, but in their flashing the subjectivity of a writer on to a variety of isolated topics; they thus have value, not as fragments of literary science, but as fragments of Addison, of Jeffrey, of Macaulay. Nor is the bearing of the present argument that commentators should set themselves to eulogise the authors they treat instead of condemning them (though this would certainly be the safer of two errors). The treatment aimed at is one independent of praise or blame, one that has nothing to do with merit, relative or absolute. The contention is for a branch of criticism separate from the criticism of taste; a branch that, in harmony with the spirit of other modern sciences, reviews the phenomena of literature as they actually stand, enquiring into and endeavouring to systematise the laws and principles by which they are moulded and produce their effects. Scientific criticism and the criticism of taste have distinct spheres: and the whole of literary history shows that the failure to keep the two separate results only in mutual confusion. Our present purpose is with inductive criticism. What, by the analogy of other sciences, is implied in the inductive treatment of literature? [_Application of induction to literary subject-matter._] The inductive sciences occupy themselves directly with facts, that is, with phenomena translated by observation into the form of facts; and soundness of inductive theory is measured by the closeness with which it will bear confronting with the facts. In the case of literature and art the facts are to be looked for in the literary and artistic productions themselves: the dramas, epics, pictures, statues, pillars, capitals, symphonies, operas--the details of these are the phenomena which the critical observer translates into facts. A picture is a title for a bundle of facts: that the painter has united so many figures in such and such groupings, that he has given such and such varieties of colouring, and such and such arrangement of light and shade. Similarly the _Iliad_ is a short name implying a large number of facts characterising the poem: that its principal personages are Agamemnon and Achilles, that these personages are represented as displaying certain qualities, doing certain deeds, and standing in certain relations to one another. [_Difficulty: the want of positiveness in literary impressions._] Here, however, arises that which has been perhaps the greatest stumbling-block in the way of securing inductive treatment for literature. Science deals only with ascertained facts: but the details of literature and art are open to the most diverse interpretation. They leave conflicting impressions on different observers, impressions both subjective and variable in themselves, and open to all manner of distracting influences, not excepting that of criticism itself. Where in the treatment of literature is to be found the positiveness of subject-matter which is the first condition of science? [_The difficulty not confined to literature._] In the first place it may be pointed out that this want of certainty in literary interpretation is not a difficulty of a kind peculiar to literature. The same object of terror will affect the members of a crowd in a hundred different ways, from presence of mind to hysteria; yet this has not prevented the science of psychology from inductively discussing fear. Logic proposes to scientifically analyse the reasoning processes in the face of the infinite degrees of susceptibility different minds show to proof and persuasion. It has become proverbial that taste in art is incapable of being settled by discussion, yet the art of music has found exact treatment in the science of harmony. In the case of these well-established sciences it has been found possible to separate the variable element from that which is the subject-matter of the science: such a science as psychology really covers two distinct branches of thought, the psychology that discusses formally the elements of the human mind, and another psychology, not yet systematised, that deals with the distribution of these elements amongst different individuals. It need then be no barrier to inductive treatment that in the case of literature and art the will and consciousness act as disturbing forces, refracting what may be called natural effects into innumerable effects on individual students. It only becomes a question of practical procedure, in what way the interfering variability is to be eliminated. [_The variable element to be eliminated by reference not to taste;_] It is precisely at this point that _à priori_ criticism and induction part company. The _à priori_ critic gets rid of uncertainty in literary interpretation by confining his attention to effects produced upon the best minds: he sets up _taste_ as a standard by which to try impressions of literature which he is willing to consider. The inductive critic cannot have recourse to any such arbitrary means of limiting his materials; for his doubts he knows no court of appeal except the appeal to the literary works themselves. [_but to the objective details of the literature itself._] The astronomer, from the vast distance of the objects he observes, finds the same phenomenon producing different results on different observers, and he has thus regularly to allow for personal errors: but he deals with such discrepancies only by fresh observations on the stars themselves, and it never occurs to him that he can get rid of a variation by abstract argument or deference to a greater observer. In the same way the inductive critic of literature must settle his doubts by referring them to the literary productions themselves; to him the question is not of the nobler view or the view in best taste, but simply what view fits in best with the details as they stand in actual fact. He quite recognises that it is not the objective details but the subjective impressions they produce that make literary effect, but the objective details are the _limit_ on the variability of the subjective impressions. The character of Macbeth impresses two readers differently: how is the difference to be settled? The _à priori_ critic contends that his conception is the loftier; that a hero should be heroic; that moreover the tradition of the stage and the greatest names in the criticism of the past bear him out; or, finally, falls back upon good taste, which closes the discussion. The inductive critic simply puts together all the sayings and doings of Macbeth himself, all that others in the play say and appear to feel about him, and whatever view of the character is consistent with these and similar facts of the play, that view he selects; while to vary from it for any external consideration would seem to him as futile as for an astronomer to make a star rise an hour earlier to tally with the movements of another star. [_Foundation axiom of the inductive criticism: Interpretation of the nature of an hypothesis._] We thus arrive at a foundation axiom of inductive literary criticism: _Interpretation in literature is of the nature of a scientific hypothesis, the truth of which is tested by the degree of completeness with which it explains the details of the literary work as they actually stand_. That will be the true meaning of a passage, not which is the most worthy, but which most nearly explains the words as they are; that will be the true reading of a character which, however involved in expression or tame in effect, accounts for and reconciles all that is represented of the personage. The inductive critic will interpret a complex situation, not by fastening attention on its striking elements and ignoring others as oversights and blemishes, but by putting together with business-like exactitude all that the author has given, weighing, balancing, and standing by the product. He will not consider that he has solved the action of a drama by some leading plot, or some central idea powerfully suggested in different parts, but will investigate patiently until he can find a scheme which will give point to the inferior as well as to the leading scenes, and in connection with which all the details are harmonised in their proper proportions. In this way he will be raising a superstructure of exposition that rests, not on authority however high, but upon a basis of indisputable fact. [_Practical objection: Did the authors intend those interpretations?_] In actual operation I have often found that such positive analysis raises in the popular mind a very practical objection: that the scientific interpretation seems to discover in literary works much more in the way of purpose and design than the authors themselves can be supposed to have dreamed of. Would not Chaucer and Shakespeare, it is asked, if they could come to life now, be greatly astonished to hear themselves lectured upon? to find critics knowing their purposes better than they had known them themselves, and discovering in their works laws never suspected till after they were dead, and which they themselves perhaps would need some effort to understand? Deep designs are traced in Shakespeare's plots, and elaborate combinations in his characters and passions: is the student asked to believe that Shakespeare really _intended_ these complicated effects? [_Answer: changed meaning of 'design' in science._] The difficulty rests largely upon a confusion in words. Such words as 'purpose,' 'intention,' have a different sense when used in ordinary parlance from that which they bear when applied in criticism and science. In ordinary parlance a man's 'purpose' means his conscious purpose, of which he is the best judge; in science the 'purpose' of a thing is the purpose it actually serves, and is discoverable only by analysis. Thus science discovers that the 'purpose' of earthworms is to break up the soil, the 'design' of colouring in flowers is to attract insects, though the flower is not credited with fore-sight nor the worm with disinterestedness. In this usage alone can the words 'purpose,' 'intention,' be properly applied to literature and art: science knows no kind of evidence in the matter of creative purpose so weighty as the thing it has actually produced. This has been well put by Ulrici: The _language_ of the artist is poetry, music, drawing, colouring: there is no other form in which he can express himself with equal depth and clearness. Who would ask a philosopher to paint his ideas in colours? It would be equally absurd to think that because a poet cannot say with perfect philosophic certainty in the form of reflection and pure thought what it was that he wished and intended to produce, that he never thought at all, but let his imagination improvise at random. Nothing is more common than for analysis to discover design in what, so far as consciousness is concerned, has been purely instinctive. Thus physiology ascertains that bread contains all the necessary elements of food except one, which omission happens to be supplied by butter: this may be accepted as an explanation of our 'purpose' in eating butter with bread, without the explanation being taken to imply that all who have ever fed on bread and butter have consciously _intended_ to combine the nitrogenous and oleaginous elements of food. It is the natural order of things that the practical must precede the analytic. Bees by instinct construct hexagonal cells, and long afterwards mensuration shows that the hexagon is the most economic shape for such stowage; individual states must rise and fall first before the sciences of history and politics can come to explain the how and why of their mutations. Similarly it is in accordance with the order of things that Shakespeare should produce dramas by the practical processes of art-creation, and that it should be left for others, his critics succeeding him at long intervals, to discover by analysis his 'purposes' and the laws which underlie his effects. The poet, if he could come to life now, would not feel more surprise at this analysis of his 'motives' and unfolding of his unconscious 'design' than he would feel on hearing that the beating of his heart--to him a thing natural enough, and needing no explanation--had been discovered to have a distinct purpose he could never have dreamed of in propelling the circulation of his blood, a thing of which he had never heard. [_Three points of contrast between judicial and inductive criticism._] There are three leading ideas in relation to which inductive and judicial criticism are in absolute antagonism: to bring out these contrasts will be the most effective way of describing the inductive treatment. The first of these ideas is order of merit, together with the kindred notions of partisanship and hostility applied to individual authors and works. [1. _Comparisons of merit: these outside science._] The minds of ordinary readers are saturated with this class of ideas; they are the weeds of taste, choking the soil, and leaving no room for the purer forms of literary appreciation. Favoured by the fatal blunder of modern education, which considers every other mental power to stand in need of training, but leaves taste and imagination to shift for themselves, literary taste has largely become confused with a spurious form of it: the mere taste for competition, comparison of likes and dislikes, gossip applied to art and called criticism. Of course such likes and dislikes must always exist, and journalism is consecrated to the office of giving them shape and literary expression; though it should be led by experience, if by nothing else, to exercise its functions with a double reserve, recognising that the judicial attitude of mind is a limit on appreciation, and that the process of testing will itself be tried by the test of vitality. But such preferences and comparisons of merit must be kept rigidly outside the sphere of science. Science knows nothing of competitive examination: a geologist is not heard extolling old red sandstone as a model rock-formation, or making sarcastic comments on the glacial epoch. Induction need not disturb the freedom with which we attach ourselves to whatever attracts our individual dispositions: individual partisanship for the wooded snugness of the Rhine or the bold and bracing Alps is unaffected by the adoption of exact methods in physical geography. What is to be avoided is the confusion of two different kinds of interest attaching to the same object. In the study of the stars and the rocks, which can inspire little or no personal interest, it is easy to keep science pure; to keep it to 'dry light,' as Heraclitus calls it, intelligence unclouded by the humours of individual sentiment, as Bacon interprets. But when science comes to be applied to objects which can excite emotion and inspire affection, then confusion arises, and the scientific student of political economy finds his treatment of pauperism disturbed by the philanthropy which belongs to him as a man. Still more in so emotional an atmosphere as the study of beauty, the student must use effort to separate the _beauty_ of an object, which is a thing of art and perfectly analysable, from his personal _interest_ in it, which is as distinctly external to the analysis of beauty as his love for his dog is external to the science of zoology. The possibility of thus separating interest and perception of beauty without diminishing either may be sufficiently seen in the case of music--an art which has been already reduced to scientific form. Music is as much as any art a thing of tastes and preferences; besides partialities for particular masters one student will be peculiarly affected by melody, another is all for dramatic effect, others have a special taste for the fugue or the sonata. No one can object to such preferences, but the science of music knows nothing about them; its exposition deals with modes of treatment or habits of orchestration distinguishing composers, irrespective of the private partialities they excite. Mozart and Wagner are analysed as two items in the sum of facts which make up music; and if a particular expositor shows by a turn in the sentence that he has a leaning to one or the other, the slip may do no harm, but for the moment science has been dropped. [_Inductive treatment concerned with differences of kind, not of degree._] There is, however, a sort of difference between authors and works, the constant recognition of which would more than make up to cultured pleasure for discarding comparisons of merit. Inductive treatment is concerned with _differences of kind_ as distinguished from differences of degree. Elementary as this distinction is, the power of firmly grasping it is no slight evidence of a trained mind: the power, that is, of clearly seeing that two things are different, without being at the same time impelled to rank one above the other. The confusion of the two is a constant obstacle in the way of literary appreciation. It has been said, by way of comparison between two great novelists, that George Eliot constructs characters, but Charlotte Brontë creates them. The description (assuming it to be true) ought to shed a flood of interest upon both authoresses; by perpetually throwing on the two modes of treatment the clear light of contrast it ought to intensify our appreciation of both. As a fact, however, the description is usually quoted to suggest a preference for Charlotte Brontë on the supposed ground that creation is 'higher' than construction; and the usual consequences of preferences are threatened--the gradual closing of our susceptibilities to those qualities in the less liked of the two which do not resemble the qualities of the favourite. Yet why should we not be content to accept such a description (if true) as constituting a difference of kind, and proceed to recognise 'construction' and 'creation' as two parallel modes of treatment, totally distinct from one another in the way in which a fern is distinct from a flower, a distinction allowing no room for preferences because there is no common ground on which to compare? This separateness once granted, the mind, instead of having to choose between the two, would have scope for taking in to the full the detailed effects flowing from both modes of treatment, and the area of mental pleasure would be enlarged. The great blunders of criticism in the past, which are now universally admitted, rest on this inability to recognise differences of kind in literature. The Restoration poets had a mission to bring the heroic couplet to perfection: poetry not in their favourite measure they treated, not as different, but as bad, and rewrote or ignored Spenser and Milton. And generations of literary history have been wasted in discussing whether the Greek dramatists or Shakespeare were the higher: now every one recognises that they constitute two schools different in kind that cannot be compared. [_Distinctions of kind a primary element in appreciation._] It is hardly going too far to assert that this sensitiveness to differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree is the first condition of literary appreciation. Nothing can be more essential to art-perception than receptiveness, and receptiveness implies a change in the receptive attitude of mind with each variety of art. To illustrate by an extreme case. Imagine a spectator perfectly familiar with the Drama, but to whom the existence of the Opera was unknown, and suppose him to have wandered into an opera-house, mistaking it for a theatre. At first the mistake under which he was labouring would distort every effect: the elaborate overture would seem to him a great 'waste' of power in what was a mere accessory; the opening recitative would strike him as 'unnaturally' delivered, and he would complain of the orchestral accompaniment as a 'distraction'; while at the first aria he would think the actor gone mad. As, however, arias, terzettos, recitatives succeeded one another, he must at last catch the idea that the music was an essential element in the exhibition, and that he was seeing, not a drama, but a drama translated into a different kind of art. The catching of this idea would at once make all the objectionable elements fall into their proper places. No longer distracted by the thought of the ordinary Drama, his mind would have leisure to catch the special effects of the Opera: he would feel how powerfully a change of passion could move him when magnified with all the range of expression an orchestra affords, and he would acknowledge a dramatic touch as the diabolic spirit of the conspirator found vent in a double D. The illustration is extreme to the extent of absurdity: but it brings out how expectation plays an important part in appreciation, and how the expectation has to be adapted to that on which it is exercised. The receptive attitude is a sort of mental focus which needs adjusting afresh to each variety of art if its effects are to be clearly caught; and to disturb attention when engaged on one species of literature by the thought of another is as unreasonable as to insist on one microscopic object appearing definite when looked at with a focus adjusted to another object. [_Each author a separate species._] This will be acknowledged in reference to the great divisions of art: but does it not apply to the species as well as the genera, indeed to each individual author? Wordsworth has laid down that each fresh poet is to be tried by fresh canons of taste: this is only another way of saying that the differences between poets are differences of kind, that each author is a 'school' by himself, and can be appreciated only by a receptive attitude formed by adjustment to himself alone. In a scientific treatment of literature, at all events, an elementary axiom must be: [_Second axiom of inductive criticism: its function in distinguishing literary species._] _That inductive criticism is mainly occupied in distinguishing literary species_. And on this view it will clearly appear how such notions as order of merit become disturbing forces in literary appreciation: unconsciously they apply the _qualitative_ standard of the favourite works to works which must necessarily be explained by a different standard. They are defended on the ground of pleasure, but they defeat their own object: no element in pleasure is greater than variety, and comparisons of merit, with every other form of the judicial spirit, are in reality arrangements for appreciating the smallest number of varieties. [II. _The 'laws of art': confusion between law external and scientific._] The second is the most important of the three ideas, both for its effect in the past and for the sharpness with which it brings judicial and inductive criticism into contrast. It is the idea that there exist 'laws' of art, in the same sense in which we speak of laws in morality or the laws of some particular state--great principles which have been laid down, and which are binding on the artist as the laws of God or his country are binding on the man; that by these, and by lesser principles deduced from these, the artist's work is to be tried, and praise or blame awarded accordingly. Great part of formal criticism runs on these lines; while, next in importance to comparisons of merit, the popular mind considers literary taste to consist in a keen sensitiveness to the 'faults' and 'flaws' of literary workmanship. This attitude to art illustrates the enormous misleading power of the metaphors that lie concealed in words. The word 'law,' justly applicable in one of its senses to art, has in practice carried with it the associations of its other sense; and the mistake of metaphor has been sufficient to distort criticism until, as Goldsmith remarks, rules have become the greatest of all the misfortunes which have befallen the commonwealth of letters. Every expositor has had to point out the widespread confusion between the two senses of this term. Laws in the moral and political world are external obligations, restraints of the will; they exist where the will of a ruler or of the community is applied to the individual will. In science, on the other hand, law has to do not with what ought to be, but with what is; scientific laws are facts reduced to formulæ, statements of the habits of things, so to speak. The laws of the stars in the first sense could only mean some creative fiat, such as 'Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven'; in the scientific sense laws of the stars are summaries of their customary movements. In the act of getting drunk I am violating God's moral law, I am obeying his law of alcoholic action. So scientific laws, in the case of art and literature, will mean descriptions of the practice of artists or the characteristics of their works, when these will go into the form of general propositions as distinguished from disconnected details. The key to the distinction is the notion of external authority. There cannot be laws in the moral and political sense without a ruler or legislative authority; in scientific laws the law-giver and the law-obeyer are one and the same, and for the laws of vegetation science looks no further than the facts of the vegetable world. [_The 'laws of art' are scientific laws._] In literature and art the term 'law' applies only in the scientific sense; the laws of the Shakespearean Drama are not laws imposed by some external authority upon Shakespeare, but laws of dramatic practice derived from the analysis of his actual works. Laws of literature, in the sense of external obligations limiting an author, there are none: if he were voluntarily to bind himself by such external laws, he would be so far curtailing art; it is hardly a paradox to say the art is legitimate only when it does not obey laws. [_The word 'fault' meaningless in inductive criticism._] What applies to the term 'law' applies similarly to the term 'fault.' The term is likely always to be used from its extreme convenience in art-training; but it must be understood strictly as a term of education and discipline. In inductive criticism, as in the other inductive sciences, the word 'fault' has no meaning. If an artist acts contrary to the practice of all other artists, the result is either that he produces no art-effect at all, in which case there is nothing for criticism to register and analyse, or else he produces a new effect, and is thus extending, not breaking, the laws of art. The great clash of horns in Beethoven's Heroic Symphony was at first denounced as a gross fault, a violation of the plainest laws of harmony; now, instead of a 'fault,' it is spoken of as a 'unique effect,' and in the difference between the two descriptions lies the whole difference between the conceptions of judicial and inductive criticism. Again and again in the past this notion of faults has led criticism on to wrong tracks, from which it has had to retrace its steps on finding the supposed faults to be in reality new laws. Immense energy was wasted in denouncing Shakespeare's 'fault' of uniting serious with light matter in the same play as a violation of fundamental dramatic laws; experience showed this mixture of passions to be the source of powerful art-effects hitherto shut out of the Drama, and the 'fault' became one of the distinguishing 'laws' in the most famous branch of modern literature. It is necessary then to insist upon the strict scientific sense of the term 'law' as used of literature and art; and the purging of criticism from the confusion attaching to this word is an essential step in its elevation to the inductive standard. It is a step, moreover, in which it has been preceded by other branches of thought. At one time the practice of commerce and the science of economy suffered under the same confusion: the battle of 'free trade' has been fought, the battle of 'free art' is still going on. In time it will be recognised that the practice of artists, like the operations of business, must be left to its natural working, and the attempt to impose external canons of taste on artists will appear as futile as the attempt to effect by legislation the regulation of prices. [_Objection as to the moral purpose of literature:_] Objections may possibly be taken to this train of argument on very high grounds, as if the protest against the notion of law-obeying in art were a sort of antinomianism. Literature, it may be said, has a moral purpose, to elevate and refine, and no duty can be higher than that of pointing out what in it is elevating and refining, and jealously watching against any lowering of its standard. [_this outside inductive treatment, though intrinsically more important._] Such contention may readily be granted, and yet may amount to no more than this: that there are ways of dealing with literature which are more important than inductive criticism, but which are none the less outside it. Jeremy Collier did infinite service to our Restoration Drama, but his was not the service of a scientific critic. The same things take different ranks as they are tried by the standards of science or morals. An enervating climate may have the effect of enfeebling the moral character, but this does not make the geographer's interest in the tropical zone one whit the less. Economy concerns itself simply with the fact that a certain subsidence of profits in a particular trade will drive away capital to other trades. But the details of human experience that are latent in such a proposition: the chilling effects of unsuccess and the dim colour it gives to the outlook into the universe, the sifting of character and separation between the enterprising and the simple, the hard thoughts as to the mysterious dispensations of human prosperity, the sheer misery of a wage-class looking on plenty and feeling starvation--this human drama of failing profits may be vastly more important than the whole science of economy, but economy none the less entirely and rightly ignores it. [_Objection: Art as an arbitrary product not subject to law._] To some, I know, it appears that literature is a sphere in which the strict sense of the word 'law' has no application: that such laws belong to nature, not to art. The essence, it is contended, of the natural sciences is the certainty of the facts with which they deal. Art, on the contrary, is creative; it does not come into the category of objective phenomena at all, but is the product of some artist's will, and therefore purely arbitrary. If in a compilation of observations in natural history for scientific use it became known that the compiler had at times drawn upon his imagination for his details, the whole compilation would become useless; and any scientific theories based upon it would be discredited. But the artist bases his work wholly on imagination, and caprice is a leading art-beauty: how, it is asked, can so arbitrary a subject-matter be reduced to the form of positive laws? [_Third axiom of inductive criticism: art a part of nature._] In view of any such objections, it may be well to set up a third axiom of inductive criticism: _That art is a part of nature_. Nature, it is true, is the vaguest of words: but this is a vagueness common to the objection and the answer. The objection rests really on a false antithesis, of which one term is 'nature,' while it is not clear what is the other term; the axiom set up in answer implies that there is no real distinction between 'nature' and the other phenomena which are the subject of human enquiry. The distinction is supposed to rest upon the degree to which arbitrary elements of the mind, such as imagination, will, caprice, enter into such a thing as art-production. [_Other arbitrary products subject to inductive treatment._] But there are other things in which the human will plays as much part as it does in art, and which have nevertheless proved compatible with inductive treatment. Those who hold that 'thought is free' do not reject psychology as an inductive science; actual politics are made up of struggles of will, exercises of arbitrary power, and the like, and yet there is a political science. If there is an inductive science of politics, men's voluntary actions in the pursuit of public life, and an inductive science of economy, men's voluntary actions in pursuit of wealth, why should there not be an inductive science of art, men's voluntary actions in pursuit of the beautiful? The whole of human action, as well as the whole of external nature, comes within the jurisdiction of science; so far from the productions of the will and imagination being exempted from scientific treatment, will and imagination themselves form chapters in psychology, and caprice has been analysed. [III. _Testing by fixed standards inconsistent with inductive treatment._] It remains to notice the third of the three ideas in relation to which the two kinds of criticism are in complete contrast with one another. It is a vague notion, which no objector would formulate, but which as a fact does underlie judicial criticism, and insensibly accompanies its testing and assaying. It is the idea that the foundations of literary form have reached their final settlement, the past being tacitly taken as a standard for the present and future, or the present as a standard for the past. Thus in the treatment of new literature the idea manifests itself in a secret antagonism to variations from received models; at the very least, new forms are called upon to justify themselves, and so the judicial critic brings his least receptive attitude to the new effects which need receptiveness most. In opposition to this tacit assumption, inductive criticism starts with a distinct counter-axiom of the utmost importance: _That literature is a thing of development_. [_Fourth axiom of inductive criticism: literature a thing of development._] This axiom implies that the critic must come to literature as to that in which he is expecting to find unlimited change and variety; he must keep before him the fact that production must always be far ahead of criticism and analysis, and must have carried its conquering invention into fresh regions before science, like settled government in the wake of the pioneer, follows to explain the new effects by new principles. No doubt in name literary development is recognised in all criticism; yet in its treatment both of old literature and new the _à priori_ criticism is false to development in the scientific sense of the term. [_Ignoring of development in new literature:_] Such systems are apt to begin by laying down that 'the object of literature is so and so,' or that 'the purpose of the Drama is to pourtray human nature'; they then proceed to test actual literature and dramas by the degree in which they carry out these fundamental principles. Such procedure is the opposite of the inductive method, and is a practical denial of development in literature. [_'purpose' in literature continually modifying._] Assuming that the object of existing literature were correctly described, such a formula could not bind the literature of the future. Assuming that there was ever a branch of art which could be reduced to one simple purpose, yet the inherent tendency of the human mind and its productions to develop would bring it about that what were at first means towards this purpose would in time become ends in themselves side by side with the main purpose, giving us in addition to the simple species a modified variety of it; external influences, again, would mingle with the native characteristics of the original species, and produce new species compound in their purposes and effects. The real literature would be ever obeying the first principle of development and changing from simple to complex, while the criticism that tried it by the original standard would be at each step removed one degree further from the only standard by which the literature could be explained. [_Development in past literature confused with improvement._] And if judicial criticism fails in providing for development in the future and present, it is equally unfortunate in giving a false twist to development when looked for in the past. The critic of comparative standards is apt to treat early stages of literature as elementary, tacitly assuming his own age as a standard _up to_ which previous periods have developed. Thus his treatment of the past becomes often an assessment of the degrees in which past periods have approximated to his own, advancing from literary pot-hooks to his own running facility. The clearness of an ancient writer he values at fifty per cent. as compared with modern standards, his concatenation of sentences is put down as only forty-five. But what if a certain degree of mistiness be an essential element in the phase of literary development to which the particular writer belongs, so that in him modern clearness would become, in judicial phrase, a fault? What if Plato's concatenation of sentences would simply spoil the flavour of Herodotus's story-telling, if Jeremy Taylor's prolixity and Milton's bi-lingual prose be simply the fittest of all dresses for the thought of their age and individual genius? In fact, the critic of fixed standards confuses development with _improvement_: a parallel mistake in natural history would be to understand the statement that man is higher in the scale of development than the butterfly as implying that a butterfly was God's failure in the attempt to make man. The inductive critic will accord to the early forms of his art the same independence he accords to later forms. Development will not mean to him education for a future stage, but the perpetual branching out of literary activity into ever fresh varieties, different in kind from one another, and each to be studied by standards of its own: the 'individuality' of authors is the expression in literary parlance which corresponds to the perpetual 'differentiation' of new species in science. Alike, then, in his attitude to the past and the future, the inductive critic will eschew the temptation to judgment by fixed standards, which in reality means opposing lifeless rules to the ever-living variety of nature. He will leave a dead judicial criticism to bury its dead authors and to pen for them judicious epitaphs, and will himself approach literature filled equally with reverence for the unbroken vitality of its past and faith in its exhaustless future. [_Summary._] To gather up our results. Induction, as the most universal of scientific methods, may be presumed to apply wherever there is a subject-matter reducible to the form of fact; such a subject-matter will be found in literature where its effects are interpreted, not arbitrarily, but with strict reference to the details of the literary works as they actually stand. There is thus an inductive literary criticism, akin in spirit and methods to the other inductive sciences, and distinct from other branches of criticism, such as the criticism of taste. This inductive criticism will entirely free itself from the judicial spirit and its comparisons of merit, which is found to have been leading criticism during half its history on to false tracks from which it has taken the other half to retrace its steps. On the contrary, inductive criticism will examine literature in the spirit of pure investigation: looking for the laws of art in the practice of artists, and treating art, like the rest of nature, as a thing of continuous development, which may thus be expected to fall, with each author and school, into varieties distinct in kind from one another, and each of which can be fully grasped only when examined with an attitude of mind adapted to the special variety without interference from without. * * * * * To illustrate the criticism thus described in its application to Shakespeare is the purpose of the present work. The scope of the book is limited to the consideration of Shakespeare in his character as the great master of the Romantic Drama; and its treatment of his dramatic art divides itself into two parts. The first applies the inductive method in a series of Studies devoted to particular plays, and to single important features of dramatic art which these plays illustrate. One of the purposes of this first part is to bring out how the inductive method, besides its scientific interest, has the further recommendation of assisting more than any other treatment to enlarge our appreciation of the author and of his achievements. The second part will use the materials collected in the first part to present, in the form of a brief survey, Dramatic Criticism as an inductive science: enumerating, so far as its materials admit, the leading topics which such a science would treat, and arranging these topics in the logical connection which scientific method requires. PART FIRST. SHAKESPEARE CONSIDERED AS A DRAMATIC ARTIST _IN TEN STUDIES_. I. THE TWO STORIES SHAKESPEARE BORROWS FOR HIS MERCHANT OF VENICE. _A Study in the Raw Material of the Romantic Drama_. [_Story as the Raw Materials of the Romantic Drama._] THE starting-point in the treatment of any work of literature is its position in literary history: the recognition of this gives the attitude of mind which is most favourable for extracting from the work its full effect. The division of the universal Drama to which Shakespeare belongs is known as the 'Romantic Drama,' one of its chief distinctions being that it uses the stories of Romance, together with histories treated as story-books, as the sources from which the matter of the plays is taken; Romances are the _raw material_ out of which the Shakespearean Drama is manufactured. This very fact serves to illustrate the elevation of the Elizabethan Drama in the scale of literary development: just as the weaver uses as his raw material that which is the finished product of the spinner, so Shakespeare and his contemporaries start in their art of dramatising from Story which is already a form of art. In the exhibition, then, of Shakespeare as an Artist, it is natural to begin with the raw material which he worked up into finished masterpieces. For illustration of this no play could be more suitable than _The Merchant of Venice_, in which two tales, already familiar in the story form, have been woven together into a single plot: the Story of the Cruel Jew, who entered into a bond with his enemy of which the forfeit was to be a pound of this enemy's own flesh, and the Story of the Heiress and the Caskets. The present study will deal with the stories themselves, considering them as if with the eye of a dramatic artist to catch the points in which they lend themselves to dramatic effect; the next will show how Shakespeare improves the stories in the telling, increasing their dramatic force by the very process of working them up; a third study will point out how, not content with two stories, he has added others in the development of his plot, making it more complex only in reality to make it more simple. [_Story of The Jew._] In the Story of the Jew the main point is its special capability for bringing out the idea of _Nemesis_, one of the simplest and most universal of dramatic motives. Described broadly, Nemesis is retribution as it appears in the world of art. [_Nemesis as a dramatic idea._] In reality the term covers two distinct conceptions: in ancient thought Nemesis was an artistic bond between excess and reaction, in modern thought it is an artistic bond between sin and retribution. The distinction is part of the general difference between Greek and modern views of life. [_Ancient conception: artistic connection between excess and reaction._] The Greeks may be said to be the most artistic nation of mankind, in the sense that art covered so large a proportion of their whole personality: it is not surprising to find that they projected their sense of art into morals. Aristotle was a moral philosopher, but his system of ethics reads as an artistically devised pattern, in which every virtue is removed at equal distances from vices of excess and defect balancing it on opposite sides. The Greek word for law signifies proportion and distribution, _nomos_; and it is only another form of it that expresses _Nemesis_ as the power punishing violations of proportion in things human. Distinct from Justice, which was occupied with crime, Nemesis was a companion deity to Fortune; and as Fortune went through the world distributing the good things of life heedlessly without regard to merit, so Nemesis followed in her steps, and, equally without regard to merit, delighted in cutting down the prosperity that was high enough to attract her attention. Polycrates is the typical victim of such Nemesis: cast off by his firmest ally for no offence but an unbroken career of good luck, in the reaction from which his ally feared to be involved; essaying as a forlorn hope to propitiate by voluntarily throwing in the sea his richest crown-jewel; recognising when this was restored by fishermen that heaven had refused his sacrifice, and abandoning himself to his fate in despair. But Nemesis, to the moral sense of antiquity, could go even beyond visitation on innocent prosperity, and goodness itself could be carried to a degree that invited divine reaction. Heroes like Lycurgus and Pentheus perished for excess of temperance; and the ancient Drama startles the modern reader with an Hippolytus, whose passionate purity brought down on him a destruction prophesied beforehand by those to whom religious duty suggested moderate indulgence in lust. [_Modern conception: artistic connection between sin and retribution._] Such malignant correction of human inequalities is not a function to harmonise with modern conceptions of Deity. Yet the Greek notion of Nemesis has an element of permanency in it, for it represents a principle underlying human life. It suggests a sort of elasticity in human experience, a tendency to rebound from a strain; this is the equilibrium of the moral world, the force which resists departure from the normal, becoming greater in proportion as departure from the normal is wider. Thus in commercial speculation there is a safe medium certain to bring profit in the long run; in social ambition there is a certain rise though slow: if a man hurries to be rich, or seeks to rise in public life by leaps and bounds, the spectator becomes aware of a secret force that has been set in motion, as when the equilibrium of physical bodies has been disturbed, which force threatens to drag the aspirant down to the point from which he started, or to debase him lower in proportion to the height at which he rashly aimed. Such a force is 'risk,' and it may remain risk, but if it be crowned with the expected fall the whole is recognised as 'Nemesis.' This Nemesis is deeply embedded in the popular mind and repeatedly crops up in its proverbial wisdom. Proverbs like 'Grasp all, lose all,' 'When things come to the worst they are sure to mend,' exactly express moral equilibrium, and the 'golden mean' is its proverbial formula. The saying 'too much of a good thing' suggests that the Nemesis on departures from the golden mean applies to good things as well as bad; while the principle is made to apply even to the observation of the golden mean itself in the proverb 'Nothing venture, nothing have.' Nevertheless, this side of the whole notion has in modern usage fallen into the background in comparison with another aspect of Nemesis. The grand distinction of modern thought is the predominance in it of moral ideas: they colour even its imagination; and if the Greeks carried their art-sense into morals, modern instincts have carried morals into art. In particular the speculations raised by Christianity have cast the shadow of Sin over the whole universe. It has been said that the conception of Sin is unknown to the ancients, and that the word has no real equivalent in Latin or Classical Greek. The modern mind is haunted by it. Notions of Sin have invaded art, and Nemesis shows their influence: vague conceptions of some supernatural vindication of artistic proportion in life have now crystallised into the interest of watching morals and art united in their treatment of Sin. The link between Sin and its retribution becomes a form of art-pleasure; and no dramatic effect is more potent in modern Drama than that which emphasises the principle that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. [_Dramatic Nemesis latent in the Story of the Jew._] Now for this dramatic effect of Nemesis it would be difficult to find a story promising more scope than the Story of the Cruel Jew. It will be seen at once to contain a double nemesis, attaching to the Jew himself and to his victim. The two moreover represent the different conceptions of Nemesis in the ancient and modern world; Antonio's excess of moral confidence suffers a nemesis of reaction in his humiliation, and Shylock's sin of judicial murder finds a nemesis of retribution in his ruin by process of law. The nemesis, it will be observed, is not merely two-fold, but double in the way that a double flower is distinct from two flowers: it is a nemesis _on_ a nemesis; the nemesis which visits Antonio's fault is the crime for which Shylock suffers his nemesis. Again, in that which gives artistic character to the reaction and the retribution the two nemeses differ. Let St. Paul put the difference for us: 'Some men's sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some they follow after.' So in cases like that of Shylock the nemesis is interesting from its very obviousness and the impatience with which we look for it; in the case of Antonio the nemesis is striking for the very opposite reason, that he of all men seemed most secure against it. [_Antonio: perfection and self-sufficiency, the Nemesis of Surprise._] Antonio must be understood as a perfect character: for we must read the play in the light of its age, and intolerance was a mediæval virtue. But there is no single good quality that does not carry with it its special temptation, and the sum of them all, or perfection, has its shadow in self-sufficiency. It is so with Antonio. Of all national types of character the Roman is the most self-sufficient, alike incorruptible by temptation and independent of the softer influences of life: [=iii.= ii. 297.] we find that 'Roman honour' is the idea which Antonio's friends are accustomed to associate with him. Further the dramatist contrives to exhibit Antonio to us in circumstances calculated to bring out this drawback to his perfection. In the opening scene we see the dignified merchant-prince suffering under the infliction of frivolous visitors, to which his friendship with the young nobleman exposes him: his tone throughout the interview is that of the barest toleration, and suggests that his courtesies are felt rather as what is due to himself than what is due to those on whom they are bestowed. [=i.= i. 60-64.] When Salarino makes flattering excuses for taking his leave, Antonio replies, first with conventional compliment, Your worth is very dear in my regard, and then with blunt plainness, as if Salarino were not worth the trouble of keeping up polite fiction: I take it, your own business calls on you And you embrace the occasion to depart. [=i.= i. 8.] The visitors, trying to find explanation for Antonio's seriousness, suggest that he is thinking of his vast commercial speculations; Antonio draws himself up: [=i.= i. 41.] Believe me, no: I thank my fortune for it, My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate Upon the fortune of this present year: Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad. Antonio is saying in his prosperity that _he_ shall never be moved. But the great temptation to self-sufficiency lies in his contact, not with social inferiors, but with a moral outcast such as Shylock: confident that the moral gulf between the two can never be bridged over, Antonio has violated dignity as well as mercy in the gross insults he has heaped upon the Jew whenever they have met. [=i.= iii. 99 &c.] In the Bond Scene we see him unable to restrain his insults at the very moment in which he is soliciting a favour from his enemy; [=i.= iii. 107-130.] the effect reaches a climax as Shylock gathers up the situation in a single speech, reviewing the insults and taunting his oppressor with the solicited obligation: Well then, it now appears you need my help: Go to, then; you come to me, and you say, 'Shylock, we would have moneys': you say so; You, that did void your rheum upon my beard And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. There is such a foundation of justice for these taunts that for a moment our sympathies are transferred to Shylock's side. But Antonio, so far from taking warning, is betrayed beyond all bounds in his defiance; and in the challenge to fate with which he replies we catch the tone of infatuated confidence, the _hybris_ in which Greek superstition saw the signal for the descent of Nemesis. [=i.= iii. 131.] I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not As to thy friends ... _But lend it rather to thine enemy, Who, if he break, thou may'st with better face Exact the penalty_. To this challenge of self-sufficiency the sequel of the story is the answering Nemesis: the merchant becomes a bankrupt, the first citizen of Venice a prisoner at the bar, the morally perfect man holds his life and his all at the mercy of the reprobate he thought he might safely insult. [_Shylock: malignant justice, the Nemesis of Measure for Measure._] So Nemesis has surprised Antonio in spite of his perfectness: but the malice of Shylock is such as is perpetually crying for retribution, and the retribution is delayed only that it may descend with accumulated force. In the case of this second nemesis the Story of the Jew exhibits dramatic capability in the opportunity it affords for the sin and the retribution to be included within the same scene. [=iv.= i.] Portia's happy thought is a turning-point in the Trial Scene on the two sides of which we have the Jew's triumph and the Jew's retribution; the two sides are bound together by the principle of measure for measure, and for each detail of vindictiveness that is developed in the first half of the scene there is a corresponding item of nemesis in the sequel. [_Charter_ v. _statute_. =iv.= i. 38; compare 102, 219.] To begin with, Shylock appeals to the charter of the city. It is one of the distinctions between written and unwritten law that no flagrant injustice can arise out of the latter. If the analogy of former precedents would seem to threaten such an injustice, it is easy in a new case to meet the special emergency by establishing a new precedent; where, however, the letter of the written law involves a wrong, however great, it must, nevertheless, be exactly enforced. Shylock takes his stand upon written law; [compare =iii.= iii. 26-31.] indeed upon the strictest of all kinds of written law, for the charter of the city would seem to be the instrument regulating the relations between citizens and aliens--an absolute necessity for a free port--which could not be superseded without international negotiations. But what is the result? As plaintiff in the cause Shylock would, in the natural course of justice, leave the court, when judgment had been given against him, with no further mortification than the loss of his suit. He is about to do so when he is recalled: It is enacted in the laws of Venice, &c. [=iv.= i. 314.] Unwittingly, he has, by the action he has taken, entangled himself with an old statute law, forgotten by all except the learned Bellario, which, going far beyond natural law, made the mere attempt upon a citizen's life by an alien punishable to the same extent as murder. Shylock had chosen the letter of the law, and by the letter of the law he is to suffer. [_Humour_ v. _quibble_.] Again, every one must feel that the plea on which Portia upsets the bond is in reality the merest quibble. It is appropriate enough in the mouth of a bright girl playing the lawyer, but no court of justice could seriously entertain it for a moment: by every principle of interpretation a bond that could justify the cutting of human flesh must also justify the shedding of blood, which is necessarily implied in such cutting. But, to balance this, we have Shylock in the earlier part of the scene refusing to listen to arguments of justice, and taking his stand upon his 'humour': [=iv.= i. 40-62.] if he has a whim, he pleads, for giving ten thousand ducats to have a rat poisoned, who shall prevent him? The suitor who rests his cause on a whim cannot complain if it is upset by a quibble. Similarly, throughout the scene, every point in Shylock's justice of malice meets its answer in the justice of nemesis. He is offered double the amount of his loan: [_Offer of double_ v. _refusal of principal._] If every ducat in six thousand ducats Were in six parts, and every part a ducat, he answers, he would not accept them in lieu of his bond. [=iv.= i. 318, 336.] The wheel of Nemesis goes round, and Shylock would gladly accept not only this offer but even the bare principal; but he is denied, on the ground that he has refused it in open court. They try to bend him to thoughts of mercy: [_Complete security_ v. _total loss._] How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none? He dares to reply: What judgement shall I dread, doing no wrong? The wheel of Nemesis goes round, and Shylock's life and all lie at the mercy of the victim to whom he had refused mercy and the judge to whose appeal for mercy he would not listen. [_Exultation_ v. _irony._] In the flow of his success, when every point is being given in his favour, he breaks out into unseemly exultation: [=iv.= i. 223, 246, 250, 301, 304.] A Daniel come to judgement! yea, a Daniel! The ebb comes, and his enemies catch up the cry and turn it against him: [=iv.= i. 313, 317, 323, 333, 340.] A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel! I thank thee, Jew, for _teaching_ me that word. Such then is the Story of the Jew, and so it exhibits nemesis clashing with nemesis, the nemesis of surprise with the nemesis of equality and intense satisfaction. * * * * * [_The Caskets Story._] In the Caskets Story, which Shakespeare has associated with the Story of the Jew, the dramatic capabilities are of a totally different kind. In the artist's armoury one of the most effective weapons is Idealisation: [_Idealisation:_] inexplicable touches throwing an attractiveness over the repulsive, uncovering the truth and beauty which lie hidden in the commonplace, and showing how much can be brought out of how little with how little change. [_the exhibition of a commonplace experience in a glorified form._] A story will be excellent material, then, for dramatic handling which contains at once some experience of ordinary life, and also the surroundings which can be made to exhibit this experience in a glorified form: the more commonplace the experience, the greater the triumph of art if it can be idealised. The point of the Caskets Story to the eye of an artist in Drama is the opportunity it affords for such an idealisation of the commonest problem in everyday experience--what may be called the Problem of Judgment by Appearances. [_Problem of Judgment by Appearances._] In the choice between alternatives there are three ways in which judgment may be exercised. The first mode, if it can be called judgment at all, is to accept the decision of chance--to cast lots, or merely to drift into a decision. An opposite to this is purely rational choice. But rational choice, if strictly interpreted as a logical process, involves great complications. If a man would choose according to the methods of strict reason, he must, first of all, purge himself of all passion, for passion and reason are antagonistic. Next, he must examine himself as to the possibility of latent prejudice; and as prejudice may be unconsciously inherited, he must include in the sphere of his examination ancestral and national bias. Then, he must accumulate all the evidence that can possibly bear upon the question in hand, and foresee every eventuality that can result from either alternative. When he has all the materials of choice before him, he must proceed to balance them against one another, seeing first that the mental faculties employed in the process have been equally developed by training. All such preliminary conditions having been satisfied, he may venture to enquire on which side the balance dips, maintaining his suspense so long as the dip is undecided. And when a man has done all this he has attained only that degree of approach to strictly rational choice which his imperfect nature admits. Such pure reason has no place in real life: judgment in practical affairs is something between chance and this strict reason; it attempts to use the machinery of rational choice, but only so far as practical considerations proper to the matter in hand allow. This medium choice is what I am here calling Judgment by Appearances, for it is clear that the antithesis between appearance and reality will obtain so long as the materials of choice are scientifically incomplete; the term will apply with more and more appropriateness as the divergence from perfect conditions of choice is greater. [_This idealised: a maximum in the issue._] Judgment by Appearances so defined is the only method of judgment proper to practical life, and accordingly an exalted exhibition of it must furnish a keen dramatic interest. How is such a process to be glorified? Clearly Judgment by Appearances will reach the ideal stage when there is the maximum of importance in the issue to be decided and the minimum of evidence by which to decide it. These two conditions are satisfied in the Caskets Story. In questions touching the individual life, that of marriage has this unique importance, that it is bound up with wide consequences which extend beyond the individual himself to his posterity. With the suitors of Portia the question is of marriage with the woman who is presented as supreme of her age in beauty, in wealth and in character; [=ii.= i. 40, &c.] moreover, the other alternative is a vow of perpetual celibacy. So the question at issue in the Caskets Story concerns the most important act of life in the most important form in which it can be imagined to present itself. [_and a minimum in the evidence._] When we turn to the evidence on which this question is to be decided we find that of rational evidence there is absolutely none. The choice is to be made between three caskets distinguished by their metals and by the accompanying inscriptions: [=ii.= vii. 5-9.] Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire. Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves. Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath. However individual fancies may incline, it is manifestly impossible to set up any train of _reasoning_ which should discover a ground of preference amongst the three. And it is worth noting, as an example of Shakespeare's nicety in detail, that the successful chooser reads in the scroll which announces his victory, [=iii.= ii. 132.] You that choose not by the view, Chance _as_ fair, and choose _as_ true: Shakespeare does not say '_more_ fair,' '_more_ true.' [=i.= ii. 30-36.] This equal balancing of the alternatives will appear still clearer when we recollect that it is an intentional puzzle with which we are dealing, and accordingly that even if ingenuity could discover a preponderance of reason in favour of any one of the three, there would be the chance that this preponderance had been anticipated by the father who set the puzzle. The case becomes like that of children bidden to guess in which hand a sweetmeat is concealed. They are inclined to say the right hand, but hesitate whether that answer may not have been foreseen and the sweetmeat put in the left hand; and if on this ground they are tempted to be sharp and guess the left hand, there is the possibility that this sharpness may have been anticipated, and the sweetmeat kept after all in the right hand. If then the Caskets Story places before us three suitors, going through three trains of intricate reasoning for guidance in a matter on which their whole future depends, whereas we, the spectators, can see that from the nature of the case no reasoning can possibly avail them, we have clearly the Problem of Judgment by Appearances drawn out in its ideal form; and our sympathies are attracted by the sight of a process, belonging to our everyday experience, yet developed before us in all the force artistic setting can bestow. [_Solution of the problem: the characters of the choosers determine their fates._] But is this all? Does Shakespeare display before us the problem, yet give no help towards its solution? The key to the suitors' fates is not to be found in the trains of reasoning they go through. [=iii.= ii, from 43; esp. 61.] As if to warn us against looking for it in this direction. Shakespeare contrives that we never hear the reasonings of the successful suitor. By a natural touch Portia, who has chosen Bassanio in her heart, is represented as unable to bear the suspense of hearing him deliberate, and calls for music to drown his meditations; it is only the conclusion to which he has come that we catch as the music closes. The particular song selected on this occasion points dimly in the direction in which we are to look for the true solution of the problem: [=iii.= ii. 63.] Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? 'Fancy' in Shakespearean English means 'love'; and the discussion, whether love belongs to the head or the heart, is no inappropriate accompaniment to a reality which consists in this--that the success in love of the suitors, which they are seeking to compass by their reasonings, is in fact being decided by their characters. To compare the characters of the three suitors, it will be enough to note the different form that pride takes in each. [=ii.= i, vii.] The first suitor is a prince of a barbarian race, who has thus never known equals, but has been taught to consider himself half divine; as if made of different clay from the rest of mankind he instinctively shrinks from 'lead.' [=ii.= vii. 20.] Yet modesty mingles with his pride, and though he feels truly that, so far [=ii.= vii. 24-30.] as the estimation of him by others is concerned, he might rely upon 'desert,' yet he doubts if desert extends as far as Portia. [=ii.= vii, from 36.] What seizes his attention is the words, 'what many men desire'; and he rises to a flight of eloquence in picturing wildernesses and deserts become thoroughfares by the multitude of suitors flocking to Belmont. But he is all the while betraying a secret of which he was himself unconscious: he has been led to seek the hand of Portia, not by true love, but by the feeling that what all the world is seeking the Prince of Morocco must not be slow to claim. Very different is the pride of Arragon. [=ii.= ix.] He has no regal position, but rather appears to be one who has fallen in social rank: [compare =ii.= ix. 47-9.] he makes up for such a fall by intense pride of family, and is one of those who complacently thank heaven that they are not as other men. The 'many men' which had attracted Morocco repels Arragon: [=ii.= ix. 31.] I will not choose what many men desire, Because I will not jump with common spirits, And rank me with the barbarous multitudes. [=ii.= ix, from 36.] He is caught by the bait of 'desert.' It is true he almost deceives us with the lofty tone in which he reflects how the world would benefit if dignities and offices were in all cases purchased by the merit of the wearer; yet there peeps through his sententiousness his real conception of merit--the sole merit of family descent. His ideal is that the 'true seed of honour' should be 'picked from the chaff and ruin of the times,' and wrest greatness from the 'low peasantry' who had risen to it. He accordingly rests his fate upon desert: and he finds in the casket of his choice a fool's head. [=iii.= ii, from 73.] Of Bassanio's soliloquy we hear enough to catch that his pride is the pride of the soldier, who will yield to none the post of danger, [compare =i.= ii. 124.] and how he is thus attracted by the 'threatening' of the leaden casket: thou meagre lead, Which rather threatenest than dost promise aught, Thy paleness moves me more than eloquence. Moreover, he is a lover, and the threatening is a challenge to show what he will risk for love: his true heart finds its natural satisfaction in 'giving and hazarding' his all. This is the pride that is worthy of Portia; and thus the ingenious puzzle of the 'inspired' father has succeeded in piercing through the outer defence of specious reasoning, and carrying its repulsion and attraction to the inmost characters of the suitors. [_General principle: character as an element in judgment._] Such, then, is Shakespeare's treatment of the Problem of Judgment by Appearances: while he draws out the problem itself to its fullest extent in displaying the suitors elaborating trains of argument for a momentous decision in which we see that reason can be of no avail, he suggests for the solution that, besides reason, there is in such judgments another element, character, and that in those crises in which reason is most fettered, character is most potent. An important solution this is; for what is character? A man's character is the shadow of his past life; it is the grand resultant of all the forces from within and from without that have been operating upon him since he became a conscious agent. Character is the sandy footprint of the commonplace hardened into the stone of habit; it is the complexity of daily tempers, judgments, restraints, impulses, all focussed into one master-passion acting with the rapidity of an instinct. To lay down then, that where reason fails as an element in judgment, character comes to its aid, is to bind together the exceptional and the ordinary in life. In most of the affairs of life men have scope for the exercise of commonplace qualities, but emergencies do come where this is denied them; in these cases, while they think, like the three suitors, that they are moving voluntarily in the direction in which they are judging fit at the moment, in reality the weight of their past lives is forcing them in the direction in which their judgment has been accustomed to take them. Thus in the moral, as in the physical world, nothing is ever lost: not a ripple on the surface of conduct but goes on widening to the outermost limit of experience. Shakespeare's contribution to the question of practical judgment is that by the long exercise of commonplace qualities we are building up a character which, though unconsciously, is the determining force in the emergencies in which commonplace qualities are impossible. II. HOW SHAKESPEARE IMPROVES THE STORIES IN THE TELLING. _A Study in Dramatic Workmanship._ [_Two points of Dramatic Mechanism._] IN treating the Story as the raw material of the Romantic Drama it has already been shown, in the case of the stories utilised for _The Merchant of Venice_, what natural capacities these exhibit for dramatic effect. The next step is to show how the artist increases their dramatic force in the process of working them up. Two points will be illustrated in the present study: first, how Shakespeare meets the difficulties of a story and reduces them to a minimum; secondly, how he improves the two tales by weaving them together so that they assist one another's effect. [_Reduction of difficulties specially important in Drama._] The avoidance or reduction of difficulties in a story is an obvious element in any kind of artistic handling; it is of special importance in Drama in proportion as we are more sensitive to improbabilities in what is supposed to take place before our eyes than in what we merely hear of by narrative. This branch of art could not be better illustrated than in the Story of the Jew: never perhaps has an artist had to deal with materials so bristling with difficulties of the greatest magnitude, and never, it may be added, have they been met with greater ingenuity. The host of improbabilities gathering about such a detail as the pound of flesh must strike every mind. [_First difficulty: monstrosity of the Jew's character._] There is, however, preliminary to these, another difficulty of more general application: the difficulty of painting a character bad enough to be the hero of the story. It might be thought that to paint excess of badness is comparatively easy, as needing but a coarse brush. On the contrary, there are few severer tests of creative power than the treatment of monstrosity. To be told that there is villainy in the world and tacitly to accept the statement may be easy; it is another thing to be brought into close contact with the villains, to hear them converse, to watch their actions and occasionally to be taken into their confidence. We realise in Drama through our sympathy and our experience: in real life we have not been accustomed to come across monsters and are unfamiliar with their behaviour; in proportion then as the badness of a character is exaggerated it is carried outside the sphere of our experience, the naturalness of the scene is interrupted and its human interest tends to decline. So, in the case of the story under consideration, the dramatist is confronted with this dilemma: he must make the character of Shylock absolutely bad, or the incident of the bond will appear unreal; he must not make the character extraordinarily bad, or there is danger of the whole scene appearing unreal. [_Its repulsiveness counteracted by sympathy with his wrongs._] Shakespeare meets a difficulty of this kind by a double treatment. On the one hand, he puts no limits to the blackness of the character itself; on the other hand, he provides against repulsiveness by giving it a special attraction of another kind. In the present case, while painting Shylock as a monster, he secures for him a hold upon our sympathy by representing him as a victim of intolerable ill-treatment and injustice. The effect resembles the popular sympathy with criminals. The men themselves and their crimes are highly repulsive; but if some slight irregularity occurs in the process of bringing them to justice--if a counsel shows himself unduly eager, or a judge appears for a moment one-sided, a host of volunteer advocates espouse their cause. These are actuated no doubt by sensitiveness to purity of justice; but their protests have a ring that closely resembles sympathy with the criminals themselves, whom they not unfrequently end by believing to be innocent and injured. [e.g. in =iii.= i, iii; =iv.= i; =ii.= 5.] In the same way Shakespeare shows no moderation in the touches of bloodthirstiness, of brutality, of sordid meanness he heaps together in the character of Shylock; but he takes equal pains to rouse our indignation at the treatment he is made to suffer. [e.g. =iii.= i.; =iv.= i, &c.] Personages such as Gratiano, Salanio, Salarino, Tubal, serve to keep before us the mediæval feud between Jew and Gentile, and the persecuting insolence with which the fashionable youth met the money-lenders who ministered to their necessities. [=i.= iii. 107-138.] Antonio himself has stepped out of his natural character in the grossness of his insults to his enemy. [=iii.= i. 57, 133; =iii.= iii. 22; and =i.= iii. 45.] Shylock has been injured in pocket as well as in sentiment, Antonio using his wealth to disturb the money-market and defeat the schemes of the Jew; according to Shylock Antonio has hindered him of half-a-million, and were he out of Venice the usurer could make what merchandise he would. Finally, our sense of deliverance in the Trial Scene cannot hinder a touch of compunction for the crushed plaintiff, as he appeals against the hard justice meted out to him:--the loss of his property, the acceptance of his life as an act of grace, the abandonment of his religion and race, which implies the abandonment of the profession by which he makes his living. [=iv.= i. 374.] Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live. By thus making us resent the harsh fate dealt to Shylock the dramatist recovers in our minds the fellow-feeling we have lost in contemplating the Jew himself. [_Dramatic Hedging._] A name for such double treatment might be 'Dramatic Hedging': as the better covers a possible loss by a second bet on the opposite side, so, when the necessities of a story involve the creation of a monster, the dramatic artist 'hedges' against loss of attractiveness by finding for the character human interest in some other direction. So successful has Shakespeare been in the present instance that a respectable minority of readers rise from the play partisans of Shylock. [_Difficulties connected with the pound of flesh._] We pass on to the crop of difficulties besetting the pound of flesh as a detail in the bond. That such a bond should be proposed, that when proposed it should be accepted, that it should be seriously entertained by a court of justice, that if entertained at all it should be upset on so frivolous a pretext as the omission of reference to the shedding of blood: these form a series of impossible circumstances that any dramatist might despair of presenting with even an approach to naturalness. Yet if we follow the course of the story as moulded by Shakespeare we shall find all these impossibilities one after another evaded. [_Proposal of the bond._] At the end of the first scene Antonio had bidden Bassanio go forth and try what his credit could do in Venice. [=i.= i. 179.] Armed with this blank commission Bassanio hurries into the city. As a gay young nobleman he knows nothing of the commercial world except the money-lenders; and now proceeds to the best-known of them, apparently unaware of what any gossip on the Rialto could have told him, the unfortunate relations between this Shylock and his friend Antonio. [compare =i.= iii. 1-40.] At the opening of the Bond Scene we find Bassanio and Shylock in conversation, Bassanio impatient and irritated to find that the famous security he has to offer seems to make so little impression on the usurer. [=i.= iii. 41.] At this juncture Antonio himself falls[1] in with them, sees at a glance to what his rash friend has committed him, but is too proud to draw back in sight of his enemy. Already a minor difficulty is surmounted, as to how Antonio comes to be in the position of asking an obligation of Shylock. Antonio is as impatient as dignity will permit to bring an awkward business to a conclusion. Shylock, on the contrary, to whom the interview itself is a triumph, in which his persecutor is appearing before him in the position of a client, casts about to prolong the conversation to as great a length as possible. Any topic would serve his purpose; but what topic more natural than the question at the root of the feud between the two, the question of lending money on interest? It is here we reach the very heart of our problem, how the first mention of the pound of flesh is made without a shock of unreality sufficient to ruin the whole scene. Had Shylock asked for a forfeiture of a million per cent., or in any other way thrown into a commercial form his purpose of ruining Antonio, the old feud and the present opportunity would be explanation sufficient: the real difficulty is the total incongruity between such an idea as a pound of human flesh and commercial transactions of any kind. [_The proposal led up to by the discourse on interest._] This difficulty Shakespeare has met by one of his greatest triumphs of mechanical ingenuity: his leading up to the proposal of the bond by the discussion on interest. The effect of this device a modern reader is in danger of losing: [=i.= iii, from 69.] we are so familiar with the idea of interest at the present day that we are apt to forget what the difficulty was to the ancient and mediæval mind, which for so many generations kept the practice of taking interest outside the pale of social decency. This prejudice was one of the confusions arising out of the use of a metal currency. The ancient mind could understand how corn put into the ground would by the agency of time alone produce twentyfold, thirtyfold, or a hundredfold; they could understand how cattle left to themselves would without human assistance increase from a small to a large flock: but how could metal grow? how could lifeless gold and silver increase and multiply like animals and human beings? The Greek word for interest, _tokos_, is the exact equivalent of the English word _breed_, and the idea underlying the two was regularly connected with that of interest in ancient discussions. The same idea is present throughout the dispute between Antonio and Shylock. Antonio indignantly asks: [=i.= iii. 134.] when did friendship take A _breed_ for _barren metal_ of his friend? [=i.= iii. 72.] Shylock illustrates usury by citing the patriarch Jacob and his clever trick in cattle-breeding; showing how, at a time when cattle were the currency, the natural rate of increase might be diverted to private advantage. Antonio interrupts him: [=i.= iii. 96.] Is your gold and silver ewes and rams? Shylock answers: I cannot tell; I make it _breed_ as fast; both parties thus showing that they considered the distinction between the using of flesh and metal for the medium of wealth to be the essential point in their dispute. With this notion then of flesh _versus_ money floating in the air between them the interview goes on to the outbursts of mutual hatred which reach a climax in Antonio's challenge to Shylock to do his worst; [=i.= iii, from 138.] this challenge suddenly combines with the root idea of the conversation to flash into Shylock's mind the suggestion of the bond. In an instant he smoothes his face and proposes friendship. He will lend the money without interest, in pure kindness, nay more, he will go to that extent of good understanding implied in joking, and will have a merry bond; while as to the particular joke (he says in effect), since you Christians cannot understand interest in the case of money while you acknowledge it in the case of flesh and blood, suppose I take as my interest in this bond a pound of your own flesh. In such a context the monstrous proposal sounds almost natural. It has further been ushered in a manner which makes it almost impossible to decline it. When one who is manifestly an injured man is the first to make advances, a generous adversary finds it almost impossible to hold back. A sensitive man, again, will shrink from nothing more than from the ridicule attaching to those who take serious precautions against a jest. And the more incongruous Shylock's proposal is with commercial negotiations the better evidence it is of his non-commercial intentions. In a word, the essence of the difficulty was the incongruity between human flesh and money transactions: it has been surmounted by a discussion, flowing naturally from the position of the two parties, of which the point is the relative position of flesh and money as the medium of wealth in the past. [_Difficulty of legally recognising the bond evaded:_] The bond thus proposed and accepted, there follows the difficulty of representing it as entertained by a court of justice. With reference to Shakespeare's handling of this point it may be noted, first, that he leaves us in doubt whether the court would have entertained it: [=iv.= i. 104.] the Duke is intimating an intention of adjourning at the moment when the entrance of Portia gives a new turn to the proceedings. [=iv.= i. 17.] Again, at the opening of the trial, the Duke gives expression to the universal opinion that Shylock's conduct was intelligible only on the supposition that he was keeping up to the last moment the appearance of insisting on his strange terms, in order that before the eyes of the whole city he might exhibit his enemy at his mercy, and then add to his ignominy by publicly pardoning him: a fate which, it must be admitted, was no more than Antonio justly deserved. This will explain how Shylock comes to have a hearing at all: when once he is admitted to speak it is exceedingly difficult to resist the pleas Shakespeare puts into his mouth. [=iv.= i. 38.] He takes his stand on the city's charter and the letter of the law, and declines to be drawn into any discussion of natural justice; [=iv.= i. 90.] yet even as a question of natural justice what answer can be found when he casually points to the institution of slavery, which we must suppose to have existed in Venice at the period? Shylock's only offence is his seeking to make Antonio's life a matter of barter: what else is the accepted institution of slavery but the establishment of power over human flesh and blood and life, simply because these have been bought with money, precisely as Shylock has given good ducats for his rights over the flesh of Antonio? No wonder the perplexed Duke is for adjourning. [_Difficulty as to the traditional mode of upsetting the bond met._] There remains one more difficulty, the mode in which, according to the traditional story, the bond is upset. It is manifest that the agreement as to the pound of flesh, if it is to be recognised by a court of justice at all, cannot without the grossest perversion of justice be cancelled on the ground of its omitting to mention blood. Legal evasion can go to great lengths. It is well known that an Act requiring cabs to carry lamps at night has been evaded through the omission of a direction that the lamps were to be lighted; and that importers have escaped a duty on foreign gloves at so much the pair by bringing the right-hand and left-hand gloves over in different ships. But it is perfectly possible to carry lamps without lighting them, while it is a clear impossibility to cut human flesh without shedding blood. Nothing of course would be easier than to upset the bond on rational grounds--indeed the difficulty is rather to imagine it receiving rational consideration at all; but on the other hand no solution of the perplexity could be half so dramatic as the one tradition has preserved. The dramatist has to choose between a course of procedure which shall be highly dramatic but leave a sense of injustice, and one that shall be sound and legal but comparatively tame. Shakespeare contrives to secure both alternatives. He retains the traditional plea as to the blood, but puts it into the mouth of one known to his audience to be a woman playing the lawyer for the nonce; [=iv.= i. 314, 347.] and again, before we have time to recover from our surprise and feel the injustice of the proceeding, he follows up the brilliant evasion by a sound legal plea, the suggestion of a real lawyer. Portia has come to the court from a conference with her cousin Bellario, the most learned jurist of Venice. [=iii.= iv. 47; =iv.= i. 143.] Certainly it was not this doctor who hit upon the idea of the blood being omitted. His contribution to the interesting consultation was clearly the old statute of Venice, which every one else seems to have forgotten, which made the mere attempt on the life of a citizen by an alien punishable with death and loss of property: according to this piece of statute law not only would Shylock's bond be illegal, but the demand of such security constituted a capital offence. Thus Shakespeare surmounts the final difficulty in the story of the Jew in a mode which retains dramatic force to the full, yet does this without any violation of legal fairness. * * * * * [_The interweaving of the two stories._] The second purpose of the present study is to show how Shakespeare has improved his two stories by so weaving them together that they assist one another's effect. First, it is easy to see how the whole movement of the play rises naturally out of the union of the two stories. One of the main distinctions between the progress of events in real life or history and in Drama is that the movement of a drama falls into the form technically known as Complication and Resolution. [_Complication and Resolution._] A dramatist fastens our attention upon some train of events: then he sets himself to divert this train of events from its natural course by some interruption; this interruption is either removed, and the train of events returns to its natural course, or the interruption is carried on to some tragic culmination. In _The Merchant of Venice_ our interest is at the beginning fixed on Antonio as rich, high-placed, the protector and benefactor of his friends. By the events following upon the incident of the bond we see what would seem the natural life of Antonio diverted into a totally different channel; in the end the old course is restored, and Antonio becomes prosperous as before. Such interruption of a train of incidents is its Complication, and the term Complication suggests a happy Resolution to follow. Complication and Resolution are essential to dramatic movement, as discords and their 'resolution' into concords constitute the essence of music. [_The one story complicated and resolved by the other._] The Complication and Resolution in the story of the Jew serve for the Complication and Resolution of the drama as a whole; and my immediate point is that these elements of movement in the one story spring directly out of its connection with the other. [=i.= i, from 122; =i.= iii.] But for Bassanio's need of money and his blunder in applying to Shylock the bond would never have been entered into, and the change in Antonio's fortunes would never have come about: thus the cause for all the Complication of the play (technically, the Complicating Force) is the happy lover of the Caskets Story. Similarly Portia is the means by which Antonio's fortunes are restored to their natural flow: in other words, the source of the Resolution (or Resolving Force) is the maiden of the Caskets Story. The two leading personages of the one tale are the sources respectively of the Complication and Resolution in the other tale, which carry the Complication and Resolution of the drama as a whole. Thus simply does the movement of the whole play flow from the union of the two stories. [_The whole play symmetrical about its central scene._] One consequence flowing from this is worth noting; that the scene in which Bassanio makes his successful choice of the casket is the Dramatic Centre of the whole play, as being the point in which the Complicating and Resolving Forces meet. This Dramatic Centre is, according to Shakespeare's favourite custom, placed in the exact mechanical centre of the drama, covering the middle of the middle Act. There is again an amount of poetic splendour lavished upon this scene which throws it up as a poetic centre to the whole. More than this, it is the real crisis of the play. Looking philosophically upon the whole drama as a piece of history, we must admit that the true turning-point is the success of Bassanio; the apparent crisis is the Trial Scene, but this is in reality governed by the scene of the successful choice, and if Portia and Bassanio had not been united in the earlier scene no lawyer would have interposed to turn the current of events in the trial. There is yet another sense in which the same scene may be called central. Hitherto I have dealt with only two tales; the full plot however of _The Merchant of Venice_ involves two more, the Story of Jessica and the Episode of the Rings: it is to be observed that all four stories meet in the scene of the successful choice. This scene is the climax of the Caskets Story. [=iii.= ii, from 221.] It is connected with the catastrophe in the Story of the Jew: Bassanio, at the moment of his happiness, learns that the friend through whom he has been able to contend for the prize has forfeited his life to his foe as the price of his liberality. The scene is connected with the Jessica Story: for Jessica and her husband are the messengers who bring the sad tidings, and thus link together the bright and gloomy elements of the play. [=iii.= ii. 173-187.] Finally, the Episode of the Rings, which is to occupy the end of the drama, has its foundation in this scene, in the exchange of the rings which are destined to be the source of such ironical perplexity. Such is the symmetry with which the plot of _The Merchant of Venice_ has been constructed: the incident which is technically its Dramatic Centre is at once its mechanical centre, its poetic centre, and, philosophically considered, its true turning-point; while, considering the play as a Romantic drama with its union of stories, we find in the same central incident all the four stories dovetailed together. [_Shakespeare as a master of Plot_.] These points may appear small and merely technical. But is a constant purpose with me in the present exposition of Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist to combat the notion, so widely prevalent amongst ordinary readers, that Shakespeare, though endowed with the profoundest grasp of human nature, is yet careless in the construction of his plots: a notion in itself as improbable as it would be that a sculptor could be found to produce individual figures exquisitely moulded and chiselled, yet awkwardly and clumsily grouped. It is the minuter points that show the finish of an artist; and such symmetry of construction as appears in _The Merchant of Venice_ is not likely to characterise a dramatist who sacrifices plot to character-painting. [_The union of a light with a serious story._] There remains another point, which no one will consider small or technical, connected with the union of the two stories: the fact that Shakespeare has thus united a light and a serious story, that he has woven together gloom and brightness. This carries us to one of the great battlefields of dramatic history; no feature is more characteristic of the Romantic Drama than this mingling of light and serious in the same play, and at no point has it been more stoutly assailed by critics trained in an opposite school. I say nothing of the wider scope this practice gives to the dramatist, nor the way in which it brings the world of art nearer to the world of reality; my present purpose is to review the dramatic effects which flow from the mingling of the two elements in the present play. [_Dramatic effects arising out of this union._] In general human interest the stories are a counterpoise to one another, so different in kind, so equal in the degree of interest their progress continues to call forth. The incidents of the two tales gather around Antonio and Portia respectively; [_Effects of Human Interest._] each of these is a full and rounded character, and they are both centres of their respective worlds. [=i.= i. 1.] The stories seem to start from a common point. The keynote to the story of the Jew is the strange 'sadness'--the word implies no more than seriousness--which overpowers Antonio, and which seems to be the shadow of his coming trouble. Compare with this the first words we hear of Portia: [=i.= ii. 1.] By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world. Such a humorous languor is a fitting precursor to the excitement and energy of the scenes which follow. But from this common starting-point the stories move in opposite directions; the spectator's sympathies are demanded alternately for two independent chains of circumstances, for the fortunes of Antonio sinking lower and lower, and the fortunes of Portia rising higher and higher. He sees the merchant and citizen become a bankrupt prisoner, the lordly benefactor of his friends a wretch at the mercy of his foe. He sees Portia, already endowed with beauty, wealth, and character, attain what to her heart is yet higher, the power to lay all she has at the feet of the man she loves. Then, when they are at the climax of their happiness and misery, when Portia has received all that this world can bestow, and Antonio has lost all that this world can take away, for the first time these two central personages meet face to face in the Trial Scene. [_Effects of Plot._] And if from general human interest we pass on to the machinery of plot, we find this also governed by the same combination: a half-serious frolic is the medium in which a tragic crisis finds its solution. [_Emotional effects: increase of tragic passion;_] But it is of course passion and emotional interest which are mainly affected by the union of light and serious: these we shall appreciate chiefly in connection with the Trial Scene, where the emotional threads of the play are gathered into a knot, and the two personages who are the embodiments of the light and serious elements face one another as judge and prisoner. [=iv.= i, from 225.] In this scene it is remarkable how Portia takes pains to prolong to the utmost extent the crisis she has come to solve; she holds in her fingers the threads of the tangled situation, and she is strong enough to play with it before she will consent to bring it to an end. [178.] She has intimated her opinion that the letter of the bond must be maintained, [184-207.] she has made her appeal to Shylock for mercy and been refused, she has heard Bassanio's appeal to wrest the law for once to [214-222.] her authority and has rejected it; there remains nothing but to pronounce the decree. [225.] But at the last moment she asks to see the bond, and every spectator in court holds his breath and hears his heart beat as he follows the lawyer's eye down line after line. [227-230.] It is of no avail; at the end she can only repeat the useless offer of thrice the loan, with the effect of drawing from Shylock an oath that he will not give way. [230-244.] Then Portia admits that the bond is forfeit, with a needless reiteration of its horrible details; yet, as if it were some evenly balanced question, in which after-thoughts were important, she once more appeals to Shylock to be merciful and bid her tear the bond, and evokes a still stronger asseveration from the malignant victor, until even Antonio's stoicism begins to give way, and he begs for a speedy judgment. [243.] Portia then commences to pass her judgment in language of legal prolixity, which sounds like a recollection of her hour with Bellario:-- For the intent and purpose of the law Hath full relation to the penalty, Which here appeareth due upon the bond, &c. [255-261.] Next she fads about the details of the judicial barbarity, the balance to weigh the flesh, a surgeon as a forlorn hope; and when Shylock demurs to the last, stops to argue that he might do this for charity. At last surely the intolerable suspense will come to a termination. [263.] But our lawyer of half-an-hour's standing suddenly remembers she has forgotten to call on the defendant in the suit, and the pathos is intensified by the dying speech of Antonio, calmly welcoming death for himself, anxious only to soften Bassanio's remorse, his last human passion a rivalry with Portia for the love of his friend. [=iv.= i. 276.] Bid her be judge Whether Bassanio had not once a love. [=iv.= i, from 299.] When the final judgment can be delayed no longer its opening sentences are still lengthened out by the jingling repetitions of judicial formality, The law allows it, and the court awards it, &c. Only when every evasion has been exhausted comes the thunderstroke which reverses the whole situation. Now it is clear that had this situation been intended to have a tragic termination this prolonging of its details would have been impossible; thus to harrow our feelings with items of agony would be not art but barbarity. It is because Portia knows what termination she is going to give to the scene that she can indulge in such boldness; it is because the audience have recognised in Portia the signal of deliverance that the lengthening of the crisis becomes the dramatic beauty of suspense. It appears then that, if this scene be regarded only as a crisis of tragic passion, the dramatist has been able to extract more _tragic_ effect out of it by the device of assisting the tragic with a light story. [_reaction and comic effect;_] Again, it is a natural law of the human mind to pass from strain to reaction, and suspense relieved will find vent in vehement exhilaration. By giving Portia her position in the crisis scene the dramatist is clearly furnishing the means for a reaction to follow, and the reaction is found in the [=iv.= i, from 425.] Episode of the Rings, by which the disguised wives entangle their husbands in a perplexity affording the audience the bursts of merriment needed as relief from the tension of the Trial Scene. The play is thus brought into conformity with the laws of mental working, and the effect of the reaction is to make the serious passion more keen because more healthy. [_effects of mixed passion._] Finally, there are the effects of mixed passion, neither wholly serious nor wholly light, but compounded of the two, which are impossible to a drama that can admit only a single tone. The effect of Dramatic Irony, which Shakespeare inherited from the ancient Drama, but greatly modified and extended, is powerfully illustrated at the most pathetic point of the Trial Scene, [=iv.= i. 273-294.] when Antonio's chance reference to Bassanio's new wife calls from Bassanio and his followers agonised vows to sacrifice even their wives if this could save their patron--little thinking that these wives are standing by to record the vow. But there is an effect higher than this. [=iv.= i. 184-202.] Portia's outburst on the theme of mercy, considered only as a speech, is one of the noblest in literature, a gem of purest truth in a setting of richest music. But the situation in which she speaks it is so framed as to make Portia herself the embodiment of the mercy she describes. How can we imagine a higher type of mercy, the feminine counterpart of justice, than in the bright woman, at the moment of her supreme happiness, appearing in the garb of the law to deliver a righteous unfortunate from his one error, and the justice of Venice from the insoluble perplexity of having to commit a murder by legal process? And how is this situation brought about but by the most intricate interweaving of a story of brightness with a story of trouble? In all branches then of dramatic effect, in Character, in Plot and in Passion, the union of a light with a serious story is found to be a source of power and beauty. The fault charged against the Romantic Drama has upon a deeper view proved a new point of departure in dramatic progress; and in this particular case the combination of tales so opposite in character must be regarded as one of the leading points in which Shakespeare has improved the tales in the telling. FOOTNOTES: [1] No commentator has succeeded in making intelligible the line [=i.= iii. 42.] How like a fawning publican he looks! as it stands in the text at the opening of Shylock's soliloquy. The expression 'fawning publican' is so totally the opposite of all the qualities of Antonio that it could have no force even in the mouth of a satirist. It is impossible not to be attracted by the simple change in the text that would not only get over this difficulty, but add a new effect to the scene: the change of assigning this single line to Antonio, reserving, of course, the rest of the speech for Shylock. The passage would then read thus [the stage direction is my own]: _Enter_ ANTONIO. _Bass._ This is Signior Antonio. _Ant._ [_Aside_]. How like a fawning publican he looks-- [BASSANIO _whispers_ ANTONIO _and brings him to_ SHYLOCK. _Shy._ [_Aside_]. I hate him, for he is a Christian, But more, &c. Both the terms 'fawning' and 'publican' are literally applicable to Shylock, and are just what Antonio would be likely to say of him. It is again a natural effect for the two foes on meeting for the first time in the play to exchange scowling defiance. Antonio's defiance is cut short at the first line by Bassanio's running up to him, explaining what he has done, and bringing Antonio up to where Shylock is standing; the time occupied in doing this gives Shylock scope for his longer soliloquy. III. HOW SHAKESPEARE MAKES HIS PLOT MORE COMPLEX IN ORDER TO MAKE IT MORE SIMPLE. _A Study in Underplot._ [_Paradox of simplicity by means of increased complexity._] THE title of the present study is a paradox: that Shakespeare makes a plot more complex[2] in order to make it more simple. It is however a paradox that finds an illustration from the material world in every open roof. The architect's problem has been to support a heavy weight without the assistance of pillars, and it might have been expected that in solving the problem he would at least have tried every means in his power for diminishing the weight to be supported. On the contrary, he has increased this weight by the addition of massive cross-beams and heavy iron-girders. Yet, if these have been arranged according to the laws of construction, each of them will bring a supporting power considerably greater than its own weight; and thus, while in a literal sense increasing the roof, for all practical purposes they may be said to have diminished it. Similarly a dramatist of the Romantic school, from his practice of uniting more than one story in the same plot, has to face the difficulty of complexity. This difficulty he solves not by seeking how to reduce combinations as far as possible, but, on the contrary, by the addition of more and inferior stories; yet if these new stories are so handled as to emphasise and heighten the effect of the main stories, the additional complexity will have resulted in increased simplicity. In the play at present under consideration, Shakespeare has interwoven into a common pattern two famous and striking tales; his plot, already elaborate, he has made yet more elaborate by the addition of two more tales less striking in their character--the Story of Jessica and the Episode of the Rings. [_The Jessica Story and the Rings Episode assist the main stories._] If it can be shown that these inferior stories have the effect of assisting the main stories, smoothing away their difficulties and making their prominent points yet more prominent, it will be clear that he has made his plot more complex only in reality to make it more simple. The present study is devoted to noticing how the Stories of Jessica and of the Rings minister to the effects of the Story of the Jew and the Caskets Story. [_The Jessica Story. It serves as Underplot for mechanical personages._] To begin with: it may be seen that in many ways the mechanical working out of the main stories is assisted by the Jessica story. In the first place it relieves them of their superfluous personages. Every drama, however simple, must contain 'mechanical' personages, who are introduced into the play, not for their own sake, but to assist in presenting incidents or other personages. The tendency of Romantic Drama to put a story as a whole upon the stage multiplies the number of such mechanical personages: and when several such stories come to be combined in one, there is a danger of the stage being crowded with characters which intrinsically have little interest. Here the Underplots become of service and find occupation for these inferior personages. In the present case only four personages are essential to the main plot--Antonio, Shylock, Bassanio, Portia. But in bringing out the unusual tie that binds together a representative of the city and a representative of the nobility, [e.g. =i.= i; =iii.= iii; =iv.= i.] and upon which so much of the plot rests, it is an assistance to introduce the rank and file of gay society and depict these paying court to the commercial magnate. The high position of Antonio and Bassanio in their respective spheres will come out still clearer if these lesser social personages are graduated. [=i.= i; compare =iii.= i. esp. 14-18.] Salanio, Salerio, and Salarino are mere parasites; [=i.= i. 74-118. =i.= ii. 124. =v.= i, &c. =i.= ii, &c. =iii.= i. 80, &c.] Gratiano has a certain amount of individuality in his wit; while, seeing that Bassanio is a scholar as well as a nobleman and soldier, it is fitting to give prominence amongst his followers to the intellectual and artistic Lorenzo. Similarly the introduction of Nerissa assists in presenting Portia fully; Shylock is seen in his relations with his race by the aid of Tubal, his family life is seen in connection with Jessica, and his behaviour to dependants in connection with Launcelot; Launcelot himself is set off by Gobbo. Now the Jessica story is mainly devoted to these inferior personages, and the majority of them take an animated part in the successful elopement. It is further to be noted that the Jessica Underplot has itself an inferior story attached to it, [=ii.= ii. iii; =iii.= v.] that of Launcelot, who seeks scope for his good nature by transferring himself to a Christian master, just as his mistress seeks a freer social atmosphere in union with a Christian husband. And, similarly, side by side with the Caskets Story, which unites Portia and Bassanio, [=iii.= ii. 188, &c.] we have a faintly-marked underplot which unites their followers, Nerissa and Gratiano. In one or other of these inferior stories the mechanical personages find attachment to plot; and the multiplication of individual figures, instead of leaving an impression of waste, is made to minister to the sense of Dramatic Economy. [_It assists mechanical development: occupying the three months' interval,_] Again: as there are mechanical personages so there are mechanical difficulties--difficulties of realisation which do not belong to the essence of a story, but which appear when the story comes to be worked out upon the stage. The Story of the Jew involves such a mechanical difficulty in the interval of three months which elapses between the signing of the bond and its forfeiture. In a classical setting this would be avoided by making the play begin on the day the bond falls due; such treatment, however, would shut out the great dramatic opportunity of the Bond Scene. The Romantic Drama always inclines to exhibiting the whole of a story; it must therefore in the present case _suppose_ a considerable interval between one part of the story and another, and such suppositions tend to be weaknesses. The Jessica Story conveniently bridges over this interval. The first Act is given up to bringing about the bond, which at the beginning of the third Act appears to be broken. The intervening Act consists of no less than nine scenes, and while three of them carry on the progress of the Caskets Story, the other six are devoted to the elopement of Jessica: the bustle and activity implied in such rapid change of scene indicating how an underplot can be used to keep the attention of the audience just where the natural interest of the main story would flag. [_and so breaking gradually the news of Antonio's losses._] The same use of the Jessica Story to bridge over the three months' interval obviates another mechanical difficulty of the main plot. The loss of all Antonio's ships, the supposition that all the commercial ventures of so prudent a merchant should simultaneously miscarry, is so contrary to the chances of things as to put some strain upon our sense of probability; and this is just one of the details which, too unimportant to strike us in an anecdote, become realised when a story is presented before our eyes. The artist, it must be observed, is not bound to find actual solutions for every possible difficulty; he has merely to see that they do not interfere with dramatic effect. Sometimes he so arranges his incidents that the difficulty is met and vanishes; sometimes it is kept out of sight, the portion of the story which contains it going on behind the scenes; at other times he is content with reducing the difficulty in amount. In the present instance the improbability of Antonio's losses is lessened by the gradual way in which the news is broken to us, distributed amongst the numerous scenes of the three months' interval. [=ii.= viii. 25.] We get the first hint of it in a chance conversation between Salanio and Salarino, in which they are chuckling over the success of the elopement and the fury of the robbed father. Salanio remarks that Antonio must look that he keep his day; this reminds Salarino of a ship he has just heard of as lost somewhere in the English Channel: I thought upon Antonio when he told me; And wish'd in silence that it were not his. [=iii.= i.] In the next scene but one the same personages meet, and one of them, enquiring for the latest news, is told that the rumour yet lives of Antonio's loss, and now the exact place of the wreck is specified as the Goodwin Sands; Salarino adds: 'I would it might prove the end of his losses.' Before the close of the scene Shylock and Tubal have been added to it. Tubal has come from Genoa and gives Shylock the welcome news that at Genoa it was _known_ that Antonio had lost an argosy coming from Tripolis; while on his journey to Venice Tubal had travelled with creditors of Antonio who were speculating upon his bankruptcy as a certainty. [=iii.= ii.] Then comes the central scene in which the full news reaches Bassanio at the moment of his happiness: all Antonio's ventures failed-- From Tripolis, from Mexico and England, From Lisbon, Barbary, and India, not one escaped. [=iii.= iii.] In the following scene we see Antonio in custody. [_The Jessica Story assists Dramatic Hedging in regard to Shylock._] These are minor points such as may be met with in any play, and the treatment of them belongs to ordinary Dramatic Mechanism. But we have already had to notice that the Story of the Jew contains special difficulties which belong to the essence of the story, and must be met by special devices. One of these was the monstrous character of the Jew himself; and we saw how the dramatist was obliged to maintain in the spectators a double attitude to Shylock, alternately letting them be repelled by his malignity and again attracting their sympathy to him as a victim of wrong. Nothing in the play assists this double attitude so much as the Jessica Story. Not to speak of the fact that Shylock shows no appreciation for the winsomeness of the girl who attracts every one else in the drama, nor of the way in which this one point of brightness in the Jewish quarter throws up the sordidness of all her surroundings, [=ii.= iii. 2.] we hear the Jew's own daughter reflect that his house is a 'hell,' and we see enough of his domestic life to agree with her. [e.g. =ii.= v.] A Shylock painted without a tender side at all would be repulsive; he becomes much more repulsive when he shows a tenderness for one human being, and yet it appears how this tenderness has grown hard and rotten with the general debasement of his soul by avarice, until, in his ravings over his loss, [=iii.= i, from 25.] his ducats and his daughter are ranked as equally dear. [=iii.= i. 92.] I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear! Would she were hearsed at my foot, and the ducats in her coffin! For all this we feel that he is hardly used in losing her. Paternal feeling may take a gross form, but it is paternal feeling none the less, and cannot be denied our sympathy; bereavement is a common ground upon which not only high and low, but even the pure and the outcast, are drawn together. Thus Jessica at home makes us hate Shylock: with Jessica lost we cannot help pitying him. The perfection of Dramatic Hedging lies in the equal balancing of the conflicting feelings, and one of the most powerful scenes in the whole play is devoted to this twofold display of Shylock. Fresh from the incident of the elopement, he is encountered by the parasites and by Tubal: these amuse themselves with alternately 'chaffing' him upon his losses, and 'drawing' him in the matter of the expected gratification of his vengeance, while his passions rock him between extremes of despair and fiendish anticipation. [_Jessica Shakespeare's compensation to Shylock._] We may go further. Great creative power is accompanied by great attachment to the creations and keen sense of justice in disposing of them. Looked at as a whole, the Jessica Story is Shakespeare's compensation to Shylock. [=iv.= i. 348-394.] The sentence on Shylock, which the necessities of the story require, is legal rather than just; yet large part of it consists in a requirement that he shall make his daughter an heiress. And, to put it more generally, the repellent character and hard fate of the father have set against them the sweetness and beauty of the daughter, together with the full cup of good fortune which her wilful rebellion brings her in the love of Lorenzo and the protecting friendship of Portia. Perhaps the dramatist, according to his wont, is warning us of this compensating treatment when he makes one of the characters early in the play exclaim: [=ii.= iv. 34.] If e'er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter's sake. [_The Jessica Story explains Shylock's unyieldingness._] The other main source of difficulty in the Story of the Jew is, as we have seen, the detail concerning the pound of flesh, which throws improbability over every stage of its progress. In one at least of these stages the difficulty is directly met by the aid of the Jessica Story: it is this which explains Shylock's resolution not to give way. When we try in imagination to realise the whole circumstances, common sense must take the view taken in the play itself by the Duke: [=iv.= i. 17.] Shylock, the world thinks, and I think so too, That thou but lead'st this fashion of thy malice To the last hour of act; and then 'tis thought Thou'lt show thy mercy and remorse more strange Than is thy strange apparent cruelty. A life-long training in avarice would not easily resist an offer of nine thousand ducats. But further, the alternatives between which Shylock has to choose are not so simple as the alternatives of Antonio's money or his life. On the one hand, Shylock has to consider the small chance that either the law or the mob would actually suffer the atrocity to be judicially perpetrated, and how his own life would be likely to be lost in the attempt. Again, turning to the other alternative, Shylock is certainly deep in his schemes of vengeance, and the finesse of malignity must have suggested to him how much more cruel to a man of Antonio's stamp it would be to fling him a contemptuous pardon before the eyes of Venice than to turn him into a martyr, even supposing this to be permitted. But at the moment when the choice becomes open to Shylock he has been maddened by the loss of his daughter, who, with the wealth she has stolen, has gone to swell the party of his deadly foe. It is fury, not calculating cruelty, that makes Shylock with a madman's tenacity cling to the idea of blood, while this passion is blinding him to a more keenly flavoured revenge, and risking the chance of securing any vengeance at all[3]. [_The Jessica Story assists the interweaving of the main stories._] From the mechanical development of the main plot and the reduction of its difficulties, we pass to the interweaving of the two principal stories, which is so leading a feature of the play. In the main this interweaving is sufficiently provided for by the stories themselves, and we have already seen how the leading personages in the one story are the source of the whole movement in the other story. But this interweaving is drawn closer still by the affair of Jessica: [_It is thus a Link Action,_] technically described the position in the plot of Jessica's elopement is that of a Link Action between the main stories. This linking appears in the way in which Jessica and her suite are in the course of the drama transferred from the one tale to the other. At the opening of the play they are personages in the Story of the Jew, and represent its two antagonistic sides, Jessica being the daughter of the Jew and Lorenzo a friend and follower of Bassanio and Antonio. First the contrivance of the elopement assists in drawing together these opposite sides of the Jew Story, and aggravating the feud on which it turns. [=iii.= ii, from 221.] Then, as we have seen, Jessica and her husband in the central scene of the whole play come into contact with the Caskets Story at its climax. From this point they become adopted into the Caskets Story, and settle down in the house and under the protection of Portia. [_helping to restore the balance between the main stories,_] This transference further assists the symmetry of interweaving by helping to adjust the balance between the two main stories. In its _mass_, if the expression may be allowed, the Caskets tale, with its steady progress to a goal of success, is over-weighted by the tale of Antonio's tragic peril and startling deliverance: the Jessica episode, withdrawn from the one and added to the other, helps to make the two more equal. Once more, the case, we have seen, is not merely that of a union between stories, but a union between stories opposite in kind, a combination of brightness with gloom. [_and a bond between their bright and dark climaxes._] The binding effect of the Jessica Story extends to the union between these opposite tones. We have already had occasion to notice how the two extremes meet in the central scene, how from the height of Bassanio's bliss we pass in an instant to the total ruin of Antonio, which we then learn in its fulness for the first time: the link which connects the two is the arrival of Jessica and her friends as bearers of the news. [_Character effects. Character of Jessica._] So far, the points considered have been points of Mechanism and Plot; in the matter of Character-Interest the Jessica episode is to an even greater degree an addition to the whole effect of the play, Jessica and Lorenzo serving as a foil to Portia and Bassanio. The characters of Jessica and Lorenzo are charmingly sketched, though liable to misreading unless carefully studied. To appreciate Jessica we must in the first place assume the grossly unjust mediæval view of the Jews as social outcasts. [=ii.= v.] The dramatist has vouchsafed us a glimpse of Shylock at home, and brief as the scene is it is remarkable how much of evil is crowded into it. The breath of home life is trust, yet the one note which seems to pervade the domestic bearing of Shylock is the lowest suspiciousness. [12, 16, 36.] Three times as he is starting for Bassanio's supper he draws back to question the motives for which he has been invited. He is moved to a shriek of suspicion by the mere fact of his servant joining him in shouting for the absent Jessica, [7.] by the mention of masques, by the sight of the servant whispering to his daughter [28, 44.]. Finally, he takes his leave with the words [52.] Perhaps I will return immediately, a device for keeping order in his absence which would be a low one for a nurse to use to a child, but which he is not ashamed of using to his grown-up daughter and the lady of his house. The short scene of fifty-seven lines is sufficient to give us a further reminder of Shylock's sordid house-keeping, which is glad to get rid of the good-natured Launcelot as a 'huge feeder'; [3, 46.] and his aversion to any form of gaiety, which leads him to insist on his shutters being put up when he hears that there is a chance of a pageant in the streets [28.]. Amidst surroundings of this type Jessica has grown up, a motherless girl, mingling only with harsh men (for we nowhere see a trace of female companionship for her): [=ii.= iii. 20.] it can hardly be objected against her that she should long for a Christian atmosphere in which her affections might have full play. Yet even for this natural reaction she feels compunction: [=ii.= iii. 16.] Alack, what heinous sin is it in me To be ashamed to be my father's child! But though I am a daughter to his blood, I am not to his manners. Formed amidst such influences it would be a triumph to a character if it escaped repulsiveness; Jessica, on the contrary, is full of attractions. She has a simplicity which stands to her in the place of principle. More than this she has a high degree of feminine delicacy. Delicacy will be best brought out in a person who is placed in an equivocal situation, and we see Jessica engaged, not only in an elopement, but in an elopement which, [=ii.= iv. 30.] it appears, has throughout been planned by herself and not by Lorenzo. Of course a quality like feminine delicacy is more conveyed by the bearing of the actress than by positive words; we may however notice the impression which Jessica's part in the elopement scenes makes upon those who are present. [=ii.= iv. 30-40.] When Lorenzo is obliged to make a confidant of Gratiano, and tell him how it is Jessica who has planned the whole affair, instead of feeling any necessity of apologising for her the thought of her childlike innocence moves him to enthusiasm, and it is here that he exclaims: If e'er the Jew her father come to heaven, It will be for his gentle daughter's sake. [=ii.= vi.] In the scene of the elopement itself, Jessica has steered clear of both prudishness and freedom, and when after her pretty confusion she has retired from the window, even Gratiano breaks out: [=ii.= vi. 51.] Now, by my hood, a Gentile and no Jew; while Lorenzo himself has warmed to see in her qualities he had never expected: [=ii.= vi. 52.] Beshrew me but I love her heartily; For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she has proved herself, And therefore, like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul. So generally, all with whom she comes into contact feel her spell: [=ii.= iii. 10.] the rough Launcelot parts from her with tears he is ashamed of yet cannot keep down; [=iii.= i. 41.] Salarino--the last of men to take high views of women--resents as a sort of blasphemy Shylock's claiming her as his flesh and blood; [=iii.= iv, v; =v.= i.] while between Jessica and Portia there seems to spring in an instant an attraction as mysterious as is the tie between Antonio and Bassanio. [_Character of Lorenzo._] Lorenzo is for the most part of a dreamy inactive nature, as may be seen in his amused tolerance of Launcelot's word-fencing [=iii.= v. 44-75.]--word-fencing being in general a challenge which none of Shakespeare's characters can resist; similarly, Jessica's enthusiasm on the subject of Portia, which in reality he shares, he prefers to meet with banter [=iii.= v. 75-89.]: Even such a husband Hast thou of me as she is for a wife. But the strong side of his character also is shown us in the play: [=v.= i. 1-24, 54-88.] he has an artist soul, and to the depth of his passion for music and for the beauty of nature we are indebted for some of the noblest passages in Shakespeare. This is the attraction which has drawn him to Jessica, her outer beauty is the index of artistic sensibility within: [=v.= i. 69, 1-24.] 'she is never merry when she hears sweet music,' and the soul of rhythm is awakened in her, just as much as in her husband, by the moonlight scene. Simplicity again, is a quality they have in common, as is seen by their ignorance in money-matters, [=iii.= i. 113, 123.] and the way a valuable turquoise ring goes for a monkey--if, at least, Tubal may be believed: a carelessness of money which mitigates our dislike of the free hand Jessica lays upon her father's ducats and jewels. On the whole, however, Lorenzo's dreaminess makes a pretty contrast to Jessica's vivacity. And Lorenzo's inactivity is capable of being roused to great things. This is seen by the elopement itself: [esp. =ii.= iv. 20, 30; =ii.= vi. 30. &c.] for the suggestion of its incidents seems to be that Lorenzo meant at first no more than trifling with the pretty Jewess, and that he rose to the occasion as he found and appreciated Jessica's higher tone and attraction. [=iii.= iv. 24, 32.] Finally, we must see the calibre of Lorenzo's character through the eyes of Portia, who selects him at first sight as the representative to whom to commit her household in her absence, of which commission she will take no refusal. [_Jessica and Lorenzo a foil to Portia and Bassanio._] So interpreted the characters of Jessica and Lorenzo make the whole episode of the elopement an antithesis to the main plot. To a wedded couple in the fresh happiness of their union there can hardly fall a greater luxury than to further the happiness of another couple; this luxury is granted to Portia and Bassanio, and in their reception of the fugitives what picturesque contrasts are brought together! The two pairs are a foil to one another in kind, and set one another off like gold and gems. Lorenzo and Jessica are negative characters with the one positive quality of intense capacity for enjoyment; Bassanio and Portia have everything to enjoy, yet their natures appear dormant till roused by an occasion for daring and energy. The Jewess and her husband are distinguished by the bird-like simplicity that so often goes with special art-susceptibility; Portia and Bassanio are full and rounded characters in which the whole of human nature seems concentrated. The contrast is of degree as well as kind: the weaker pair brought side by side with the stronger throw out the impression of their strength. Portia has a fulness of power which puts her in her most natural position when she is extending protection to those who are less able to stand by themselves. Still more with Bassanio: he has so little scope in the scenes of the play itself, which from the nature of the stories present him always in situations of dependence on others, that we see his strength almost entirely by the reflected light of the attitude which others hold to him; in the present instance we have no difficulty in catching the intellectual power of Lorenzo, and Lorenzo looks up to Bassanio as a superior. And the couples thus contrasted in character present an equal likeness and unlikeness in their fortunes. Both are happy for ever, and both have become so through a bold stroke. Yet in the one instance it is blind obedience, in face of all temptations, to the mere whims of a good parent, who is dead, that has been guided to the one issue so passionately desired; in the case of the other couple open rebellion, at every practical risk, against the legitimate authority of an evil father, still living, has brought them no worse fate than happiness in one another, and for their defenceless position the best of patrons. It seems, then, that the introduction of the Jessica Story is justified, not only by the purposes of construction which it serves, but by the fact that its human interest is at once a contrast and a supplement to the main story, with which it blends to produce the ordered variety of a finished picture. [_The Rings Episode assists the mechanism of the main stories,_] A few words will be sufficient to point out how the effects of the main plot are assisted by the Rings Episode, which, though rich in fun, is of a slighter character than the Jessica Story, and occupies a much smaller space in the field of view. The dramatic points of the two minor stories are similar. Like the Jessica Story the Rings Episode assists the mechanical working out of the main plot. An explanation must somehow be given to Bassanio that the lawyer is Portia in disguise; mere mechanical explanations have always an air of weakness, but the affair of the rings utilises the explanation in the present case as a source of new dramatic effects. This arrangement further assists, to a certain extent, in reducing the improbability of Portia's project. The point at which the improbability would be most felt would be, not the first appearance of the lawyer's clerk, for then we are engrossed in our anxiety for Antonio, but when the explanation of the disguise came to be made; there might be a danger lest here the surprise of Bassanio should become infectious, and the audience should awake to the improbability of the whole story: as it is, their attention is at the critical moment diverted to the perplexity of the penitent husbands. [_and their interweaving;_] The Story of the Rings, like that of Jessica, assists the interweaving of the two main stories with one another, its subtlety suggesting to what a degree of detail this interlacing extends. Bassanio is the main point which unites the Story of the Jew and the Caskets Story; in the one he occupies the position of friend, in the other of husband. [=iv.= i. 425-454.] The affair of the rings, slight as it is, is so managed by Portia that its point becomes a test as between his friendship and his love; and so equal do these forces appear that, though his friendship finally wins and he surrenders his betrothal ring, yet it is not until after his wife has given him a hint against herself: An if your wife be not a mad-woman, And know how well I have deserved the ring, She would not hold out enemy for ever For giving it to me. The Rings Episode, even more than the Jessica Story, assists in restoring the balance between the main tales. The chief inequality between them lies in the fact that the Jew Story is complicated and resolved, while the Caskets Story is a simple progress to a goal; when, however, there springs from the latter a sub-action which has a highly comic complication and resolution the two halves of the play become dramatically on a par. And the interweaving of the dark and bright elements in the play is assisted by the fact that the Episode of the Rings not only provides a comic reaction to relieve the tragic crisis, but its whole point is a Dramatic Irony in which serious and comic are inextricably mixed. [_and assists in the development of Portia's character._] Finally, as the Jessica Story ministers to Character effect in connection with the general ensemble of the personages, so the Episode of the Rings has a special function in bringing out the character of Portia. The secret of the charm which has won for Portia the suffrages of all readers is the perfect balance of qualities in her character: she is the meeting-point of brightness, force, and tenderness. And, to crown the union, Shakespeare has placed her at the supreme moment of life, on the boundary line between girlhood and womanhood, when the wider aims and deeper issues of maturity find themselves in strange association with the abandon of youth. The balance thus becomes so perfect that it quivers, and dips to one side and the other. [=i.= ii. 39.] Portia is the saucy child as she sprinkles her sarcasms over Nerissa's enumeration of the suitors: in the trial she faces the world of Venice as a heroine. [=iii.= ii. 150.] She is the ideal maiden in the speech in which she surrenders herself to Bassanio: [=iv.= i. 184.] she is the ideal woman as she proclaims from the judgment seat the divinity of mercy. Now the fourth Act has kept before us too exclusively one side of this character. Not that Portia in the lawyer's gown is masculine: but the dramatist has had to dwell too long on her side of strength. He will not dismiss us with this impression, but indulges us in one more daring feat surpassing all the madcap frolics of the past. Thus the Episode of the Rings is the last flicker of girlhood in Portia before it merges in the wider life of womanhood. We have rejoiced in a great deliverance wrought by a noble woman: our enjoyment rises higher yet when the Rings Episode reminds us that this woman has not ceased to be a sportive girl. It has been shown, then, that the two inferior stories in _The Merchant of Venice_ assist the main stories in the most varied manner, smoothing their mechanical working, meeting their special difficulties, drawing their mutual interweaving yet closer, and throwing their character effects into relief: the additional complexity they have brought has resulted in making emphatic points yet more prominent, and the total effect has therefore been to increase clearness and simplicity. Enough has now been said on the building up of Dramas out of Stories, which is the distinguishing feature of the Romantic Drama; the studies that follow will be applied to the more universal topics of dramatic interest, Character, Plot, and Passion. FOOTNOTES: [2] It is a difficulty of literary criticism that it has to use as technical terms words belonging to ordinary conversation, and therefore more or less indefinite in their significations. In the present work I am making a distinction between 'complex' and 'complicated': the latter is applied to the diverting a story out of its natural course with a view to its ultimate 'resolution'; 'complex' is reserved for the interweaving of stories with one another. Later on 'single' will be opposed to 'complex,' and 'simple' to 'complicated.' [3] This seems to me a reasonable view notwithstanding what Jessica says to the contrary (iii. ii. 286), that she has often heard her father swear he would rather have Antonio's flesh than twenty times the value of the bond. It is one thing to swear vengeance in private, another thing to follow it up in the face of a world in opposition. A man of overbearing temper surrounded by inferiors and dependants often utters threats, and seems to find a pleasure in uttering them, which both he and his hearers know he will never carry out. IV. A PICTURE OF IDEAL VILLAINY IN RICHARD III. _A Study in Character-Interpretation._ [_Villainy as a subject for art-treatment._] I HOPE that the subject of the present study will not be considered by any reader forbidding. On the contrary, there is surely attractiveness in the thought that nothing is so repulsive or so uninteresting in the world of fact but in some way or other it may be brought under the dominion of art-beauty. The author of _L'Allegro_ shows by the companion poem that he could find inspiration in a rainy morning; and the great master in English poetry is followed by a great master in English painting who wins his chief triumphs by his handling of fog and mist. Long ago the masterpiece of Virgil consecrated agricultural toil; Murillo's pictures have taught us that there is a beauty in rags and dirt; rustic commonplaces gave a life passion to Wordsworth, and were the cause of a revolution in poetry; while Dickens has penetrated into the still less promising region of low London life, and cast a halo around the colourless routine of poverty. Men's evil passions have given Tragedy to art, crime is beautified by being linked to Nemesis, meanness is the natural source for brilliant comic effects, ugliness has reserved for it a special form of art in the grotesque, and pain becomes attractive in the light of the heroism that suffers and the devotion that watches. In the infancy of modern English poetry Drayton found a poetic side to topography and maps, and Phineas Fletcher idealised anatomy; while of the two greatest imaginations belonging to the modern world Milton produced his masterpiece in the delineation of a fiend, and Dante in a picture of hell. The final triumph of good over evil seems to have been already anticipated by art. [_The villainy of Richard ideal in its scale,_] The portrait of Richard satisfies a first condition of ideality in the scale of the whole picture. The sphere in which he is placed is not private life, but the world of history, in which moral responsibility is the highest: if, therefore, the quality of other villainies be as fine, here the issues are deeper. [_and in its fulness of development._] As another element of the ideal, the villainy of Richard is presented to us fully developed and complete. Often an artist of crime will rely--as notably in the portraiture of Tito Melema--mainly on the succession of steps by which a character, starting from full possession of the reader's sympathies, arrives by the most natural gradations at a height of evil which shocks. In the present case all idea of growth is kept outside the field of this particular play; the opening soliloquy announces a completed process: [=i.= i. 30.] I am determined to prove a villain. What does appear of Richard's past, seen through the favourable medium of a mother's description, only seems to extend the completeness to earlier stages: [=iv.= iv. 167.] A grievous burthen was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy; Thy school-days frightful, desperate, wild, and furious, Thy prime of manhood daring, bold, and venturous, Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, bloody, treacherous, More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred. So in the details of the play there is nowhere a note of the hesitation that betrays tentative action. When even Buckingham is puzzled as to what can be done if Hastings should resist, Richard answers: [=iii.= i. 193.] Chop off his head, man; somewhat we will do. His choice is only between different modes of villainy, never between villainy and honesty. [_It has no sufficient motive._] Again, it is to be observed that there is no suggestion of impelling motive or other explanation for the villainy of Richard. He does not labour under any sense of personal injury, such as Iago felt in believing, however groundlessly, [_Othello_: =i.= iii. 392, &c.] that his enemies had wronged him through his wife; [_Lear_: =i.= ii. 1-22.] or Edmund, whose soliloquies display him as conscious that his birth has made his whole life an injury. Nor have we in this case the morbid enjoyment of suffering which we associate with Mephistopheles, and which Dickens has worked up into one of his most powerful portraits in Quilp. Richard never turns aside to gloat over the agonies of his victims; it is not so much the details as the grand schemes of villainy, the handling of large combinations of crime, that have an interest for him: he is a strategist in villainy, not a tactician. Nor can we point to ambition as a sufficient motive. He is ambitious in a sense which belongs to all vigorous natures; he has the workman's impulse to rise by his work. But ambition as a determining force in character must imply more than this; it is a sort of moral dazzling, its symptom is a fascination by ends which blinds to the ruinous means leading up to these ends. Such an ambition was Macbeth's; but in Richard the symptoms are wanting, and in all his long soliloquies he is never found dwelling upon the prize in view. A nearer approach to an explanation would be Richard's sense of bodily deformity. Not only do all who come in contact with him shrink from the 'bottled spider,' [=i.= iii. 242, 228; =iv.= iv. 81, &c.] but he himself gives a conspicuous place in his meditations to the thought of his ugliness; from the outset he connects his criminal career with the reflection that he 'is not shaped for sportive tricks' [=i.= i. 14.]: Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. Still, it would be going too far to call this the motive of his crimes: the spirit of this and similar passages is more accurately expressed by saying that he has a morbid pleasure in contemplating physical ugliness analogous to his morbid pleasure in contemplating moral baseness. [esp. =i.= ii. 252-264.] [_Villainy has become to Richard an end in itself._] There appears, then, no sufficient explanation and motive for the villainy of Richard: the general impression conveyed is that to Richard villainy has become an end in itself needing no special motive. This is one of the simplest principles of human development--that a means to an end tends to become in time an end in itself. The miser who began accumulating to provide comforts for his old age finds the process itself of accumulating gain firmer and firmer hold upon him, until, when old age has come, he sticks to accumulating and foregoes comfort. So in previous plays Gloster may have been impelled by ambition to his crimes: [compare _3 Henry VI:_ =iii.= ii. 165-181.] by the time the present play is reached crime itself becomes to him the dearer of the two, and the ambitious end drops out of sight. This leads directly to one of the two main features of Shakespeare's portrait: Richard is an _artist in villainy_. [_Richard an artist in villainy._] What form and colour are to the painter, what rhythm and imagery are to the poet, that crime is to Richard: it is the medium in which his soul frames its conceptions of the beautiful. The gulf that separates between Shakespeare's Richard and the rest of humanity is no gross perversion of sentiment, nor the development of abnormal passions, nor a notable surrender in the struggle between interest and right. It is that he approaches villainy as a thing of pure intellect, a region of moral indifference in which sentiment and passion have no place, attraction to which implies no more motive than the simplest impulse to exercise a native talent in its natural sphere. [_Richard lacks the emotions naturally attending crime._] Of the various barriers that exist against crime, the most powerful are the checks that come from human emotions. It is easier for a criminal to resist the objections his reason interposes to evildoing than to overcome these emotional restraints: either his own emotions, woven by generations of hereditary transmission into the very framework of his nature, which make his hand tremble in the act of sinning; or the emotions his crimes excite in others, such as will cause hardened wretches, who can die calmly on the scaffold, to cower before the menaces of a mob. Crime becomes possible only because these emotions can be counteracted by more powerful emotions on the other side, by greed, by thirst for vengeance, by inflamed hatred. In Richard, however, when he is surveying his works, we find no such evil emotions raised, no gratified vengeance or triumphant hatred. The reason is that there is in him no restraining emotion to be overcome. Horror at the unnatural is not subdued, but absent; [=i.= ii.] his attitude to atrocity is the passionless attitude of the artist who recognises that the tyrant's cruelty can be set to as good music as the martyr's heroism. Readers are shocked at the scene in which Richard wooes Lady Anne beside the bier of the parent he has murdered, and wonder that so perfect an intriguer should not choose a more favourable time. But the repugnance of the reader has no place in Richard's feelings: the circumstances of the scene are so many _objections_, to be met by so much skill of treatment. A single detail in the play illustrates perfectly this neutral attitude to horror. Tyrrel comes to bring the news of the princes' murder; Richard answers: [=iv.= iii. 31.] Come to me, Tyrrel, soon at after supper, And thou shalt tell the process of their death. Quilp could not have waited for his gloating till after supper; other villains would have put the deed out of sight when done; the epicure in villainy reserves his _bonbouche_ till he has leisure to do it justice. Callous to his own emotions, he is equally callous to the emotions he rouses in others. When Queen Margaret is pouring a flood of curses which make the innocent courtiers' hair stand on end, and the heaviest curse of all, which she has reserved for Richard himself, [=i.= iii. 216-239.] is rolling on its climax, Thou slander of thy mother's heavy womb! Thou loathed issue of thy father's loins! Thou rag of honour! thou detested-- he adroitly slips in the word 'Margaret' in place of the intended 'Richard,' and thus, with the coolness of a schoolboy's small joke, disconcerts her tragic passion in a way that gives a moral wrench to the whole scene. [=iv.= iv, from 136.] His own mother's curse moves him not even to anger; he caps its clauses with bantering repartees, until he seizes an opportunity for a pun, and begins to move off: [=ii.= ii. 109.] he treats her curse, as in a previous scene he had treated her blessing, with a sort of gentle impatience as if tired of a fond yet somewhat troublesome parent. Finally, there is an instinct which serves as resultant to all the complex forces, emotional or rational, which sway us between right and wrong; this instinct of conscience is formally disavowed by Richard: [=v.= iii. 309.] Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. [_But he regards villainy with the intellectual enthusiasm of the artist._] But, if the natural heat of emotion is wanting, there is, on the other hand, the full intellectual warmth of an artist's enthusiasm, whenever Richard turns to survey the game he is playing. He reflects with a relish how he does the wrong and first begins the brawl, how he sets secret mischief abroach and charges it on to others, beweeping his own victims to simple gulls, and, [=i.= iii, from 324.] when these begin to cry for vengeance, quoting Scripture against returning evil for evil, and thus seeming a saint when most he plays the devil. The great master is known by his appreciation of details, in the least of which he can see the play of great principles: so the magnificence of Richard's villainy does not make him insensible to commonplaces of crime. When in the long usurpation conspiracy there is a moment's breathing space just before the Lord Mayor enters, [=iii.= vi. 1-11.] Richard and Buckingham utilise it for a burst of hilarity over the deep hypocrisy with which they are playing their parts; how they can counterfeit the deep tragedian, murder their breath in the middle of a word, tremble and start at wagging of a straw:--here we have the musician's flourish upon his instrument from very wantonness of skill. Again: [=i.= i. 118.] Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven-- is the composer's pleasure at hitting upon a readily workable theme. Richard appreciates his murderers as a workman appreciates good tools: [=i.= iii. 354.] Your eyes drop millstones, when fools' eyes drop tears: I like you, lads. [=i.= ii, from 228.] And at the conclusion of the scene with Lady Anne we have the artist's enjoyment of his own masterpiece: Was ever woman in this humour woo'd? Was ever woman in this humour won?... What! I, that kill'd her husband and his father, To take her in her heart's extremest hate, With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes, The bleeding witness of her hatred by; Having God, her conscience, and these bars against me, And I nothing to back my suit at all, But the plain devil and dissembling looks, And yet to win her, all the world to nothing! The tone in this passage is of the highest: it is the tone of a musician fresh from a triumph of his art, the sweetest point in which has been that he has condescended to no adventitious aids, no assistance of patronage or concessions to popular tastes; it has been won by pure music. So the artist in villainy celebrates a triumph of _plain devil_! [_The villainy ideal in success: a fascination of irresistibility in Richard._] This view of Richard as an artist in crime is sufficient to explain the hold which villainy has on Richard himself: but ideal villainy must be ideal also in its success; and on this side of the analysis another conception in Shakespeare's portraiture becomes of first importance. It is obvious enough that Richard has all the elements of success which can be reduced to the form of skill: but he has something more. No theory of human action will be complete which does not recognise a dominion of will over will operating by mere contact, without further explanation so far as conscious influence is concerned. What is it that takes the bird into the jaws of the serpent? No persuasion or other influence on the bird's consciousness, for it struggles to keep back; we can only recognise the attraction as a force, and give it a name, fascination. In Richard there is a similar Fascination of Irresistibility, which also operates by his mere presence, and which fights for him in the same way in which the idea of their invincibility fought for conquerors like Napoleon, and was on occasions as good to them as an extra twenty or thirty thousand men. A consideration like this will be appreciated in the case of _tours de force_ like the Wooing of Lady Anne, which is a stumblingblock to many readers--a widow beside the bier of her murdered husband's murdered father wooed and won by the man who makes no secret that he is the murderer of them both. The analysis of ordinary human motives would make it appear that Anne would not yield at points at which the scene represents her as yielding; some other force is wanted to explain her surrender, and it is found in this secret force of irresistible will which Richard bears about with him. But, it will be asked, in what does this fascination appear? The answer is that the idea of it is furnished to us by the other scenes of the play. Such a consideration illustrates the distinction between real and ideal. An ideal incident is not an incident of real life simply clothed in beauty of expression; nor, on the other hand, is an ideal incident divorced from the laws of real possibility. Ideal implies that the transcendental has been made possible by treatment: that an incident (for example) which might be impossible in itself becomes possible through other incidents with which it is associated, just as in actual life the action of a public personage which may have appeared strange at the time becomes intelligible when at his death we can review his life as a whole. Such a scene as the Wooing Scene might be impossible as a fragment; it becomes possible enough in the play, where it has to be taken in connection with the rest of the plot, throughout which the irresistibility of the hero is prominent as one of the chief threads of connection. [_The fascination is to be conveyed in the acting._] Nor is it any objection that the Wooing Scene comes early in the action. The play is not the book, but the actor's interpretation on the stage, and the actor will have collected even from the latest scenes elements of the interpretation he throws into the earliest: the actor is a lens for concentrating the light of the whole play upon every single detail. The fascination of irresistibility, then, which is to act by instinct in every scene, may be arrived at analytically when we survey the play as a whole--when we see how by Richard's innate genius, by the reversal in him of the ordinary relation of human nature to crime, especially by his perfect mastery of the successive situations as they arise, the dramatist steadily builds up an irresistibility which becomes a secret force clinging to Richard's presence, and through the operation of which his feats are half accomplished by the fact of his attempting them. [_The irresistibility analysed. Unlikely means._] To begin with: the sense of irresistible power is brought out by the way in which the unlikeliest things are continually drawn into his schemes and utilised as means. [=i.= i, from 42.] Not to speak of his regular affectation of blunt sincerity, he makes use of the simple brotherly confidence of Clarence as an engine of fratricide, [=iii.= iv; esp. 76 compared with =iii.= i. 184.] and founds on the frank familiarity existing between himself and Hastings a plot by which he brings him to the block. The Queen's compunction at the thought of leaving Clarence out of the general reconciliation around the dying king's bedside is the fruit of a conscience tenderer than her neighbours': [=ii.= i, from 73: cf. 134.] Richard adroitly seizes it as an opportunity for shifting on to the Queen and her friends the suspicion of the duke's murder. [=iii.= i. 154.] The childish prattle of little York Richard manages to suggest to the bystanders as dangerous treason; [=ii.= i. 52-72.] the solemnity of the king's deathbed he turns to his own purposes by outdoing all the rest in Christian forgiveness and humility; [=iii.= v. 99, &c.] and he selects devout meditation as the card to play with the Lord Mayor and citizens. On the other hand, amongst other devices for the usurpation conspiracy, he starts a slander upon his own mother's purity; [=iii.= v. 75-94.] and further--by one of the greatest strokes in the whole play--makes capital in the Wooing Scene out of his own heartlessness, [=i.= ii. 156-167.] describing in a burst of startling eloquence the scenes of horror he has passed through, the only man unmoved to tears, in order to add: And what these sorrows could not thence exhale, Thy beauty hath, and made them blind with weeping. There are things which are too sacred for villainy to touch, and there are things which are protected by their own foulness: both alike are made useful by Richard. [_The sensation produced by one crime made to bring about others._] Similarly it is to be noticed how Richard can utilise the very sensation produced by one crime as a means to bring about more; as when he interrupts the King's dying moments to announce the death of Clarence in such a connection as must give a shock to the most unconcerned spectator, [=ii.= i, from 77; cf. 134.] and then draws attention to the pale faces of the Queen's friends as marks of guilt. He thus makes one crime beget another without further effort on his part, reversing the natural law by which each criminal act, through its drawing more suspicion to the villain, tends to limit his power for further mischief. [_Richard's own plans foisted on to others._] It is to the same purpose that Richard chooses sometimes instead of acting himself to foist his own schemes on to others; as when he inspires Buckingham with the idea of the young king's arrest, and, when Buckingham seizes the idea as his own, meekly accepts it from him: [=ii.= ii. 112-154; esp. 149.] I, like a child, will go by thy direction. There is in all this a dreadful _economy_ of crime: not the economy of prudence seeking to reduce its amount, but the artist's economy which delights in bringing the largest number of effects out of a single device. Such skill opens up a vista of evil which is boundless. [_No signs of effort in Richard: imperturbability of mind._] The sense of irresistible power is again brought out by his perfect imperturbability of mind: villainy never ruffles his spirits. He never misses the irony that starts up in the circumstances around him, and says to Clarence: [=i.= i. 111.] This deep disgrace in brotherhood _Touches_ me deeply. While taking his part in entertaining the precocious King he treats us to continual asides-- [=iii.= i. 79, 94.] So wise so young, they say, do never live long-- showing how he can stop to criticise the scenes in which he is an actor. [=iii.= iv. 24.] He can delay the conspiracy on which his chance of the crown depends by coming late to the council, [=iii.= iv. 32.] and then while waiting the moment for turning upon his victim is cool enough to recollect the Bishop of Ely's strawberries. [_humour;_] But more than all these examples is to be noted Richard's _humour_. This is _par excellence_ the sign of a mind at ease with itself: scorn, contempt, bitter jest belong to the storm of passion, but humour is the sunshine of the soul. Yet Shakespeare has ventured to endow Richard with unquestionable humour. [=i.= i. 151-156.] Thus, in one of his earliest meditations, he prays, 'God take King Edward to his mercy,' for then he will marry Warwick's youngest daughter: What though I kill'd her husband and her father! The readiest way to make the wench amends Is to become her husband and her father! [e.g. =i.= i. 118; =ii.= ii. 109; =iv.= iii. 38, 43; =i.= iii. 142; =ii.= i. 72; =iii.= vii. 51-54, &c.] And all through there perpetually occur little turns of language into which the actor can throw a tone of humorous enjoyment; notably, when he complains of being 'too childish-foolish for this world,' and where he nearly ruins the effect of his edifying penitence in the Reconciliation Scene, by being unable to resist one final stroke: I thank my God for my humility! [_freedom from prejudice._] Of a kindred nature is his perfect frankness and fairness to his victims: villainy never clouds his judgment. Iago, astutest of intriguers, was deceived, as has been already noted, by his own morbid acuteness, and firmly believed--what the simplest spectator can see to be a delusion--that Othello has tampered with his wife. Richard, on the contrary, is a marvel of judicial impartiality; he speaks of King Edward in such terms as these-- [=i.= i. 36.] If King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false and treacherous; and weighs elaborately the superior merit of one of his victims to his own: [=i.= ii. from 240.] Hath she forgot already that brave prince, Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since, Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewksbury? A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman, Framed in the prodigality of nature, Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal, The spacious world cannot again afford: And will she yet debase her eyes on me, That cropped the golden prime of this sweet prince, And made her widow to a woful bed? On me, whose all not equals Edward's moiety? Richard can rise to all his height of villainy without its leaving on himself the slightest trace of struggle or even effort. [_A recklessness suggesting boundless resources._] Again, the idea of boundless resource is suggested by an occasional recklessness, almost a slovenliness, in the details of his intrigues. Thus, in the early part of the Wooing Scene he makes two blunders of which a tyro in intrigue might be ashamed. [=i.= ii. 91.] He denies that he is the author of Edward's death, to be instantly confronted with the evidence of Margaret as an eye-witness. Then a few lines further on he goes to the opposite extreme: [=i.= ii. 101.] _Anne._ Didst thou not kill this king? _Glouc._ I grant ye. _Anne_. Dost grant me, hedgehog? The merest beginner would know better how to meet accusations than by such haphazard denials and acknowledgments. But the crack billiard-player will indulge at the beginning of the game in a little clumsiness, giving his adversaries a prospect of victory only to have the pleasure of making up the disadvantage with one or two brilliant strokes. And so Richard, essaying the most difficult problem ever attempted in human intercourse, lets half the interview pass before he feels it worth while to play with caution. [_General character of Richard's intrigue: inspiration rather than calculation._] The mysterious irresistibility of Richard, pointed to by the succession of incidents in the play, is assisted by the very improbability of some of the more difficult scenes in which he is an actor. Intrigue in general is a thing of reason, and its probabilities can be readily analysed; but the genius of intrigue in Richard seems to make him avoid the caution of other intriguers, and to give him a preference for feats which seem impossible. The whole suggests how it is not by calculation that he works, but he brings the _touch_ of an artist to his dealing with human weakness, and follows whither his artist's inspiration leads him. If, then, there is nothing so remote from evil but Richard can make it tributary; if he can endow crimes with power of self-multiplying; if he can pass through a career of sin without the taint of distortion on his intellect and with the unruffled calmness of innocence; if Richard accomplishes feats no other would attempt with a carelessness no other reputation would risk, even slow reason may well believe him irresistible. When, further, such qualifications for villainy become, by unbroken success in villainy, reflected in Richard's very bearing; when the only law explaining his motions to onlookers is the lawlessness of genius whose instinct is more unerring than the most laborious calculation and planning, it becomes only natural that the _opinion_ of his irresistibility should become converted into a mystic _fascination_, making Richard's very presence a signal to his adversaries of defeat, chilling with hopelessness the energies with which they are to face his consummate skill. The two main ideas of Shakespeare's portrait, the idea of an artist in crime and the fascination of invincibility which Richard bears about with him, are strikingly illustrated in the wooing of Lady Anne. [=i.= ii.] For a long time Richard will not put forth effort, but meets the loathing and execration hurled at him with repartee, saying in so many words that he regards the scene as a 'keen encounter of our wits.' [115.] All this time the mysterious power of his presence is operating, the more strongly as Lady Anne sees the most unanswerable cause that denunciation ever had to put produce no effect upon her adversary, and feels her own confidence in her wrongs recoiling upon herself. [from 152.] When the spell has had time to work then he assumes a serious tone: suddenly, as we have seen, turning the strong point of Anne's attack, his own inhuman nature, into the basis of his plea--he who never wept before has been softened by love to her. From this point he urges his cause with breathless speed; [175.] he presses a sword into her hand with which to pierce his breast, knowing that she lacks the nerve to wield it, and seeing how such forbearance on her part will be a starting-point in giving way. [from 193.] We can trace the sinking of her will before the unconquerable will of her adversary in her feebler and feebler refusals, while as yet very shame keeps her to an outward defiance. Then, when she is wishing to yield, he suddenly finds her an excuse by declaring that all he desires at this moment is that she should leave the care of the King's funeral To him that hath more cause to be a mourner. By yielding this much to penitence and religion we see she has commenced a downward descent from which she will never recover. Such consummate art in the handling of human nature, backed by the spell of an irresistible presence, the weak Anne has no power to combat. [=iv.= i. 66-87.] To the last she is as much lost in amazement as the reader at the way it has all come about: Lo, ere I can repeat this curse again, Even in so short a space, my woman's heart Grossly grew captive to his honey words. [_Ideal_ v. _real villainy_] To gather up our results. A dramatist is to paint a portrait of ideal villainy as distinct from villainy in real life. In real life it is a commonplace that a virtuous life is a life of effort; but the converse is not true, that he who is prepared to be a villain will therefore lead an easy life. On the contrary, 'the _way_ of transgressors is hard.' The metaphor suggests a path, laid down at first by the Architect of the universe, beaten plain and flat by the generations of men who have since trodden it: he who keeps within this path of rectitude will walk, not without effort, yet at least with safety; but he who 'steps aside' to the right or left will find his way beset with pitfalls and stumblingblocks. In real life a man sets out to be a villain, but his mental power is deficient, and he remains a villain only in intention. Or he has stores of power, but lacks the spark of purpose to set them aflame. Or, armed with both will to plan and mind to execute, yet his efforts are hampered by unfit tools. Or, if his purpose needs reliance alone on his own clear head and his own strong arm, yet in the critical moment the emotional nature he has inherited with his humanity starts into rebellion and scares him, like Macbeth, from the half-accomplished deed. Or, if he is as hardened in nature as corrupt in mind and will, yet he is closely pursued by a mocking fate, which crowns his well-laid plans with a mysterious succession of failures. Or, if there is no other limitation on him from within or from without, yet he may move in a world too narrow to give him scope: the man with a heart to be the scourge of his country proves in fact no more than the vagabond of a country side.--But in Shakespeare's portrait we have infinite capacity for mischief, needing no purpose, for evil has become to it an end in itself; we have one who for tools can use the baseness of his own nature or the shame of those who are his nearest kin, while at his touch all that is holiest becomes transformed into weapons of iniquity. We have one whose nature in the past has been a gleaning ground for evil in every stage of his development, and who in the present is framed to look on unnatural horror with the eyes of interested curiosity. We have one who seems to be seconded by fate with a series of successes, which builds up for him an irresistibility that is his strongest safeguard; and who, instead of being cramped by circumstances, has for his stage the world of history itself, in which crowns are the prize and nations the victims. In such a portrait is any element wanting to arrive at the ideal of villainy? [_Ideal villainy_ v. _monstrosity._] The question would rather be whether Shakespeare has not gone too far, and, passing outside the limits of art, exhibited a monstrosity. Nor is it an answer to point to the 'dramatic hedging' by which Richard is endowed with undaunted personal courage, unlimited intellectual power, and every good quality not inconsistent with his perfect villainy. The objection to such a portrait as the present study presents is that it offends against our sense of the principles upon which the universe has been constructed; we feel that before a violation of nature could attain such proportions nature must have exerted her recuperative force to crush it. If, however, the dramatist can suggest that such reassertion of nature is actually made, that the crushing blow is delayed only while it is accumulating force: in a word, if the dramatist can draw out before us a _Nemesis_ as ideal as the villainy was ideal, then the full demands of art will be satisfied. The Nemesis that dominates the whole play of _Richard III_ will be the subject of the next study. V. RICHARD III: HOW SHAKESPEARE WEAVES NEMESIS INTO HISTORY. _A Study in Plot._ [_Richard III: from the Character side a violation of Nemesis;_] I HAVE alluded already to the dangerous tendency, which, as it appears to me, exists amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare, to ignore plot as of secondary importance, and to look for Shakespeare's greatness mainly in his conceptions of character. But the full character effect of a dramatic portrait cannot be grasped if it be dissociated from the plot; and this is nowhere more powerfully illustrated than in the play of _Richard III_. The last study was devoted exclusively to the Character side of the play, and on this confined view the portrait of Richard seemed a huge offence against our sense of moral equilibrium, rendering artistic satisfaction impossible. Such an impression vanishes when, as in the present study, the drama is looked at from the side of Plot. [_from the side of Plot, the transformation of history into Nemesis._] The effect of this plot is, however, missed by those who limit their attention in reviewing it to Richard himself. These may feel that there is nothing in his fate to compensate for the spectacle of his crimes: man must die, and a death in fulness of energy amid the glorious stir of battle may seem a fate to be envied. But the Shakespearean Drama with its complexity of plot is not limited to the individual life and fate in its interpretation of history; and when we survey all the distinct trains of interest in the play of _Richard III_, with their blendings and mutual influence, we shall obtain a sense of dramatic satisfaction amply counterbalancing the monstrosity of Richard's villainy. Viewed as a study in character the play leaves in us only an intense craving for Nemesis: when we turn to consider the plot, this presents to us the world of history transformed into an intricate design of which the recurrent pattern is Nemesis. [_The underplot: a set of separate Nemesis Actions._] This notion of tracing a pattern in human affairs is a convenient key to the exposition of plot. Laying aside for the present the main interest of Richard himself, we may observe that the bulk of the drama consists in a number of minor interests--single threads of the pattern--each of which is a separate example of Nemesis. [_Clarence._] The first of these trains of interest centres around the Duke of Clarence. He has betrayed the Lancastrians, to whom he had solemnly sworn fealty, for the sake of the house of York; [=i.= iv. 50, 66.] this perjury is his bitterest recollection in his hour of awakened conscience, and is urged home by the taunts of his murderers; while his only defence is that he did it all for his brother's love. [=ii.= i. 86.] Yet his lot is to fall by a treacherous death, the warrant for which is signed by this brother, the King and head of the Yorkist house, [=i.= iv. 250.] while its execution is procured by the bulwark of the house, the intriguing Richard. [_The King._] The centre of the second nemesis is the King, who has thus allowed himself in a moment of suspicion to be made a tool for the murder of his brother, seeking to stop it when too late. [=ii.= i. 77-133.] Shakespeare has contrived that this death of Clarence, announced as it is in so terrible a manner beside the King's sick bed, gives him a shock from which he never rallies, and he is carried out to die with the words on his lips: O God, I fear Thy justice will take hold On me, and you, and mine, and yours for this. [_The Queen and her kindred._] In this nemesis on the King are associated the Queen and her kindred. They have been assenting parties to the measures against Clarence (however little they may have contemplated the bloody issue to which those measures have been brought by the intrigues of Gloster). [=ii.= ii. 62-65.] This we must understand from the introduction of Clarence's children, who serve no purpose except to taunt the Queen in her bereavement: _Boy._ Good aunt, you wept not for our father's death; How can we aid you with our kindred tears? _Girl._ Our fatherless distress was left unmoan'd; Your widow-dolour likewise be unwept! [=ii.= ii. 74, &c.] The death of the King, so unexpectedly linked to that of Clarence, removes from the Queen and her kindred the sole bulwark to the hated Woodville family, and leaves them at the mercy of their enemies. [_Hastings._] A third nemesis Action has Hastings for its subject. [=i.= i. 66; =iii.= ii. 58, &c.] Hastings is the head of the court-faction which is opposed to the Queen and her allies, and he passes all bounds of decency in his exultation at the fate which overwhelms his adversaries: But I shall laugh at this a twelvemonth hence, That they who brought me in my master's hate, I live to look upon their tragedy. He even forgets his dignity as a nobleman, and stops on his way to the Tower to chat with a mere officer of the court, [=iii.= ii. 97.] in order to tell him the news of which he is full, that his enemies are to die that day at Pomfret. Yet this very journey of Hastings is his journey to the block; the same cruel fate which had descended upon his opponents, from the same agent and by the same unscrupulous doom, is dealt out to Hastings in his turn. [_Buckingham._] In this treacherous casting off of Hastings when he is no longer useful, Buckingham has been a prime agent. [=iii.= ii, from 114.] Buckingham amused himself with the false security of Hastings, adding to Hastings's innocent expression of his intention to stay dinner at the Tower the aside And supper too, although thou know'st it not; while in the details of the judicial murder he plays second to Richard. By precisely similar treachery he is himself cast off when he hesitates to go further with Richard's villainous schemes; [=iv.= ii, from 86.] and in precisely similar manner the treachery is flavoured with contempt. _Buck._ I am thus bold to put your grace in mind Of what you promised me. _K. Rich._ Well, but what's o'clock? _Buck._ Upon the stroke of ten. _K. Rich._ Well, let it strike. _Buck._ Why let it strike? _K. Rich._ Because that, like a Jack, thou keep'st the stroke Betwixt thy begging and my meditation. I am not in the giving vein to-day. _Buck._ Why, then resolve me whether you will or no. _K. Rich._ Tut, tut. Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein. [_Exeunt all but Buckingham._ _Buck._ Is it even so? rewards he my true service With such deep contempt? made I him king for this? O, let me think on Hastings, and be gone To Brecknock, while my fearful head is on! [_The four nemeses formed into a system by nemesis as a link._] These four Nemesis Actions, it will be observed, are not separate trains of incident going on side by side, they are linked together into a system, the law of which is seen to be that those who triumph in one nemesis become the victims of the next; so that the whole suggests a 'chain of destruction,' like that binding together the orders of the brute creation which live by preying upon one another. When Clarence perished it was the King who dealt the doom and the Queen's party who triumphed: the wheel of Nemesis goes round and the King's death follows the death of his victim, the Queen's kindred are naked to the vengeance of their enemies, and Hastings is left to exult. Again the wheel of Nemesis revolves, and Hastings at the moment of his highest exultation is hurled to destruction, while Buckingham stands by to point the moral with a gibe. Once more the wheel goes round, and Buckingham hears similar gibes addressed to himself and points the same moral in his own person. Thus the portion of the drama we have so far considered yields us a pattern within a pattern, a series of Nemesis Actions woven into a complete underplot by a connecting-link which is also Nemesis. [_The 'Enveloping Action' a nemesis._] Following out the same general idea we may proceed to notice how the dramatic pattern is surrounded by a fringe or border. The picture of life presented in a play will have the more reality if it be connected with a life wider than its own. There is no social sphere, however private, but is to some extent affected by a wider life outside it, this by one wider still, until the great world is reached the story of which is History. The immediate interest may be in a single family, but it will be a great war which, perhaps, takes away some member of this family to die in battle, or some great commercial crisis which brings mutation of fortune to the obscure home. The artists of fiction are solicitous thus to suggest connections between lesser and greater; it is the natural tendency of the mind to pass from the known to the unknown, and if the artist can derive the movements in his little world from the great world outside, he appears to have given his fiction a basis of admitted truth to rest on. This device of enclosing the incidents of the actual story in a framework of great events--technically, the 'Enveloping Action'--is one which is common in Shakespeare; it is enough to instance such a case as _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, in which play a fairy story has a measure of historic reality given to it by its connection with the marriage of personages so famous as Theseus and Hippolyta. In the present case, the main incidents and personages belong to public life; nevertheless the effect in question is still secured, and the contest of factions with which the play is occupied is represented as making up only a few incidents in the great feud of Lancaster and York. This Enveloping Action of the whole play, the War of the Roses, is marked with special clearness: two personages are introduced for the sole purpose of giving it prominence. [=ii.= ii. 80.] The Duchess of York is by her years and position the representative of the whole house; the factions who in the play successively triumph and fall are all descended from herself; she says: Alas, I am the mother of these moans! Their woes are parcell'd, mine are general. [=i.= iii, from 111; and =iv.= iv. 1-125.] And probabilities are forced to bring in Queen Margaret, the head and sole rallying-point of the ruined Lancastrians: when the two aged women are confronted the whole civil war is epitomised. It is hardly necessary to point out that this Enveloping Action is itself a Nemesis Action. All the rising and falling, the suffering and retaliation that we actually see going on between the different sections of the Yorkist house, constitute a detail in a wider retribution: [esp. =ii.= ii; =iv.= i; =iv.= iv.] the presence of the Duchess gives to the incidents a unity, [=ii.= iii; and =iv.= iv.] Queen Margaret's function is to point out that this unity of woe is only the nemesis falling on the house of York for their wrongs to the house of Lancaster. Thus the pattern made up of so many reiterations of nemesis is enclosed in a border which itself repeats the same figure. [_The Enveloping Nemesis carried on into indefiniteness._] The effect is carried further. Generally the Enveloping Action is a sort of curtain by which our view of a drama is bounded; in the present case the curtain is at one point lifted, and we get a glimpse into the world beyond. Queen Margaret has surprised the Yorkist courtiers, and her prophetic denunciations are still ringing, in which she points to the calamities her foes have begun to suffer as retribution for the woes of which her fallen greatness is the representative--[=i.= iii. 174-194.] when Gloster suddenly turns the tables upon her. The curse my noble father laid on thee, When thou didst crown his warlike brows with paper And with thy scorns drew'st rivers from his eyes, And then, to dry them, gavest the duke a clout Steep'd in the faultless blood of pretty Rutland,-- His curses, then from bitterness of soul Denounced against thee, are all fall'n upon thee; And God, not we, hath plagu'd thy bloody deed. And the new key-note struck by Gloster is taken up in chorus by the rest, who find relief from the crushing effect of Margaret's curses by pressing the charge home upon her. This is only a detail, but it is enough to carry the effect of the Enveloping Action a degree further back in time: the events of the play are nemesis on York for wrongs done to Lancaster, but now, it seems, these old wrongs against Lancaster were retribution for yet older crimes Lancaster had committed against York. As in architecture the vista is contrived so as to carry the general design of the building into indefiniteness, so here, while the grand nemesis, of which Margaret's presence is the representative, shuts in the play like a veil, the momentary lifting of the veil opens up a vista of nemeses receding further and further back into history. [_The one attempt to reverse the nemesis confirms it._] Once more. All that we have seen suggests it as a sort of law to the feud of York and Lancaster that each is destined to wreak vengeance on the other, and then itself suffer in turn. [=i.= ii.] But at one notable point of the play an attempt is made to evade the hereditary nemesis by the marriage of Richard and Lady Anne. Anne, daughter to Warwick--the grand deserter to the Lancastrians and martyr to their cause--widow to the murdered heir of the house and chief mourner to its murdered head, is surely the greatest sufferer of the Lancastrians at the hands of the Yorkists. Richard is certainly the chief avenger of York upon Lancaster. When the chief source of vengeance and the chief sufferer are united in the closest of all bonds, the attempt to evade Nemesis becomes ideal. Yet what is the consequence? This attempt of Lady Anne to evade the hereditary curse proves the very channel by which the curse descends upon herself. [=iv.= i. 66-87.] We see her once more: she is then on her way to the Tower, and we hear her tell the strange story of her wooing, and wish the crown were 'red hot steel to sear her to the brain'; never, she says, since her union with Richard has she enjoyed the golden dew of sleep; she is but waiting for the destruction, by which, no doubt, Richard will shortly rid himself of her. [_To counteract the effect of repetition the nemeses are specially emphasised:_] An objection may, however, here present itself, that continual repetition of an idea like Nemesis, tends to weaken its artistic effect, until it comes to be taken for granted. No doubt it is a law of taste that force may be dissipated by repetition if carried beyond a certain point. But it is to be noted, on the other hand, what pains Shakespeare has taken to counteract the tendency in the present instance. The force of a nemesis may depend upon a fitness that addresses itself to the spectator's reflection, or it may be measured by the degree to which the nemesis is brought into prominence in the incidents themselves. [_by recognition,_] In the incidents of the present play special means are adopted to make the recognition of the successive nemeses as they arise emphatic. In the first place the nemesis is in each case pointed out at the moment of its fulfilment. [=i.= iv, from 18.] In the case of Clarence his story of crime and retribution is reflected in his dream before it is brought to a conclusion in reality; and wherein the bitterness of this review consists, we see when he turns to his sympathising jailor and says: [=i.= iv. 66.] O Brackenbury, I have done those things, Which now bear evidence against my soul, For Edward's sake: and see how he requites me! The words have already been quoted in which the King recognises how God's justice has overtaken him for his part in Clarence's death, and those in which the children of Clarence taunt the Queen with her having herself to bear the bereavement she has made them suffer. As the Queen's kindred are being led to their death, one of them exclaims: [=iii.= iii. 15.] Now Margaret's curse is fall'n upon our heads For standing by when Richard stabb'd her son. Hastings, when his doom has wakened him from his infatuation, recollects a priest he had met on his way to the Tower, with whom he had stopped to talk about the discomfiture of his enemies: [=iii.= iv. 89.] O, now I want the priest that spake to me! Buckingham on his way to the scaffold apostrophises the souls of his victims: [=v.= i. 7.] If that your moody discontented souls Do through the clouds behold this present hour, Even for revenge mock my destruction. [=iv.= iv. 1, 35.] And such individual notes of recognition are collected into a sort of chorus when Margaret appears the second time to point out the fulfilment of her curses, and sits down beside the old Duchess and her daughter-in-law to join in the 'society of sorrow' and 'cloy her' with beholding the revenge for which she has hungered. [_by prophecy,_] Again, the nemeses have a further emphasis given to them by prophecy. [=i.= iii, from 195.] As Queen Margaret's second appearance is to mark the fulfilment of a general retribution, so her first appearance denounced it beforehand in the form of curses. And the effect is carried on in individual prophecies: the Queen's friends as they suffer foresee that the turn of the opposite party will come: [=iii.= iii. 7.] You live that shall cry woe for this hereafter; and Hastings prophesies Buckingham's doom: [=iii.= iv. 109.] They smile at me that shortly shall be dead. It is as if the atmosphere cleared for each sufferer with the approach of death, and they then saw clearly the righteous plan on which the universe is constructed, and which had been hidden from them by the dust of life. [_and especially by irony._] But there is a third means, more powerful than either recognition or prophecy, which Shakespeare has employed to make his Nemesis Actions emphatic. The danger of an effect becoming tame by repetition he has met by giving to each train of nemesis a flash of irony at some point of its course. In the case of Lady Anne we have already seen how the exact channel Nemesis chooses by which to descend upon her is the attempt she made to avert it. She had bitterly cursed her husband's murderer: [=iv.= i. 75.] And be thy wife--if any be so mad-- As miserable by the life of thee As thou hast made me by my dear lord's death! In spite of this she had yielded to Richard's mysterious power, and so, as she feels, proved the _subject of her own heart's curse_. Again, it was noticed in the preceding study how the Queen, less hard than the rest in that wicked court, or perhaps softened by the spectacle of her dying husband, essayed to reverse, when too late, what had been done against Clarence; [=ii.= i. 134.] Gloster skilfully turned this compunction of conscience into a ground of suspicion on which he traded to bring all the Queen's friends to the block, and thus a moment's relenting was made into a means of destruction. [=i.= iv. 187, 199, 200, 206.] In Clarence's struggle for life, as one after another the threads of hope snap, as the appeal to law is met by the King's command, the appeal to heavenly law by the reminder of his own sin, [=i.= iv. 232.] he comes to rest for his last and surest hope upon his powerful brother Gloster--and the very murderers catch the irony of the scene: _Clar._ If you be hired for meed, go back again, And I will send you to my brother Gloster, Who shall reward you better for my life Than Edward will for tidings of my death. _Sec. Murd._ You are deceived, your brother Gloster hates you. _Clar._ O, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear: Go you to him from me. _Both._ Ay, so we will. _Clar._ Tell him, when that our princely father York Bless'd his three sons with his victorious arm, And charg'd us from his soul to love each other, He little thought of this divided friendship: Bid Gloster think of this, and he will weep. _First Murd._ Ay, millstones; as he lesson'd us to weep. _Clar._ O, do not slander him, for he is kind. _First Murd._ Right, As snow in harvest. Thou deceivest thyself: 'Tis he that sent us hither now to slaughter thee. _Clar._ It cannot be; for when I parted with him, He hugg'd me in his arms, and swore, with sobs, That he would labour my delivery. _Sec. Murd._ Why, so he doth, now he delivers thee From this world's thraldom to the joys of heaven. [=ii.= i. 95.] In the King's case a special incident is introduced into the scene to point the irony. Before Edward can well realise the terrible announcement of Clarence's death, the decorum of the royal chamber is interrupted by Derby, who bursts in, anxious not to lose the portion of the king's life that yet remains, in order to beg a pardon for his follower. The King feels the shock of contrast: Have I a tongue to doom my brother's death, And shall the same give pardon to a slave? The prerogative of mercy that exists in so extreme a case as the murder of a 'righteous gentleman,' and is so passionately sought by Derby for a servant, is denied to the King himself for the deliverance of his innocent brother. [=iii.= ii, from 41.] The nemesis on Hastings is saturated with irony; he has the simplest reliance on Richard and on 'his servant Catesby,' who has come to him as the agent of Richard's treachery; and the very words of the scene have a double significance that all see but Hastings himself. _Hast._ I tell thee, Catesby,-- _Cate._ What, my lord? _Hast._ Ere a fortnight make me elder I'll send some packing that yet think not on it. _Cate._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, When men are unprepared, and look not for it. _Hast._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: and so 'twill do With some men else, who think themselves as safe As thou and I. As the scenes with Margaret constituted a general summary of the individual prophecies and recognitions, [=ii.= i.] so the Reconciliation Scene around the King's dying bed may be said to gather into a sort of summary the irony distributed through the play; for the effect of the incident is that the different parties pray for their own destruction. [=ii.= i. 32.] In this scene Buckingham has taken the lead and struck the most solemn notes in his pledge of amity; [=v.= i, from 10.] when Buckingham comes to die, his bitterest thought seems to be that the day of his death is All Souls' Day. _This is the day_ that, in King Edward's time, I wish'd might fall on me, when I was found False to his children or his wife's allies; This is the day wherein I wish'd to fall By the false faith of him I trusted most; ... That high All-Seer that I dallied with Hath turn'd my feigned prayer on my head And given in earnest what I begg'd in jest. By devices, then, such as these; by the sudden revelation of a remedy when it is just too late to use it; by the sudden memory of clear warnings blindly missed; by the spectacle of a leaning for hope upon that which is known to be ground for despair; by attempts to retreat or turn aside proving short cuts to destruction; above all by the sufferer's perception that he himself has had a chief share in bringing about his doom:--by such irony the monotony of Nemesis is relieved, and fatality becomes flavoured with mockery. [_This multiplication of Nemesis a dramatic background for the villainy of Richard._] Dramatic design, like design which appeals more directly to the eye, has its perspective: to miss even by a little the point of view from which it is to be contemplated is enough to throw the whole into distortion. So readers who are not careful to watch the harmony between Character and Plot have often found in the present play nothing but wearisome repetition. Or, as there is only a step between the sublime and the ridiculous, this masterpiece of Shakespearean plot has suggested to them only the idea of Melodrama,--that curious product of dramatic feeling without dramatic inventiveness, with its world in which poetic justice has become prosaic, in which conspiracy is never so superhumanly secret but there comes a still more superhuman detection, and however successful villainy may be for a moment the spectator confidently relies on its being eventually disposed of by a summary 'off with his head.' The point of view thus missed in the present play is that this network of Nemesis is all needed to give dramatic reality to the colossal villainy of the principal figure. When isolated, the character of Richard is unrealisable from its offence against an innate sense of retribution. Accordingly Shakespeare projects it into a world of which, in whatever direction we look, retribution is the sole visible pattern; in which, as we are carried along by the movement of the play, the unvarying reiteration of Nemesis has the effect of _giving rhythm to fate_. [_The motive force of the whole play is another nemesis: the Life and Death of Richard._] What the action of the play has yielded so far to our investigation has been independent of the central personage: we have now to connect Richard himself with the plot. Although the various Nemesis Actions have been carried on by their own motion and by the force of retribution as a principle of moral government, yet there is not one of them which reaches its goal without at some point of its course receiving an impetus from contact with Richard. Richard is thus the source of movement to the whole drama, communicating his own energy through all parts. It is only fitting that the motive force to this system of nemeses should be itself a grand Nemesis Action, the _Life and Death_, or crime and retribution, _of Richard III_. The hero's rise has been sufficiently treated in the preceding study; it remains to trace his fall. [_The fall of Richard: not a shock but a succession of stages._] This fall of Richard is constructed on Shakespeare's favourite plan; its force is measured, not by suddenness and violence, but by protraction and the perception of distinct stages--the crescendo in music as distinguished from the fortissimo. Such a fall is not a mere passage through the air--one shock and then all is over--but a slipping down the face of the precipice, with desperate clingings and consciously increasing impetus: its effect is the one inexhaustible emotion of suspense. If we examine the point at which the fall begins we are reminded that the nemesis on Richard is different in its type from the others in the play. [_Not a nemesis of equality but of sureness._] These are (like that on Shylock) of the _equality_ type, of which the motto is measure for measure: [=iii.= iii. 15.] and, with his usual exactness, Shakespeare gives us a turning-point in the precise centre of the play, where, as the Queen's kindred are being borne to their death, we get the first recognition that the general retribution denounced by Margaret has begun to work. But the turning-point of Richard's fate is reserved till long past the centre of the play; his is the nemesis of _sureness_, in which the blow is delayed that it may accumulate force. Not that this turning-point is reserved to the very end; [_The turning-point: irony of its delay._] the change of fortune appears just when Richard has _committed himself_ to his final crime in the usurpation--the murder of the children--the crime from which his most unscrupulous accomplice has drawn back. [=iv.= ii, from 46.] The effect of this arrangement is to make the numerous crimes which follow appear to come by necessity; he is 'so far in blood that sin will pluck on sin'; he is forced to go on heaping up his villainies with Nemesis full in his view. This turning-point appears in the simple announcement that 'Dorset has fled to Richmond.' There is an instantaneous change in Richard to an attitude of defence, which is maintained to the end. His first instinct is action: but as soon as we have heard the rapid scheme of measures--most of them crimes--by which he prepares to meet his dangers, then he can give himself up to meditation; [from 98.] and we now begin to catch the significance of what has been announced. The name of Richmond has been just heard for the first time in this play. But as Richard meditates we learn how Henry VI prophesied that Richmond should be a king while he was but a peevish boy. Again, Richard recollects how lately, while viewing a castle in the west, the mayor, who showed him over it, mispronounced its name as 'Richmond'--and he had started, for a bard of Ireland had told him he should not live long after he had seen Richmond. Thus the irony that has given point to all the other retributions in the play is not wanting in the chief retribution of all: Shakespeare compensates for so long keeping the grand Nemesis out of sight by thus representing Richard as gradually realising that _the finger of Nemesis has been pointing at him all his life and he has never seen it_! [_Tantalising mockery in Richard's fate._] From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock Richard. He engages in his measures of defence, and with their villainy his spirits begin to recover: [=iv.= iii. 38.] The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom, And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night; young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, and To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer. [comp. 49. =iv.= iii. 45.] Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that Ely, the shrewd bishop he dreads most of all men, is with Richmond, and that Buckingham has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of Elizabeth--his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind--has been brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation: [=iv.= iv. 431.] Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman! Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity begins at last to be disturbed. [_His equanimity affected._] He storms at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message to take. [=iv.= iv. 444-540.] More than this, a little further on _Richard changes his mind_! Through the rest of the long scene destiny is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste: Richmond is on the seas--Courtenay has risen in Devonshire--the Guildfords are up in Kent.--But Buckingham's army is dispersed--But Yorkshire has risen.--But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed--a triumph, Buckingham is taken.--Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings. [=v.= iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.] When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression: Here will I lie to-night; But where to-morrow? [=v.= iii, from 47.] A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine and _confesses_ a change in himself: I have not that alacrity of spirit, Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. [_Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions._] Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not that they are only apparitions. [=v.= iii, from 118.] Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the close _connection_ between a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed--that the climax of his fate comes to Richard in his _sleep_. [_Significance of Richard's sleep._] The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus, and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom, though heaven be lost, All is not lost, the unconquerable will ... And courage never to submit or yield. But when that strange bundle of greatness and littleness which makes up man attempts to oppose with such weapons the Almighty, how is he to provide for those states in which the will is no longer the governing force in his nature; for the sickness, in which the mind may have to share the feebleness of the body, or for the daily suspension of will in sleep? Richard can to the last preserve his will from faltering. But, like all the rest of mankind, he must some time sleep: that which is the refuge of the honest man, when he may relax the tension of daily care, sleep, is to Richard his point of weakness, when the safeguard of invincible will can protect him no longer. It is, then, this weak moment which a mocking fate chooses for hurling upon Richard the whole avalanche of his doom; as he starts into the frenzy of his half-waking soliloquy we see him, as it were, tearing off layer after layer of artificial reasonings with which the will-struggles of a lifetime have covered his soul against the touch of natural remorse. With full waking his will is as strong as ever: but meanwhile his physical nature has been shattered to its depths, and it is only the wreck of Richard that goes to meet his death on Bosworth Field. [_Remaining stages of the fall._] There is no need to dwell on the further stages of the fall: to the last the tantalising mockery continues. [=v.= iii. 303.] Richard's spirits rise with the ordering of the battle, and there comes the mysterious scroll to tell him he is bought and sold. [=v.= iii. 342.] His spirits rise again as the fight commences, and news comes of Stanley's long feared desertion. [=v.= iv. 11.] Five times in the battle he has slain his foe, and five times it proves a false Richmond. Thus slowly the cup is drained to its last dregs and Richard dies. [=i.= i, from 1.] The play opened with the picture of peace, the peace which led Richard's turbid soul, no longer finding scope in physical warfare, to turn to the moral war of villainy; from that point through all the crowded incidents has raged the tumultuous battle between Will and Nemesis; with Richard's death it ceases, and the play may return to its keynote: [=v.= v. 40.] Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again. VI. HOW NEMESIS AND DESTINY ARE INTERWOVEN IN MACBETH. _A further Study in Plot._ [_Macbeth as a study of subtlety in Plot._] THE present study, like the last, is a study in Plot. The last illustrated Shakespeare's grandeur of conception, how a single principle is held firm amidst the intricacies of history, and reiterated in every detail. The present purpose is to give an example of Shakespeare's _subtlety_, and to exhibit the incidents of a play bound together not by one, [_Its threefold action._] but by three, distinct threads of connection--or, if a technical term may be permitted, three Forms of Dramatic Action--all working harmoniously together into a design equally involved and symmetrical. One of these forms is Nemesis; the other two are borrowed from the ancient Drama: it thus becomes necessary to digress for a moment, in order to notice certain differences between the ancient and modern Drama, and between the ancient and modern thought of which the Drama is the expression. [_In the passage from ancient to modern, Destiny changes into Providence._] In the ancient Classical Drama the main moral idea underlying its action is the idea of Destiny. The ancient world recognised Deity, but their deities were not supreme in the universe; Zeus had gained his position by a revolution, and in his turn was to be overthrown by revolution; there was thus, in ancient conception, behind Deity a yet higher force to which Deity itself was subject. The supreme force of the universe has by a school of modern thought been defined as a stream of tendency in things not ourselves making for righteousness: if we attempt to adapt this formula to the ideas of antiquity the difficulty will be in finding anything to substitute for the word 'righteousness.' Sometimes the sum of forces in the universe did seem, in the conception of the ancients, to make for righteousness, and Justice became the highest law. At other times the world seemed to them governed by a supernatural Jealousy, and human prosperity was struck down for no reason except that it was prosperity. In such philosophy as that of Lucretius, again, the tendency of all things was towards Destruction; while in the handling of legends such as that of Hippolytus there is a suggestion of a dark interest to ancient thought in conceiving Evil itself as an irresistible force. It appears, then, that the ancient mind had caught the idea of _force_ in the universe, without adding to it the further idea of a motive by which that force was guided: _blind_ fate was the governing power over all other powers. With this simple conception of force as ruling the world, modern thought has united as a motive righteousness or law: the transition from ancient to modern thought may be fairly described by saying that Destiny has become changed into Providence as the supreme force of the universe. [_The change reflected in ancient and modern Nemesis._] The change may be well illustrated by comparing the ancient and modern conception of Nemesis. To ancient thought Nemesis was simply one phase of Destiny; the story of Polycrates has been quoted in a former study to illustrate how Nemesis appeared to the Greek mind as capricious a deity as Fortune, a force that might at any time, heedless of desert, check whatever happiness was high enough to attract its attention. But in modern ideas Nemesis and justice are strictly associated: Nemesis may be defined as the artistic side of justice. So far as Nemesis then is concerned, it has, in modern thought, passed altogether out of the domain of Destiny and been absorbed into the domain of law: it is thus fitted to be one of the regular forms into which human history may be represented as falling, in harmony with our modern moral conceptions. But even as regards Destiny itself, while the notion as a whole is out of harmony with the modern notion of law and Providence as ruling forces of the world, yet certain minor phases of Destiny as conceived by antiquity have survived into modern times and been found not irreconcilable with moral law. [_Nemesis and Destiny interwoven in the plot of Macbeth_.] Two of these minor phases of Destiny are, it will be shown, illustrated in _Macbeth_: and we may thus take as a general description of its plot, the interweaving of Destiny with Nemesis. [_The whole plot a Nemesis Action,_] That the career of Macbeth is an example of Nemesis needs only to be stated. As in the case of _Richard III_, we have the rise and fall of a leading personage; the rise is a crime of which the fall is the retribution. Nemesis has just been defined as the artistic aspect of justice; we have in previous studies seen different artistic elements in different types of Nemesis. Sometimes, as with Richard III, the retribution becomes artistic through its sureness; its long delay renders the effect of the blow more striking when it does come. [_of the type of equality._] More commonly the artistic element in Nemesis consists in the perfect equality between the sin and its retribution; and of the latter type the Nemesis in the play of _Macbeth_ is perhaps the most conspicuous illustration. The rise and fall of Macbeth, to borrow the illustration of Gervinus, constitute a perfect arch, with a turning-point in the centre. Macbeth's series of successes is unbroken till it ends in the murder of Banquo; his series of failures is unbroken from its commencement in the escape of Fleance. Success thus constituting the first half and failure the second half of the play, the transition from the one to the other is the expedition against Banquo and Fleance, in which success and failure are mingled: [=iii.= iii.] and this expedition, the keystone to the arch, is found to occupy the exact middle of the middle Act. But this is not all: not only the play as a whole is an example of nemesis, but if its two halves be taken separately they will be found to constitute each a nemesis complete in itself. [_The rise of Macbeth a separate Nemesis action._] To begin with the first half, that which is occupied with the rise of Macbeth. If the plan of the play extended no further than to make the hero's fall the retribution upon his rise, it might be expected that the turning-point of the action would be reached upon Macbeth's elevation to the throne. As a fact, however, Macbeth's rise does not stop here; he still goes on to win one more success in his attempt upon the life of Banquo. What the purpose of this prolonged flow of fortune is will be seen when it is considered that this final success of the hero is in reality the source of his ruin. In Macbeth's progress to the attainment of the crown, while of course it was impossible that crimes so violent as his should not incur suspicion, yet circumstances had strangely combined to soothe these suspicions to sleep. But--so Shakespeare manipulates the story--when Macbeth, seated on the throne, goes on to the attempt against Banquo, this additional crime not only brings its own punishment, but has the further effect of unmasking the crimes that have gone before. This important point in the plot is brought out to us in a scene, specially introduced for the purpose, in which Lennox and another lord represent the opinion of the court. [=iii.= vi. i.] _Lennox._ My former speeches have but hit your thoughts, Which can interpret further: only, I say, Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead: And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late; Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd, For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late. Who cannot want the thought how monstrous It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain To kill their gracious father? damned fact! How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight In pious rage the two delinquents tear, That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep? Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too; For 'twould have anger'd any heart alive To hear the men deny't. So that, I say, He has borne all things well: and I do think That had he Duncan's sons under his key-- As, an't please heaven, he shall not--they should find What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance. Under the bitter irony of this speech we can see clearly enough that Macbeth has been exposed by his _series_ of suspicious acts; he has 'done all things well;' and in particular by peculiar resemblances between this last incident of Banquo and Fleance and the previous incident of Duncan and his son. It appears then that Macbeth's last successful crime proves the means by which retribution overtakes all his other crimes; the latter half of the play is needed to develop the steps of the retribution, but, in substance, Macbeth's fall is latent in the final step of his rise. Thus the first half of the play, that which traces the rise of Macbeth, is a complete Nemesis Action--a career of sins in which the last sin secures the punishment of all. [_The fall of Macbeth a separate Nemesis Action._] The same reasoning applies to the latter half of the play: the fall of Macbeth not only serves as the retribution for his rise, but further contains in itself a crime and its nemesis complete. What Banquo is to the first half of the play Macduff is to the latter half; the two balance one another as, in the play of _Julius Cæsar_, Cæsar himself is balanced by Antony; and Macduff comes into prominence upon Banquo's death as Antony upon the fall of Cæsar. Now Macduff, when he finally slays Macbeth, is avenging not only Scotland, but also his own wrongs; and the tyrant's crime against Macduff, with its retribution, just gives unity to the second half of the play, in the way in which the first half was made complete by the association between Macbeth and Banquo, [=iii.= i. 57-72.] from their joint encounter with the Witches on to the murder of Banquo as a consequence of the Witches' prediction. Accordingly we find that no sooner has Macbeth, by the appearance of the Ghost at the banquet, realised the turn of fate, than his first thoughts are of Macduff: [=iii.= iv. 128.] _Macbeth._ How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding? _Lady M._ Did you send to him, sir? _Macbeth._ I hear it by the way; but I will send. When the Apparitions bid Macbeth 'beware Macduff,' he answers, [=iv.= i. 74.] Thou hast harp'd my fear aright! [=iv.= i, from 139.] On the vanishing of the Apparition Scene, the first thing that happens is the arrival of news that Macduff has fled to England, and is out of his enemy's power; then Macbeth's bloody thoughts devise a still more cruel purpose of vengeance to be taken on the fugitive's family. Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits: The flighty purpose never is o'ertook Unless the deed go with it.... The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in his line. [=iv.= ii, iii.] In succeeding scenes we have this diabolical massacre carried out, and see the effect which the news of it has in rousing Macduff to his revenge; [=v.= vii. 15.] until in the final scene of all he feels that if Macbeth is slain and by no stroke of his, his wife and children's ghosts will for ever haunt him. Thus Macduff's function in the play is to be the agent not only of the grand nemesis which constitutes the whole plot, but also of a nemesis upon a private wrong which occupies the latter half of the play. And, putting our results together, we find that a Nemesis Action is the description alike of the whole plot and of the rise and fall which are its two halves. [_The Oracular as one phase of Destiny: its partial revelation._] With Nemesis is associated in the play of _Macbeth_ Destiny in two distinct phases. The first of these is _the Oracular_. In ancient thought, as Destiny was the supreme governor of the universe, so oracles were the revelation of Destiny; and thus the term 'the Oracles of God' is appropriately applied to the Bible as the Christian revelation. With the advent of Christianity the oracles became dumb. But the triumph of Christianity was for centuries incomplete; heathen deities were not extirpated, but subordinated to the supernatural personages of the new religion; [_A minor form of the Oracular in modern oracular beings._] and the old oracles declined into oracular beings such as witches and wizards, and oracular superstitions, such as magic mirrors, dreams, apparitions--all means of dimly revealing hidden destiny. Shakespeare is never wiser than the age he is pourtraying; and accordingly he has freely introduced witches and apparitions into the machinery of _Macbeth_, though in the principles that govern the action of this, as of all his other plays, he is true to the modern notions of Providence and moral law. [_The Oracular Action: Destiny working from mystery to clearness;_] An oracle and its fulfilment make up a series of events eminently fitted to constitute a dramatic interest; and no form of ancient Drama and Story is more common than this of the 'Oracular Action.' Its interest may be formulated as Destiny working from mystery to clearness. At the commencement of an oracular story the fated future is revealed indeed, but in a dress of mystery, as when the Athenians are bidden to defend themselves with only wooden walls; but as the story of Themistocles develops itself, the drift of events is throwing more and more light on to the hidden meaning of the oracle, until by the naval victory over the Persians the oracle is at once clear and fulfilled. The Oracular Action is so important an element in plot, that it may be worth while to prolong the consideration of it by noting the three principal varieties into which it falls, all of which are illustrated in the play of _Macbeth_. In each case the interest consists in tracing the working of Destiny out of mystery into clearness: the distinction between the varieties depends upon the agency by which Destiny works, and the relation of this agency to the original oracle. [(1) _by the agency of blind obedience;_] In the first variety Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience. The Spartans, unfortunate in their war with the Messenians, enquire of an oracle, and receive the strange response that they must apply for a general to the Athenians, their hereditary enemies. But they resolve to obey the voice of Destiny, though to all appearance they obey at their peril; and the Athenians mock them by selecting the most unfit subject they can find--a man whose bodily infirmities had excluded him from the military exercises altogether. Yet in the end the faith of the Spartans is rewarded. It had been no lack of generalship that had caused their former defeats, but discord and faction in their ranks; now Tyrtæus turned out to be a lyric poet, whose songs roused the spirit of the Spartans and united them as one man, and when united, their native military talent led them to victory. Thus in its fulfilment the hidden meaning of the oracle breaks out into clearness: and blind obedience to the oracle is the agency by which it has been fulfilled. [(2) _by the agency of free will;_] In the second variety the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of indifference and free will: it is neither obeyed nor disobeyed, but ignored. One of the best illustrations is to be found in the plot of Sir Walter Scott's novel, _The Betrothed_. Its heroine, more rational than her age, resists the family tradition that would condemn her to sleep in the haunted chamber; overborne, however, by age and authority, she consents, and the lady of the bloody finger appears to pronounce her doom: Widow'd wife, and wedded maid; Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed. This seems a mysterious destiny for a simple and virtuous girl. The faithful attendant Rose declares in a burst of devotion that betrayed her mistress may be, but betrayer never; the heroine herself braces her will to dismiss the foreboding from her thoughts, and resolves that she will not be influenced by it on the one side or on the other. Yet it all comes about. Gratitude compels her to give her hand to the elderly Constable, who on the very day of betrothal is summoned away to the Crusade, from which, as it appears, he is never to return, leaving his spouse at once a widowed wife and a wedded maid. In the troubles of that long absence, by a perfectly natural series of events, gratitude again leads the heroine to admit to her castle her real deliverer and lover in order to save his life, and in protecting him amidst strange circumstances of suspicion to bid defiance to all comers. Finally the castle is besieged by the royal armies, and the heroine has to hear herself proclaimed a traitor by the herald of England; from this perplexity a deliverance is found only when her best friend saves her by betraying the castle to the king. So every detail in the unnatural doom has been in the most natural manner fulfilled: and the woman by whose action it has been fulfilled has been all the while maintaining the freedom of her will and persistently ignoring the oracle. [(3) _by the agency of opposing will._] But the supreme interest of the Oracular Action is reached when the oracle is fulfilled by an agency that has all the while set itself to oppose and frustrate it. A simple illustration of this is seen in the Eastern potentate who, in opposition to a prophecy that his son should be killed by a lion, forbad the son to hunt, but heaped upon him every other indulgence. In particular he built him a pleasure-house, hung with pictures of hunting and of wild beasts, on which all that art could do was lavished to compensate for the loss of the forbidden sport. One day the son, chafing at his absence from the manly exercise in which his comrades were at that moment engaged, wandered through his pleasure-house, until, stopping at a magnificent picture of a lion at bay, he began to apostrophise it as the source of his disgrace, and waxing still more angry, drove his fist through the picture. A nail, hidden behind the canvas entered his hand; the wound festered, and he died. So the measures taken to frustrate the destiny proved the means of fulfilling it. But in this third variety of the Oracular Action the classical illustration is the story of Oedipus: told fully, it presents three examples woven together. Laius of Thebes learns from an oracle that the son about to be born to him is destined to be his murderer; accordingly he refuses to rear the child, and it is cast out to perish. A herdsman, Polybus, takes pity on the infant, carries it away to Corinth, and brings it up in secret. In due time this Oedipus becomes weary of the humble life of his supposed father; quitting Corinth, he seeks advice of the oracle as to his future career, and receives the startling response that he is destined to slay his own father. Resolved to frustrate so terrible a fate, he will not return to Corinth, but, as it happens, _takes the road to Thebes_, where he falls in accidentally with Laius, and, in ignorance of his person, quarrels with him and slays him. Now if Laius had not resisted the oracle by casting out the infant, it would have grown up like other sons, and every probability would have been against his committing so terrible a crime as parricide. Again, if Polybus had not by his removal to Corinth sought to keep the child in ignorance of his fate, he would have known the person of Laius and spared him. Once more, if Oedipus had not, in opposition to the oracle, avoided his supposed home, Corinth, he would never have gone to Thebes and fallen in with his real father. Three different persons acting separately seek to frustrate a declared destiny, and their action unites in fulfilling it. The plot of _Macbeth_, both as a whole and in its separate parts, is constructed upon this form of the Oracular Action, in combination with the form of Nemesis. The play deals with the rise and fall of Macbeth: the rise, and the fall, and again the two taken together, present each of them an example of an Oracular Action. [_The rise of Macbeth an Oracular Action,_] Firstly, the former half of the play, the rise of Macbeth, taken by itself, consists in an oracle and its fulfilment--the Witches' promise of the crown and the gradual steps by which the crown is attained. Amongst the three varieties of the Oracular Action we have just distinguished, the present example wavers between the first and the second. [_varying between the second and first type._] After his first excitement has passed away, Macbeth resolves that he will have nothing to do with the temptation that lurked in the Witches' words; in his disjointed meditation we hear him saying: [=i.= iii. 143.] If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me Without my stir; and again: [=i.= iii. 146.] Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day; in which last speech the very rhyming may, according to Shakespeare's subtle usage, be pointed to as marking a mind made up. So far then we appear to be following an Oracular Action of the second type, that of indifference and ignoring. But in the very next scene the proclamation of a Prince of Cumberland--that is, of an heir-apparent like our Prince of Wales--takes away Macbeth's 'chance': [=i.= iv. 48.] _Macb._ [_Aside_]. The prince of Cumberland! that is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. He instantly commits himself to the evil suggestion, and thus changes the type of action to the first variety, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of obedience. [_The fall an Oracular Action of the first type._] Similarly Macbeth's fall, taken by itself, constitutes an Oracular Action, consisting as it does of the ironical promises by the Apparitions which the Witches raise for Macbeth on his visit to them, and the course of events by which these promises are fulfilled. Its type is a highly interesting example of the first variety, that of blind obedience. [=iv.= i. 71-100.] The responses of the Apparitions lay down impossible conditions, and as long as these conditions are unfulfilled Macbeth is to be secure; he will fall only when one not born of woman shall be his adversary, only when Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane. Macbeth trusts blindly to these promises; further he obeys them, so far as a man can be said to obey an oracle which enjoins no command: he obeys in the sense of relying on them, and making that reliance his ground of action. But this reliance of Macbeth on the ironical promises is an agency in fulfilling them in their real meaning. [=iv.= i. 144-156.] In his reckless confidence he strikes out right and left, and amongst others injures one to whom the description 'not born of woman' applies. In his reliance on the Apparitions he proceeds, when threatened by the English, to _shut himself up in Dunsinane Castle_; but for this fact the English army would not have approached Dunsinane Castle by the route of Birnam Wood, and the incident of the boughs would never have taken place. Thus Macbeth's fate was made to depend uponi mpossibilities: by his action in reliance on these impossibilities he is all the while giving them occasion to become possible. In this way an ironical oracle comes to be fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience. [_The whole plot an Oracular Action of the third type._] Thirdly, the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked together as to constitute the whole plot another example of the Oracular Action. [=i.= iii. 48-50, 62-66.] The original oracle given by the Witches on the blasted heath was a double oracle: besides the promise of the thaneships and the crown there was another revelation of destiny, that Banquo was to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that he was to get kings though to be none. In this latter half of the oracle is found the link which binds together the rise and fall of Macbeth. When the first half of the Witches' promise has been fulfilled in his elevation to the throne, Macbeth sets himself to prevent the fulfilment of the second half by his attempt upon Banquo and Fleance. Now we have already seen how this attempt has the effect of drawing attention, not only to itself, but also to Macbeth's other crimes, and proves indeed the foundation of his ruin. Had Macbeth been content with the attainment of the crown, all might yet have been well: the addition of just one more precaution renders all the rest vain. It appears, then, that that which binds together the rise and the fall, that which makes the fall the retribution upon the rise, is the expedition against the Banquo family; and the object of this crime is to frustrate the second part of the Witches' oracle. So the original oracle becomes the motive force to the whole play, setting in motion alike the rise and fall of the action. The figure of the whole plot we have taken as a regular arch; its movement might be compared to that terrible incident of mining life known as 'overwinding,' in which the steam engine pulls the heavy cage from the bottom to the top of the shaft, but, instead of stopping then, winds on till the cage is carried over the pulley and dashed down again to the bottom. So the force of the Witches' prediction is not exhausted when it has tempted Macbeth on to the throne, but carries him on to resist its further clauses, and in resisting to bring about the fall by which they are fulfilled. Not only then are the rise and the fall of Macbeth taken separately oracular, but the whole plot, compounded of the two taken together, constitutes another Oracular Action; and the last is of that type in which Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of a will that has been opposing it. [_Irony a phase of malignant Destiny._] A second phase of Destiny enters into the plot of _Macbeth_: this is Irony. Etymologically the word means no more than _saying_. Pressing the idea of saying as distinguished from meaning we get at the ordinary signification, ambiguous speech; from which the word widens in its usage to include double-dealing in general, such as the 'irony of Socrates,' his habit of assuming the part of a simple enquirer in order to entangle the pretentious sophists in their own wisdom. The particular extension of meaning with which we are immediately concerned is that by which irony comes to be applied to a double-dealing in Destiny itself; the link between this and the original sense being no doubt the ambiguous wording of oracular responses which has become proverbial. In ancient conception Destiny wavered between justice and malignity; a leading phase of malignant destiny was this Irony or double-dealing; Irony was the laughter or mockery of Fate. It is illustrated in the angry measures of Oedipus for penetrating the mystery that surrounds the murder of Laius in order to punish the crime, impunity for which has brought the plague upon his city: when at last it is made clear that Oedipus himself has been unknowingly the culprit, there arises an irresistible sensation that Destiny has been all the while playing with the king, and using his zeal as a means for working his destruction. In modern thought the supreme force of the universe cannot possibly be represented as malignant. [_A modified Irony: Justice in a mocking humour._] But mockery, though it may not be enthroned in opposition to justice, may yet, without violating modern ideas, be made to appear in the _mode of operation_ by which justice is brought about; here mockery is no longer malignant, but simply an index of overpowering force, just as we smile at the helpless stubbornness of a little child, whereas a man's opposition makes us angry. For such a reconciliation of mockery with righteousness we have authority in the imagery of Scripture. Why do the heathen rage? And the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves And the rulers take counsel together Against the Lord And against His Anointed: Saying, Let us break their bonds, And cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath; And vex them in his sore displeasure. There could not be a more perfect type of Irony, in that form of it which harmonises with justice, than this picture in three touches, of the busy security of the wicked, of justice pausing to mock their idle efforts, and then with a burst of wrath and displeasure annihilating their projects at a stroke. In modern thought, then, Irony is Justice in a mocking humour. The mockery that suddenly becomes apparent in the mysterious operations of Providence, and is a measure of their overpowering force, is clearly capable of giving a highly dramatic interest to a train of events, and so is fitted to be a form of dramatic action. [_Irony in the plot of Macbeth: obstacles converted into stepping-stones._] The operation of Destiny as exhibited in the plot of _Macbeth_ is throughout tinctured with irony: the element of mockery appearing always in this, that apparent checks to Destiny turn out the very means Destiny chooses by which to fulfil itself. Irony of this kind is regularly attached to what I have called the third variety of the Oracular Action, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of attempts to oppose it; but in the play under consideration the destiny, whether manifesting itself in that type of the Oracular Action or not, is never dissociated from the attitude of mockery to resistance which converts obstacles into stepping-stones. It remains to show how the rise of Macbeth, the fall of Macbeth, and again the rise and the fall taken together, are all of them Irony Actions. [_The rise of Macbeth an Irony Action._] The basis of Macbeth's rise is the Witches' promise of the crown. Scarcely has it been given when an obstacle starts up to its fulfilment in the proclamation of Malcolm as heir-apparent. I have already pointed out that it is this very proclamation which puts an end to Macbeth's wavering, and leads him to undertake the treasonable enterprise which only in the previous scene he had resolved he would have nothing to do with. Later in the history a second obstacle appears: [=ii.= iii. 141.] the king is slain, but his two sons, this heir-apparent and his brother, escape from Macbeth's clutches and place two lives between him and the fulfilment of his destiny. But, as events turn out, it is this very flight of the princes that, by diverting suspicion to them for a moment, causes Macbeth to be named as Duncan's successor. A conversation in the play itself is devoted to making this point clear. [=ii.= iv. 22.] _Ross._ Is't known who did this more than bloody deed? _Macduff._ Those that Macbeth hath slain. _Ross._ Alas, the day! What good could they pretend? _Macduff._ They were suborn'd: Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons, Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon them Suspicion of the deed. _Ross._ 'Gainst nature still! Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up Thine own life's means! Then 'tis most like The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth. _Macduff._ He is already named, and gone to Scone To be invested. [_The fall an Irony Action._] Twice, then, in the course of the rise Destiny allows obstacles to appear only for the sake of using them as an unexpected means of fulfilment. The same mockery marks the fall of the action. The security against a fall promised by the Apparitions to Macbeth had just one drawback--'beware Macduff'; [=iv.= i. 71.] and [=iv.= ii, &c.] we have already had occasion to notice Macbeth's attempt to secure himself against this drawback in the completest manner by extirpating the dangerous thane and his family to the last scion of his stock, and also how this cruel purpose succeeded against all but Macduff himself. Now it is to be noted that this attempt against the fulfilment of the destined retribution proves the very source of the fulfilment, without which it would never have come about. For at one point of the story Macduff, the only man who, according to the decrees of Fate, can harm Macbeth, resolves to abandon his vengeance against him. In his over-cautious policy Macduff was unwilling to move without the concurrence of Malcolm the rightful heir. [=iv.= iii.] In one of the most singular scenes in all Shakespeare Macduff is represented as urging Malcolm to assert his rights, while Malcolm (in reality driven by the general panic to suspect even Macduff) discourages his attempts, and affects to be a monster of iniquity, surpassing the tyrant of Scotland himself. [=iv.= iii, from 100.] At last he succeeds in convincing Macduff of his villainies, and in a burst of despair the fate-appointed avenger renounces vengeance. _Macduff._ Fit to govern? No, not to live.... Fare thee well! These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast Thy hope ends here! Malcolm, it is true, then drops the pretence of villainy, but he does not succeed in reassuring his companion. [=iv.= iii. 138.] _Macduff._ Such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'Tis hard to reconcile. At this moment enters Ross with the news of Macbeth's expedition against Fife, and tells how all Macduff's household, 'wife, children, servants, all,' have been cut off 'at one swoop': before the agony of a bereavement like this hesitation flies away for ever. [=iv.= iii. 231.] Gentle heavens, Cut short all intermission; front to front Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; Within my sword's length set him: if he 'scape, Heaven forgive him too! The action taken by Macbeth with a view to prevent Macduff's being the instrument of retribution, is brought by a mocking Fate to impel Macduff to his task at the precise moment he had resolved to abandon it. [_The plot as a whole an Irony Action._] Finally, if the rise and the fall be contemplated together as constituting one action, this also will be found animated by the same spirit of irony. The original promise of the Witches, as well as the later promise of the Apparition, [=i.= iii. 62-66.] had its drawback in the destiny that Banquo was to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, to get kings though to be none; and to secure against this drawback is Macbeth's purpose in his plot against Banquo and Fleance, by which the rival family would be extirpated. The plot only _half succeeds_, and by its half-success contributes to the exactness with which the destiny is fulfilled. Had Macbeth's attempt fully succeeded, Banquo would neither have got kings nor been one; had no such attempt at all been made, then, for anything we see to the contrary in the play, Banquo would have preceded his sons on the throne, and so again the oracle would not have been fulfilled which made Banquo lesser than Macbeth. But by the mixture of success and failure in Macbeth's plot Banquo is slain before he can attain the crown, and Fleance lives to give a royal house to Scotland. Once more, then, mockery appears a characteristic of the Destiny that finds in human resistance just the one peculiar device needed for effecting the peculiar distribution of fortune it has promised. [_Summary._] Such is the subtlety with which Shakespeare has constructed this plot of _Macbeth_, and interwoven in it Nemesis and Destiny. To outward appearance it is connected with the rise and fall of a sinner: the analysis that searches for inner principles of construction traces through its incidents three forms of action working harmoniously together, by which the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked as to exhibit at once a crime with its Nemesis, an Oracle with its fulfilment, and the Irony which works by the agency of that which resists it. Again the separate halves of the play, the rise and the fall of the hero, are found to present each the same triple pattern as the whole. Once more, with the career of Macbeth are associated the careers of Banquo and Macduff, and these also reflect the threefold spirit. Macbeth's rise involves Banquo's fall: this fall is the subject of oracular prediction, it is the starting-point of nemesis on Macbeth, and it has an element of irony in the fact that Banquo _all but_ escaped. With Macbeth's fall is bound up Macduff's rise: this also had been predicted in oracles, it is an agency in the main nemesis, and Macduff's fate has the irony that he _all but_ perished at the outset of his mission. Through all the separate interests of this elaborate plot, the three forms of action--Nemesis, the Oracular, Irony--are seen perfectly harmonised and perfectly complete. And over all this is thrown the supernatural interest of the Witches, who are agents of nemesis working by the means of ironical oracles. VII. MACBETH, LORD AND LADY. _A Study in Character-Contrast._ CONTRASTS of character form one of the simplest elements of dramatic interest. Such contrasts are often obvious; at other times they take definitiveness only when looked at from a particular point of view. The contrast of character which it is the object of the present study to sketch rests upon a certain distinction which is one of the fundamental ideas in the analysis of human nature--[_The antithesis of the outer and inner life._] the distinction between the outer life of action and the inner life of our own experience. The recognition of the two is as old as the _Book of Proverbs_, which contrasts the man that ruleth his spirit with the man that taketh a city. The heathen oracle, again, opened out to an age which seemed to have exhausted knowledge a new world for investigation in the simple command, Know thyself. The Stoics, who so despised the busy vanity of state cares, yet delighted to call their ideal man a king; and their particular tenet is universalised by Milton when he says: Therein stands the office of a king, His honour, virtue, merit, and chief praise, That for the public all this weight he bears: Yet he who reigns within himself, and rules Passions, desires, and fears, is more a king. And the modern humourist finds the idea indispensable for his pourtrayal of character and experience. 'Sir,' says one of Thackeray's personages, 'a distinct universe walks about under your hat and under mine ... You and I are but a pair of infinite isolations with some fellow-islands more or less near to us.' And elsewhere the same writer says that 'each creature born has a little kingdom of thought of his own, which it is a sin in us to invade.' This antithesis of the practical and inner life is so accepted a commonplace of the pulpit and of the essayist on morals and culture that it may seem tedious to expound it. But for the very reason that it belongs to all these spheres, and that these spheres overlap, the two sides of the antithesis are not kept clearly distinct, nor are the terms uniformly used in the same sense. For the present purpose the exact distinction is between the outer world, the world of practical action, the sphere of making and doing, in which we mingle with our fellow men, join in their enterprises, and influence them to our ideas, in which we investigate nature and society, or seek to build up a fabric of power: and, on the other hand, the inner intellectual life, in which our powers as by a mirror are turned inwards upon ourselves, finding a field for enterprise in self-discipline and the contest with inherited notions and passions, exploring the depths of our consciousness and our mysterious relations with the unseen, until the thinker becomes familiar with strange situations of the mind and at ease in the presence of its problems. The antithesis is thus not at all the same as that between worldly and religious, for the inner life may be cultivated for evil: self-anatomy, as Shelley says, Shall teach the will Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers. Knowing what must be thought and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes. Still less is it the antithesis between intellectual and commonplace; the highest intellectual powers find employment in practical life. The various mental and moral qualities belong to both spheres, but have a different meaning for each. Practical experience is a totally different thing from what the religious thinker means by his 'experience.' The discipline given by the world often consists in the dulling of those powers which self-discipline seeks to develope. Knowledge of affairs, with its rapid and instinctive grasp, is often possessed in the highest degree by the man who is least of all men versed in the other knowledge, which could explain and analyse the processes by which it operated. And every observer is struck by the different forms which courage takes in the two spheres, courage in action, and courage where nothing can be done and men have only to endure and wait. Macaulay in a well-known passage contrasts the active and passive courage as one of the distinctions between the West and the East. An European warrior, who rushes on a battery of cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the surgeon's knife, and fall into an agony of despair at the sentence of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun, his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured, without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been known to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sidney. The two lives are complete, each with its own field, its own qualities, culture, and fruit. [_The antithesis an element in Character-Interpretation._] It is obvious that relation to these two lives will have a very great effect in determining individual character. In the same man the two sides of experience may be most unequally developed; an intellectual giant is often a child in the affairs of the world, and a moral hero may be found in the person of some bedridden cripple. On the other hand, to some the inner life is hardly known: familiar perhaps with every other branch of knowledge they go down to their graves strangers to themselves. All things without, which round about we see, We seek to know and how therewith to do; But that whereby we reason, live, and be Within ourselves, we strangers are thereto. We seek to know the moving of each sphere, And the strange cause of the ebbs and flows of Nile: But of that clock within our breasts we bear, The subtle motions we forget the while. We, that acquaint ourselves with every zone, And pass both tropics, and behold each pole, When we come home, are to ourselves unknown, And unacquainted still with our own soul. The antithesis then between the outer and inner life will be among the ideas which lie at the root of Character-Interpretation. [_In a simple age it coincides with the distinction of the sexes._] When the idea is applied to an age like that of Macbeth, the antithesis between the two lives almost coincides with the distinction of the sexes: amid the simple conditions of life belonging to such an age the natural tendency would be for genius in men to find scope in the outer and practical world, while genius in women would be restricted to the inner life. And this is the idea I am endeavouring to work out in the present study:--[_The antithesis the key to the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth._] that the key to Shakespeare's portraiture of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth will be found in regarding the two as illustrations of the outer and inner life. Both possess force in the highest degree, but the two have been moulded by the exercise of this force in different spheres; their characters are in the play brought into sharp contrast by their common enterprise, and the contrast of practical and intellectual mind is seen maintained through the successive stages of their descent to ruin. [_Macbeth as the practical man._] Thus Macbeth is essentially the practical man, the man of action, of the highest experience, power, and energy in military and political command, accustomed to the closest connection between willing and doing. He is one who in another age would have worked out the problem of free trade, or unified Germany, or engineered the Suez Canal. On the other hand, he has concerned himself little with things transcendental; he is poorly disciplined in thought and goodness; prepared for any emergency in which there is anything to be _done_, yet a mental crisis or a moral problem afflicts him with the shock of an unfamiliar situation. This is by no means a generally accepted view: amongst a large number of readers the traditional conception of Macbeth lingers as a noble disposition dragged down by his connection with the coarser nature of his wife. [_His nobility conventional._] According to the view here suggested the nobility of Macbeth is of the flimsiest and most tawdry kind. The lofty tone he is found at times assuming means no more than virtuous education and surroundings. When the purely practical nature is examined in reference to the qualities which belong to the intellectual life, the result is not a blank but ordinariness: the practical nature will reflect current thought and goodness as they appear from the outside. So Macbeth's is the morality of inherited notions, retained just because he has no disposition to examine them; he has all the practical man's distrust of wandering from the beaten track of opinion, which gives the working politician his prejudice against doctrinaires, and has raised up stout defenders of the Church amongst men whose lives were little influenced by her teaching. And the traditionary morality is more than merely retained. When the seed fell into stony ground forthwith it sprang up _because_ it had no deepness of earth: the very shallowness of a man's character may lend emphasis to his high professions, just as, on the other hand, earnestness in its first stage often takes the form of hesitation. So Macbeth's practical genius takes in strongly what it takes in at all, and gives it out vigorously. But that the nobility has gone beyond the stage of passive recognition, that it has become absorbed into his inner nature, there is not a trace; on the contrary, it is impossible to follow Macbeth's history far without abundant evidence that real love of goodness for its own sake, founded on intelligent choice or deep affection, has failed to root a single fibre in his nature. First, we have the opportunity of studying Macbeth's character in the analysis given of it in the play itself by the one person who not only saw Macbeth in his public life, but knew also the side of him hidden from the world. [_Lady Macbeth's analysis of her husband's character._] [=i.= v. 16-31.] _Lady Macbeth._ I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. I believe that this phrase, the 'milk of human kindness,' divorced from its context and become the most familiar of all commonplaces, has done more than anything else towards giving a false twist to the general conception of Macbeth's character. The words _kind, kindness_ are amongst the most difficult words in Shakespeare. The wide original signification of the root, _natural, nature_, still retained in the noun _kind_, has been lost in the adjective, which has been narrowed by modern usage to one sort of naturalness, tender-heartedness; though in a derivative form the original sense is still familiar to modern ears in the expression 'the _kindly_ fruits of the earth.' In Elizabethan English, however, the root signification still remained in all usages of _kind_ and its derivatives. In Schmidt's analysis of the adjective, two of its four significations agree with the modern use, the other two are 'keeping to nature, natural,' and 'not degenerate and corrupt, but such as a thing or person ought to be.' Shakespeare delights to play upon the two senses of this family of words: [_Much Ado,_ =i.= i. 26.] tears of joy are described as a 'kind overflow of kindness'; the Fool says of Regan that she will use Lear 'kindly,' i.e. according to her nature; [_Lr._ =i.= v. 15.] 'the worm will do his kind,' i.e. bite. [_Ant. and Cleop._ =v.= ii. 264.] How far the word can wander from its modern sense is seen in a phrase of the present play, [=ii.= i. 24.] 'at your kind'st leisure,' where it is simply equivalent to 'convenient.' Still more will the wider signification of the word obtain, when it is associated with the word _human_; 'humankind' is still an expression for human nature, and the sense of the passage we are considering would be more obvious if the whole phrase were printed as one word, not 'human kindness,' but 'humankind-ness':--that shrinking from what is not natural, which is a marked feature of the practical nature. The other part of the clause, _milk_ of humankind-ness, no doubt suggests absence of hardness: but it equally connotes natural, inherited, traditional feelings, imbibed at the mother's breast. The whole expression of Lady Macbeth, then, I take to attribute to her husband an instinctive tendency to shrink from whatever is in any way unnatural. That this is the true sense further appears, not only from the facts--[=i.= ii. 54.] for nothing in the play suggests that Macbeth, 'Bellona's bridegroom,' was distinguished by kindness in the modern sense--but from the context. The form of Lady Macbeth's speech makes the phrase under discussion a summing up of the rest of her analysis, or rather a general text which she proceeds to expand into details. Not one of these details has any connection with tender-heartedness: on the other hand, if put together the details do amount to the sense for which I am contending, that Macbeth's character is a type of commonplace morality, the shallow unthinking and unfeeling man's lifelong hesitation between God and Mammon. Thou would'st be great; Art not without ambition, but without The illness should attend it: what thou would'st highly That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'ldst have, great Glamis, That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it, And that which _rather thou dost fear to do Than wishest should be undone._' If the delicate balancing of previous clauses had left any doubt as to the meaning, the last two lines remove it, and assert distinctly that Macbeth has no objection to the evil itself, but only a fear of evil measures which must be associated to a practical mind with failure and disgrace. [=i.= iv. 48-53.] It is striking that at the very moment Lady Macbeth is so meditating, her husband is giving a practical confirmation of her description in its details as well as its general purport. [=i.= iii. 143, 146.] He had resolved to take no steps himself towards the fulfilment of the Witches' prophecy, but to leave all to chance; then the proclamation of Malcolm, removing all apparent chance of succession, led him to change his mind and entertain the scheme of treason and murder: the words with which he surrenders himself seem like an echo of his wife's analysis. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand; _yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see._ [_Macbeth's soliloquy: of an eminently practical character._] But we are not left to descriptions of Macbeth by others. We have him self-displayed; and that in a situation so framed that if there were in him the faintest sympathy with goodness it must here be brought into prominence. [=i.= vii. 1-28.] Macbeth has torn himself away from the banquet, and, his mind full of the desperate danger of the treason he is meditating, he ponders over the various motives that forbid its execution. A strong nobility would even amid incentives _to_ crime feel the attraction of virtue and have to struggle against it; but surely the weakest nobility, when facing motives _against_ sin, would be roused to some degree of virtuous passion. Yet, if Macbeth's famous soliloquy be searched through and through, not a single thought will be found to suggest that he is regarding the deep considerations of sin and retribution in any other light than that of immediate practical consequences. First, there is the thought of the sureness of retribution even in this world. It may be true that hope of heaven and fear of hell are not the highest of moral incentives, but at least they are a degree higher than the thought of worldly prosperity and failure; Macbeth however is willing to take his chance of the next world if only he can be guaranteed against penalties in this life. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgement here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice To our own lips. So far he has reached no higher consideration, in reference to treason and murder, than the fear that he may be suggesting to others to use against himself the weapon he is intending for Duncan. Then his thoughts turn to the motives against crime which belong to the softer side of our nature. He's here in double trust, First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host, Who should against his murderer shut the door, Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan, Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity-- At all events it is clear this is no case of a man blinded for the moment to the emotions which resist crime; and as we hear him passing in review kinship, loyalty, hospitality, pity, we listen for the burst of remorse with which he will hurl from him the treachery he had been fostering. But, on the contrary, his thoughts are still practical, and the climax to which this survey of motives is to lead up is no more than the effect they will have on others: pity Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. And then he seems to regret that he cannot find more incentives to his villainy. I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other. So Macbeth's searching self-examination on topics of sin and retribution, amid circumstances specially calculated to rouse compunction, results in thoughts not more noble than these--that murder is a game which two parties can play at, that heartlessness has the effect of drawing general attention, that ambition is apt to defeat its own object. [_Macbeth rises with external deeds and sinks with internal conflicts._] Again: that Macbeth's union of superficial nobility with real moral worthlessness is connected with the purely practical bent of his mind will be the more evident the wider the survey which is taken of his character and actions. It may be observed that Macbeth's spirits always rise with evil deeds: however he may have wavered in the contemplation of crime, its execution strings him up to the loftiest tone. [=ii.= i, from 31; and =iii.= ii, from 39.] This is especially clear in the Dagger Scene, and in the scene in which he darkly hints to his wife the murder of Banquo, which is in a brief space to be in actual perpetration. As he feels the moment of crime draw near, his whole figure seems to dilate, the language rises, and the imagery begins to flow. Like a poet invoking his muse, Macbeth calls on seeling night to scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day. He has an eye to dramatic surroundings for his dark deeds. Now, o'er the one half-world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, _And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it._ The man who had an hour or two before been driven from the table of his guests by the mere thought of a crime moves to the deed itself with the exalted language of a Hebrew prophet. On the other hand, in his spiritual struggles there is a simpleness that sometimes suggests childishness. [=ii.= ii. 31.] His trouble is that he could not say 'Amen' when the sleepers cried 'God bless us'; his conscience seems a voice outside him; [=ii.= ii. 35-46.] finally, the hardened warrior dare not return to the darkness and face the victim he had so exultingly done to death. Macbeth, then, is the embodiment of one side of the antithesis with which we started; his is pre-eminently the practical nature, moulded in a world of action, but uninfluenced by the cultivation of the inner life. Yet he is not perfect as a man of action: for the practical cannot reach its perfection without the assistance of the inner life. [_Two flaws in Macbeth as an embodiment of the practical: his superstition;_] There are two flaws in Macbeth's completeness. For one, his lack of training in thought has left him without protection against the superstition of his age. He is a passive prey to supernatural imaginings. [=v.= v. 10.] He himself tells us he is a man whose senses would cool to hear a night-shriek, and his fell of hair rouse at a dismal treatise. And we see throughout the play how he never for an instant doubts the reality of the supernatural appearances: [e.g. =iii.= iv. 60; =i.= iii. 107, 122.] a feature the more striking from its contrast with the scepticism of Lady Macbeth, and the hesitating doubt of Banquo. [_and his helplessness under suspense._] [=iii.= i. 6.] Again: no active career can be without its periods when action is impossible, and it is in such periods that the training given by the intellectual life makes itself felt, with its self-control and passive courage. All this Macbeth lacks: in suspense he has no power of self-restraint. [compare =i.= iii. 137, and =iii.= ii. 16.] When we come to trace him through the stages of the action we shall find that one of these two flaws springing out of Macbeth's lack of the inner life, his superstition and his helplessness in suspense, is at every turn the source of his betrayal. In the case of Lady Macbeth, the old-fashioned view of her as a second Clytæmnestra has long been steadily giving way before a conception higher at least on the intellectual side. [_Lady Macbeth as an embodiment of the inner life._] The exact key to her character is given by regarding her as the antithesis of her husband, and an embodiment of the inner life and its intellectual culture so markedly wanting in him. She has had the feminine lot of being shut out from active life, and her genius and energy have been turned inwards; [=v.= i. 58.] her soul--like her 'little hand'--is not hardened for the working-day world, but is quick, delicate, sensitive. She has the keenest insight into the characters of those around her. She is accustomed to moral loneliness and at home in mental struggles. She has even solved for herself some of their problems. In the very crisis of Duncan's murder she gives utterance to the sentiment: [=ii.= ii. 53.] the sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures. When we remember that she must have started with the superstitions of her age such an expression, simple enough in modern lips, opens up to us a whole drama of personal history: we can picture the trembling curiosity, the struggle between will and quivering nerves, the triumph chequered with awe, the resurrection of doubts, the swayings between natural repulsion and intellectual thirst, the growing courage and the reiterated victories settling down into calm principle. Accordingly, Lady Macbeth has won the grand prize of the inner life: in the kingdom of her personal experience her WILL is unquestioned king. It may seem strange to some readers that Lady Macbeth should be held up as the type of the inner life, so associated is that phrase to modern ears with the life fostered by religion. But the two things must not be confused--religion and the sphere in which religion is exercised. 'The kingdom of God is within you,' was the proclamation of Christ, but the world within _may_ be subjugated to other kings than God. Mental discipline and perfect self-control, like that of Lady Macbeth, would hold their sway over evil passions, but they would also be true to her when she chose to contend against goodness, and even against the deepest instincts of her feminine nature. [_A struggle against not absence of the softer qualities._] This was ignored in the old conception of the character, and a struggle _against_ the softer side of her nature was mistaken for its total absence. But her intellectual culture must have quickened her finer sensibilities at the same time that it built up a will strong enough to hold them down; nor is the subjugation so perfect but that a sympathetic insight can throughout trace a keen delicacy of nature striving to assert itself. [=i.= v. 41.] In particular, when she calls upon the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts to unsex and fill her from crown to toe with direst cruelty, she is thrilling all over with feminine repugnance to the bloody enterprise, which nevertheless her royal will insists upon her undertaking. Lady Macbeth's career in the play is one long mental civil war: and the strain ends, as such a strain could only end, in madness. [_The Character-Contrast traced through the action._] Such is the general conception of Lord and Lady Macbeth from the point of view of the antithesis between the outer and inner life. We have now to turn from character to action, and trace the contrasted pair through the stages of their common career. [_Situation at the opening of the play._] The two opposing natures have been united in a happy marriage, the happier because a link between characters so forceful and so antithetic, if it held at all, must be a source of interest: [compare =i.= v. 55-60; =i.= vii. 38; =iii.= ii. 27, 29, 36, 45; =iii.= iv. 141.] the dark tragedy of this unhappy pair is softened by the tenderness of demeanour which appears on both sides. Another source of marriage happiness is added: there is not a trace of self-seeking in Lady Macbeth. Throughout the play she is never found meditating upon what she is to gain by the crown; wife-like, she has no sphere but the career of her husband. [_The original impulse to evil came from Macbeth._] In a picture of human characters, great in their scale, overwhelmed in moral ruin, the question of absorbing interest is the commencement of the descent, and the source from which the impulse to evil has come. This, in the present case, Shakespeare has carefully hidden from us: before the play opens the essential surrender of spirit has taken place, and all that we are allowed to see is its realisation in life and fact. If, however, we use the slight material afforded us for speculation on this point, it would appear that the original choice for evil has for both been made by Macbeth. In the partnership of man and wife it is generally safe to assume that the initiative of action has come from the husband, if nothing appears to the contrary. [=i.= vii. 48.] In the present case we are not left to assumptions, Lady Macbeth distinctly speaks of her husband as first breaking to her the enterprise of treacherous ambition. What beast was't, then, Which made you break this enterprise to me? ... Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both. The reference can only be to a period before the commencement of the play; and the general drift of the passage suggests that it was no mere choice, made by Macbeth with deliberation during which he would be open to conviction, but an impulse of uncontrollable passion that it would have been vain for his wife to resist, supposing that she had had the desire to resist it--so uncontrollable, indeed, [=i.= vii. 54.] that it appears to Lady Macbeth stronger than the strongest of feminine passions, a mother's love. I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this. The only sense in which Lady Macbeth can be pronounced the ruin of her husband is that her firm nature holds him in the path to which he has committed them both, and will not allow his fatal faltering to lose both the virtue he has renounced and the price for which he has bartered it. Denied by her feminine position, the possibility--even if she had had the desire--of directing the common lot for good, she has recognised before we make her acquaintance that this lot has been cast for evil, and she is too well-trained in self-knowledge to attempt the self-deception her husband tries to keep up. [=i.= vii. 54.] And to this evil lot she applies her full force. Her children have died, and this natural outlet for passion is wanting; the whole of her energy is brought to bear upon her husband's ambition, and she is waiting only an occasion for concentrating her powers upon some definite project. [_Four stages in the action._] With such mutual relations between the hero and the heroine the play opens: we are to watch the contrasted characters through the successive stages of the Temptation, the Deed, the Concealment, the Nemesis. [_The Temptation._] The Temptation accosts the two personages when separated from one another, and we thus have the better opportunity of watching the different forms it assumes in adapting itself to the different characters. The expedition, which has separated Macbeth from his wife, is one which must have led him to brood over his schemes of ambition. Certainly it exhibits to him an example of treason and shows him the weakness of his sovereign. Probably he sees events shaping in a direction that suggests opportunity; he may have known that the king must pass in the direction of his castle, or in some other way may have anticipated a royal visit; at all events the king's intimation of this visit in the play itself-- [=i.= iv. 42.] From hence to Inverness, And bind us further to you,-- does not look like a first mention of it. [=i.= iii. 38-78.] To a mind so prepared the supernatural solicitation brings a shock of temptation; and as the Witches in their greeting reach the promise, 'Thou shalt be KING hereafter,' Macbeth gives a start that astonishes Banquo: Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair? To Banquo this prediction of the Witches seems no more than curious; for it must be remembered that Macbeth's position in the kingdom was not such as to exclude hope of succession to the crown, though the hope was a remote one. But Macbeth's start tells a tale of his inner thoughts at the time. This alone should be sufficient to vindicate Shakespeare from the charge sometimes brought against him of turning a great character from virtue to vice by demoniac agency; his is the higher conception that a soul which has commenced the surrender to evil will find in the powers of darkness agencies ready to expedite its descent, it matters not what form these agencies assume. Macbeth has been for years playing with the idea of treason, while never bracing himself up to the point of acting it: suddenly the thought he fancied so safe within his bosom appears outside him in tangible form, gleaming at him in the malignant glances of recognition the Witches are casting at him. To a mind utterly undefended by culture against superstitious terror this objective presentation of his own thought proves a Rubicon of temptation which he never attempts to recross. [=i.= v. 1-55.] On Lady Macbeth the supernatural incident makes not the slightest impression of any kind; we see her reading her husband's excited account of the interview with the most deliberate calmness, weighing its suggestions only with reference to the question how it can be used upon her husband. To her temptation comes with the suggestion of _opportunity_. The messenger enters during her quiet meditation; _Mess._ The king comes here to-night. _Lady M._ Thou 'rt mad to say it! The shock that passes over her is like the shock of chemical change. In an instant her whole nature is strung up to a single end; the long-expected occasion for the concentration of a whole life's energy upon a decisive stroke is come. So rapidly does her imagination move that she sees the deed before her as already done, and, as she casts her eyes upwards, the very ravens over her head seem to be croaking the fatal entrance of Duncan under her battlements. [_The meeting afterwards._] [=i.= v, from 55: =i.= vii.] The stage of Temptation cannot be considered complete without taking in that important section of the play which intervenes between the meeting of the two personages after their separate temptations and the accomplishment of the treason. This is essentially a period of suspense, and accordingly exhibits Macbeth at his weakest. As he enters his castle his tell-tale face is as a book where men may read strange matters; and his utter powerlessness of self-control throws upon his wife's firm will the strongest of all strains, that of infusing her own tenacity into a vacillating ally. I have already dealt with the point at which Macbeth's suspense becomes intolerable, and he leaves the supper-table; and I have drawn attention to the eminently practical nature of his thoughts even at this crisis. The scene which follows, when his wife labours to hold him to the enterprise he has undertaken, illustrates perhaps better than any other incident in the play how truly this practical bent is the key to Macbeth's whole character. At first he takes high ground, and rests his hesitation on considerations of gratitude. Lady Macbeth appeals to consistency, to their mutual love, and, her anger beginning to rise at this wavering of will in a critical moment, she taunts her husband with cowardice. Then it is that Macbeth, irritated in his turn, speaks the noble words that have done so much to gain him a place in the army of martyrs to wifely temptations. Prithee, peace: I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none. But it is difficult to share Macbeth's self-deception long. At his wife's reminder how he had been the one to first moot the undertaking, and swear to it in spite of overwhelming obstacles, already the noble attitude looks more like the sour grapes morality of the man who begins to feel indignation against sin at the precise moment when the sin becomes dangerous. And the whole truth comes sneaking out at Macbeth's next rejoinder: 'If we should fail?' Here is the critical point of the scene. [=i.= vii, from 61.] At its beginning Macbeth is for abandoning the treason, at its end he prepares for his task of murder with animation: where does the change come? _The practical man is nerved by having the practical details supplied to him._ Lady Macbeth sketches a feasible scheme: how that the King will be wearied, his chamberlains can by means of the banquet be easily drugged, their confusion on waking can be interpreted as guilt--before she has half done her husband interrupts her with a burst of enthusiasm, and completes her scheme for her. The man who had thought it was manliness that made him shrink from murder henceforward never hesitates till he has plunged his dagger in his sovereign's bosom. [_The Deed_] [=ii.= i. 31 to =ii.= ii.] In the perpetration of the Deed itself we have the woman passing from weakness to strength, the man from strength to weakness. To Lady Macbeth this actual contact with a deed of blood is the severest point of the strain, the part most abhorrent to her more delicate nature. For a single moment she feels herself on the verge of the madness which eventually comes upon her: [=ii.= ii. 33.] These deeds must not be thought After these ways; so, it will make us mad! And at the beginning of the scene she has been obliged to have recourse to stimulants in order to brace her failing nerves: [=ii.= ii. 1.] That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold. And in part the attempt to bring her delicate nature to the repugnant deed does fail. It is clear that, knowing how little her husband could be depended upon, she had intended to have a hand in the murder itself: [=i.= vii. 69; compare =i.= v. 68.] What cannot _you and I_ perform upon The unguarded Duncan? But the will which was strong enough to hold down conscience gave way for a moment before an instinct of feminine tenderness: [=ii.= ii. 13.] Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done 't. The superiority, however, of the intellectual mind is seen in this, that it can nerve itself from its own agitation, it can draw strength out of the weakness surrounding it, or out of the necessities of the situation: _must_ is the most powerful of spells to a trained will. And so it is that Lady Macbeth rises to the occasion when her husband fails. At first Macbeth in the perpetration of the murder appears in his proper sphere of action, and we have already noticed how the Dagger Soliloquy shows no shrinking, but rather excitement on the side of exultation. The change in him comes with a moment of suspense, caused by the momentary waking of the grooms: [=ii.= ii. 24.] 'I stood and heard them.' With this, no longer sustained by action, he utterly breaks down under the unfamiliar terrors of a fight with his conscience. His prayer sticks in his throat; his thoughts seem so vivid that his wife can hardly tell whether he did not take them for a real voice outside him. Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane, You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. In his agitation he forgets the plan of action, brings away the daggers instead of leaving them with the grooms, and finally dares not return to finish what he has left uncompleted. And accordingly his wife has to make another demand upon her overwrought nature: with one hysterical jest, If he do bleed, I'll _gild_ the faces of the grooms withal, For it must seem their _guilt_, her nature rallies, and the strength derived from the inner life fills up a gap in action where the mere strength of action had failed. [_The first Shock of Concealment._ =ii.= iii, from 68.] The Concealment of the murder forms a stage of the action which falls into two different parts: the single effort which faces the first shock of discovery, and the very different strain required to meet the slowly gathering evidence of guilt. In the Scene of the Discovery Macbeth is perfectly at home: energetic action is needed, and he is dealing with men. His acted innocence appears to me better than his wife's; Lady Macbeth goes near to suggesting a personal interest in the crime by her over-anxiety to disclaim it. _Macduff._ O Banquo, Banquo, Our royal master's murder'd! _Lady M._ Woe, alas! What, in our house? _Banquo._ Too cruel anywhere. Yet in this scene, as everywhere else, the weak points in Macbeth's character betray him: for one moment he is left to himself, and that moment's suspense ruins the whole episode. In the most natural manner in the world Macbeth had, on hearing the announcement, rushed with Lennox to the scene of the murder. Lennox quitted the chamber of blood first, and for an instant Macbeth was alone, facing the grooms still heavy with their drugged sleep, and knowing that in another moment they would be aroused and telling their tale: the sense of crisis proves too much for him, and under an ungovernable impulse he stabs them. He thus wrecks the whole scheme. How perfectly Lady Macbeth's plan would have served if it had been left to itself is seen by Lennox's account of what he had seen, and how the grooms stared, and were distracted; no man's life Was to be trusted with them. Nothing, it is true, can be finer than the way in which Macbeth seeks to cover his mistake and announces what he has done. But in spite of his brilliant outburst, Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment? and his vivid word-picture of his supposed sensations, his efforts are in vain, and at the end of his speech we feel that there has arisen in the company of nobles the indescribable effect known as 'a sensation,' and we listen for some one to speak some word that shall be irrevocable. [=ii.= iii. 124.] The crisis is acute, but Lady Macbeth comes to the rescue _and faints_! It matters little whether we suppose the fainting assumed, or that she yields to the agitation she has been fighting against so long. The important point is that she chooses this exact moment for giving way: she holds out to the end of her husband's speech, then falls with a cry for help; there is at once a diversion, and she is carried out. [=ii.= iii. 132.] But the crisis has passed, and a moment's consideration has suggested to the nobles the wisdom of adjourning for a fitter occasion the enquiry into the murder they all suspect: [=ii.= iv. 24-32.] before that occasion arrives the flight of the king's sons has diverted suspicion into an entirely new channel. Lady Macbeth's fainting saved her husband. [_The long Strain of Concealment._ =iii.= i, ii.] To convey dramatically the continuous strain of keeping up appearances in face of steadily accumulating suspicion is more difficult than to depict a single crisis. Shakespeare manages it in the present case chiefly by presenting Macbeth to us on the eve of an important council, at which the whole truth is likely to come out. [= iii.= i. 30.] We hear, our bloody cousins are bestowed In England and in Ireland, not confessing Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers With strange invention: but of that to-morrow. It is enough to note here that Macbeth takes the step--the fatal step, as was pointed out in the last study--of contriving Banquo's murder simply because he cannot face the suspense of waiting for the morrow, and hearing the defence of the innocent princes made in presence of Banquo, who knows the inducement he had to such a deed. That he feels the danger of the crime, which nevertheless he cannot hold himself back from committing, is clear from the fact that he will not submit it to the calmer judgment of his wife. [=iii.= ii. 45.] The contrast of the two characters appears here as everywhere. Lady Macbeth can _wait_ for an opportunity of freeing themselves from Banquo: [=iii.= ii. 37.] _Macb._ Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives. _Lady M._ But in them nature's copy's not eterne. To Macbeth the one thing impossible is to wait; and once more his powerlessness to control suspense is his ruin. [_The first Shock of Nemesis._] We have reviewed the contrasted characters under Temptation, in the Deed of sin itself, and in the struggle for Concealment: [=iii.= iv.] it remains to watch them face to face with their Nemesis. In the present play Shakespeare has combined the nemesis which takes the form of a sudden shock with the yet severer nemesis of a hopeless resistance through the stages of a protracted fall. The first Shock of Nemesis comes in the Banquet Scene. Macbeth has surrendered himself to the supernatural, and from the supernatural his retribution comes. This is not the place to draw out the terrible force of this famous scene; for its bearing on the contrast of character under delineation it is to be remarked that Macbeth faces his ghostly visitation with unflinching courage, yet without a shadow of doubt as to the reality of what nevertheless no one sees but himself. Lady Macbeth is equally true to her character, and fights on to the last in the now hopeless contest--her double task of keeping up appearances for herself and for her husband. Her keen tact in dealing with Macbeth is to be noted. At first she rallies him angrily, and seeks to shame him into self-command; a moment shows that he is too far gone to be reached by such motives. Instantly she changes her tactics, and, employing a device so often effective with patients of disordered brain, she endeavours to recall him to his senses by assuming an ordinary tone of voice; hitherto she has whispered, now, in the hearing of all, she makes the practical remark: [=iii.= iv. 83.] My worthy lord, Your noble friends do lack you. The device proves successful, his nerves respond to the tone of everyday life, and recovering himself he uses all his skill of deportment to efface the strangeness of the episode, until the reappearance of his victim plunges the scene in confusion past recovery. In the moment of crisis Lady Macbeth had used roughness to rouse her husband; [=iii.= iv, from 122.] when the courtiers are gone she is all tenderness. She utters not a word of reproach: perhaps she is herself exhausted by the strain she has gone through; more probably the womanly solicitude for the physical sufferer thinks only how to procure for her husband 'the season of all natures, sleep.' [_The full Nemesis._] At last the end comes. The final stage, like the first, is brought to the two personages separately. Lady Macbeth has faced every crisis by sheer force of nerve; [=v.= i.] the nemesis comes upon her fitly in madness, the brain giving way under the strain of contest which her will has forced upon it. In the delirium of her last appearance before us we can trace three distinct tones of thought working into one another as if in some weird harmony. There is first the mere reproduction of the horrible scenes she has passed through. One: two: why then 'tis time to do 't.... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.... The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? Again there is an inner thought contending with the first, the struggle to keep her husband from betraying himself by his irresolution. No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.... Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale.... Fie! a soldier and afear'd? And there is an inmost thought of all: the uprising of her feminine nature against the foulness of the violent deed. Out, damned spot!... Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand-- and the 'sorely charged heart' vents itself in a sigh which the attendants shudder to hear. On Macbeth Nemesis heaps itself in double form. The purely practical man, without resources in himself, finds nemesis in an old age that receives no honour from others. [=v.= iii. 22.] My way of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have, but, in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep. Again, as the drunkard finds his refuge in drink, so the victim of superstition longs for deeper draughts of the supernatural. [=iv.= i.] Macbeth seeks the Witches, forces himself to hear the worst, [=iv.= i. 110-135.] and suffers nemesis in anticipation in viewing future generations which are to see his foes on his throne. [from =iv.= i. 80.] Finally from the supernatural comes the climax of retribution when Macbeth is seen resting in unquestioning reliance on an ironical oracle: [=v.= v, from 33; =v.= viii, from 13.] till the shock of revelation comes, the pledge of his safety is converted into the sign of his doom, and the brave Macbeth, hero of a hundred battles, [=v.= viii. 22.] throws down his sword and refuses to fight. VIII. JULIUS CÆSAR BESIDE HIS MURDERERS AND HIS AVENGER. _A Study in Character-Grouping._ [_Character-Grouping._] EVERY lover of art feels that the different fine arts form not a crowd but a family; the more familiar the mind becomes with them the more it delights to trace in them the application of common ideas to different media of expression. We are reminded of this essential unity by the way in which the arts borrow their terms from one another. 'Colour' is applied to music, 'tone' to painting; we speak of costume as 'loud,' of melody as 'bright,' of orchestration as 'massive.' Two classes of oratorical style have been distinguished as 'statuesque' and 'picturesque'; while the application of a musical term, 'harmony,' and a term of sculpture, 'relief,' to all the arts alike is so common that the transference is scarcely felt. Such usages are not the devices of a straitened vocabulary, but are significant of a single _Art_ which is felt to underlie the special _arts_. So the more Drama is brought by criticism into the family of the fine arts the more it will be seen to present the common features. We have already had to notice repeatedly how the idea of pattern or design is the key to dramatic plot. We are in the present study to see how contrast of character, such as was traced in the last study between Lord and Lady Macbeth, when applied to a larger number of personages, produces an effect on the mind analogous to that of _grouping_ in pictures and statuary: the different personages not only present points of contrast with one another, but their varieties suddenly fall into a unity of effect if looked at from some one point of view. [_The grouping in Julius Cæsar rests on the antithesis of the practical and inner life._] An example of such Character-Grouping is seen in the play of _Julius Cæsar_, where the four leading figures, all on the grandest scale, have the elements of their characters thrown into relief by comparison with one another, and the contrast stands out boldly when the four are reviewed in relation to one single idea. This idea is the same as that which lay at the root of the Character-Contrast in _Macbeth_--the antithesis of the practical and inner life. It is, however, applied in a totally different sphere. Instead of a simple age in which the lives coincide with the sexes we are carried to the other extreme of civilisation, the final age of Roman liberty, and all four personages are merged in the busy world of political life. Naturally, then, the contrast of the two lives takes in this play a different form. [_This takes the form of individual sympathies_ v. _public policy._] In the play of _Macbeth_ the inner life was seen in the force of will which could hold down alike bad and good impulses; while the outer life was made interesting by its confinement to the training given by action, and an exhibition of it devoid of the thoughtfulness and self-control for which the life of activity has to draw upon the inner life. But there is another aspect in which the two may be regarded. The idea of the inner life is reflected in the word 'individuality,' or that which a man has not in common with others. The cultivation of the inner life implies not merely cultivation of our own individuality, but to it also belongs sympathy with the individuality of others; whereas in the sphere of practical life men fall into classes, and each person has his place as a member of these classes. Thus benevolence may take the form of enquiring into individual wants and troubles and meeting these by personal assistance; but a man has an equal claim to be called benevolent who applies himself to such sciences as political economy, studies the springs which regulate human society, and by influencing these in the right direction confers benefits upon whole classes at a time. Charity and political science are the two forms benevolence assumes correspondent to the inner life of individual sympathies and the outer life of public action. Or, if we consider the contrast from the side of rights as distinguished from duties, the supreme form in which the rights of individuals may be summed up is justice; the corresponding claim which public life makes upon us is (in the highest sense of the term) policy: wherever these two, justice and policy, seem to clash, the outer and inner life are brought into conflict. It is in this form that the conflict is raised in the play of _Julius Cæsar_. To get it in its full force, the dramatist goes to the world of antiquity, for one of the leading distinctions between ancient and modern society is that the modern world gives the fullest play to the individual, while in ancient systems the individual was treated as existing solely for the state. 'Liberty' has been a watchword in both ages; but while we mean by liberty the least amount of interference with personal activity, the liberty for which ancient patriots contended was freedom of the government from external or internal control, and the ideal republic of Plato was so contrived as to reduce individual liberty to a minimum. And this subordination of private to public was most fully carried out in Rome. 'The common weal,' says Merivale, 'was after all the grand object of the heroes of Roman story. Few of the renowned heroes of old had attained their eminence as public benefactors without steeling their hearts against the purest instincts of nature. The deeds of a Brutus or a Manlius, of a Sulla or a Cæsar, would have been branded as crimes in private citizens; it was the public character of the actors that stamped them with immortal glory in the eyes of their countrymen.' Accordingly, the opposition of outer and inner life is brought before us most keenly when, in Roman life, a public policy, the cause of republican freedom, seems to be bound up with the supreme crime against justice and the rights of the individual, assassination. [_Brutus's character so evenly developed that the antithesis disappears._] Brutus is the central figure of the group: in his character the two sides are so balanced that the antithesis disappears. This evenness of development in his nature is the thought of those who in the play gather around his corpse; giving prominence to the quality in Brutus hidden from the casual observer they say: [=v.= v. 73.] His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world 'This was a man!' Of another it would be said that he was a poet, a philosopher; of Brutus the only true description was that he was a man! It is in very few characters that force and softness are each carried to such perfection. [_Force of his character._] The strong side of Brutus's character is that which has given to the whole play its characteristic tone. It is seen in the way in which he appreciates the issue at stake. Weak men sin by hiding from themselves what it is they do; Brutus is fully alive to the foulness of conspiracy at the moment in which he is conspiring. [=ii.= i. 77.] O conspiracy, Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? His high tone he carries into the darkest scenes of the play. The use of criminal means has usually an intoxicating effect upon the moral sense, and suggests to those once committed to it that it is useless to haggle over the amount of the crime until the end be obtained. [=ii.= i. 162.] Brutus resists this intoxication, setting his face against the proposal to include Antony in Cæsar's fate, and resolving that not one life shall be unnecessarily sacrificed. He scorns the refuge of suicide; and with warmth adjures his comrades not to stain-- [=ii.= i. 114.] The even virtue of our enterprise, Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits, To think that or our cause or our performance Did need an oath; when every drop of blood That every Roman bears, and nobly bears, Is guilty of a several bastardy, If he do break the smallest particle Of any promise that hath pass'd from him. The scale of Brutus's character is again brought out by his relations with other personages of the play. Casca, with all his cynical depreciation of others, has to bear unqualified testimony to Brutus's greatness: [=i.= iii. 157.] O, he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness. [=ii.= i, fin.] We see Ligarius coming from a sick-bed to join in he knows not what: 'it sufficeth that Brutus leads me on.' And the hero's own thought, when at the point of death he pauses to take a moment's survey of his whole life, [=v.= v. 34.] is of the unfailing power with which he has swayed the hearts of all around him: My heart doth joy that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me. Above all, contact with Cassius throws into relief the greatness of Brutus. [=i.= ii.] At the opening of the play it is Cassius that we associate with the idea of force; but his is the ruling mind only while Brutus is hesitating; as soon as Brutus has thrown in his lot with the conspirators, Cassius himself is swept along with the current of Brutus's irresistible influence. [Cf. =ii.= i. 162-190; =iii.= i. 140-146, 231-243; =iv.= iii. 196-225, &c.] In the councils every point is decided--and, so far as success is concerned, wrongly decided--against Cassius's better judgment. In the sensational moment when Popilius Lena enters the Senate-house and is seen to whisper Cæsar, Cassius's presence of mind fails him, [=iii.= i. 19.] and he prepares in despair for suicide; Brutus retains calmness enough to _watch faces_: Cassius, be constant: Popilius Lena speaks not of our purposes; For, look, he smiles, and Cæsar doth not change. [=iv.= iii.] In the Quarrel Scene Cassius has lost all pretensions to dignity of action in the impatience sprung from a ruined cause; Brutus maintains principle in despair. Finally, at the close of the scene, when it is discovered that under all the hardness of this contest for principle Brutus has been hiding a heart broken by the loss of Portia, [=iv.= iii, from 145.] Cassius is forced to give way and acknowledge Brutus's superiority to himself even in his own ideal of impassiveness: [=iv.= iii. 194.] I have as much of this in art as you, But yet my nature could not bear it so. [_Its softness._] The force in Brutus's character is obvious: it is rather its softer side that some readers find difficulty in seeing. But this difficulty is in reality a testimony to Shakespeare's skill, for Brutus is a Stoic, and what gentleness we see in him appears in spite of himself. It may be seen in his culture of art, music, and philosophy, which have such an effect in softening the manners. Nor is this in the case of the Roman Brutus a mere conventional culture: these tastes are among his strongest passions. [=iv.= iii. 256.] When all is confusion around him on the eve of the fatal battle he cannot restrain his longing for the refreshing tones of his page's lyre; and, the music over, he takes up his philosophical treatise at the page he had turned down. [=iv.= iii. 242.] Again Brutus's considerateness for his dependants is in strong contrast with the harshness of Roman masters. On the same eve of the battle he insists that the men who watch in his tent shall lie down instead of standing as discipline would require. [=iv.= iii, from 252.] An exquisite little episode brings out Brutus's sweetness of demeanour in dealing with his youthful page; this rises to womanly tenderness at the end when, noticing how the boy, wearied out and fallen asleep, is lying in a position to injure his instrument, he rises and disengages it without waking him. _Bru._ Look, Lucius, here's the book I sought for so; I put it in the pocket of my gown. _Luc._ I was sure your lordship did not give it me. _Bru._ Bear with me, good boy; I am much forgetful. Can'st thou hold up thy heavy eyes awhile, And touch thy instrument a strain or two? _Luc._ Ay, my lord, an't please you. _Bru._ It does, my boy: I trouble thee too much, but thou art willing. _Luc._ It is my duty, sir. _Bru._ I should not urge thy duty past thy might; I know young bloods look for a time of rest. _Luc._ I have slept my lord, already. _Bru._ It was well done; and thou shall sleep again; I will not hold thee long: if I do live I will be good to thee. [_Music and a song._ This is a sleepy tune. O murderous slumber, Lay'st thou thy leaden mace upon my boy, That plays thee music? Gentle knave, good night; I will not do thee so much wrong to wake thee.-- If thou dost nod, thou break'st thy instrument; I'll take it from thee; and, good boy, good night. [=ii.= i, from 233.] Brutus's relations with Portia bear the same testimony. Portia is a woman with as high a spirit as Lady Macbeth, and she can inflict a wound on herself to prove her courage and her right to share her husband's secrets. But she lacks the physical nerve of Lady Macbeth; [=ii.= iv.] her agitation on the morning of the assassination threatens to betray the conspirators, and when these have to flee from Rome the suspense is too much for her and she commits suicide. Brutus knew his wife better than she knew herself, and was right in seeking to withhold the fatal confidence; yet he allowed himself to be persuaded: no man would be so swayed by a tender woman unless he had a tender spirit of his own. In all these ways we may trace an extreme of gentleness in Brutus. [_This is concealed under stoic imperturbability._] But it is of the essence of his character that this softer side is concealed behind an imperturbability of outward demeanour that belongs to his stoic religion: this struggle between inward and outward is the main feature for the actor to bring out. [=iii.= ii, from 14.] It is a master stroke of Shakespeare that he utilises the euphuistic prose of his age to express impassiveness in Brutus's oration. The greatest of the world has just been assassinated; the mob are swaying with fluctuating passions; the subtlest orator of his day is at hand to turn those passions into the channel of vengeance for his friend: Brutus called on amid such surroundings to speak for the conspirators still maintains the artificial style of carefully balanced sentences, such as emotionless rhetoric builds up in the quiet of a study. As Cæsar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. [_The antithesis reappears for Brutus in the action._] Brutus's nature then is developed on all its sides; in his character the antithesis of the outer and inner life disappears. It reappears, however, in the action; [=ii.= i. 10-85.] for Brutus is compelled to balance a weighty issue, with public policy on the one side, and on the other, not only justice to individual claims, but further the claims of friendship, which is one of the fairest flowers of the inner life. And the balance dips to the wrong side. If the question were of using the weapon of assassination against a criminal too high for the ordinary law to reach, this would be a moral problem which, however doubtful to modern thought, would have been readily decided by a Stoic. But the question which presented itself to Brutus was distinctly not this. [=ii.= i. 18-34.] Shakespeare has been careful to represent Brutus as admitting to himself that Cæsar has done no wrong: he slays him _for what he might do_. The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power: and, _to speak truth of Cæsar, I have not known when his affections sway'd More than his reason_. But 'tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Cæsar may. Then, lest he may, prevent. And _since the quarrel Will bear no colour for the thing he is,_ Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented, Would run to these and these extremities: And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell. It is true that Shakespeare, with his usual 'dramatic hedging,' softens down this immoral bias in a great hero by representing him as both a Roman, of the nation which beyond all other nations exalted the state over the individual, and a Brutus, [compare =i.= ii. 159.] representative of the house which had risen to greatness by leading violence against tyranny. But, Brutus's own conscience being judge, the man against whom he moves is guiltless; and so the conscious sacrifice of justice and friendship to policy is a fatal error which is source sufficient for the whole tragedy of which Brutus is the hero. [_Cæsar: discrepancies in his character to be reconciled._] The character of Cæsar is one of the most difficult in Shakespeare. Under the influence of some of his speeches we find ourselves in the presence of one of the master spirits of mankind; other scenes in which he plays a leading part breathe nothing but the feeblest vacillation and weakness. It is the business of Character-Interpretation to harmonise this contradiction; it is not interpretation at all to ignore one side of it and be content with describing Cæsar as vacillating. The force and strength of his character is seen in the impression he makes upon forceful and strong men. The attitude of Brutus to Cæsar seems throughout to be that of looking up; and notably at one point the thought of Cæsar's greatness seems to cast a lurid gleam over the assassination plot itself, and Brutus feels that the grandeur of the victim gives a dignity to the crime: [=ii.= i. 173.] Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods. The strength and force of Antony again no one will question; and Antony, at the moment when he is alone with the corpse of Cæsar and can have no motive for hypocrisy, apostrophises it in the words-- [=iii.= i. 256.] Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever lived in the tide of times. And we see enough of Cæsar in the play to bear out the opinions of Brutus and Antony. Those who accept vacillation as sufficient description of Cæsar's character must explain his strong speeches as vaunting and self-assertion. But surely it must be possible for dramatic language to distinguish between the true and the assumed force; and equally surely there is a genuine ring in the speeches in which Cæsar's heroic spirit, shut out from the natural sphere of action in which it has been so often proved, leaps restlessly at every opportunity into pregnant words. We may thus feel certain of his lofty physical courage. [=ii.= ii. 32.] Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear ... * * * * * [=ii.= ii. 44.] Danger knows full well That Cæsar is more dangerous than he: We are two lions litter'd in one day, And I the elder and more terrible. A man must have felt the thrill of courage in search of its food, danger, before his self-assertion finds language of this kind in which to express itself. In another scene we have the perfect _fortiter in re_ and _suaviter in modo_ of the trained statesman exhibited in the courtesy with which Cæsar receives the conspirators, [=ii.= ii, from 57.] combined with his perfect readiness to 'tell graybeards the truth.' [=iii.= i. 35.] Nor could imperial firmness be more ideally painted than in the way in which Cæsar 'prevents' Cimber's intercession. Be not fond, To think that Cæsar bears such rebel blood That will be thaw'd from the true quality With that which melteth fools; I mean, sweet words, Low-crooked court'sies, and base spaniel-fawning. Thy brother by decree is banished: If thou dost bend and pray and fawn for him, I spurn thee like a cur out of my way. Know, Cæsar doth not wrong, nor without cause Will he be satisfied. Commonplace authority loudly proclaims that it will never relent: the true imperial spirit feels it a preliminary condition to see first that it never does wrong. [_Reconciliation: Cæsar the highest type of the practical;_] It is the antithesis of the outer and inner life that explains this contradiction in Cæsar's character. Like Macbeth, he is the embodiment of one side and one side only of the antithesis; he is the complete type of the practical--though in special qualities he is as unlike Macbeth as his age is unlike Macbeth's age. Accordingly Cæsar appears before us perfect up to the point where his own personality comes in. The military and political spheres, in which he has been such a colossal figure, call forth practical powers, and do not involve introspection and meditation on foundation principles of thought. Theirs not to reason why: Theirs but to do. The tasks of the soldier and the statesman are imposed upon them by external authority and necessities, and the faculties exercised are those which shape means to ends. But at last Cæsar comes to a crisis that does involve his personality; he attempts a task imposed on him by his own ambition. He plays in a game of which the prize is the world and the stake himself, and to estimate chances in such a game tests self-knowledge and self-command to its depths. [_but lacking in the inner life._] How wanting Cæsar is in the cultivation of the inner life is brought out by his contrast with Cassius. [=i.= ii. 100-128.] The incidents of the flood and the fever, retained by the memory of Cassius, illustrate this. The first of these was no mere swimming-match; the flood in the Tiber was such as to reduce to nothing the difference between one swimmer and another. [=i.= ii. 102.] It was a trial of nerve: and as long as action was possible Cæsar was not only as brave as Cassius, but was the one attracted by the danger. Then some chance wave or cross current renders his chance of life hopeless, and no buffeting with lusty sinews is of any avail; that is the point at which the _passive_ courage born of the inner life comes in, and gives strength to submit to the inevitable in calmness. This Cæsar lacks, and he calls for rescue: Cassius would have felt the water close over him and have sunk to the bottom and died rather than accept aid from his rival. In like manner the sick bed is a region in which the highest physical and intellectual activity is helpless; the trained self-control of a Stoic may have a sphere for exercise even here; but the god Cæsar shakes, and cries for drink like a sick girl. [_The conception brought out by personal contact with Cassius._] It is interesting to note how the two types of mind, when brought into personal contact, jar upon one another's self-consciousness. The intellectual man, judging the man of action by the test of mutual intercourse, sees nothing to explain the other's greatness, and wonders what people find in him that they so admire him and submit to his influence. On the other hand, the man of achievement is uneasily conscious of a sort of superiority in one whose intellectual aims and habits he finds it so difficult to follow--yet superiority it is not, for what has he _done_? [=i.= ii. 182-214.] Shakespeare has illustrated this in the play by contriving to bring Cæsar and his suite across the 'public place' in which Cassius is discoursing to Brutus. Cassius feels the usual irritation at being utterly unable to find in his old acquaintance any special qualities to explain his elevation. [=i.= ii. 148.] Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed, That he is grown so great? Similarly Cæsar, as he casts a passing glance at Cassius, becomes at once uneasy. 'He thinks too much,' is the exclamation of the man of action: He loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music. The practical man, accustomed to divide mankind into a few simple types, is always uncomfortable at finding a man he cannot classify. Finally there is a climax to the jealousy that exists between the two lives: Cæsar complains that Cassius '_looks quite through the deeds of men._' [_A change in Cæsar and a change in Rome itself._ comp. =i.= i, and =iii.= iii; =i.= ii. 151, 164; =i.= iii. 82, 105; =iii.= i. 66-70; =v.= v. 69-72, &c.] There is another circumstance to be taken into account in explaining the weakness of Cæsar. A change has come over the spirit of Roman political life itself--such seems to be Shakespeare's conception: Cæsar on his return has found Rome no longer the Rome he had known. Before he left for Gaul, Rome had been the ideal sphere for public life, the arena in which principles alone were allowed to combat, and from which the banishment of personal aims and passions was the first condition of virtue. In his absence Rome has gradually degenerated; the mob has become the ruling force, and introduced an element of uncertainty into political life; politics has passed from science into gambling. A new order of public men has arisen, of which Cassius and Antony are the types; personal aims, personal temptations, and personal risks are now inextricably interwoven with public action. This is a changed order of things to which the mind of Cæsar, cast in a higher mould, lacks the power to adapt itself. His vacillation is the vacillation of unfamiliarity with the new political conditions. [=i.= ii. 230.] He refuses the crown 'each time gentler than the other,' showing want of decisive reading in dealing with the fickle mob; [=i.= ii. 183.] and on his return from the Capitol he is too untrained in hypocrisy to conceal the angry spot upon his face; he has tried to use the new weapons which he does not understand, and has failed. [=ii.= i. 195.] It is a subtle touch of Shakespeare's to the same effect that Cæsar is represented as having himself undergone a change _of late_: For he is superstitious grown of late, Quite from the main opinion he held once Of fantasy, of dreams and ceremonies To come back to a world of which you have mastered the machinery, and to find that it is no longer governed by machinery at all, that causes no longer produce their effects--this, if anything, might well drive a strong intellect to superstition. And herein consists the pathos of Cæsar's situation. The deepest tragedy of the play is not the assassination of Cæsar, it is rather seen in such a speech as this of Decius: [=ii.= i. 202.] If he be so resolved, I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betray'd with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils and men with flatterers; But when I tell him, he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered. Assassination is a less piteous thing than to see the giant intellect by its very strength unable to contend against the low cunning of a fifth-rate intriguer. Such, then, appears to be Shakespeare's conception of Julius Cæsar. He is the consummate type of the practical: emphatically the public man, complete in all the greatness that belongs to action. On the other hand, the knowledge of self produced by self-contemplation is wanting, and so when he comes to consider the relation of his individual self to the state he vacillates with the vacillation of a strong man moving amongst men of whose greater intellectual subtlety he is dimly conscious: no unnatural conception for a Cæsar who has been founding empires abroad while his fellows have been sharpening their wits in the party contests of a decaying state. [_Cassius: his whole character developed and subjected to a master-passion that is disinterested._] The remaining members of the group are Cassius and Antony. In Cassius thought and action have been equally developed, and he has the qualities belonging to both the outer and the inner life. But the side which in Brutus barely preponderated, absolutely tyrannises in Cassius; his public life has given him a grand passion to which the whole of his nature becomes subservient. Inheriting a 'rash humour' from his mother, he was specially prepared for impatience of political anomalies; [=iv.= iii. 120.] republican independence has become to him an ideal dearer than life. [=i.= ii. 95.] I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. [=i.= ii, iii; =ii.= i; =iii.= i. 177, &c.] He has thus become a professional politician. Politics is to him a game, and men are counters to be used; [=i.= ii. 312-319.] Cassius finds satisfaction in discovering that even Brutus's 'honourable metal may be wrought from that it is disposed.' He has the politician's low view of human nature; while Brutus talks of principles Cassius interposes appeals to interest: he says to Antony, [=iii.= i. 177.] Your voice shall be as strong as any man's In the disposing of new dignities. His party spirit is, as usual, unscrupulous; he seeks to work upon his friend's unsuspecting nobility by concocted letters thrown in at his windows; [=i.= ii. 319.] and in the Quarrel Scene loses patience at Brutus's scruples. [=iv.= iii. 7, 29, &c.] I'll not endure it: you forget yourself, To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I, Older in practice, abler than yourself To make conditions. At the same time he has a party politician's tact; his advice throughout the play is proved by the event to have been right, [=iii.= i. 145.] and he does himself no more than justice when he says his misgiving 'still falls shrewdly to the purpose.' [_Antony: his whole character developed and subjected to selfish passion._] Antony also has all the powers that belong both to the intellectual and practical life; so far as these powers are concerned, he has them developed to a higher degree than even Brutus and Cassius. His distinguishing mark lies in the use to which these powers are put; like Cassius, he has concentrated his whole nature in one aim, but this aim is not a disinterested object of public good, it is unmitigated self-seeking. Antony has greatness enough to appreciate the greatness of Cæsar; hence in the first half of the play he has effaced himself, choosing to rise to power as the useful tool of Cæsar. [esp. =i.= ii, from 190; comp. =ii.= i. 165.] Here, indeed, he is famed as a devotee of the softer studies, but it is not till his patron has fallen that his irresistible strength is put forth. There seems to be but one element in Antony that is not selfish: [=iii.= i, from 254; comp. 194-213.] his attachment to Cæsar is genuine, and its force is measured in the violent imagery of the vow with which, when alone for a moment with the corpse, he promises vengeance till all pity is 'choked with custom of fell deeds.' And yet this perhaps is after all the best illustration of his callousness to higher feelings; for the one tender emotion of his heart is used by him as the convenient weapon with which to fight his enemies and raise himself to power. [_The Grouping as a whole surveyed._] Such, then, is the Grouping of Characters in the play of _Julius Cæsar_. To catch it they must be contemplated in the light of the antithesis between the outer and inner life. In Brutus the antithesis disappears amid the perfect balancing of his character, to reappear in the action, when Brutus has to choose between his cause and his friend. In Cæsar the practical life only is developed, and he fails as soon as action involves the inner life. Cassius has the powers of both outer and inner life perfect, and they are fused into one master-passion, morbid but unselfish. Antony has carried to an even greater perfection the culture of both lives, and all his powers are concentrated in one purpose, which is purely selfish. In the action in which this group of personages is involved the determining fact is the change that has come over the spirit of Roman life, and introduced into its public policy the element of personal aggrandisement and personal risk. The new spirit works upon Brutus: the chance of winning political liberty by the assassination of one individual just overbalances his moral judgment, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the one false judgment of his life brings him, what is more to him than victory, the chance of maintaining the calmness of principle amid the ruins of a falling cause, and showing how a Stoic can fail and die. The new spirit affects Cæsar and tempts him into a personal enterprise in which success demands a meanness that he lacks, and he is betrayed to his fall. Yet in his fall he is glorious: the assassins' daggers purge him from the stain of his momentary personal ambition, and the sequel shows that the Roman world was not worthy of a ruler such as Cæsar. The spirit of the age effects Cassius, and fans his passion to work itself out to his own destruction, and he falls. Yet in his fall he is glorious: we forgive him the lowered tone of his political action when we see by the spirit of the new rulers how desperate was the chance for which he played, and how Cassius and his loved cause of republican freedom expire together. The spirit of the age which has wrought upon the rest is controlled and used by Antony, and he rises on their ruins. Yet in his rise he is less glorious than they in their fall: he does all for self; he may claim therefore the prize of success, but in goodness he has no share beyond that he is permitted to be the passive instrument of punishing evil. IX. HOW THE PLAY OF JULIUS CÆSAR WORKS TO A CLIMAX AT THE CENTRE. _A Study in Passion and Movement._ [_Passion and Movement as elements of dramatic effect._] THE preceding chapters have been confined to two of the main elements in dramatic effect, Character and Plot: the third remains to be illustrated. Amongst other devices of public amusement the experiment has been tried of arranging a game of chess to be played by living pieces on a monster board; if we suppose that in the midst of such a game the real combative instincts of the living pieces should be suddenly aroused, that the knight should in grim earnest plunge his spear into his nearest opponent, and that missiles should actually be discharged from the castles, then the shock produced in the feelings of the bystanders by such a change would serve to bring out with emphasis the distinction between Plot and the third element of dramatic effect, Passion. Plot is an interest of a purely intellectual kind, it traces laws, principles, order, and design in the incidents of life. Passion, on the other hand, depends on the human character of the personages involved; it consists in the effects produced on the spectator's emotional nature as his sympathy follows the characters through the incidents of the plot; it is War as distinguished from _Kriegspiel_. Effects of such Passion are numerous and various: the present study is concerned with its _Movement_. This Movement comprehends a class of dramatic effects differing in one obvious particular from the effects considered so far. Character-Interpretation and Plot are both analytical in their nature; the play has to be taken to pieces and details selected from various parts have to be put together to give the idea of a complete character, or to make up some single thread of design. [_Passion connected with the movement of a drama._] Movement, on the contrary, follows the actual order of the events as they take place in the play itself. The emotional effects produced by such events as they succeed one another will not be uniform and monotonous; the skill of the dramatist will lie in concentrating effect at some points and relieving it at others; and to watch such play of passion through the progress of the action will be a leading dramatic interest. Now we have already had occasion to notice the prominence which Shakespeare in his dramatic construction gives to the central point of a play; symmetry more than sensation is the effect which has an attraction for his genius, and the finale to which the action is to lead is not more important to him than the balancing of the whole drama about a turning-point in the middle. Accordingly it is not surprising to find that in the Passion-Movement of his dramas a similar plan of construction is often followed; that all other variations are subordinated to one great Climax of Passion at the centre. [_The regular arch-form applicable to Passion-Movement._] To repeat an illustration already applied to Plot: the movement of the passion seems to follow the form of a regular arch, commencing in calmness, rising through emotional strain to a summit of agitation at the centre, then through the rest of the play declining into a calmness of a different kind. It is the purpose of the two remaining studies to illustrate this kind of movement in two very different plays. _Julius Cæsar_ has the simplest of plots; our attention is engaged with a train of emotion which is made to rise gradually to a climax at the centre, and then equally gradually to decline. _Lear_, on the contrary, is amongst the most intricate of Shakespeare's plays; nevertheless the dramatist contrives to keep the same simple form of emotional effect, and its complex passions unite in producing a concentration of emotional agitation in a few central scenes. [_In Julius Cæsar the movement follows the justification of the conspirators to the audience:_] The passion in the play of _Julius Cæsar_ gathers around the conspirators, and follows them through the mutations of their fortunes. If however we are to catch the different parts of the action in their proper proportions we must remember the character of these conspirators, and especially of their leaders Brutus and Cassius. These are actuated in what they do not by personal motives but by devotion to the public good and the idea of republican liberty; accordingly in following their career we must not look too exclusively at their personal success and failure. The exact key to the movement of the drama will be given by fixing attention upon _the justification of the conspirators' cause_ in the minds of the audience; [_this rises to the centre and declines from the centre._] and it is this which is found to rise gradually to its height in the centre of the play, and from that point to decline to the end. I have pointed out in the preceding study how the issue at stake in _Julius Cæsar_ amounts to a conflict between the outer and inner life, between devotion to a public enterprise and such sympathy with the claims of individual humanity as is specially fostered by the cultivation of the inner nature. The issue is reflected in words of Brutus already quoted: [=ii.= i. 18.] The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power. Brutus applies this as a test to Cæsar's action, and is forced to acquit him: but is not Brutus here laying down the very principle of which his own error in the play is the violation? The assassin's dagger puts Brutus and the conspirators in the position of power; while 'remorse'--the word in Shakespearean English means human sympathy--is the due of their victim Cæsar, whose rights to justice as a man, and to more than justice as the friend of Brutus, the conspirators have the responsibility of balancing against the claims of a political cause. These claims of justice and humanity are deliberately ignored by the stoicism of Brutus, while the rest of the conspirators are blinded to them by the mists of political enthusiasm; this outraged human sympathy asserts itself after Cæsar's death in a monstrous form in the passions of the mob, which are guided by the skill of Antony to the destruction of the assassins. Of course both the original violation of the balance between the two lives and the subsequent reaction are equally corrupt. The stoicism of Brutus, with its suppression of the inner sympathies, arrives practically at the principle--destined in the future history of the world to be the basis of a yet greater crime--that it is expedient that one man should die rather than that a whole people should perish. On the other hand, Antony trades upon the fickle violence of the populace, and uses it as much for personal ends as for vengeance. This demoralisation of both the sides of character is the result of their divorce. Such is the essence of this play if its action be looked at as a whole; but it belongs to the movement of dramatic passion that we see the action only in its separate parts at different times. Through the first half of the play, while the justification of the conspirators' cause is rising, the other side of the question is carefully hidden from us; from the point of the assassination the suppressed element starts into prominence, and sweeps our sympathies along with it to its triumph at the conclusion of the play. [_First stage: the conspiracy forming. Passion indistinguishable from mere interest._] In following the movement of the drama the action seems to divide itself into stages. In the first of these stages, which comprehends the first two scenes, the conspiracy is only forming; the sympathy with which the spectator follows the details is entirely free from emotional agitation; passion so far is indistinguishable from mere interest. [=i.= i, ii.] The opening scene strikes appropriately the key-note of the whole action. [_Starting-point: signs of reaction in the popular worship of Cæsar._] In it we see the tribunes of the people--officers whose whole _raison d'être_ is to be the mouthpiece of the commonalty--restraining their own clients from the noisy honours they are disposed to pay to Cæsar. [=i.= i.] To the justification in our eyes of a conspiracy against Cæsar, there could not be a better starting-point than this hint that the popular worship of Cæsar, which has made him what he is, is itself reaching its reaction-point. Such a suggestion moreover makes the whole play one complete _wave_ of popular fickleness from crest to crest. [_The Rise begins. The cause seen at its best, the victim at his worst._] The second is the scene upon which the dramatist mainly relies for the _crescendo_ in the justification of the conspirators. It is a long scene, elaborately contrived so as to keep the conspirators and their cause before us at their very best, and the victim at his very worst. [=i.= ii.] Cassius is the life and spirit of this scene, as he is of the whole republican movement. Cassius is excellent soil for republican principles. The 'rash humour' his mother gave him would predispose him to impatience of those social inequalities and conventional distinctions against which republicanism sets itself. Again he is a hard-thinking man, to whom the perfect realisation of an ideal theory would be as palpable an aim as the more practical purposes of other men. He is a Roman moreover, at once proud of his nation as the greatest in the world, and aware that this national greatness had been through all history bound up with the maintenance of a republican constitution. His republicanism gives to Cassius the dignity that is always given to a character by a grand passion, whether for a cause, a woman, or an idea--the unification of a whole life in a single aim, by which the separate strings of a man's nature are, as it were, tuned into harmony. In the present scene Cassius is expounding the cause which is his life-object. Nor is this all. Cassius was politician enough to adapt himself to his hearers, and could hold up the lower motives to those who would be influenced by them; but in the present case it is the 'honourable metal' of a Brutus that he has to work upon, and his exposition of republicanism must be adapted to the highest possible standard. Accordingly, in the language of the scene we find the idea of human equality expressed in its most ideal form. Without it Cassius thinks life not worth living. [=i.= ii. 95.] I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. I was born free as Cæsar; so were you; We both have fed as well, and we can both Endure the winter's cold as well as he. The examples follow of the flood and fever incidents, which show how the majesty of Cæsar vanished before the violence of natural forces and the prostration of disease. [115.] And this man Is now become a god, and Cassius is A wretched creature and must bend his body, If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him. In the eye of the state, individuals are so many members of a class, in precisely the way that their names are so many examples of the proper noun. [142.] Brutus and Cæsar: what should be in that 'Cæsar'? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them, Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed, That he is grown so great? And this exposition of the conspirators' cause in its highest form is at the same time thrown into yet higher relief by a background to the scene, in which the victim is presented at his worst. [from 182.] All through the conversation between Brutus and Cassius, the shouting of the mob reminds of the scene which is at the moment going on in the Capitol, while the conversation is interrupted for a time by the returning procession of Cæsar. In this action behind the scenes which thus mingles with the main incident Cæsar is committing the one fault of his life: this is the fault of 'treason,' which can be justified only by being successful and so becoming 'revolution,' whereas Cæsar is failing, and deserving to fail from the vacillating hesitation with which he sins. Moreover, unfavourable as such incidents would be in themselves to our sympathy with Cæsar, yet it is not the actual facts that we are permitted to see, but they are further distorted by the medium through which they reach us--the cynicism of Casca which belittles and disparages all he relates. [=i.= ii. 235.] _Bru._ Tell us the manner of it, gentle Casca. _Casca._ I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery; I did not mark it. I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown;--yet 'twas not a crown neither, 'twas one of these coronets:--and, as I told you, he put it by once: but, for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again: but, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offer'd it the third time; he put it the third time by: and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chapped hands and threw up their sweaty night-caps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Cæsar had refused the crown that it had almost choked Cæsar; for he swounded and fell down at it: and, for mine own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.... When he came to himself again, he said, If he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity. Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried, 'Alas, good soul!' and forgave him with all their hearts; but there's no heed to be taken of them; if Cæsar had stabbed their mothers they would have done no less. [_Second stage: the conspiracy formed and developing. Passion-Strain begins._] At the end of the scene Brutus is won, and we pass immediately into the second stage of the action: the conspiracy is now formed and developing, and the emotional strain begins. The adhesion of Brutus has given us confidence that the conspiracy will be effective, and we have only to _wait_ for the issue. [=i.= iii--=ii.= ii.] This mere notion of _waiting_ is itself enough to introduce an element of agitation into the passion sufficient to mark off this stage of the action from the preceding. [_Suspense one element in the strain of passion._] How powerful suspense is for this purpose we have expressed in the words of the play itself: [=ii.= i. 63.] Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection. [_The background of tempest and supernatural portents a device for increasing the strain._] But besides the suspense there is a special device for securing the agitation proper to this stage of the passion: throughout there is maintained a Dramatic Background of night, storm, and supernatural portents. The conception of nature as exhibiting sympathy with sudden turns in human affairs is one of the most fundamental instincts of poetry. To cite notable instances: it is this which accompanies with storm and whirlwind the climax to the _Book of Job_, and which leads Milton to make the whole universe sensible of Adam's transgression: Earth trembl'd from her entrails, as again In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan; Sky lowr'd, and muttering thunder, some sad drops Wept at completing of the mortal sin Original. So too the other end of the world's history has its appropriate accompaniments: 'the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall be falling from heaven.' There is a _vagueness_ of terror inseparable from these outbursts of nature, so mysterious in their causes and aims. They are actually the most mighty of forces--for human artillery is feeble beside the earthquake--yet they are invisible: the wind works its havoc without the keenest eye being able to perceive it, and the lightning is never seen till it has struck. Again, there is something weird in the feeling that the most frightful powers in the material universe are all _soft things_. The empty air becomes the irresistible wind; the fluid and yielding water wears down the hard and massive rock and determines the shape of the earth; impalpable fire that is blown about in every direction can be roused till it devours the solidest constructions of human skill; while the most powerful agencies of all, electricity and atomic force, are imperceptible to any of the senses and are known only by their results. This uncanny terror attaching to the union between force and softness is the inspiration of one of Homer's most unique episodes, in which the bewildered Achilles, struggling with the river-god, finds the strength and skill of the finished warrior vain against the ever-rising water, and bitterly feels the violation of the natural order-- That strong might fall by strong, where now weak water's luxury Must make my death blush. [=i.= iii; =ii.= ii, &c.] To the terrible in nature are added portents of the supernatural, sudden violations of the uniformity of nature, the principle upon which all science is founded. The solitary bird of night has been seen in the crowded Capitol; fire has played around a human hand without destroying it; lions, forgetting their fierceness, have mingled with men; clouds drop fire instead of rain; graves are giving up their dead; the chance shapes of clouds take distinctness to suggest tumult on the earth. Such phenomena of nature and the supernatural, agitating from their appeal at once to fear and mystery, and associated by the fancy with the terrible in human events, have made a deep impression upon primitive thought; and the impression has descended by generations of inherited tradition until, whatever may be the attitude of the intellect to the phenomena themselves, their associations in the emotional nature are of agitation. They thus become appropriate as a Dramatic Background to an agitated passion in the scenes themselves, calling out the emotional effect by a vague sympathy, much as a musical note may set in vibration a distant string that is in unison with it. This device then is used by Shakespeare in the second stage of the present play. We see the warning terrors through the eyes of men of the time, and their force is measured by the fact that they shake the cynical Casca into eloquence. [=i.= iii. 3.] Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth Shakes like a thing unfirm? O Cicero, I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam, To be exalted with the threatening clouds: But never till to-night, never till now, Did I go through a tempest dropping fire. Either there is a civil strife in heaven, Or else the world, too saucy with the gods, Incenses them to send destruction. And the idea thus started at the commencement is kept before our minds throughout this stage of the drama by perpetual allusions, however slight, to the sky and external nature. [compare =ii.= i. 44, 101, 198, 221, 263; =ii.= ii.] Brutus reads the secret missives by the light of exhalations whizzing through the air; when some of the conspirators step aside, to occupy a few moments while the rest are conferring apart, it is to the sky their thoughts naturally seem to turn, and they with difficulty can make out the East from the West; the discussion of the conspirators includes the effect on Cæsar of the night's prodigies. Later Portia remonstrates against her husband's exposure to the raw and dank morning, to the rheumy and unpurged air; even when daylight has fully returned, the conversation is of Calpurnia's dream and the terrible prodigies. [=i.= iii.] Against this background are displayed, first single figures of Cassius and other conspirators; [=ii.= i. 1-85.] then Brutus alone in calm deliberation: [=ii.= i. 86-228.] then the whole band of conspirators, their wild excitement side by side with Brutus's immovable moderation. [=ii.= i, from 233.] Then the Conspiracy Scene fades in the early morning light into a display of Brutus in his softer relations; [=ii.= ii.] and with complete return of day changes to the house of Cæsar on the fatal morning. Cæsar also is displayed in contact with the supernatural, as represented by Calpurnia's terrors and repeated messages of omens that forbid his venturing upon public action for that day. [_Cæsar still seen at a disadvantage;_] Cæsar faces all this with his usual loftiness of mind; yet the scene is so contrived that, as far as immediate effect is concerned, this very loftiness is made to tell against him. The unflinching courage that overrides and interprets otherwise the prodigies and warnings seems presumption to us who know the reality of the danger. [=ii.= ii. 8-56.] It is the same with his yielding to the humour of his wife. Why should he not? his is not the conscious weakness that must be firm to show that it is not afraid. Yet when, upon Decius's explaining away the dream and satisfying Calpurnia's fears, Cæsar's own attraction to danger leads him to persevere in his first intention, this change of purpose seems to us, [=ii.= i. 202.] who have heard Decius's boast that he can o'ersway Cæsar with flattery, a confirmation of Cæsar's weakness. So in accordance with the purpose that reigns through the first half of the play the victim is made to appear at his worst: the _passing_ effect of the scene is to suggest weakness in Cæsar, while it is in fact furnishing elements which, upon reflection, go to build up a character of strength. [_and the justification of the conspirators still rising._] On the other hand, throughout this stage the justification of the conspirators' cause gains by their confidence and their high tone; in particular by the way in which they interpret to their own advantage the supernatural element. [=i.= iii. 42-79.] Cassius feels the wildness of the night as in perfect harmony with his own spirit. [=i.= iii. 46.] For my part, I have walk'd about the streets, Submitting me unto the perilous night, And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see, Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone; And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open The breast of heaven, I did present myself Even in the aim and very flash of it. And it needs only a word from him to communicate his confidence to his comrades. [=i.= iii. 72.] _Cassius._ Now could I, Casca, name to thee a man Most like this dreadful night, That thunders, lightens, opens graves, and roars As doth the lion in the Capitol, A man no mightier than thyself or me In personal action, yet prodigious grown And fearful, as these strange eruptions are-- _Casca._ 'Tis Cæsar that you mean; is it not, Cassius? [_Third stage. The Crisis: the passion-strain rises to a Climax._] The third stage of the action brings us to the climax of the passion; the strain upon our emotions now rises to a height of agitation. The exact commencement of the crisis seems to be marked by the soothsayer's words at the opening of Act III. [=ii.= iii--=iii.= i. 121.] Cæsar observes on entering the Capitol the soothsayer who had warned him to beware of this very day. _Cæsar._ The ides of March are come. _Sooth._ Ay, Cæsar; but not gone. Such words seem to measure out a narrow area of time in which the crisis is to work itself out. There is however no distinct break between different stages of a dramatic movement like that in the present play; [_Devices for working up the agitation._] and two short incidents have preceded this scene which have served as emotional devices to bring about a distinct advance in the intensification of the strain. [_Artemidorus_; =ii.= iii. and =iii.= i. 3.] In the first, Artemidorus appeared reading a letter of warning which he purposed to present to Cæsar on his way to the fatal spot. In the Capitol Scene he presents it, while the ready Decius hastens to interpose another petition to take off Cæsar's attention. Artemidorus conjures Cæsar to read his first for 'it touches him nearer'; but the imperial chivalry of Cæsar forbids: What touches us ourself shall be last served. [_Portia;_ =ii.= iv.] The momentary hope of rescue is dashed. In the second incident Portia has been displayed completely unnerved by the weight of a secret to the anxiety of which she is not equal; she sends messengers to the Capitol and recalls them as she recollects that she dare give them no message; her agitation has communicated itself to us, besides suggesting the fear that it may betray to others what she is anxious to conceal. Our sympathy has thus been tossed from side to side, although in its general direction it still moves on the side of the conspirators. [_Popilius Lena._] In the crisis itself the agitation becomes painful as the entrance of Popilius [=iii.= i. 13.] Lena and his secret communication to Cæsar cause a panic that threatens to wreck the whole plot on the verge of its success. Brutus's nerve sustains even this trial, and the way for the accomplishment of the deed is again clear. Emotional devices like these have carried the passion up to a climax of agitation; and the conspirators now advance to present their pretended suit and achieve the bloody deed. To the last the double effect of Cæsar's demeanour continues. Considered in itself, his unrelenting firmness of principle exhibits the highest model of a ruler; yet to us, who know the purpose lurking behind the hypocritical intercession of the conspirators, Cæsar's self-confidence resembles the infatuation that goes before Nemesis. [from 58.] He scorns the fickle politicians before him as mere wandering sparks of heavenly fire, while he is left alone as a pole-star of true-fixed and resting quality:--and in answer to his presumptuous boast that he can never be moved come the blows of the assassins which strike him down; [compare 115.] while there is a flash of irony as he is seen to have fallen beside the statue of Pompey, and the marble seems to gleam in cold triumph over the rival at last lying bleeding at its feet. The assassination is accomplished, the cause of the conspirators is won: pity notwithstanding we are swept along with the current of their enthusiasm; [_The justification at its height in the appeal to all time._] and the justification that has been steadily rising from the commencement reaches its climax as, their adversaries dispersing in terror, the conspirators dip their hands in their victim's blood, and make their triumphant appeal to the whole world and all time. [111.] _Cassius_. Stoop, then, and wash. How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In states unborn and accents yet unknown! _Brutus_. How many times shall Cæsar bleed in sport, That now on Pompey's basis lies along, No worthier than the dust! _Cassius._ So oft as that shall be, So often shall the knot of us be call'd The men that gave their country LIBERTY! [_Catastrophe, and commencement of the Reaction._] _Enter a servant:_ this simple stage-direction is the 'catastrophe,' the turning-round of the whole action; the arch has reached its apex and the Reaction has begun. [=iii.= i, from 122.] So instantaneous is the change, that though it is only the servant of Antony who speaks, yet the first words of his message ring with the peculiar tone of subtly-poised sentences which are inseparably associated with Antony's eloquence; it is like the first announcement of that which is to be a final theme in music, and from this point this tone dominates the scene to the very end. [125.] Thus he bade me say: Brutus is noble, wise, valiant, and honest, Cæsar was mighty, bold, royal, and loving, Say I love Brutus, and I honour him; Say I fear'd Cæsar, honour'd him, and lov'd him. If Brutus will vouchsafe that Antony May safely come to him, and be resolv'd How Cæsar hath deserved to lie in death, Mark Antony shall not love Cæsar dead So well as Brutus living. In the whole Shakespearean Drama there is nowhere such a swift swinging round of a dramatic action as is here marked by this sudden up-springing of the suppressed individuality in Antony's character, [=ii.= i. 165.] hitherto so colourless that he has been spared by the conspirators as a mere limb of Cæsar. [=iii.= i. 144.] The tone of exultant triumph in the conspirators has in an instant given place to Cassius's 'misgiving' as Brutus grants Antony an audience; [from 164.] and when Antony enters, Brutus's first words to him fall into the form of apology. The quick subtlety of Antony's intellect has grasped the whole situation, and with irresistible force he slowly feels his way towards using the conspirators' aid for crushing themselves and avenging their victim. [=iii.= i. 211, compare 177.] The bewilderment of the conspirators in the presence of this unlooked-for force is seen in Cassius's unavailing attempt to bring Antony to the point, as to what compact he will make with them. Antony, on the contrary, reads his men with such nicety that he can indulge himself in sailing close to the wind, [from 184.] and grasps fervently the hands of the assassins while he pours out a flood of bitter grief over the corpse. It is not hypocrisy, nor a trick to gain time, this conciliation of his enemies. Steeped in the political spirit of the age, Antony knows, as no other man, the mob which governs Rome, and is conscious of the mighty engine he possesses in his oratory to sway that mob in what direction he pleases; when his bold plan has succeeded, and his adversaries have consented to meet him in contest of oratory, then ironical conciliation becomes the natural relief to his pent-up passion. [220.] Friends am I with you all and love you all, _Upon this hope, that you shall give me reasons_ Why and wherein Cæsar was dangerous. It is as he feels the sense of innate oratorical power and of the opportunity his enemies have given to that power, that he exaggerates his temporary amity with the men he is about to crush: it is the executioner arranging his victim comfortably on the rack before he proceeds to apply the levers. Already the passion of the drama has fallen under the guidance of Antony. The view of Cæsar as an innocent victim is now allowed full play upon our sympathies when Antony, [from 254.] left alone with the corpse, can drop the artificial mask and give vent to his love and vengeance. [231-243.] The success of the conspiracy had begun to decline as we marked Brutus's ill-timed generosity to Antony in granting him the funeral oration; [=iii.= ii, from 13.] it crumbles away through the cold unnatural euphuism of Brutus's speech in its defence; [=iii.= ii, from 78.] it is hurried to its ruin when Antony at last exercises his spell upon the Roman people and upon the reader. The speech of Antony, with its mastery of every phase of feeling, is a perfect sonata upon the instrument of the human emotions. [=iii.= ii. 78.] Its opening theme is sympathy with bereavement, against which are working as if in conflict anticipations of future themes, doubt and compunction. [95, 109, &c.] A distinct change of movement comes with the first introduction of what is to be the final subject, [133.] the mention of the will. But when this new movement has worked up from curiosity to impatience, [177.] there is a diversion: the mention of the victory over the Nervii turns the emotions in the direction of historic pride, [178.] which harmonises well with the opposite emotions roused as the orator fingers hole after hole in Cæsar's mantle made by the daggers of his false friends, [200.] and so leads up to a sudden shock when he uncovers the body itself and displays the popular idol and its bloody defacement. [243.] Then the finale begins: the forgotten theme of the will is again started, and from a burst of gratitude the passion quickens and intensifies to rage, to fury, to mutiny. [_The mob won to the Reaction._] The mob is won to the Reaction; [=iii.= iii.] and the curtain that falls upon the third Act rises for a moment to display the populace tearing a man to pieces simply because he bears the same name as one of the conspirators. [_Last stage. Development of an inevitable fate: passion-strain ceases._] The final stage of the action works out the development of an inevitable fate. The emotional strain now ceases, and, as in the first stage, the passion is of the calmer order, the calmness in this case of pity balanced by a sense of justice. From the opening of the fourth Act the decline in the justification of the conspirators is intimated by the logic of events. The first scene exhibits to us the triumvirate that now governs Rome, and shows that in this triumvirate Antony is supreme: [Acts =iv, v. iv.= i.] with the man who is the embodiment of the Reaction thus appearing at the head of the world, the fall of the conspirators is seen to be inevitable. [=iv.= ii. 3.] The decline of our sympathy with them continues in the following scenes. The Quarrel Scene shows how low the tone of Cassius has fallen since he has dealt with assassination as a political weapon; and even Brutus's moderation has hardened into unpleasing harshness. [=iv.= iii. 148, &c.] There is at this point plenty of relief to such unpleasing effects: [=iv.= iii. from 239.] there is the exhibition of the tender side of Brutus's character as shown in his relations with his page, [=iv.= iii.] and the display of friendship maintained between Brutus and Cassius amid falling fortunes. But such incidents as these have a different effect upon us from that which they would have had at an earlier period; the justification of the conspirators has so far declined that now attractive touches in them serve only to increase the pathos of a fate which, however, our sympathy no longer seeks to resist. [=iv.= iii. 275.] We get a supernatural foreshadowing of the end in the appearance to Brutus of Cæsar's Ghost, [=v.= i. 80.] and the omen Cassius sees of the eagles that had consorted his army to Philippi giving place to ravens, crows, and kites on the morning of battle: this lends the authority of the invisible world to our sense that the conspirators' cause is doomed. [=iv.= iii. 196-230.] And judicial blindness overtakes them as Brutus's authority in council overweighs in point after point the shrewder advice of Cassius. Through the scenes of the fifth Act we see the republican leaders fighting on without hope. [_Justification entirely vanishes as the conspirators recognise Cæsar's victory._] The last remnant of justification for their cause ceases as the conspirators themselves seem to acknowledge their error and fate. Cassius as he feels his death-blow recognises the very weapon with which he had committed the crime: [=v.= iii. 45.] Cæsar, thou art revenged, Even with the sword that kill'd thee. And at last even the firm spirit of Brutus yields: [=v.= v. 94.] O Julius Cæsar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords In our own proper entrails. X. HOW CLIMAX MEETS CLIMAX IN THE CENTRE OF LEAR. _A Study in more complex Passion and Movement._ [_The plot of Lear highly complex_.] IN _Julius Cæsar_ we have seen how, in the case of a very simple play, a few simple devices are sufficient to produce a regular rise and fall in the passion. We now turn to a highly elaborate plot and trace how, notwithstanding the elaborateness, a similar concentration of the passion in the centre of the play can be secured. _King Lear_ is one of the most complex of Shakespeare's tragedies; its plot is made up of a number of separate actions, with their combinations accurately carried out, the whole impressing us with a sense of artistic involution similar to that of an elaborate musical fugue. Here, however, we are concerned only indirectly with the plot of the play: we need review it no further than may suffice to show what distinct interests enter into it, and enable us to observe how the separate trains of passion work toward a common climax at the centre. Starting from the notion of pattern as a fundamental idea we have seen how Plot presents trains of events in human life taking form and shape as a crime and its nemesis, an oracle and its fulfilment, the rise and fall of an individual, or even as simply a story. [_The main plot exhibits the Problem form of dramatic action._] The particular form of action underlying the main plot of _King Lear_ is different from any we have yet noticed. It may be described as a _Problem Action_. A mathematician in his problem assumes some unusual combination of forces to have come about, and then proceeds to trace its consequences: so the Drama often deals with problems in history and life, setting up, before the commencement of the play or early in the action, some peculiar arrangement of moral relations, and then throughout the rest of the action developing the consequences of these to the personages involved. Thus the opening scene of _King Lear_ is occupied in bringing before us a pregnant and suggestive state of affairs: imperiousness is represented as overthrowing conscience and setting up an unnatural distribution of power. [_The problem stated._] A human problem has thus been enunciated which the remainder of the play has to work out to its natural solution. Imperiousness seems to be the term appropriate to Lear's conduct in the first scene. This is no case of dotage dividing an inheritance according to public declarations of affection. The division had already been made according to the best advice: [=i.= i. 3, &c.] in the case of two of the daughters 'equalities had been so weighed that curiosity in neither could make choice of either's moiety'; and if the portion of the youngest and best loved of the three was the richest, this is a partiality natural enough to absolute power. The opening scene of the play is simply the court ceremony in which the formal transfer is to be made. [38.] Lear is already handing to his daughters the carefully drawn maps which mark the boundaries of the provinces, [49.] when he suddenly pauses, and, with the yearning of age and authority for testimonies of devotion, calls upon his daughters for declarations of affection, the easiest of returns for the substantial gifts he is giving them, and which Goneril and Regan pour forth with glib eloquence. [84.] Then Lear turns to Cordelia, and, thinking delightedly of the special prize he has marked out for the pet of his old age, asks her: What can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters? But Cordelia has been revolted by the fulsome flattery of the sisters whose hypocrisy she knows so well, and she bluntly refuses to be drawn into any declaration of affection at all. Cordelia might well have found some other method of separating herself from her false sisters, without thus flouting her father before his whole court in a moment of tenderness to herself; or, if carried away by the indignation of the moment, a sign of submission would have won her a ready pardon. [compare =i.= i. 131.] But Cordelia, sweet and strong as her character is in great things, has yet inherited a touch of her father's temper, and the moment's sullenness is protracted into obstinacy. Cordelia then has committed an offence of manner; Lear's passion vents itself in a sentence proper only to a moral crime: now the punishment of a minute offence with wholly disproportionate severity simply because it is an offence against personal will is an exact description of imperiousness. As Lear stands for imperiousness, so conscience is represented by Kent, who, with the voice of authority derived from lifelong intimacy and service, interposes to check the King's passion in its headlong course. [141-190.] _Kent._ Royal Lear, Whom I have ever honour'd as my king, Loved as my father, as my master follow'd, As my great patron thought on in my prayers,-- _Lear._ The bow is bent and drawn, make from the shaft. _Kent._ Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart: be Kent unmannerly When Lear is mad. What wilt thou do, old man? Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak, When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound, When majesty stoops to folly. Reverse thy doom.... _Lear._ Kent, on thy life, no more. _Kent._ My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies, nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive.... _Lear._ O, vassal! miscreant! [_Laying his hand on his sword._ _Albany._ } Dear sir, forbear. _Cornwall._ } _Kent._ Do: Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease. Revoke thy doom; Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat, I'll tell thee thou dost evil. In the banishment of this Kent, then, the resistance of Lear's conscience is overcome, and his imperious passion has full swing in transferring Cordelia's kingdom to her treacherous sisters. The opening scene has put before us, not in words but figured in action, a problem in human affairs: the violation of moral equity has set up an unnatural arrangement of power--power taken from the good and lodged in the hands of the bad. Here is, so to speak, a piece of moral unstable equilibrium, and the rebound from it is to furnish the remainder of the action. The very structure of the plot corresponds with the simple structure of a scientific proposition. The latter consists of two unequal parts: a few lines are sufficient to enunciate the problem, while a whole treatise may be required for its solution. So in _King Lear_ a single scene brings about the unnatural state of affairs, the consequences of which it takes the rest of the play to trace. The 'catastrophe,' or turning-point of the play at which the ultimate issues are decided, appears in the present case, not close to the end of the play, nor (as in _Julius Cæsar_) in the centre, but close to the commencement: at the end of the opening scene Lear's act of folly has in reality determined the issue of the whole action; the scenes which follow are only working out a determined issue to its full realisation. [_The solution of the problem in a triple tragedy._] We have seen the problem itself, the overthrow of conscience by imperiousness and the transfer of power from the good to the bad: what is the solution of it as presented by the incidents of the play? The consequences flowing from what Lear has done make up three distinct tragedies, which go on working side by side, and all of which are essential to the full solution of the problem. First, there is the nemesis upon Lear himself--the double retribution of receiving nothing but evil from those he has unrighteously rewarded, [(1) _Tragedy of Lear._] and nothing but good from her whom, he bitterly feels, he has cruelly wronged. [(2) _Tragedy of Cordelia and Kent._] But the punishment of the wrong-doer is only one element in the consequences of wrong; the innocent also are involved, and we get a second tragedy in the sufferings of the faithful Kent and the loving Cordelia, who, through Kent as her representative, watches over her father's safety, until at the end she appears in person to follow up her devotion to the death. When, however, the incidents making up the sufferings of Lear, of Kent, and of Cordelia are taken out of the main plot, there is still a considerable section left--[(3) _Tragedy of Goneril and Regan._] that which is occupied with the mutual intrigues of Goneril and Regan, intrigues ending in their common ruin. This constitutes a third tragedy which, it will be seen, is as necessary to the solution of our problem as the other two. To place power in the hands of the bad is an injury not only to others, but also to the bad themselves, as giving fuel to the fire of their wickedness: so in the tragedy of Goneril and Regan we see evil passions placed in improper authority using this authority to work out their own destruction. [_An underplot on the same basis as the main plot._] To this main plot is added an underplot equally elaborate. As in _The Merchant of Venice_, the stories borrowed from two distinct sources are worked into a common design: and the interweaving in the case of the present play is perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph of constructive skill. The two stories are made to rest upon the same fundamental idea--[compare =i.= i, fin.] that of undutifulness to old age: what Lear's daughters actually do is that which is insinuated by Edmund as his false charge against his brother. [=i.= ii. 76, &c.] I have heard him oft maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age, and fathers declining, the father should be as ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue. So obvious is this fundamental connection between the main and the underplot, that our attention is called to it by a personage in the play itself: [=iii.= vi. 117.] 'he childed as I father'd,' is Edgar's pithy summary of it when he is brought into contact with Lear. [_The main and underplot parallel and contrasted throughout._] But in this double tragedy, drawn from the two families of Lear and of Gloucester, the chief bond between its two sides consists in the sharp contrast which extends to every detail of the two stories. In the main plot we have a daughter, who has received nothing but harm from her father, who has unjustly had her position torn from her and given to undeserving sisters: nevertheless she sacrifices herself to save the father who did the injury from the sisters who profited by it. In the underplot we have a son, who has received nothing but good from his father, who has, contrary to justice, been advanced by him to the position of an elder brother whom he has slandered: nevertheless, he is seeking the destruction of the father who did him the unjust kindness, when he falls by the hand of the brother who was wronged by it. Thus as the main and underplot go on working side by side, they are at every turn by their antithesis throwing up one another's effect; the contrast is like the reversing of the original subject in a musical fugue. [_The underplot an Intrigue Action:_] Again, as the main plot consisted in the initiation of a problem and its solution, so the underplot consists in the development of an intrigue and its consequences. The tragedy of the Gloucester family will, if stated from the point of view of the father, correspond in its parts with the tragedy in the family of Lear. It must be remembered, however, that the position of the father is different in the two cases; Gloucester is not, as Lear, the agent of the crime, but only a deceived instrument in the hands of the villain Edmund, who is the real agent; if the proper allowance be made for this difference, [_involving a triple tragedy parallel with that of the main plot._] it will be seen that the three tragedies which make up the consequences of Lear's error have their analogies in the three tragedies which flow from the intrigue of Edmund. [(1) _Tragedy of Gloucester._] First, we have the nemesis on Gloucester, and this, in analogy with the nemesis on Lear, consists in receiving nothing but evil from the son he has so hastily advanced, and nothing but good from the other son whom, he comes gradually to feel, he has unintentionally wronged. [(2) _Tragedy of Edgar._] In the next place we have the sufferings of the innocent Edgar. [(3) _Tragedy of Edmund._] Then, as we before saw a third tragedy in the way in which the power conferred upon Goneril and Regan is used to work out their destruction, so in the underplot we find that the position which Edmund has gained involves him in intrigues, which by the development of the play are made to result in a nemesis upon his original intrigue. And it is a nemesis of exquisite exactness: for he meets his death in the very moment of his success, at the hands of the brother he has maligned and robbed, while the father he has deceived and sought to destroy is the means by which the avenger has been brought to the scene. [_Complexity of plot not inconsistent with simplicity of movement._] We have gone far enough into the construction of the plot to perceive its complexity and the principal elements into which that complexity can be analysed. Two separate systems, each consisting of an initial action and three resulting tragedies, eight actions in all, are woven together by common personages and incidents, by parallelism of spirit, and by movement to a common climax; not to speak of lesser Link Actions which assist in drawing the different stories closer together. As with plot generally, these separate elements are fully manifest only to the eye of analysis; in following the course of the drama itself, they make themselves felt only in a continued sense of involution and harmonious symmetry. It is with passion, not with plot, that the present study is concerned; and the train of passion which the common movement of these various actions calls out in the sympathy of the reader is as simple as the plot itself is intricate. In the case both of the main plot and the underplot the emotional effect rises in intensity; moreover at this central height of intensity the two merge in a common Climax. The construction of the play resembles, if such a comparison may be allowed, the patent gas-apparatus, which secures a high illuminating power by the simple device of several ordinary burners inclined to one another at such an angle that the apexes of their flames meet in a point. [from =ii.= iv. 290 to =iii.= vi. with the interruption of =iii.= iii, =iii.= v.] So the present play contains a Centrepiece of some three scenes, marked off (at least at the commencement) decisively, in which the main and underplot unite in a common Climax, with special devices to increase its effect; [_The different trains of passion focussed in a central Climax._] the diverse interests to which our sympathy was called out at the commencement, and which analysis can keep distinct to the end, are _focussed_, so far as passion is concerned, in this Centrepiece, in which human emotion is carried to the highest pitch of tragic agitation that the world of art has yet exhibited. [_The passions of the main plot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Lear._] The emotional effect of the main plot rises to a climax in the madness of Lear. This, as the highest form of human agitation, is obviously a climax to the story of Lear himself. It is equally a climax to the story of Kent and Cordelia, who suffer solely through their devoted watching over Lear, and to whom the bitterest point in their sufferings is that they feel over again all that their fallen master has to endure. Finally, in the madness of Lear the third of the three tragedies, the Goneril and Regan action, appears throughout in the background as the cause of all that is happening. If we keep our eye upon this madness of Lear the movement of the play assumes the form we have so often had to notice--the regular arch. The first half of the arch, or rise in emotional strain, we get in symptoms of mental disturbance preparing us for actual madness which is to come. It is important to note the difference between passion and madness: passion is a disease of the mind, madness is a disease extending to the mysterious linking of mind and body. At the commencement Lear is dominated by the passion of imperiousness, an imperiousness born of his absolute power as king and father; he has never learned from discipline restraint of his passion, but has been accustomed to fling himself upon obstacles and see them give way before him. Now the tragical situation is prepared for him of meeting with obstacles which will not give way, but from which his passion rebounds upon himself with a physical shock. As thus opposition follows opposition, we see _waves_ of physical, that is of hysterical, passion, sweeping over Lear, until, as it were, a tenth wave lands him in the full disease of madness. [=i.= iv.] The first case occurs in his interview with Goneril after that which is the first check he has received in his new life, the insolence shown to his retinue. Goneril enters his presence with a frown. The wont had been that Lear frowned and all cowered before him: and now he waits for his daughter to remember herself with a rising passion ill concealed under the forced calmness with which he enquires, 'Are you our daughter?' 'Doth any here know me?' But Goneril, on the contrary, calmly assumes the position of reprover, and details her unfounded charges of insolence against her father's sober followers, until at last he hears himself desired By her, that else will take the thing she begs, to disquantity his train. Then Lear breaks out: Darkness and devils! Saddle my horses; call my train together. Degenerate bastard! I'll not trouble thee: Yet have I left a daughter. In a moment the thought of Cordelia's 'most small fault' and how it had been visited upon her occurs to condense into a single pang the whole sense of his folly; and here it is that the first of these waves of physical passion comes over Lear, its physical character marked by the physical action which accompanies it: [=i.= iv. 292.] O Lear, Lear, Lear! Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in, [_Striking his head._ And thy dear judgement out. It lasts but for a moment: but it is a wave, and it will return. [=i.= v.] Accordingly in the next scene we see Lear on his journey from one daughter to the other. He is brooding over the scene he is leaving behind, and he cannot disguise a shade of anxiety, in his awakened judgment, that some such scene may be reserved for him in the goal to which he is journeying. He is half listening, moreover, to the Fool, who harps on the same thought, that the King is suffering what he might have expected, that the other daughter will be like the first:--until there comes another of these sudden outbursts of passion, in which Lear for a moment half foresees the end to which he is being carried. [=i.= v. 49.] O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad! Imperiousness is especially attached to outward signs of reverence: [=ii.= iv. 4.] it is reserved for Lear when he arrives at Regan's palace to find the messenger he has sent on to announce him suffering the indignity of the stocks. At first he will not believe that this has been done by order of his daughter and son. [13.] _Kent._ It is both he and she; Your son and daughter. _Lear._ No. _Kent._ Yes. _Lear._ No, I say. _Kent._ I say, yea. _Lear._ No, no, they would not. _Kent._ Yes, they have. _Lear._ By Jupiter, I swear, no. _Kent._ By Juno, I swear, ay. _Lear._ They durst not do't; They could not, would not do't; 'tis worse than murder, To do upon respect such violent outrage. But he has to listen to a circumstantial account of the insult, and, further, reminded by the Fool that Fathers that wear rags Do make their children blind, he comes at last to realise it all,--and then there sweeps over him a third and more violent wave of hysterical agitation. [56.] O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element's below! [=ii.= iv. 89.] He has mastered the passion by a strong effort: but it is a wave, and it will return. He has mastered himself in order to confront the culprits face to face: his altered position is brought home to him when they refuse to receive him. And the refusal is made the worse by the well-meant attempt of Gloucester to palliate it, in which he unfortunately speaks of the 'fiery quality' of the duke. _Lear._ Vengeance! plague! death! confusion! Fiery? what quality? Nothing is harder than to endure what one is in the habit of inflicting on others; it was Lear's own 'fiery quality' by which he had been accustomed to scorch all opposition out of his way; now he has to hear another man's 'fiery quality' quoted to him. But this outburst is only momentary; the very extremity of the case seems to calm Lear, and he begins himself to frame excuses for the duke, how sickness and infirmity neglect the 'office' to which health is bound--until his eye lights again upon his messenger sitting in the stocks, and the recollection of this deliberate affront brings back again the wave of passion. [122.] O me, my heart, my rising heart! but, down! Lear had a strange confidence in his daughter Regan. As we see the two women in the play, Regan appears the more cold-blooded; nothing in Goneril is more cruel than Regan's [204.] I pray you, father, being weak, seem so; or her meeting Lear's 'I gave you all' with the rejoinder, [253.] And in good time you gave it. But there was something in Regan's personal appearance that belied her real character; her father says to her in this scene: [173.] Her eyes are fierce, but thine Do comfort and not burn. Judas betrayed with a kiss, and Regan persecutes her father in tears. But Regan has scarcely entered her father's presence when the trumpet announces the arrival of Goneril, and [185.] Lear has to see the Regan [197.] in whom he is trusting take Goneril's hand before his eyes in token that she is making common cause with her. When following this the words 'indiscretion,' 'dotage,' reach his ear there is a momentary swelling of the physical passion within: [200.] O sides, you are too tough; Will you yet hold? He has mastered it for the last time: for now his whole world seems to be closing in around him; he has committed his all to the two daughters standing before him, [from 233.] and they unite to beat him down, from fifty knights to twenty-five, from twenty-five to ten, to five, until the soft-eyed Regan asks, 'What need one?' A sense of crushing oppression stifles his anger, and Lear begins to answer with the same calmness with which the question had been asked: O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st, Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need,-- He breaks off at finding himself actually pleading: and the blinding tears come as he recognises that the kingly passion in which he had found support at every cross has now deserted him in his extremity. He appeals to heaven against the injustice. You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need! You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks! The prayer is answered; the passion returns in full flood, and at last brings Lear face to face with the madness which has threatened from a distance. No, you unnatural hags, I will have such revenges on you both, That all the world shall--I will do such things,-- What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep; No, I'll not weep: I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I SHALL go mad! [=ii.= iv. 290. _The storm marks off the Centrepiece of the play._] As Lear with these words rushes out into the night, we hear the first sound of the storm--the storm which here, as in _Julius Cæsar_, will be recognised as the dramatic background to the tempest of human emotions; it is the signal that we have now entered upon the mysterious Centrepiece of the play, in which the gathering passions of the whole drama are to be allowed to vent themselves without check or bound. And it is no ordinary storm: it is a night of bleak winds sorely ruffling, of cataracts and hurricanoes, of curled waters swelling above the main, of thought-executing fires and oak-cleaving thunderbolts; a night [=iii.= i. 12, &c.] wherein the cub-drawn bear would couch, The lion and the belly-pinched wolf Keep their fur dry. And all of it is needed to harmonise with the whirlwind of human passions which finds relief only in outscorning its fury. The purpose of the storm is not confined to this of marking the emotional climax: it is one of the agencies which assist in carrying it to its height. Experts in mental disease have noted amongst the causes which convert mere mental excitement into actual madness two leading ones, external physical shocks and imitation. Shakespeare has made use of both in the central scenes of this play. [=iii.= i. 3: =iii.= ii. &c.] For the first, Lear is exposed without shelter to the pelting of the pitiless storm, and he waxes wilder with its wildness. [=iii.= iv, from 39.] Again when all this is at its height he is suddenly brought into contact with a half-naked Tom o'Bedlam. This gives the final shock. So far he had not gone beyond ungovernable rage; he had not lost self-consciousness, and could say, 'My wits begin to turn'; [=iii.= iv. 66.] but the sight of Edgar completely unhinges his mind, and hallucinations set in; a moment after he has seen him the spirit of imitation begins to work, and Lear commences to strip off his clothes. Thus perfect is the regular arch of effect which is connected with Lear's madness. We have its gradual rise in the waves of hysterical passion which ebbed after they had flowed, until, at the point separating the Centrepiece from the rest of the play, Lear's 'O fool I _shall_ go mad' seems to mark a change from which he never goes back. Through these central scenes exposure to the storm is fanning his passion more and more irretrievably into madness; [=iii.= iii. 39.] at the exact centre of all, imitation of Edgar comes to make the insanity acute. [_Decline after the Centrepiece from violent madness to shattered intellect._] After the Centrepiece Lear disappears for a time, and when we next see him agitation has declined into what is more pathetic: the acute mania has given place to the pitiful spectacle of a shattered intellect; there is no longer sharp suffering, [=iv.= vi. 81.] but the whole mind is wrecked, gleams of coherence coming at intervals to mark what a fall there has been; [compare =iv.= vi. 178; =v.= iii. 314.] the strain upon our emotions sinks into the calm of hopelessness. He hates him much That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. [_The passions of the underplot gather to a common Climax in the madness of Edgar._] But who is this madman with whom Lear meets at the turning-point of the play? It is Edgar, the victim of the underplot, whose life has been sought by his brother and father until he can find no way of saving himself but the disguise of feigned madness. This feigned madness of Edgar, as it appears in the central scenes, serves as emotional climax to the underplot, just as the madness of Lear is the emotional climax of the main plot. Edgar's madness is obviously the climax to the tragedy of his own sufferings, but it is also a central point to the movement of the other two tragedies which with that of Edgar make up the underplot. One of these is the nemesis upon Gloucester, and this, we have seen, is double, that he receives good from the son he has wronged and evil from the son he has favoured. [=iii.= iv. 170.] The turning-point of such a nemesis is reached in the Hovel Scene, where Gloucester says: I'll tell thee, friend, I am almost mad myself: I had a son, Now outlaw'd from my blood; he sought my life, But lately, very late: I loved him, friend: No father his son dearer: truth to tell thee, This grief hath crazed my wits! He says this in the presence of the very Edgar, disguised under the form of the wretched idiot he hardly marks. Edgar now learns how his father has been deceived; [compare =iii.= iii. 15.] in his heart he is re-united to him, and from this point of re-union springs the devotion he lavishes upon his father in the affliction that presently falls upon him. [=iii.= iii. 22; =iii.= vii.] On the other hand, that which brings Gloucester to this Hovel Scene, the attempt to save the King, is betrayed by Edmund, who becomes thereby the cause of the vengeance which puts out his father's eyes. Thus from this meeting of the mad Edgar with the mad Lear there springs at once the final stroke in the misery Gloucester suffers from the son he has favoured, and the beginning of the forgiving love he is to experience from the son he has wronged: that meeting then is certainly the central climax to the double nemesis which makes up the Gloucester action. The remaining tragedy of the underplot embraces the series of incidents by the combination of which the success of Edmund's intrigue becomes gradually converted into the nemesis which punishes it. Now the squalid wretchedness of a Bedlamite, together with the painful strain of supporting the assumed character amidst the conflicting emotions which the unexpected meeting of the Hovel Scene has aroused, represent the highest point to which the misery resulting from the intrigue can rise. [=iv.= i, &c.] At the same time the use Edgar makes of this madness after hearing Gloucester's confession is to fasten himself in attendance upon his afflicted father, and proves in the sequel the means by which he is brought to be the instrument of the vengeance that overtakes Edmund. The central climax of a tragedy like this of intrigue and nemesis cannot be more clearly marked than in the incident in which are combined the summit of the injury and the foundation of the retribution. Thus all three tragedies which together make up the resultant of the intrigue constituting the underplot reach their climax of agitation in the scene in which Lear and Edgar meet. [_The Centrepiece a duet, or by the addition of the Fool, a trio of madness.]_ It appears, then, that the Centrepiece of the play is occupied with the contact of two madnesses, the madness of Lear and the madness of Edgar; that of Lear gathering up into a climax trains of passion from all the three tragedies of the main plot, and that of Edgar holding a similar position to the three tragedies of the underplot. Further, these madnesses do not merely go on side by side; as they meet they mutually affect one another, and throw up each other's intensity. By the mere sight of the Bedlamite, Lear, already tottering upon the verge of insanity, is driven really and incurably mad; while in the case of Edgar, the meeting with Lear, and through Lear with Gloucester, converts the burden of feigning idiocy from a cruel stroke of unjust fate into a hardship voluntarily undergone for the sake of ministering to a father now forgiven and pitied. And so far as the general effect of the play is concerned this central Climax presents a terrible _duet of madness_, the wild ravings and mutual interworkings of two distinct strains of insanity, each answering and outbidding the other. The distinctness is the greater as the two are different in kind. In Lear we have the madness of passion, exaggeration of ordinary emotions; Edgar's is the madness of idiocy, as idiocy was in early ages when the cruel neglect of society added physical hardship to mental affliction. In Edgar's frenzy we trace rapid irrelevance with gleams of unexpected relevance, just sufficient to partly answer a question and go off again into wandering; a sense of ill-treatment and of being an outcast; remorse and thoughts as to close connection of sin and retribution; visions of fiends as in bodily presence; cold, hunger: these alternating with mere gibberish, and all perhaps within the compass of a few lines. [=iii.= iv. 51.] Who gives anything to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane by his porridge; made him proud of heart, to ride on a bay trotting-horse over four-inched bridges, to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Tom's a-cold,--O, do de, do de, do de. Bless thee from whirlwinds, star-blasting, and taking! Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend vexes: there could I have him now,--and there,--and there again, and there. But this is not all. When examined more closely this Centrepiece exhibits not a duet but a _trio of madness_; with the other two there mingles a third form of what may be called madness, the professional madness of the court fool. [_Institution of the court fool._] This court fool or jester is an institution of considerable interest. It seems to rest upon three mediæval and ancient notions. The first is the barbarism of enjoying personal defects, illustrated in the large number of Roman names derived from bodily infirmities, Varus the bandy-legged, Balbus the stammerer, and the like; this led our ancestors to find fun in the incoherence of natural idiocy, and finally made the imitation of it a profession. A second notion underlying the institution of a jester is the connection to the ancient mind between madness and inspiration; the same Greek word _entheos_ stands for both, and to this day the idiot of a Scotch village is believed in some way to see further than sane folk. A third idea to be kept in mind is the mediæval conception of wit. With us wit is weighed by its intrinsic worth; the old idea, appearing repeatedly in Shakespeare's scenes, was that wit was a mental game, a sort of battledore and shuttlecock, in which the jokes themselves might be indifferent since the point of the game lay in keeping it up as smartly and as long as possible. The fool, whose title and motley dress suggested the absence of ordinary sense or propriety, combines in his office all three notions: from the last he was bound to keep up the fire of badinage, even though it were with witless nonsense; from the second he was expected at times to give utterance to deep truths; and in virtue of the first he had license to make hard hits under protection of the 'folly' which all were supposed to enjoy. He that hath a fool doth very wisely hit, Doth very foolishly, although he smart, Not to seem senseless of the bob. [_The institution adapted to modern times in Punch._] The institution, if it has died out as a personal office attached to kings or nobles, has perhaps been preserved by the nation as a whole in a form analogous to other modern institutions: the all-embracing newspaper has absorbed this element of life, and Mr. Punch is the national jester. His figure and face are an improvement on the old motley habit; his fixed number of pages have to be filled, if not always with wit, yet with passable padding: no one dare other than enjoy the compliment of his notice, under penalty of showing that 'the cap has fitted'; and certainly Mr. Punch finds ways of conveying to statesmen criticisms to which the proprieties of parliament would be impervious. The institution of the court fool is eagerly utilised by Shakespeare, and is the source of some of his finest effects: he treats it as a sort of chronic Comedy, the function of which may be described as that of translating deep truths of human nature into the language of laughter. In applying, then, this general view of the court fool to the present case we must avoid two opposite errors. We must not pass over all his utterances as unmeaning folly, nor, on the other hand, must we insist upon seeing a meaning in everything that he says: what truth he speaks must be expected to make its appearance amidst a cloud of nonsense. [_The function of the Fool in Lear is to keep before us the original problem:_] Making this proviso we may lay down that the function of the Fool in _King Lear_ is to keep vividly before the minds of the audience (as well as of his master) the idea at the root of the main plot--that unstable moral equilibrium, that unnatural distribution of power which Lear has set up, and of which the whole tragedy is the rebound. [=i.= iv.] In the first scene in which he appears before us he is, amid all his nonsense, harping upon the idea that Lear has committed the folly of trusting to the gratitude of the ungrateful, and is reaping the inevitable consequences. As he enters he hands his coxcomb, the symbol of folly, to the King, and to Kent for taking the King's part. His first jingling song, Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, &c., is an expansion of the maxim, Trust nobody. And however irrelevant he becomes, he can in a moment get back to this root idea. They tell him his song is nothing: _Fool._ Then 'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer; you gave me nothing for 't. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle? _Lear._ Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing. _Fool_ [_to Kent_]. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool. [=i.= i. 92.] 'Nothing will come of nothing' had been the words Lear had used to Cordelia; now he is bidden to see how they have become the exact description of his own fortune. No wonder Lear exclaims, 'A bitter fool!' _Fool._ Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a bitter fool and a sweet one? _Lear._ No, lad; teach me. _Fool._ That lord that counsell'd thee To give away thy land, Come place him here by me, Do thou for him stand: The sweet and bitter fool Will presently appear; The one in motley here. The other found out there. _Lear._ Dost thou call me fool, boy? _Fool._ All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with. Again and again he turns to other topics and comes suddenly back to the main thought. [=i.= iv. 195.] _Fool._ Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie. _Lear._ An you lie, sirrah, we'll have you whipped. _Fool._ I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o' thing than a fool: and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides, and left nothing i' the middle: here comes one o' the parings. [=i.= iv. 207.] It is Goneril who enters, and who proceeds to state her case in the tone of injury, detailing how the order of her household state has been outraged, but ignoring the source from which she has received the power to keep up state at all: what she has omitted the Fool supplies in parable, as if continuing her sentence-- For, you trow, nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it's had it head bit off by it young, and then instantly involves himself in a cloud of irrelevance, So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling. [=i.= v.] In the scene which follows, the Fool is performing a variation on the same theme: the sudden removal from one sister to the other is no real escape from the original foolish situation. [=i.= v. 8.] _Fool._ If a man's brains were in 's heels, were 't not in danger of kibes? _Lear._ Ay, boy. _Fool._ Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne'er go slip-shod. To say that Lear is in no danger of suffering from brains in his heels is another way of saying that his flight is folly. He goes on to insist that the other daughter will treat her father 'kindly,' that 'she's as like this as a crab's like an apple.' His laying down that the reason why the nose is in the middle of the face is to keep the eyes on either side of the nose, and that the reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is 'a pretty reason--because they are not eight,' suggests (if it be not pressing it too far) that we must not look for depth where there is only shallowness--the mistake Lear has made in trusting to the gratitude of his daughters. And the general thought of Lear's original folly he brings out, true to the fool's office, from the most unlikely beginnings. [=i.= v. 26.] _Fool._ Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell? _Lear._ No. 'Nor I neither,' answers the Fool, with a clown's impudence; 'but,' he adds, 'I can tell why a snail has a house.' _Lear._ Why? _Fool._ Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his daughters. [=ii.= iv. 1-128.] All through the scene in front of the stocks the Fool is harping on the folly of expecting gratitude from such as Goneril and Regan. It is fathers who bear bags that see their children kind; the wise man lets go his hold on a great wheel running down hill, but lets himself be drawn after by the great wheel that goes up the hill; he himself, the Fool hints, is a fool for staying with Lear; to cry out at Goneril and Regan's behaviour is as unreasonable as for the cook to be impatient with the eels for wriggling; to have trusted the two daughters with power at all was like the folly of the man that, 'in pure kindness to his horse, buttered his hay.' The one idea, then, stationary amidst all the Fool's gyrations of folly is the idea of Lear's original sin of passion, from the consequences of which he can never escape; [_but in an emotional form as adapted to the agitation of the Centrepiece._] only the idea is put, not rationally, but translated into an emotional form which makes it fit to mingle with the agitation of the central scenes. The emotional form consists partly in the irrelevance amid which the idea is brought out, producing continual shocks of surprise. But more than this an emotional form is given to the utterances of the Fool by his very position with reference to Lear. [=iii.= i. 16; =iii.= ii. 10, 25, 68; =iii.= iv. 80, 150.] There is a pathos that mingles with his humour, where the Fool, a tender and delicate youth, is found the only attendant who clings to Lear amid the rigour of the storm, labouring with visibly decreasing vigour to out-jest his master's heart-struck injuries, and to keep up holiday abandon amidst surrounding realities. [=i.= iv. 107; =iii.= ii. 68, 72, &c.] Throughout he is Lear's best friend, and epithets of endearment are continually passing between them: he has been Cordelia's friend (as Touchstone was the friend of Rosalind), [=i.= iv. 79.] and pined for Cordelia after her banishment. Nevertheless he is the only one who can deliver hard thrusts at Lear, and bring home to him, under protection of his double relation to wisdom and folly, Lear's original error and sin. So faithful and so severe, the Fool becomes an outward conscience to his master: he keeps before Lear the unnatural act from which the whole tragedy springs, but he converts the thought of it into the emotion of self-reproach. [_Summary._] Our total result then is this. The intricate drama of _King Lear_ has a general movement which centres the passion of the play in a single Climax. Throughout a Centrepiece of a few scenes, against a background of storm and tempest is thrown up a tempest of human passion--a madness trio, or mutual play of three sorts of madness, the real madness of passion in Lear, the feigned madness of idiocy in Edgar, and the professional madness of the court fool. When the elements of this madness trio are analysed, the first is found to gather up into itself the passion of the three tragedies which form the main plot; the second is a similar climax to the passion of the three tragedies which make up the underplot; the third is an expression, in the form of passion, of the original problem out of which the whole action has sprung. Thus intricacy of plot has been found not inconsistent with simplicity of movement, and from the various parts of the drama the complex trains of passion have been brought to a focus in the centre. PART SECOND. SURVEY OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM AS AN INDUCTIVE SCIENCE. XI. TOPICS OF DRAMATIC CRITICISM. [_Purpose: to survey Dramatic Criticism as an inductive science._] IN the Introduction to this book I pleaded that a regular inductive science of literary criticism was a possibility. In the preceding ten chapters I have endeavoured to exhibit such a regular method at work on the dramatic analysis of leading points in Shakespeare's plays. The design of the whole work will not be complete without an attempt to present our results in complete form, in fact to map out a Science of Dramatic Art. I hope this may not seem too pretentious an undertaking in the case of a science yet in its infancy; while it may be useful at all events to the young student to have suggested to him a methodical treatment with which he may exercise himself on the literature he studies. Moreover the reproach against literary criticism is, not that there has not been plenty of inductive work done in this department, but that the assertion of its inductive character has been lacking; and I believe a critic does good service by throwing his results into a formal shape, however imperfectly he may be able to accomplish his task. It will be understood that the survey of Dramatic Science is here attempted only in the merest outline: it is a glimpse, not a view, of a new science that is proposed. Not even a survey would be possible within the limits of a few short chapters except by confining the matter introduced to that previously laid before the reader in a different form. The leading features of Dramatic Art have already been explained in the application of them to particular plays: they are now included in a single view, so arranged that their mutual connection may be seen to be building up this singleness of view. Such a survey, like a microscopic lens of low power, must sacrifice detail to secure a wider field. Its compensating gain will consist in what it can contribute to the orderly product of methodised enquiry which is the essence of science, and the interest in which becomes associated with the interest of curiosity when the method has been applied in a region not usually acknowledging its reign. [_Definition of Dramatic Criticism:_] The starting-point in the exposition of any science is naturally its definition. But this first step is sufficient to divide inductive criticism from the treatment of literature mostly in vogue. I have already protested against the criticism which starts with the assumption of some 'object' or 'fundamental purpose' in the Drama from which to deduce binding canons. Such an all-embracing definition, if it is possible at all, will come as the final, not the first, step of investigation. [_as to its field and its method._] Inductive criticism, on the contrary, will seek its point of departure from outside. On the one hand it will consider the relation of the matter which it proposes to treat to other matter which is the subject of scientific enquiry; on the other hand it will fix the nature of the treatment it proposes to apply by a reference to scientific method in general. That is to say, its definition will be based upon differentiation of matter and development in method. [_Stages of development in inductive method._] To begin with the latter. There are three well-marked stages in the development of sciences. The first consists in the mere observation of the subject-matter. The second is distinguished by arrangement of observations, by analysis and classification. The third stage reaches systematisation--the wider arrangement which satisfies our sense of explanation, that curiosity as to causes which is the instinct specially developed by scientific enquiry. Astronomy remained for long ages in the first stage, while it was occupied with the observation of the heavenly bodies and the naming of the constellations. It would pass into the second stage with division of labour and the study of solar, lunar, planetary, and cometary phenomena separately. But by such discoveries as that of the laws of motion, or of gravitation, the great mass of astronomical knowledge was bound together in a system which at the same time satisfied the sense of causation, and astronomy was fully developed as an inductive science. Or to take a more modern instance: comparative philology has attained completeness in our own day. Philology was in its first stage at the Renaissance, when 'learning' meant the mere accumulation of detailed knowledge connected with the Classical languages; Grimm's Law may illustrate the second stage, a classification comprehensive but purely empiric; the principle of phonetic decay with its allied recuperative processes has struck a unity through the laws of philology which stamps it as a full-grown science. [_Dramatic Criticism in the intermediate_] Applying this to our present subject, I do not pretend that Literary Criticism has reached the third of these three stages: but materials are ready for giving it a secure place in the second stage. In time, no doubt, literary science must be able to explain the modus operandi of literary production, and show how different classes of writing come to produce their different effects. But at present such explanation belongs mostly to the region of speculation; and before the science of criticism is ripe for this final stage much work has to be done in the way of methodising observation as to literary matter and form. Dramatic Criticism, then, is still in the stage of provisional arrangement. [_or 'topical' stage._] Its exact position is expressed by the technical term 'topical.' Where accumulation of observations is great enough to necessitate methodical arrangement, yet progress is insufficient to suggest final bases of arrangement which will crystallise the whole into a system, science takes refuge in 'topics.' These have been aptly described as intellectual pigeon-holes--convenient headings under which materials may be digested, with strict adherence to method, yet only as a provisional arrangement until further progress shall bring more stable organisation. This topical treatment may seem an unambitious stage in scientific advance, the goal and reward of which is insight into wide laws and far-reaching systematisations. Still it is a stage directly in the line of sound method: and the judicious choice of main and subordinate topics is systematisation in embryo. The present enquiry looks no further than this stage in its analysis of Dramatic Art. It endeavours to find convenient headings under which to set forth its observations of Shakespeare's plays. It also seeks an arrangement of these topics that will at once cover the field of the subject, and also carry on the face of it such an economy of mutual connection as may make the topics, what they ought to be, a natural bridge between the general idea which the mind forms of Drama and the realisation of this idea in the details of actual dramatic works. [_Continuous differentiation of scientific subject-matter._] But the definition of our subject involves further that we should measure out the exact field within which this method is to be applied. Science, like every other product of the human mind, marks its progress by continuous differentiation: the perpetual subdivision of the field of enquiry, the rise of separate and ever minuter departments as time goes on. Originally all knowledge was one and undivided. The name of Socrates is connected with a great revolution which separated moral science from physics, the study of man from the study of nature. With Aristotle and inductive method the process became rapid: and under his guidance ethics, as the science of conduct, became distinct from mental science; and still further, political science, treating man in his relations with the state, was distinguished from the more general science of conduct. When thought awoke at the Renaissance after the sleep of the Dark Ages, political science threw off as a distinct branch political economy; and by our own day particular branches of economy, finance, for example, have practically become independent sciences. This characteristic of science in general, the perpetual tendency to separate more confined from more general lines of investigation, will apply in an especial degree to literature, [_Dramatic Criticism branches off on the one side from the wider Literary Criticism._] which covers so wide an area of the mind and is the meeting-ground of so many separate interests. Thus Shakespeare is a poet, and his works afford a field for considering poetry in general, both as a mode of thought and a mode of expression. Again, no writer could go so deeply into human nature as Shakespeare has done without betraying his philosophy and moral system. Once more, Shakespeare must afford a specimen of literary tendencies in general, and that particular modification of them we call Elizabethan; besides that the language which is the vehicle of this literature has an interest of its own over and above that of the thought which it conveys. All this and more belongs properly to 'Shakespeare-Criticism': but from Literary Criticism as a whole a branch is being gradually differentiated, Dramatic Criticism, and its province is to deal with the question, how much of the total effect of Shakespeare's works arises from the fact of his ideas being conveyed to us in the form of dramas, and not of lyric or epic poems, of essays or moral and philosophical treatises. It is with this branch alone that the present enquiry is concerned. [_On the other side from the allied art of Stage-Representation._] But more than this goes to the definition of Dramatic Criticism. Drama is not, like Epic, merely a branch of literature: it is a compound art. The literary works which in ordinary speech we call dramas, are in strictness only potential dramas waiting for their realisation on the stage. And this stage-representation is not a mere accessory of literature, but is an independent art, having a field where literature has no place, in dumb show, in pantomime, in mimicry, and in the lost art of Greek 'dancing.' The question arises then, what is to be the relation of Dramatic Criticism to the companion art of Stage-Representation? Aristotle, the father of Dramatic Criticism, made Stage-Representation one of the departments of the science; but we shall be only following the law of differentiation if we separate the two. This is especially appropriate in the case of the Shakespearean Drama. The Puritan Revolution, which has played such a part in its history, was in effect an attack rather on the Theatre than on the Drama itself. No doubt when the movement became violent the two were not discriminated, and the Drama was made a 'vanity' as well as the Stage. Still the one interest was never so thoroughly dropped by the nation and was more readily taken up again than the other; so that from the point of view of the Stage our continuity with the Elizabethan age has been severed, from the point of view of the literary Drama it has not. The Shakespearean Drama has made a field for itself as a branch of literature quite apart from the Stage; and, however we may regret the severance and look forward to a completer appreciation of Shakespeare, yet it can hardly be doubted that at the present moment as earnest and comprehensive an interest in our great dramatist is to be found in the study as in the theatre. Dramatic Criticism, then, is to be separated, on the one side, from the wider Literary Criticism which must include a review of language, ethics, philosophy, and general art; and, on the other hand, from the companion art of Stage-Representation. But here caution is required; for all these are so closely and so organically connected with the Drama that there cannot but exist a mutual reaction. [_Topics common to Drama and art in general._] Thus we have already had to treat of topics which belong to the Drama only as a part of literature and art in general. In the first chapter we had occasion to notice how even the raw material out of which the Shakespearean Drama is constructed itself forms another species in literature. When we proceeded to watch the process of working up this Story into dramatic form we were led on to what was common ground between Drama and the other arts. In such process we saw illustrated the 'hedging,' or double process which leaves monstrosity to produce its full impression and yet provides by special means against any natural reaction; the reduction of improbabilities, by which difficulties in the subject-matter are evaded or met; the utilisation of mechanical details to assist more important effects; the multiplication and interweaving of different interests by which each is made to assist the rest. Such points of Mechanical Construction, together with the general principles of balance and symmetry, are not special to any one branch of art: in all alike the artist will contrive not wholly to conceal his processes, but by occasional glimpses will add to higher effects the satisfaction of our sense of neat workmanship. [_Drama and its Representation separate in exposition, not in idea._] Similarly, it may be convenient to make Literary Drama and Stage-Representation separate branches of enquiry: it is totally inadmissible and highly misleading to divorce the two in idea. The literary play must be throughout read _relatively_ to its representation. In actual practice the separation of the two has produced the greatest obstacles in the way of sound appreciation. Amongst ordinary readers of Shakespeare Character-Interest, which is largely independent of performance, has swallowed up all other interests; and most of the effects which depend upon the connection and relative force of incidents, and on the compression of the details into a given space, have been completely lost. Shakespeare is popularly regarded as supreme in the painting of human nature, but careless in the construction of Plot: and, worst of all, Plot itself, which it has been the mission of the English Drama to elevate into the position of the most intellectual of all elements in literary effect, has become degraded in conception to the level of a mere juggler's mystery. It must then be laid down distinctly at the outset of the present enquiry that the Drama is to be considered throughout relatively to its acting. Much of dramatic effect that is special to Stage-Representation will be here ignored: the whole mechanism of elocution, effects of light, colour and costume, the greater portion of what constitutes _mise-en-scène_. But in dealing with any play the fullest scope is assumed for ideal acting. The interpretation of a character must include what an actor can put into it; in dealing with effects regard must be had to surroundings which a reader might easily overlook, but which would be present to the eye of a spectator; and no conception of the movement of a drama will be adequate which has not appreciated the rapid sequence of incidents that crowds the crisis of a life-time or a national revolution into two or three hours of actual time. The relation of Drama to its acting will be exactly similar to that of music to its performance, the two being perfectly separable in their exposition, but never disunited in idea. [_Fundamental division of Dramatic Criticism into Human Interest and Action._] Dramatic Art, then, as thus defined, is to be the field of our enquiry, and its method is to be the discovery and arrangement of topics. For a fundamental basis of such analysis we shall naturally look to the other arts. Now all the arts agree in being the union of two elements, abstract and concrete. Music takes sensuous sounds, and adds a purely abstract element by disposing these sounds in harmonies and melodies; architecture applies abstract design to a concrete medium of stone and wood; painting gives us objects of real life arranged in abstract groupings: in dancing we have moving figures confined in artistic bonds of rhythm; sculpture traces in still figures ideas of shape and attitude. So Drama has its two elements of Human Interest and Action: on the one hand life _presented in action_--so the word 'Drama' may be translated; on the other hand the _action_ itself, that is, the concurrence of all that is presented in an abstract unity of design. The two fundamental divisions of dramatic interest, and consequently the two fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism, will thus be Human Interest and Action. But each of these has its different sides, the distinction of which is essential before we can arrive at an arrangement of topics that will be of practical value in the methodisation of criticism. [_Twofold division of Human Interest._] The interest of the life presented is twofold. There is our interest in the separate personages who enter into it, as so many varieties of the _genus homo_: this is Interest of _Character_. There is again our interest in the experience these personages are made to undergo, their conduct and fate: technically, Interest of _Passion_. Human Interest { Character. { Passion. [_Threefold division of Action._] It is the same with the other fundamental element of art, the working together of all the details so as to leave an impression of unity: while in practice the sense of this unity, say in a piece of music or a play, is one of the simplest of instincts, yet upon analysis it is seen to imply three separate mental impressions. The mind, it implies, must be conscious of a unity. It must also be conscious of a complexity of details without which the unity could not be perceptible. But the mere perception of unity and of complexity would give no art-pleasure unless the unity were seen to be _developed_ out of the complexity, and this brings in a third idea of progress and gradual _Movement_. { Unity. Action { Complexity. { Development or Movement. [_Application of the threefold division of Action to the twofold division of Human Interest._] Now if we apply the threefold idea involved in Action to the twofold idea involved in Human Interest we shall get the natural divisions of dramatic analysis. One element of Human Interest was Character: looking at this in the threefold aspect which is given to it when it is connected with Action we shall have to notice the interest of single characters, or _Character-Interpretation_, the more complex interest of _Character-Contrast_, and in the third place _Character-Development_. Applying a similar treatment to the other side of Human Interest, Passion, we shall review single elements of Passion, that is to say, _Incidents and Effects_; the mixture of various passions to express which the term _Passion-Tones_ will be used; and again _Passion-Movement_. But Action has an interest of its own, considered in the abstract and as separate from Human Interest. This is _Plot_; and it will lend itself to the same triple treatment, falling into the natural divisions of _Single Action_, _Complex Action_, and that development of Plot which constitutes dramatic _Movement_ in the most important sense. At this point it is possible only to name these leading topics of Dramatic Criticism: to explain each, and to trace them further into their lesser ramifications will be the work of the remaining three chapters. [_Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism._] +--Single Character-Interest, or | _Character-Interpretation_. +--Character +--Complex Character-Interest, or | | _Character-Contrast_. | +--_Character-Development._ | | +--Single Passion-Interest, or The Literary | | _Incident and Effect_. Drama +--Passion +--Complex Passion-Interest, or | | _Passion-Tone_. | +--_Passion-Movement._ | | +--_Single Action._ +--Plot (or Pure +--_Complex Action._ Action) +--_Plot-Movement._ XII. Interest of Character. [_Unity applied to Character: Character Interpretation._] OF the main divisions of dramatic interest Character stands first for consideration: and we are to view it under the three aspects of unity, complexity, and movement. The application of the idea unity to the idea character suggests at once our interest in single personages. This interest becomes more defined when we take into account the medium through which the personages are presented to us: characters in Drama are not brought out by abstract discussion or description, but are presented to us concretely, self-pourtrayed by their own actions without the assistance of comments from the author. Accordingly, the leading interest of character is _Interpretation_, the mental process of turning from the concrete to the abstract: from the most diverse details of conduct and impression Interpretation extracts a unity of conception which we call a character. [_Interpretation of the nature of an hypothesis._] Interpretation when scientifically handled must be, we have seen, of the nature of an hypothesis, the value of which depends upon the degree in which it explains whatever details have any bearing upon the character. Such an hypothesis may be a simple idea: and we have seen at length how the whole portraiture of Richard precipitates into the notion of Ideal Villainy, ideal on the subjective side in an artist who follows crime for its own sake, and on the objective side in a success that works by fascination. But the student must beware of the temptation to grasp at epigrammatic labels as sufficient solutions of character; in the great majority of cases Interpretation can become complete only by recognising and harmonising various and even conflicting elements. [_Canons of Interpretation._] Incidentally we have noticed some of the principles governing careful Interpretation. [_It must be Exhaustive._] One of these principles is that it must take into consideration all that is presented of a personage. It is unscientific on the face of it to say (as is repeatedly said) that Shakespeare is 'inconsistent' in ascribing deep musical sympathies to so thin a character as Lorenzo. Such allegation of inconsistency means that the process of Interpretation is unfinished; it can be paralleled only by the astronomer who should complain of eclipses as 'inconsistent' with his view of the moon's movements. In the particular case we found no difficulty in harmonising the apparent conflict: the details of Lorenzo's portraiture fit in well with the not uncommon type of nature that is so deeply touched by art sensibilities as to have a languid interest in life outside art. [_It must take in indirect evidence;_] Again: Interpretation must look for _indirect_ evidence of character, such as the impression a personage seems to have made on other personages in the story, or the effect of action outside the field of view. It is impatient induction to pronounce Bassanio unworthy of Portia merely from comparison of the parts played by the two in the drama itself. It happens from the nature of the story that the incidents actually represented in the drama are such as always display Bassanio in an exceptional and dependent position; but we have an opportunity of getting to the other side of our hero's character by observing the attitude held to him by others in the play, an attitude founded not on the incidents of the drama alone, but upon the sum total of his life and behaviour in the Venetian world. This gives a very different impression; and when we take into consideration the force with which his personality sways all who approach him, from the strong Antonio and the intellectual Lorenzo to giddy Gratiano and the rough common sense of Launcelot, then the character comes out in its proper scale. [_and the degree to which the character is displayed._] As a third principle, it is perhaps too obvious to be worth formulating that Interpretation must allow for the degree to which the character is displayed by the action: that Brutus's frigid eloquence at the funeral of Cæsar means not coldness of feeling but stoicism of public demeanour. [_Interpretation reacting on the details._] It is a less obvious principle that the very details which are to be unified into a conception of character may have a different complexion given to them when they are looked at in the light of the whole. It has been noticed how Richard seems to manifest in some scenes a slovenliness of intrigue that might be a stumbling-block to the general impression of his character. But when in our view of him as a whole we see what a large part is played by the invincibility that is stamped on his very demeanour, it becomes clear how this slovenliness can be interpreted by the analyst, and represented by the actor, not as a defect of power, but as a trick of bearing which measures his own sense of his irresistibility. Principles like these flow naturally from the fundamental idea of character and its unity. Their practical use however will be mainly that of tests for suggested interpretations: to the actual reading of character in Drama, as in real life, the safest guide is sympathetic insight. [_Complexity applied to Character._] The second element underlying all dramatic effect was complexity; when complexity is applied to Character we get Character-Contrast. [_Character-Foils._] In its lowest degree this appears in the form of _Character-Foils_: by the side of some prominent character is placed another of less force and interest but cast in the same mould, or perhaps moulded by the influence of its principal, just as by the side of a lofty mountain are often to be seen smaller hills of the same formation. Thus beside Portia is placed Nerissa, beside Bassanio Gratiano, beside Shylock Tubal; Richard's villainy stands out by comparison with Buckingham, Hastings, Tyrrel, Catesby, any one of whom would have given blackness enough to an ordinary drama. It is quite possible that minute examination may find differences between such companion figures: but the general effect of the combination is that the lesser serves as foil to throw up the scale on which the other is framed. The more pronounced effects of Character-Contrast depend upon differences of kind as distinguished from differences of degree. [_Character-Contrast._] In this form it is clear how _Character-Contrast_ is only an extension of Character-Interpretation: it implies that some single conception explains, that is, gives unity to, the actions of more than one person. A whole chapter has been devoted to bringing out such contrast in the case of Lord and Lady Macbeth: to accept these as types of the practical and inner life, cast in such an age and involved in such an undertaking, furnishes a conception sufficient to make clear and intelligible all that the two say and do in the scenes of the drama. [_Duplication._] Character-Contrast is especially common amongst the minor effects in a Shakespearean drama. In the case of personages demanded by the necessities of the story rather than introduced for their own sake Shakespeare has a tendency to double the number of such personages for the sake of getting effects of contrast. We have two unsuccessful suitors in _The Merchant of Venice_ bringing out, the one the unconscious pride of royal birth, the other the pride of intense self-consciousness; two wicked daughters of Lear, Goneril with no shading in her harshness, Regan who is in reality a degree more calculating in her cruelty than her sister, but conceals it under a charm of manner, 'eyes that comfort and not burn.' [=iii.= i.] Of the two princes in _Richard III_ the one has a gravity beyond his years, while York overflows with not ungraceful pertness. Especially interesting are the two murderers in that play. [=i.= iv, from 84.] The first is a dull, 'strong-framed' man, without any better nature. The second has had culture, and been accustomed to reflect; his better nature has been vanquished by love of greed, and now asserts itself to prevent his sinning with equanimity. [110.] It is the second murderer whose conscience is set in activity by the word 'judgment'; and he discourses on conscience, deeply, [124-157.] yet not without humour, as he recognises the power of the expected reward over the oft-vanquished compunctions. [167.] He catches, as a thoughtful man, the irony of the duke's cry for wine when they are about to drown him in the butt of malmsey. [165.] Again, instead of hurrying to the deed while Clarence is waking he cannot resist the temptation to argue with him, and so, as a man open to argument, [263.] he feels the force of Clarence's unexpected suggestion: He that set you on To do this deed will hate you for the deed. Thus he exhibits the weakness of all thinking men in a moment of action, the capacity to see two sides of a question; and, trying at the critical moment to alter his course, [284.] he ends by losing the reward of crime without escaping the guilt. [_Character-Grouping._] Character-Contrast is carried forward into _Character-Grouping_ when the field is still further enlarged, and a single conception is found to give unity to more than two personages of a drama. A chapter has been devoted to showing how the same antithesis of outer and inner life which made the conception of Macbeth and his wife intelligible would serve, when adapted to the widely different world of Roman political life, to explain the characters of the leading conspirators in _Julius Cæsar_, of their victim and of his avenger: while, over and above the satisfaction of Interpretation, the Grouping of these four figures, so colossal and so impressive, round a single idea is an interest in itself. [_Dramatic Colouring._] The effect is carried a stage further still when some single phase of human interest tends, in a greater or less degree, to give a common feature to all the personages of a play; the whole dramatic field is _coloured_ by some idea, though of course the interpretative significance of such an idea is weakened in proportion to the area over which it is distributed. The five plays to which our attention is confined do not afford the best examples of Dramatic Colouring. It is a point, however, of common remark how the play of _Macbeth_ is coloured by the superstition and violence of the Dark Ages. The world of this drama seems given over to powers of darkness who can read, if not mould, destiny; witchcraft appears as an instrument of crime and ghostly agency of punishment. We have rebellion without any suggestion of cause to ennoble it, terminated by executions without the pomp of justice; we have a long reign of terror in which massacre is a measure of daily administration and murder is a profession. With all this there is a total absence of relief in any picture of settled life: there is no rallying-point for order and purity. The very agent of retribution gets the impulse to his task in a reaction from a shock of bereavement that has come down upon him as a natural punishment for an act of indecisive folly. [compare =iv.= iii. 26; =iv.= ii. 1-22.] There are, then, three different effects that arise when complexity enters into Character-Interest. The complexity is one never separable from the unity which binds it together: in the first effect the diversity is stronger than the unity, and the whole manifests itself as Character-Contrast; in Character-Grouping the contrast of the separate figures is an equal element with the unity which binds them all into a group; in the third case the diversity is lost in the unity, and a uniformity of colouring is seized by the dramatic sense as an effect apart from the individual varieties without which such colouring would not be remarkable. [_Movement applied to Character: Character-Development._] When to Character-Interpretation, the formation of a single conception out of a multitude of concrete details, the further idea of growth and progress is added, we get the third variety of Character-Interest-- _Character-Development_. In the preceding chapters this has received only negative notice, its absence being a salient feature in the portraiture of Richard. For a positive illustration no better example could be desired than the character of Macbeth. Three features, we have seen, stand out clear in the general conception of Macbeth. There is his eminently practical nature, which is the key to the whole. And the absence in him of the inner life adds two special features: one is his helplessness under suspense, the other is the activity of his imagination with its susceptibility to supernatural terrors. Now, if we fix our attention on these three points they become three threads of development as we trace Macbeth through the stages of his career. His practical power developes as capacity for crime. Macbeth undertook his first crime only after a protracted and terrible struggle; the murder of the grooms was a crime of impulse; the murder of Banquo appears a thing of contrivance, in which Macbeth is a deliberate planner directing the agency of others, [=iii.= ii. 40, &c.] while his dark hints to his wife suggest the beginning of a relish for such deeds. This capacity for crime continues to grow, until slaughter becomes an end in itself: [=iv.= iii. 4.] Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry: and then a mania: [=v.= ii. 13.] Some say he's mad; others that lesser hate him Do call it valiant fury. We see a parallel development in Macbeth's impatience of suspense. Just after his first temptation he is able to brace himself to suspense for an indefinite period: [=i.= iii. 143.] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir. [=i.= vii.] On the eve of his great crime the suspense of the few hours that must intervene before the banquet can be despatched and Duncan can retire becomes intolerable to Macbeth, and he is for abandoning the treason. In the next stage it is the suspense of a single moment that impels him to stab the grooms. From this point suspense no longer comes by fits and starts, but is a settled disease: [=iii.= ii. 13, 36, &c.] his mind is as scorpions; it is tortured in restless ecstasy. Suspense has undermined his judgment and brought on him the gambler's fever--the haunting thought that just one more venture will make him safe; in spite of the opposition of his reason--[=iii.= ii. 45.] which his unwillingness to confide the murder of Banquo to his wife betrays--he is carried on to work the additional crime which unmasks the rest. And finally suspense intensifies to a panic, and he himself feels that his deeds-- [=iii.= iv. 140.] must be acted ere they may be scann'd. The third feature in Macbeth is the quickening of his sensitiveness to the supernatural side by side with the deadening of his conscience. Imagination becomes, as it were, a pictorial conscience for one to whom its more rational channels have been closed: the man who 'would jump the world to come' accepts implicitly every word that falls from a witch. Now this imagination is at first a restraining force in Macbeth: [=i.= iii. 134.] the thought whose image unfixes his hair leads him to abandon the treason. When later he has, under pressure, delivered himself again to the temptation, there are still signs that imagination is a force on the other side that has to be overcome: [=i.= iv. 50.] Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires: The eye wink at the hand. Once passed the boundary of the accomplished deed he becomes an absolute victim to terrors of conscience in supernatural form. [=ii.= ii. 22-46.] In the very first moment they reach so near the boundary that separates subjective and objective that a real voice appears to be denouncing the issue of his crime: _Macbeth._ Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more.'... _Lady M._ Who was it that thus cried? In the reaction from the murder of Banquo the supernatural appearance--which no eye sees but his own--[=iii.= iv.] appears more real to him than the real life around him. And from this point he _seeks_ the supernatural, [=iv.= i. 48.] forces it to disclose its terrors, and thrusts himself into an agonised vision of generations that are to witness the triumph of his foes. XIII. INTEREST OF PASSION. [PASSION.] HUMAN Interest includes not only varieties of human nature, or Character, but also items of human experience, or Passion. Passion is the second great topic of Dramatic Criticism. It is concerned with the life that is lived through the scenes of the story, as distinguished from the personages who live it; not treating this with the abstract treatment that belongs to Plot, but reviewing it in the light of its human interest; it embraces conduct still alive with the motives which have actuated it--fate in the process of forging. The word 'passion' signifies primarily what is suffered of good or bad; secondarily the emotions generated by suffering, whether in the sufferer or in bystanders. Its use as a dramatic term thus suggests how in Drama an experience can be grasped by us through our emotional nature, through our sympathy, our antagonism, and all the varieties of emotional interest that lie between. To this Passion we have to apply the threefold division of unity, complexity, and movement. [_Unity applied to Passion._] When unity is applied to Passion we get a series of details bound together into a singleness of impression as an Incident, a Situation, or an Effect. The distinction of the three rests largely on their different degrees of fragmentariness. [_Incident._] _Incidents_ are groups of continuous details forming a complete interest in themselves as ministering to our sense of story. The suit of Shylock against Antonio in the course of which fate swings right round; the murder of Clarence with its long-drawn agony; Richard and Buckingham with the Lord Mayor and Citizens exhibiting a picture of political manipulation in the fifteenth century; the startling sight of a Lady Anne wooed beside the bier of her murdered husband's murdered father, by a murderer who rests his suit on the murders themselves; Banquo's Ghost appearing at the feast at which Banquo's presence had been so vehemently called for; Lear's faithful Gloucester so brutally blinded and so instantly avenged:--all these are complete stories presented in a single view, and suggest how Shakespeare's dramas are constructed out of materials which are themselves dramas in miniature. [_Situation._] In _Situation_, on the other hand, a series of details cohere into a single impression without losing the sense of incompleteness. The two central personages of _The Merchant of Venice_, around whom brightness and gloom have been revolving in such contrast, at last brought to face one another from the judgment-seat and the dock; Lorenzo and Jessica wrapped in moonlight and music, with the rest of the universe for the hour blotted out into a background for their love; Margaret like an apparition of the sleeping Nemesis of Lancaster flashed into the midst of the Yorkist courtiers while they are bickering through very wantonness of victory; Shylock pitted against Tubal, Jew against Jew, the nature not too narrow to mix affection with avarice, mocked from passion to passion by the nature only wide enough to take in greed; Richard waking on Bosworth morning, and miserably piecing together the wreck of his invincible will which a sleeping vision has shattered; Macbeth's moment of rapture in following the airy dagger, while the very night holds its breath, to break out again presently into voices of doom; the panic mist of universal suspicion amidst which Malcolm blasts his own character to feel after the fidelity of Macduff; Edgar from his ambush of outcast idiocy watching the sad marvel of his father's love restored to him:--all these brilliant Situations are fragments of dramatic continuity in which the fragmentariness is a part of the interest. Just as the sense of sculpture might seek to arrest and perpetuate a casual moment in the evolutions of a dance, so in Dramatic Situation the mind is conscious of isolating something from what precedes and what follows so as to extract out of it an additional impression; the morsel has its purpose in ministering to a complete process of digestion, but it gets a sensation of its own by momentary delay in contact with the palate. [_Effect._] Of a still more fragmentary nature is _Dramatic Effect_--Effect strictly so called, and as distinguished from the looser use of the term for dramatic impressions in general. Such Effect seems to attach itself to single momentary details, though in reality these details owe their impressiveness to their connection with others: the final detail has completed an electric circle and a shock is given. No element of the Drama is of so miscellaneous a character and so defies analysis: all that can be done here is to notice three special Dramatic Effects. [_Irony as an Effect._] _Dramatic Irony_ is a sudden appearance of double-dealing in surrounding events: a dramatic situation accidentally starts up and produces a shock by its bearing upon conflicting states of affairs, both known to the audience, but one of them hidden from some of the parties to the scene. This is the special contribution to dramatic effect of Greek tragedy. The ancient stage was tied down in its subject-matter to stories perfectly familiar to the audience as sacred legends, and so almost excluding the effect of surprise: in Irony it found some compensation. The ancient tragedies harp upon human blindness to the future, and delight to exhibit a hero speculating about, or struggling with, or perhaps in careless talk stumbling upon, the final issue of events which the audience know so well--Oedipus, for example, through great part of a play moving heaven and earth to pierce the mystery of the judgment that has come upon his city, while according to the familiar sacred story the offender can be none other than himself. Shakespeare has used to almost as great an extent as the Greek dramatists this effect of Irony. His most characteristic handling of it belongs to the lighter plays; yet in the group of dramas dealt with in this work it is prominent amongst his effects. It has been pointed out how _Macbeth_ and _Richard III_ are saturated with it. There are casual illustrations in _Julius Cæsar_, as when the dictator bids his intended murderer [=ii.= ii. 123.] Be near me, that I may remember you; or in _Lear_, when Edmund, intriguing guiltily with Goneril, in a chance expression of tenderness unconsciously paints the final issue of that intrigue: [=iv.= ii. 25.] Yours in the ranks of death! A comic variety of Irony occurs in the Trial Scene of _The Merchant of Venice_, [=iv.= i. 282.] when Bassanio and Gratiano in their distracted grief are willing to sacrifice their new wives if this could save their friend--little thinking these wives are so near to record the vow. The doubleness of Irony is one which attaches to a situation as a whole: [=iii.= ii. 60-73.] the effect however is especially keen when a scene is so impregnated with it that the very language is true in a double sense. _Catesby._ 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, When men are unprepared and look not for it. _Hastings._ O monstrous, monstrous! and so falls it out With Rivers, Vaughan, Grey: _and so 'twill do With some men else, who think themselves as safe As thou and I._ [_Nemesis as an Effect._] _Nemesis_, though usually extending to the general movement of a drama, and so considered below, may sometimes be only an effect of detail--a sign connecting very closely retribution with sin or reaction with triumph. [=v.= iii. 45.] Such a Nemesis may be seen where Cassius in the act of falling on his sword recognises the weapon as the same with which he stabbed Cæsar. [_Dramatic Foreshadowing._] Another special variety of effect is _Dramatic Foreshadowing_--mysterious details pointing to an explanation in the sequel, a realisation in action of the saying that coming events cast their shadows before them. [=i.= i. 1.] The unaccountable 'sadness' of Antonio at the opening of _The Merchant of Venice_ is a typical illustration. [=iii.= i. 68.] Others will readily suggest themselves--[=i.= i. 39.] the Prince's shuddering aversion to the Tower in _Richard III_, [=v.= i. 77-90.] the letter G that of Edward's heirs the murderer should be, the crows substituted for Cassius's eagles on the morning of the final battle. A more elaborate example is seen in _Julius Cæsar_, [=i.= ii. 18.] where the soothsayer's vague warning 'Beware the Ides of March'--a solitary voice that could yet arrest the hero through the shouting of the crowd--is later on found, not to have become dissipated, but to have gathered definiteness as the moment comes nearer: [=iii.= i. 1.] _Cæsar._ The Ides of March are come. _Soothsayer._ Ay, Cæsar; but not gone. These three leading Effects may be sufficient to illustrate a branch of dramatic analysis in which the variety is endless. [_Complexity applied to Passion._] We are next to consider the application of complexity to Passion, and the contrasts of passion that so arise. Here care is necessary to avoid confusion with a complexity of passion that hardly comes within the sphere of dramatic criticism. [=iii.= i.] In the scene in which Shylock is being teased by Tubal it is easy to note the conflict between the passions of greed and paternal affection: such analysis is outside dramatic criticism and belongs to psychology. In its dramatic sense Passion applies to experience, not decomposed into its emotional elements, but grasped as a whole by our emotional nature: there is still room for complexity of such passion in the appeal made _to different sides of our emotional nature, the serious and the gay_. [_Passion-Tone._] In dealing with this element of dramatic effect a convenient technical term is _Tone_. The deep insight of metaphorical word-coining has given universal sanction to the expression of emotional differences by analogies of music: our emotional nature is exalted with mirth and depressed with sorrow, we speak of a chord of sympathy, a strain of triumph, a note of despair; we are in a serious mood, or pitch our appeal in a higher key. These expressions are clearly musical, and there is probably a half association of music in many others, such as a theme of sorrow, acute anguish and profound despair, response of gratitude, or even the working of our feelings. Most exactly to the purpose is a phrase of frequent occurrence, the 'gamut of the passions,' which brings out with emphasis how our emotional nature in its capacity for different kinds of impressions suggests a _scale_ of passion-contrasts, [_Scale of Passion-Tones._] not to be sharply defined but shading off into one another like the tones of a musical scale--Tragic, Heroic, Serious, Elevated, Light, Comic, Farcical. It is with such complexity of tones that Dramatic Passion is concerned. [_Mixture of Tones:_] Now the mere _Mixture of Tones_ is an effect in itself. For the present I am not referring to the combination of one tone with another in the same incident (which will be treated as a distinct variety): I apply it more widely to the inclusion of different tones in the field of the same play. Such mixture is best illustrated by music, which gives us an adagio and an allegro, a fantastic scherzo and a pompous march, within the same symphony or sonata, though in separate movements. In _The Merchant of Venice_, as often in plays of Shakespeare, every tone in the scale is represented. [=iv.= i.] When Antonio is enduring through the long suspense, and triumphant malignity is gaining point after point against helpless friendship, we have travelled far into the Tragic; [=iv.= i. 184.] the woman-nature of Portia calling Venetian justice from judicial murder to the divine prerogative of mercy throws in a touch of the Heroic; a great part of what centres around Shylock, [=ii.= v; =iii.= i, &c.] when he is crushing the brightness out of Jessica or defying the Christian world, is pitched in the Serious strain; [=ii.= i, vii; =ii.= ix.] the incidents of the unsuccessful suitors, the warm exuberance of Oriental courtesy and the less grateful loftiness of Spanish family pride, might be a model for the Elevated drama of the English Restoration; [=i.= i, &c.] the infinite nothings of Gratiano, prince of diners-out, [=i.= ii.] the more piquant small talk of Portia and Nerissa when they criticise the man-world from the secrecy of a maiden-bower--these throw a tone of Lightness over their sections of the drama; [=ii.= ii, iii; =iii.= v, &c.] Launcelot is an incarnation of the conventional Comic serving-man, [=ii.= ii, from 34.] and his Comedy becomes broad Farce where he teases the sand-blind Gobbo and draws him on to bless his astonishing beard. [_a distinction of the modern Drama._] How distinct an effect is this mere Mixture of Tones within the same play may be seen in the fact that the Classical Drama found it impossible. The exclusive and uncompromising spirit of antiquity carried caste into art itself, and their Tragedy and Comedy were kept rigidly separate, and indeed were connected with different rituals. The spirit of modern life is marked by its comprehensiveness and reconciliation of opposites; and nothing is more important in dramatic history than the way in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries created a new departure in art, by seizing upon the rude jumble of sport and earnest which the mob loved, and converting it into a source of stirring passion-effects. For a new faculty of mental grasp is generated by this harmony of tones in the English Drama. If the artist introduces every tone into the story he thereby gets hold of every tone in the spectators' emotional nature; the world of the play is presented from every point of view as it works upon the various passions, and the difference this makes is the difference between simply looking down upon a surface and viewing a solid from all round:--the mixture of tones, so to speak, makes passion of three dimensions. Moreover it brings the world of fiction nearer to the world of nature, which has never yet evolved an experience in which brightness was dissevered from gloom: half the pleasure of the world is wrung out of others' pain; the two jostle in the street, house together under every roof, share every stage of life, and refuse to be sundered even in the mysteries of death. Quite a distinct class of effects is produced when the contrasting tones are not only included in the same drama but are further brought into immediate contact and made to react upon each other. [_Tone-Play._] _Tone-Play_ is made by simple variety and alternation of light and serious passions. It has been pointed out in a previous chapter what a striking example of this is _The Merchant of Venice_, in which scene by scene two stories of youthful love and of deadly feud alternate with one another as they progress to their climaxes, [=iii.= ii. 221.] until from the rapture of Portia united to Bassanio we drop to the full realisation of Antonio in the grasp of Shylock; and again the cruel anxiety of the trial [=iv.= i. 408.] and its breathless shock of deliverance are balanced by the mad fun of the ring trick [=v.= i.] and the joy of the moonlight scene which Jessica feels is too deep for merriment. [_Tone-Relief._] A slight variation of this is _Tone-Relief_: in an action which is cast in a uniform tone the continuity is broken by a brief spell of a contrary passion, the contrast at once relieving and intensifying the prevailing tone. One of the best examples (notwithstanding its coarseness) is the introduction in _Macbeth_ of the jolly Porter, [=ii.= iii. 1.] who keeps the impatient nobles outside in the storm till his jest is comfortably finished, making each furious knock fit in to his elaborate conceit of Hell-gate. This tone of broad farce, with nothing else like it in the whole play, comes as a single ray of common daylight to separate the agony of the dark night's murder from the agony of the struggle for concealment. [_Tone-Clash._] The mixture of tones goes a stage further when opposing tones of passion _clash_ in the same incident and are _fused_ together. These terms are, I think, scarcely metaphorical: as a physiological fact we see our physical susceptibility to pleasurable and painful emotions drawn into conflict with one another in the phenomena of hysteria; and their mental analogues must be capable of much closer union. As examples of these effects resting upon an appeal to opposite sides of our emotional nature at the same time may be instanced the flash of comic irony, [=iv.= i. 288, &c.] already referred to more than once, that starts up in the most pathetic moment of Antonio's trial by his friend's allusion to his newly wedded wife. Of the same double nature are the strokes of pathetic humour in this play; [=iii.= iii. 32.] as where Antonio describes himself so worn with grief that he will hardly spare a pound of flesh to his bloody creditor; or again his pun, [=iv.= i. 280.] For if the Jew do cut but deep enough I'll pay it presently with all my heart! Shakespeare is very true to nature in thus borrowing the language of word-play to express suffering so exquisite as to leave sober language far behind. [_Tone-Storm._] Finally Tone-Clash rises into _Tone-Storm_ in such rare climaxes as the centrepiece of _Lear_, [=iii.= i-vi.] where against a tempest of nature as a fitting background we have the conflict of three madnesses, passion, idiocy, and folly, bidding against one another, and inflaming each other's wildness into an inextricable whirl of frenzy. [_Movement applied to Passion._] The idea of movement has next to be applied to Passion. Passion is experience as grasped by our emotional nature: this will be sensitive not only to isolated fragments of experience, but equally to the succession of incidents. The movement of events will produce a corresponding movement in our emotional nature as this is variously affected by them; and as the succession of incidents seems to take direction so the play of our sympathies will seem to take form. Again, events cannot succeed one another without suggesting causes at work and controlling forces: when such causes and forces are of a nature to work upon our sympathy another element of Passion will appear. [_Motive Form and Motive Force._] Under Passion-Movement then are comprehended two things--_Motive Form_ and _Motive Force_. [page 278.] The first of these is a thing in which two of the great elements of Drama, Passion, and Plot, overlap, and it will be best considered in connection with Plot which takes in dramatic form as a whole. Here we have to consider the Motive Forces of dramatic passion. The dramatist is, as it were, a God in his universe, and disposes the ultimate issues of human experience at his pleasure: what then are the principles which are found to have governed his ordering of events? to personages in a drama what are the great determinants of fate? [_Poetic Justice a form of art-beauty._] The first of the great determinants of fate in the Drama is _Poetic Justice_. What exactly is the meaning of this term? It is often understood to mean the correction of justice, as if justice in poetry were more just than the justice of real life. But this is not supported by the facts of dramatic story. An English judge and jury would revolt against measuring out to Shylock the justice that is meted to him by the court of Venice, though the same persons beholding the scene in a theatre might feel their sense of Poetic Justice satisfied; unless, indeed, which might easily happen, the confusion of ideas suggested by this term operated to check their acquiescence in the issue of the play. A better notion of Poetic Justice is to understand it as the modification of justice by considerations of art. This holds good even where justice and retribution do determine the fate of individuals in the Drama; in these cases our dramatic satisfaction still rests, not on the high degree of justice exhibited, but on the artistic mode in which it works. A policeman catching a thief with his hand in a neighbour's pocket and bringing him to summary punishment affords an example of complete justice, yet its very success robs it of all poetic qualities; the same thief defeating all the natural machinery of the law, yet overtaken after all by a questionable ruse would be to the poetic sense far more interesting. [_Nemesis as a dramatic motive._] Treating Poetic Justice, then, as the application of art to morals, its most important phase will be _Nemesis_, which we have already seen involves an artistic link between sin and retribution. The artistic connection may be of the most varied description. [_Varieties of Nemesis._] There is a Nemesis of perfect equality, Shylock reaping measure for measure as he has sown. [compare =iii.= i. 118 and 165.] When Nemesis overtook the Roman conspirators it was partly its suddenness that made it impressive: within fifty lines of their appeal to all time they have fallen into an attitude of deprecation. For Richard, on the contrary, retribution was delayed to the last moment: to have escaped to the eleventh hour is shown to be no security. Jove strikes the Titans down Not when they first begin their mountain piling, But when another rock would crown their work. Nemesis may be emphasised by repetition and multiplication; in the world in which Richard is plunged there appears to be no event which is not a nemesis. Or the point may be the unlooked-for source from which the nemesis comes; as when upon the murder of Cæsar a colossus of energy and resource starts up in the time-serving and frivolous Antony, [=ii.= i. 165.] whom the conspirators had spared for his insignificance. Or again, retribution may be made bitter to the sinner by his tracing in it his own act and deed: from Lear himself, and from no other source, Goneril and Regan have received the power they use to crush his spirit. Nay, the very prize for which the sinner has sinned turns out in some cases the nemesis fate has provided for him; as when Goneril and Regan use their ill-gotten power for the state intrigues which work their death. And most keenly pointed of all comes the nemesis that is combined with mockery: [=iii.= i. 49.] Macbeth, if he had not essayed the murder of Banquo as an _extra_ precaution, might have enjoyed his stolen crown in safety; [=iv.= iii. 219.] his expedition against Macduff's castle slays all _except_ the fate-appointed avenger; [=iv.= ii. 46.] Richard disposes of his enemies with flawless success until _the last_, Dorset, escapes to his rival. Such is Nemesis, and such are some of the modes in which the connection between sin and retribution may be made artistically impressive. Poetic Justice, however, is a wider term than Nemesis. The latter implies some offence, as an occasion for the operation of judicial machinery. [_Poetic Justice other than Nemesis._] But, apart from sin, fate may be out of accord with character, and the correction of this ill distribution will satisfy the dramatic sense. But here again the practice of dramatic providence appears regulated, not with a view to abstract justice, but to justice modified by dramatic sympathy: Poetic Justice extends to the exhibition of fate moving in the interests of those with whom we sympathise and to the confusion of those with whom we are in antagonism. [=iv.= i. 346-363.] Viewed as a piece of equity the sentence on Shylock--a plaintiff who has lost his suit by an accident of statute-law--seems highly questionable. On the other hand, this sentence brings a fortune to a girl who has won our sympathies in spite of her faults; it makes provision for those for whom there is a dramatic necessity of providing; above all it is in accord with our secret liking that good fortune should go with the bright and happy, and sever itself from the mean and sordid. Whether this last is justice, I will not discuss: it is enough that it is one of the instincts of the imagination, and in creative literature justice must pay tribute to art. [_Pathos as a dramatic motive._] But however widely the term be stretched, justice is only one of the determinants of fate in the Drama: confusion on this point has led to many errors of criticism. The case of Cordelia is in point. Because she is involved in the ruin of Lear it is felt by some commentators that a consideration of justice must be sought to explain her death: they find it perhaps in her original resistance to her father; or the ingenious suggestion has been made that Cordelia, in her measures to save her father, invades England, and this breach of patriotism needs atonement. But this is surely twisting the story to an explanation, not extracting an explanation from the details of the story. It would be a violation of all dramatic proportion, needing the strongest evidence from the details of the play, if Cordelia's 'most small fault' betrayed her to dramatic execution. [=iv.= iv. 27.] And as to the sin against patriotism, the whole notion of it is foreign to the play itself, [=ii.= ii. 170-177[4]; =iii.= i, v.] in which the truest patriots, such as Kent and Gloucester, are secretly confederate with Cordelia and look upon her as the hope of their unhappy country; [=iv.= ii. 2-10 (compare 55, 95); =v.= i. 21-27.] while even Albany himself, however necessary he finds it to repel the invader, yet distinctly feels that justice is on the other side. The fact is that in Cordelia's case, as in countless other cases, motives determine fate which have in them no relation to justice; fiction being in this matter in harmony with real life, where in only a minority of instances can we recognise any element of justice or injustice as entering into the fates of individuals. When in real life a little child dies, what consideration of justice is there that bears on such an experience? Nevertheless there is an irresistible sense of beauty in the idea of the fleeting child-life arrested while yet in its completeness, before the rude hand of time has begun to trace lines of passion or hardness; the parent indeed may not feel this in the case of his own child, but in art, where there is no mist of individual feeling to blind, the sense of beauty comes out stronger than the sense of loss. It is the mission of the Drama thus to interpret the beauty of fate: it seeks, as Aristotle puts it, to purify our emotions by healthy exercise. The Drama does with human experience what Painting does with external nature. There are landscapes whose beauty is obvious to all; but it is one of the privileges of the artist to reveal the charm that lies in the most ordinary scenery, until the ideal can be recognised everywhere, and nature itself becomes art. Similarly there are striking points in life, such as the vindication of justice, which all can catch: but it is for the dramatist, as the artist in life, to arrange the experience he depicts so as to bring out the hidden beauties of fate, until the trained eye sees a meaning in all that happens;--until indeed the word 'suffering' itself has only to be translated into its Greek equivalent, and _pathos_ is recognised as a form of beauty. Accumulation of Pathos then must be added to Poetic Justice as a determinant of fate in the Drama. And our sensitiveness to this form of beauty is nowhere more signally satisfied than when we see Cordelia dead in the arms of Lear: fate having mysteriously seconded her self-devotion, and nothing, not even her life, being left out to make her sacrifice complete. [_The Supernatural as a dramatic motive._] There remains a third great determinant of fate in the Drama--the Supernatural. I have in a former chapter pointed out how in relation to this topic the modern Drama stands in a different position from that of ancient Tragedy. In the Drama of antiquity the leading motive forces were supernatural, either the secret force of Destiny, or the interposition of supernatural beings who directly interfered with human events. We are separated from this view of life by a revolution of thought which has substituted Providence for Destiny as the controller of the universe, and absorbed the supernatural within the domain of Law. [_The Supernatural rationalised in modern Drama._] Yet elements that had once entered so deeply into the Drama would not be easily lost to the machinery of Passion-Movement; supernatural agency has a degree of recognition in modern thought, and even Destiny may still be utilised if it can be stripped of antagonism to the idea of a benevolent Providence. To begin with the latter: the problem for a modern dramatist is to reconcile Destiny with Law. The characteristics which made the ancient conception of fate dramatically impressive--its irresistibility, its unintelligibility, and its suggestion of personal hostility--he may still insinuate into the working of events: only the destiny must be rationalised, that is, the course of events must at the same time be explicable by natural causes. [_As an objective force in Irony._] First: Shakespeare gives us Destiny acting objectively, as an external force, in the form of _Irony_, already discussed in connection with the standard illustration of it in _Macbeth_. In the movement of this play Destiny appears in the most pronounced form of mockery: every difficulty and check being in the issue converted into an instrument for furthering the course of events. Yet this mockery is wholly without any suggestion of malignity in the governing power of the universe; its effect being rather to measure the irresistibility of righteous retribution. This Irony makes just the difference between the ordinary operations of Law or Providence and the suggestion of Destiny: yet each step in the action is sufficiently explained by rational considerations. [=i.= iv. 37.] What more natural than that Duncan should proclaim his son heir-apparent to check any hopes that too successful service might excite? [=i.= iv. 48.] Yet what more natural than that this loss of Macbeth's remote chance of the crown should be the occasion of his resolve no longer to be content with chances? [=ii.= iii. 141.] What more natural than that the sons of the murdered king should take flight upon the revelation of a treason useless to its perpetrator as long as they were living? Yet what again more natural than that the momentary reaction consequent upon this flight should, [=ii.= iv. 21-41.] in the general fog of suspicion and terror, give opportunity to the object of universal dread himself to take the reins of government? The Irony is throughout no more than a garb worn by rational history. [_As a subjective force in Infatuation._] Or, again, Destiny may be exhibited as a subjective force in _Infatuation_, or _Judicial Blindness_: 'whom the gods would destroy they first blind.' This was a conception specially impressive to ancient ethics; the lesson it gathered from almost every great fall was that of a spiritual darkening which hid from the sinner his own danger, obvious to every other eye, till he had been tempted beyond the possibility of retreat. Falling in frenzied guilt, he knows it not; So thick the blinding cloud That o'er him floats; and Rumour widely spread With many a sigh repeats the dreary doom, A mist that o'er the house In gathering darkness broods. Such Infatuation is very far from being inconsistent with the idea of Law; indeed, it appears repeatedly in the strong figures of Scriptural speech, by which the ripening of sin to its own destruction--a merciful law of a righteously-ordered universe--is suggested as the direct act of Him who is the founder of the universe and its laws. By such figures God is represented as hardening Pharaoh's heart; or, again, an almost technical description of Infatuation is put by the fervour of prophecy into the mouth of God: Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. [=v.= viii. 13.] In the case of Macbeth the judicial blindness is maintained to the last moment, and he pauses in the final combat to taunt Macduff with certain destruction. Yet, while we thus get the full dramatic effect of Infatuation, it is so far rationalised that we are allowed to see the machinery by which the Infatuation has been brought about: [=iii.= v. 16.] we have heard the Witches arrange to deceive Macbeth with false oracles. A very dramatic, but wholly natural, example of Infatuation appears at the turning-point of Richard's career, where, when he has just discovered that Richmond is the point from which the storm of Nemesis threatens to break upon him, [=iv.= ii. 98, &c.] prophecies throng upon his memory which might have all his life warned him of this issue, had he not been blind to them till this moment. [=i.= iii. 131.] Again, Antonio's challenge to Shylock to do his worst is, as I have already pointed out, an outburst of _hybris_, the insolence of Infatuation: but this is no more than a natural outcome of a conflict between two implacable temperaments. In Infatuation, then, as in all its other forms, Destiny is exhibited by Shakespeare as harmonised with natural law. [_Supernatural agencies._] Besides Destiny the Shakespearean Drama admits direct supernatural agencies--witches, ghosts, apparitions, as well as portents and violations of natural law. It appears to me idle to contend that these in Shakespeare are not really supernatural, but must be interpreted as delusions of their victims. There may be single cases, such as the appearance of Banquo to Macbeth, where, as no eye sees it but his own, the apparition may be resolved into an hallucination. But to determine Shakespeare's general practice it is enough to point to the Ghost in _Hamlet_, which, as seen by three persons at once and on separate occasions, is indisputably objective: and a single instance is sufficient to establish the assumption in the Shakespearean Drama of supernatural beings with a real existence. Zeal for Shakespeare's rationality is a main source of the opposite view; but for the assumption of such supernatural existences the responsibility lies not with Shakespeare, but with the opinion of the age he is pourtraying. A more important question is how far Shakespeare uses such supernatural agency as a motive force in his plays; how far does he allow it to enter into the working of events, for the interpretation of which he is responsible? On this point Shakespeare's usage is clear and subtle: he uses the agency of the supernatural to intensify and to illuminate human action, not to determine it. [_Intensifying human action._] Supernatural agency intensifying human action is illustrated in _Macbeth_. No one can seriously doubt the objective existence of the Witches in this play, or that they are endowed with superhuman sources of knowledge. But the question is, do they in reality turn Macbeth to crime? In one of the chapters devoted to this play I have dwelt on the importance of the point that Macbeth has been already meditating treason in his heart when he meets the Witches on the heath. His secret thoughts--which he betrays in his guilty start--[=i.= iii. 51.] have been an invitation to the powers of evil, and they have obeyed the summons: Macbeth has already ventured a descent, and they add an impulse downward. To bring this out the more clearly, Shakespeare keeps Banquo side by side with Macbeth through the critical stages of the temptation: Banquo has made no overtures to temptation, and to him the tempters have no mission. It is noticeable that where the two warriors meet the Witches on the heath it is Banquo who begins the conversation. [=i.= iii. 38-50.] _Banquo._ How far is 't called to Forres? No answer. The silence attracts his attention to those he is addressing. What are these So wither'd and so wild in their attire, That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on 't? Still no answer. Live you? or are you aught That man may question? They signify in dumb show that they may not answer. You seem to understand me, By each at once her chappy finger laying Upon her skinny lips: you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so. Still he can draw no answer. At last Macbeth chimes in: Speak, if you can: what are you? The tamperer with temptation has spoken, and in a moment they break out, 'All hail, Macbeth!' and ply their supernatural task. [57.] Later on in the scene, when directly challenged by Banquo, they do respond and give out an oracle for him. But into his upright mind the poison-germs of insight into the future fall harmlessly; it is because Macbeth is already tainted that these breed in him a fever of crime. [=iii.= v. and =iv.= i.] In the second incident of the Witches, so far from their being the tempters, it is Macbeth who seeks them and forces from them knowledge of the future. Yet, even here, what is the actual effect of their revelation upon Macbeth? It is, like that of his air-drawn dagger, only to marshal him along the way that he is going. [=iv.= i. 74.] They bid him beware Macduff: he answers, 'Thou hast harp'd my fear aright.' They give him preternatural pledges of safety: are these a help to him in enjoying the rewards of sin? [=iv.= iii. 4, &c.] On the contrary, as a matter of fact we find Macbeth, in panic of suspicion, seeking security by means of daily butchery; the oracles have produced in him confidence enough to give agony to the bitterness of his betrayal, but not such confidence as to lead him to dispense with a single one of the natural bulwarks to tyranny. The function of the Witches throughout the action of this play is exactly expressed by a phrase Banquo uses in connection with them: [=i.= iii. 124.] they are only 'instruments of darkness,' assisting to carry forward courses of conduct initiated independently of them. Macbeth has made the destiny which the Witches reveal. [_Illuminating human action._] Again, supernatural agency is used to illuminate human action: the course of events in a drama not ceasing to obey natural causes, but becoming, by the addition of the supernatural agency, endowed with a new art-beauty. [_The Oracular Action._] The great example of this is the _Oracular Action_. This important element of dramatic effect--how it consists in the working out of Destiny from mystery to clearness, and the different forms it assumes--has been discussed at length in a former chapter. The question here is, how far do we find such superhuman knowledge used as a force in the movement of events? As Shakespeare handles oracular machinery, the conditions of natural working in the course of events are not in the least degree altered by the revelation of the future. The actor's belief (or disbelief) in the oracle may be one of the circumstances which have influenced his action--as it would have done in the real life of the age--but to the spectator, to whom the Drama is to reveal the real governing forces of the world, the oracular action is presented not as a force but as a light. It gives to a course of events the illumination that can be in actual fact given to it by History, the office of which is to make each detail of a story interesting in the light of the explanation that comes when all the details are complete. Only it uses the supernatural agency to project this illumination into the midst of the events themselves, which History cannot give till they are concluded; and also it carries the art-effect of such illumination a stage further than History could carry it, by making it progressive in intelligibility, and making this progress keep pace with the progress of the events themselves. Fate will allow none but Macduff to be the slayer of Macbeth. True: but Macduff (who moreover knows nothing of his destiny) is the most deeply injured of Macbeth's subjects, and as a fact we find it needs the news of his injury to rouse him to his task; [=iv.= iii.] as he approaches the battle he feels that the ghosts of his wife [=v.= vii. 15.] and children will haunt him if he allows any other to be the tyrant's executioner. Thus far the interpretation of History might go: but the oracular machinery introduced points dimly to Macduff before the first breath of the King's suspicion has assailed him, and the suggestiveness becomes clearer and clearer as the convergence of events carries the action to its climax. The natural working of human events has been undisturbed: only the spectator's mind has been endowed with a special illumination for receiving them. [_The Supernatural as Dramatic Background._] In another and very different way we have supernatural agency called in to throw a peculiar illumination over human events. In dealing with the movement of _Julius Cæsar_ I have described at length the _Supernatural Background_ of storm, tempest, and portent, which assist the emotional agitation throughout the second stage of the action. These are clearly supernatural in that they are made to suggest a mystic sympathy with, and indeed prescience of, mutations in human life. Yet their function is simply that of illumination: they cast a glow of emotion over the spectator as he watches the train of events, though all the while the action of these events remains within the sphere of natural causes. In narrative and lyric poetry this endowment of nature with human sympathies becomes the commonest of poetic devices, personification; and here it never suggests anything supernatural because it is so clearly recognised as belonging to expression. But 'expression' in the Drama extends beyond language, and takes in presentation; and it is only a device in presentation that tumult in nature and tumult in history, each perfectly natural by itself, are made to have a suggestion of the supernatural by their coincidence in time. After all there is no real meaning in storm any more than in calm weather, only that contemplative observers have transferred their own emotions to particular phases of nature: it would seem, then, a very slight and natural reversal of the process to call in this humanised nature to assist the emotions which have created it. In these various forms Shakespeare introduces supernatural agency into his dramas. In my discussion of them it will be understood that I am not in the least endeavouring to explain away the reality of their supernatural character. My purpose is to show for how small a proportion of his total effect Shakespeare draws on the supernatural, allowing it to carry further or to illustrate, but not to mould or determine a course of events. It will readily be granted that he brings effect enough out of a supernatural incident to justify the use of it to our rational sense of economy. FOOTNOTES: [4] The text in this passage is regarded as difficult by many editors, and is marked in the Globe Edition as corrupt. I do not see the difficulty of taking it as it stands, if regard be had to the general situation, in which (as Steevens has pointed out) Kent is reading the letter in disjointed snatches by the dim moonlight. Commentators seem to me to have increased the obscurity by taking 'enormous' in its rare sense of 'irregular,' 'out of order,' and making it refer to the state of England. Surely it is used in its ordinary meaning, and applies to France; the clause in which it occurs being part of the _actual words_ of Cordelia's letter, who naturally uses 'this' of the country from which she writes. Inverted commas would make the connection clear. Approach, thou beacon to this under globe, That by thy comfortable beams I may Peruse this letter!--'Nothing almost sees miracles'-- 'But misery'--I know 'tis from Cordelia, Who hath 'most fortunately been inform'd' Of my 'obscured course, and shall find time From this enormous state'--'seeking to give Losses their remedies,' &c. I.e. Cordelia promises she will find leisure from the oppressive cares of her new kingdom to remedy the evils of England. Kent gives up the attempt to read; but enough has been brought out for the dramatist's purpose at that particular stage, viz. to hint that Kent was in correspondence with Cordelia, and looked to her as the deliverer of England. XIV. INTEREST OF PLOT. [_Idea of Plot as the application of design to human life._] WE now come to the third great division of Dramatic Criticism--Plot, or the purely intellectual side of action. Action itself has been treated above as the mutual connection and interweaving of all the details in a work of art so as to unite in an impression of unity. But we have found it impossible to discuss Character and Passion entirely apart from such action and interworking: the details of human interest become dramatic by being permeated with action-force. When however this mutual relation of all the parts is looked at by itself, as an abstract interest of design, the human life being no more than the material to which this design is applied, then we get the interest of Plot. So defined, I hope Plot is sufficiently removed from the vulgar conception of it as sensational mystery, which has done so much to lower this element of dramatic effect in the eyes of literary students. If Plot be understood as the extension of design to the sphere of human life, threads of experience being woven into a symmetrical pattern as truly as vari-coloured threads of wool are woven into a piece of wool-work, then the conception of it will come out in its true dignity. What else is such reduction to order than the meeting-point of science and art? Science is engaged in tracing rhythmic movements in the beautiful confusion of the heavenly bodies, or reducing the bewildering variety of external nature to regular species and nice gradations of life. Similarly, art continues the work of creation in calling ideal order out of the chaos of things as they are. And so the tangle of life, with its jumble of conflicting aspirations, its crossing and twisting of contrary motives, its struggle and partnership of the whole human race, in which no two individuals are perfectly alike and no one is wholly independent of the rest--this has gradually in the course of ages been laboriously traced by the scientific historian into some such harmonious plan as evolution. But he finds himself long ago anticipated by the dramatic artist, who has touched crime and seen it link itself with nemesis, who has transformed passion into pathos, who has received the shapeless facts of reality and returned them as an ordered economy of design. This application of form to human life is Plot: and Shakespeare has had no higher task to accomplish than in his revolutionising our ideas of Plot, until the old critical conceptions of it completely broke down when applied to his dramas. The appreciation of Shakespeare will not be complete until he is seen to be as subtle a weaver of plots as he is a deep reader of the human heart. [_Unity applied to Plot._] We have to consider Plot in its three aspects of unity, complexity, and development. [_The Single Action._] The simplest element of Plot is the _Single Action_, which may be defined as any train of incidents in a drama which can be conceived as a separate whole. Thus a series of details bringing out the idea of a crime and its nemesis will constitute a Nemesis Action, an oracle and its fulfilment will make up an Oracular Action, a problem and its solution a Problem Action. Throughout the treatment of Plot the root idea of _pattern_ should be steadily kept in mind: in the case of these Single Actions--the units of Plot--we have as it were the lines of a geometrical design, made up of their details as a geometrical line is made up of separate points. [_Forms of Dramatic Action._] The _Form_ of a dramatic action--the shape of the line, so to speak--will be that which gives the train of incidents its distinctiveness: the nemesis, the oracle, the problem. An action may get its distinctiveness from its tone as a Comic Action or a Tragic Action; or it may be a Character Action, when a series of details acquire a unity in bringing out the character of Hastings or Lady Macbeth; an action may be an Intrigue, or the Rise and Fall of a person, or simply a Story like the Caskets Story. Finally, an action may combine several different forms at the same time, just as a geometrical line may be at once, say, an arch and a spiral. The action that traces Macbeth's career has been treated as exhibiting a triple form of Nemesis, Irony, and Oracular Action; further, it is a Tragic Action in tone, it is a Character Action in its contrast with the career of Lady Macbeth, and it stands in the relation of Main Action to others in the play. [_Complexity applied to Action: a distinction of Modern Drama._] Now what I have called Single Action constituted the whole conception of Plot in ancient Tragedy; in the Shakespearean Drama it exists only as a unit of Complex Action. The application of complexity to action is rendered particularly easy by the idea of pattern, patterns which appeal to the eye being more often made up of several lines crossing and interweaving than of single lines. Ancient tragedy clung to 'unity of action,' and excluded such matter as threatened to set up a second interest in a play. Modern Plot has a unity of a much more elaborate order, perhaps best expressed by the word _harmony_--a harmony of distinct actions, each of which has its separate unity. The illustration of harmony is suggestive. Just as in musical harmony each part is a melody of itself, though one of them leads and is _the_ melody, so a modern plot draws together into a common system a Main Action and other inferior yet distinct actions. Moreover the step from melody alone to melody harmonised, or that from the single instruments of the ancient world to the combinations of a modern orchestra, marks just the difference between ancient and modern art which we find reflected in the different conception of Plot held by Sophocles and by Shakespeare. Shakespeare's plots are federations of plots: in his ordering of dramatic events we trace a common self-government made out of elements which have an independence of their own, and at the same time merge a part of their independence in common action. [_Analysis of Action._] The foundation of critical treatment in the matter of Plot is the _Analysis_ of Complex Action into its constituent Single[5] Actions. This is easy in such a play as _The Merchant of Venice_. Here two of the actions are stories, a form of unity readily grasped, and which in the present case had an independent existence outside the play. These identified and separated, it is easy also to see that Jessica constitutes a fresh centre of interest around which other details gather themselves; that the incidents in which Launcelot and Gobbo are concerned are separable from these; while the matter of the rings constitutes a distinct episode of the Caskets Story: already the junction of so many separate stories in a common working gratifies our sense of design. In other plays where the elements are not stories the individuality of the Single Actions will not always be so positive: all would readily distinguish the Lear Main plot from the Underplot of Gloucester, but in the subdivision of these difference of opinion arises. [_Canons of Analysis._] In an Appendix to this chapter I have suggested schemes of Analysis for each of the five plays treated in this work: [_Analysis tentative not positive._] I may here add four remarks. (1) Any series of details which can be collected from various parts of a drama to make up a common interest may be recognised in Analysis as a separate action. It follows from this that there may be very different modes of dividing and arranging the elements of the same plot: such Analysis is not a matter in which we are to look for right or wrong, but simply for better or worse. No scheme will ever exhaust the wealth of design which reveals itself in a play of Shakespeare; and the value of Analysis as a critical process is not confined to the scheme it produces, but includes also the insight which the mere effort to analyse a drama gives into the harmony and connection of its parts. [_Design as the test of Analysis._] (2) The essence of Plot being design, that will be the best scheme of Analysis which best brings out the idea of symmetry and design. [_Analysis exhaustive._] (3) Analysis must be exhaustive: every detail in the drama must find a place in some one of the actions. [_The elementary actions not mutually exclusive._] (4) The constituent actions will of course not be mutually exclusive, many details being common to several actions: these details are so many meeting-points, in which the lines of action cross one another.--With these sufficiently obvious principles I must leave the schemes of analysis in the Appendix to justify themselves. [_The Enveloping Action._] In the process of analysis we are led to notice special forms of action: in particular, the _Enveloping Action_. This interesting element of Plot may be described as the fringe, or border, or frame, of a dramatic pattern. It appears when the personages and incidents which make up the essential interest of a play are more or less loosely involved with some interest more wide-reaching than their own, though more vaguely presented. It is seen in its simplest form where a story occupied with private personages connects itself at points with public history: homely life being thus wrapped round with life of the great world; fiction having reality given to it by its being set in a frame of accepted fact. We are familiar enough with it in prose fiction. Almost all the Waverley Novels have Enveloping Actions, Scott's regular plan being to entangle the fortunes of individuals, which are to be the main interest of the story, with public events which make known history. Thus in _Woodstock_ a Cavalier maiden and her Puritan lover become, as the story proceeds, mixed up in incidents of the Commonwealth and Restoration; or again, the plot of _Redgauntlet_, which consists in the separate adventures of a pair of Scotch friends, is brought to an issue in a Jacobite rising in which both become involved. The Enveloping Action is a favourite element in Shakespeare's plots. In the former part of the book I have pointed out how the War of the Roses forms an Enveloping Action to _Richard III_; how its connection with the other actions is close enough for it to catch the common feature of Nemesis; and how it is marked with special clearness by the introduction of Queen Margaret and the Duchess of York to bring out its opposite sides. In _Macbeth_ there is an Enveloping Action of the supernatural centring round the Witches: the human workings of the play are wrapped in a deeper working out of destiny, with prophetic beings to keep it before us. _Julius Cæsar_, as a story of political conspiracy and political reaction, is furnished with a loose Enveloping Action in the passions of the Roman mob: this is a vague power outside recognised political forces, appearing at the beginning to mark that uncertainty in public life which can drive even good men to conspiracy, while from the turning-point it furnishes the force the explosion of which is made to secure the conspirators' downfall. A typical example is to be found in _Lear_, all the more typical from the fact that it is by no means a prominent interest in the play. The Enveloping Action in this drama is the French War. The seeds of this war are sown in the opening incident, [=i.= i. 265.] in which the French King receives his wife from Lear with scarcely veiled insult: [=i.= ii. 23.] it troubles Gloucester in the next scene that France is 'in choler parted.' Then we get, in the second Act, a distant hint of rupture from the letter of Cordelia read by Kent in the stocks. [=ii.= ii. 172.] In the other scenes of this Act the only political question is of 'likely wars toward' between the English dukes; [=ii.= i. 11.] but at the beginning of the third Act Kent directly connects these quarrels of the dukes with the growing chance of a war with France: [=iii.= i. 19-34.] the French have had intelligence of the 'scattered kingdom,' and have been 'wise in our negligence.' In this Act Gloucester confides to Edmund the feeler he has received from France, [=iii.= iii.] and his trustfulness is the cause of his downfall; [=iii.= iii. 22.] Edmund treacherously reveals the confidence to Cornwall, [=iii.= v. 18.] and makes it the occasion of his rise. Gloucester's measures for the safety of Lear have naturally a connection with the expected invasion, [=iii.= vi. 95-108.] and he sends him to Dover to find welcome and protection. [=iii.= vii. 2, &c.] The final scene of this Act, devoted to the cruel outrage on Gloucester, shows from its very commencement the important connection of the Enveloping Action with the rest of the play: the French army has landed, and it is this which is felt to make Lear's escape so important, and which causes such signal revenge to be taken on Gloucester. Throughout the fourth Act all the threads of interest are becoming connected with the invading army at Dover; if this Act has a separate interest of its own in Edmund's intrigues with both Goneril and Regan at once, [=iv.= ii. 11, 15; =iv.= v. 12, 30 &c.] yet these intrigues are possible only because Edmund is hurrying backwards and forwards between the princesses in the measures of military preparation for the battle. The fifth Act has its scene on the battlefield, and the double issue of the battle stamps itself on the whole issue of the play: the death of Lear and Cordelia is the result of the French defeat, while, on the other hand, [=v.= iii. 238, 256.] all who were to reap the fruits of guilt die in the hour of victory. Thus this French War is a model of Enveloping Action--outside the main issues, yet loosely connecting itself with every phase of the movement; originating in the incident which is the origin of the whole action; the possibility of it developed by the progress of the Main story, alike by the cruelty shown to Lear and by the rivalry between his daughters; the fear of it playing a main part in the tragic side of the Underplot, and the preparation for it serving as occasion for the remaining interest of intrigue; finally, breaking out as a reality in which the whole action of the play merges. [_Economy: supplementary to Analysis._] From Analysis we pass naturally to _Economy_. Considered in the abstract, as a phase of plot-beauty, Economy may be defined as that perfection of design which lies midway between incompleteness and waste. Its formula is that a play must be seen to contain all the details necessary to the unity, no detail superfluous to the unity, and each detail expanded in exact proportion to its bearing on the unity. In practice, as a branch of treatment in Shakespeare-Criticism, Economy, like Analysis, deals with complexity of plot. The two are supplementary to one another. The one resolves a complexity into its elements, the other traces the unity running through these elements. Analysis distinguishes the separate actions which make up a plot, while Economy notes the various bonds between these actions and the way in which they are brought into a common system: it being clear that the more the separateness of the different interests can be reduced the richer will be the economy of design. [_Economic Forms._] It will be enough to note three Economic Forms. [_Connection_] The first is simple _Connection_: the actual contact of action with action, the separate lines of the pattern meeting at various points. In other words, the different actions have details or personages in common. Bassanio is clearly a bond between the two main stories of _The Merchant of Venice_, in both of which he figures so prominently; and it has been pointed out that the scene of Bassanio's successful choice is an incident with which all the stories which enter into the action of the play connect themselves. [_and Linking._] There are _Link Personages,_ who have a special function so to connect stories, and similarly _Link Actions_: Gloucester in the play of _Lear_ and the Jessica Story in _The Merchant of Venice_ are examples. Or Connection may come by the interweaving of stories as they progress: they alternate, or fill, so to speak, each other's interstices. [from =ii.= i. to =iii.= ii. 319.] Where the Story of the Jew halts for a period of three months, the elopement of Jessica comes to occupy the interval; or again, scenes from the tragedy of the Gloucester family separate scenes from the tragedy of Lear, until the two tragedies have become mutually entangled. Envelopment too serves as a kind of Connection: the actions which make up such a play as _Richard III_ gain additional compactness by their being merged in a common Enveloping Action. [_Dependence._] Another Form of Economy is _Dependence_. This term expresses the relation between an underplot and main plot, or between subactions and the actions to which they are subordinate. [compare =i.= i. 35, 191.] The fact that Gloucester is a follower of Lear--he would appear to have been his court chamberlain--makes the story of the Gloucester family seem to spring out of the story of the Lear family; that we are not called upon to initiate a fresh train of interest ministers to our sense of Economy. [_Symmetry._] But in the Shakespearean Drama the most important Economic Form is _Symmetry_: between different parts of a design symmetry is the closest of bonds. [_Balance._] A simple form of Symmetry is the _Balance_ of actions, by which, as it were, the mass of one story is made to counterpoise that of another. If the Caskets Story, moving so simply to its goal of success, seems over-weighted by the thrilling incidents of the Jew Story, we find that the former has by way of compensation the Episode of the Rings rising out of its close, while the elopement of Jessica and her reception at Belmont transfers a whole batch of interests from the Jew side of the play to the Christian side. Or again, in a play such as _Macbeth_, which traces the Rise and Fall of a personage, the Rise is accompanied by the separate interest of Banquo till he falls a victim to its success; to balance this we have in the Fall Macduff, who becomes important only after Banquo's death, and from that point occupies more and more of the field of view until he brings the action to a close. Similarly in _Julius Cæsar_ the victim himself dominates the first half; Antony, his avenger, succeeds to his position for the second half. [_Parallelism and Contrast._] More important than Balance as forms of Symmetry are _Parallelism_ and _Contrast_ of actions. Both are, to a certain extent, exemplified in the plot of _Macbeth_: the triple form of Nemesis, Irony, and Oracular binding together all the elements of the plot down to the Enveloping Action illustrates Parallelism, and Contrast has been shown to be a bond between the interest of Lady Macbeth and of her husband. But Parallelism and Contrast are united in their most typical forms in _Lear_, which is at once the most intricate and the most symmetrical of Shakespearean dramas. A glance at the scheme of this plot shows its deep-seated parallelism. A Main story in the family of Lear has an Underplot in the family of Gloucester. The Main plot is a problem and its solution, the Underplot is an intrigue and its nemesis. Each is a system of four actions: there is the action initiating the problem with the three tragedies which make up its solution, there is again the action generating the intrigue and the three tragedies which constitute its nemesis. The threefold tragedy in the Main plot has its elements exactly analogous, each to each, to the threefold tragedy of the Underplot: Lear and Gloucester alike reap a double nemesis of evil from the children they have favoured, and good from the children they have wronged; the innocent Cordelia has to suffer like the innocent Edgar; alike in both stories the gains of the wicked are found to be the means of their destruction. Even in the subactions, which have only a temporary distinctness in carrying out such elaborate interworking, the same Parallelism manifests itself. [e.g. =i.= iv. 85-104; =ii.= ii, &c.] They run in pairs: where Kent has an individual mission as an agency for good, Oswald runs a course parallel with him as an agency for evil; [e.g. =iv.= ii. 29; =v.= iii, from 59.] of the two heirs of Lear, Albany, after passively representing the good side of the Main plot, has the function of presiding over the nemesis which comes on the evil agents of the Underplot, while Cornwall, who is active in the evil of the [=iii.= vii.] Main plot, is the agent in bringing suffering on the good victims of the Underplot; [=iv.= ii; =iv.= v; =v.= iii. 238.] once more from opposite sides of the Lear story Goneril and Regan work in parallel intrigues to their destruction. Every line of the pattern runs parallel to some distant line. Further, so fundamental is the symmetry that we have only to shift the point of view and the Parallelism becomes Contrast. If the family histories be arranged around Cordelia and Edmund, as centres of good and evil in their different spheres, we perceive a sharp antithesis between the two stories extending to every detail: though stated already in the chapter on _Lear_, I should like to state it again in parallel columns to do it full justice. In the MAIN PLOT a Daughter, In the UNDERPLOT a Son, Who has received nothing Who has received nothing but Harm from her father, but Good from his father, Who has had her position Who has, contrary to justice, been unjustly torn from her advanced to the position of an and given to her innocent elder Brother he had maligned, undeserving elder Sisters, Nevertheless sacrifices Nevertheless is seeking the destruction herself to save the Father of the Father who _did_ him the who _did_ the injury from unjust kindness, when he falls by the the Sisters who _profited_ hand of the Brother who _was wronged_ by it. by it. The play of _Lear_ is itself sufficient to suggest to the critic that in the analysis of Shakespeare's plots he may safely expect to find symmetry in proportion to their intricacy. [_Movement applied to Plot: Motive Form._] Movement applied to Plot becomes _Motive Form_: without its being necessary to take the play to pieces Motive Form is the impression of design left by the succession of incidents in the order in which they actually stand. [_Simple Movement: the Line of Motion a straight line._] The succession of incidents may suggest progress to a goal, as in the Caskets Story. This is preeminently Simple[6] Movement: the Line of Motion becomes a straight line. [_Complicated Movement: the Line of Motion a curve._] We get the next step by the variation that is made when a curved line is substituted for a straight line: in other words, when the succession of incidents reaches its goal, but only after a diversion. This is what is known as _Complication and Resolution_. A train of events is obstructed and diverted from what appears its natural course, which gives the interest of Complication: after a time the obstruction is removed and the natural course is restored, which is the Resolution of the action: the Complication, like a musical discord, having existed only for the sake of being resolved. No clearer example could be desired than that of Antonio, whose career when we are introduced to it appears to be that of leading the money-market of Venice and extending patronage and protection all around; by the entanglement of the bond this career is checked and Antonio turned into a prisoner and bankrupt; then Portia cuts the knot and Antonio becomes all he has been before. [=iii.= ii. 173.] Or again, the affianced intercourse of Portia and Bassanio begins with an exchange of rings; [=iv.= ii.] by the cross circumstances connected with Antonio's trial one of them parts with this token, and the result is a comic interruption to the smoothness of lovers' life, [=v.= i. 266.] until by Portia's confession of the ruse the old footing is restored. [_Action-Movement distinguished from Passion-Movement._] Such Complicated Movement belongs entirely to the Action side of dramatic effect. It rests upon design and the interworking of details; its interest lies in obstacles interposed to be removed, doing for the sake of undoing, entanglement for its own sake; in its total effect it ministers to a sense of intellectual satisfaction, like that belonging to a musical fugue, in which every opening suggested has been sufficiently followed up. We get a movement of quite a different kind when the sense of design is inseparable from effects of passion, and the movement is, as it were, traced in our emotional nature. In this case a growing strain is put upon our sympathy which is not unlike Complication. But no Resolution follows: the rise is made to end in fall, the progress leads to ruin; in place of the satisfaction that comes from restoring and unloosing is substituted a fresh appeal to our emotional nature, and from agitation we pass only to the calmer emotions of pity and awe. There is thus a _Passion-Movement_ distinct from _Action-Movement_; and, analogous to the Complication and Resolution of the latter, Passion-Movement has its _Strain and Reaction_. [_The Line of Passion a Regular Arch,_] The Line of Passion has its various forms. A chapter has been devoted to illustrating one form of Passion-Movement, which may be called the _Regular Arch_--if we may found a technical term on the happy illustration of Gervinus. The example was taken from the play of _Julius Cæsar_, the emotional effect in which was shown to pass from calm interest to greater and greater degree of agitation, until after culminating in the centre it softens down and yields to the different calmness of pity and acquiescence. [_an Inclined Plane_] The movement of _Richard III_ and many other dramas more resembles the form of an _Inclined Plane_, [=iv.= ii. 46.] the turn in the emotion occurring long past the centre of the play. [_or a Wave Line._] Or again, there is the _Wave Line_ of emotional distribution, made by repeated alternations of strain and relief. This is a form of Passion-Movement that nearly approaches Action-Movement, and readily goes with it in the same play; in _The Merchant of Venice_ the union of the two stories gives such alternate Strain and Relief, and the Episode of the Rings comes as final Relief to the final Strain of the trial. [_For 'Comedy,' 'Tragedy,' substitute, in the case of Shakespeare,_] The distinction between Action-Movement and Passion-Movement is of special importance in Shakespeare-Criticism, inasmuch as it is the real basis of distinction between the two main classes of Shakespearean dramas. Every one feels that the terms Comedy and Tragedy are inadequate, and indeed absurd, when applied to Shakespeare. The distinction these terms express is one of Tone, and they were quite in place in the ancient Drama, in which the comic and tragic tones were kept rigidly distinct and were not allowed to mingle in the same play. Applied to a branch of Drama of which the leading characteristic is the complete Mixture of Tones the terms necessarily break down, and the so-called 'Comedies' of _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Measure for Measure_ contain some of the most tragic effects in Shakespeare. The true distinction between the two kinds of plays is one of Movement, not Tone. In _The Merchant of Venice_ the leading interest is in the complication of Antonio's fortunes and its resolution by the device of Portia. In all such cases, however perplexing the entanglement of the complication may have become, the ultimate effect of the whole lies in the resolution of this complication; and this is an intellectual effect of satisfaction. In the plays called Tragedies there is no such return from distraction to recovery: our sympathy having been worked up to the emotion of agitation is relieved only by the emotion of pathos or despair. Thus in these two kinds of dramas the impression which to the spectator overpowers all other impressions, and gives individuality to the particular play, is this sense of intellectual or of emotional unity in the movement:--is, in other words, Action-Movement or Passion-Movement. [_'Action-Drama,' 'Passion-Drama.'_] The two may be united, as remarked above in the case of _The Merchant of Venice_; but one or the other will be predominant and will give to the play its unity of impression. The distinction, then, which the terms Comedy and Tragedy fail to mark would be accurately brought out by substituting for them the terms Action-Drama and Passion-Drama. [_Compound Movement._] With complexity of action comes complexity of movement. _Compound Movement_ takes in the idea of the relative motion amongst the different actions into which a plot can be analysed. A play of Shakespeare presents a system of wheels within wheels, like a solar system in motion as a whole while the separate members of it have their own orbits to follow. [_Its three Modes of Motion: Similar Motion,_] The nature of Compound Movement can be most simply brought out by describing its three leading Modes of Motion. In _Similar Motion_ the actions of a system are moving in the same form. The plot of _Richard III_, for example, is a general rise and fall of Nemesis made up of elements which are themselves rising and falling Nemeses. Such Similar Motion is only Parallelism looked at from the side of movement. A variation of it occurs when the form of one action is distributed amongst the rest: the main action of _Julius Cæsar_ is a Nemesis Action, the two subactions are the separate interests of Cæsar and Antony, which put together amount to Nemesis. [_Contrary Motion,_] In _Contrary Motion_ the separate actions as they move on interfere with one another, that is, each acts as complicating force to the other, turning it out of its course; in reality they are helping one another's advance, seeing that complication is a step in dramatic progress. _The Merchant of Venice_ furnishes an example. The Caskets Story progresses without check to its climax; in starting it complicates the Jew action--for before Bassanio can get to Belmont he borrows of Antonio the loan which is to entangle him in the meshes of the Jew's revenge; then the Caskets Story as a result of its climax resolves this complication in the Story of the Jew--for the union of Portia with Bassanio provides the deliverer for Bassanio's friend. But in thus resolving the Story of the Jew the Caskets Story, in the new phase of it that has commenced with the exchange of betrothal rings, itself suffers complication--the circumstances of the trial offering the suggestion to Portia to make the demand for Bassanio's ring. Thus of the two actions moving on side by side the one interferes with and diverts the other from its course, and again in restoring it gets itself diverted. This mutual interference makes up Contrary Motion. [_Convergent Motion._] A third mode of Compound movement is _Convergent Motion_, by which actions, or systems of actions, at first separate, become drawn together as they move on, and assist one another's progress. Once more the play of _Lear_ furnishes a typical example. This play, it will be recollected, includes two distinct systems of actions tracing the story of two separate families. Moreover the main story after its opening incident presents, so far as movement is concerned, three different sides, according as its incidents centre around Lear, Goneril, or Regan. The first link between these diverse actions is Gloucester, the central personage of the whole plot. [=i.= i. 35, 191.] Gloucester has been the King's chamberlain and his close friend, [=ii.= i. 93.] the King having been godfather to his son. Accordingly, in the highly unstable political condition of a kingdom divided equally between two unprincipled sisters, Gloucester represents a third party, the party of Lear: he holds the balance of power, and the effort to secure him draws the separate interests together. [=i.= v. 1.] Thus as soon as Lear and Goneril have quarrelled Lear sends Kent to Gloucester, and our actions begin to approach one another. [=ii.= i. 9.] Before this messenger can arrive we hear of 'hints and ear-kissing arguments' as to rupture between the dukes, and we see Regan and her husband making a hasty journey--'out of season threading dark-eyed night'--[=ii.= i. 121.] in order to be the first at Gloucester's castle; [=ii.= iv. 192.] when Goneril in self-defence follows, all the separate elements of the main plot have found a meeting-point. But this castle of Gloucester in which they meet is the seat of the underplot, and the two systems become united in the closest manner by this central linking. [=ii.= i. 88-131, esp. 112.] Regan arrives in time to use her authority in furthering the intrigue against Edgar as a means of recommending herself to the deceived Gloucester; the other intrigue of the underplot, [=iii.= v, &c.] that against Gloucester himself, is promoted by the same means when Edmund has betrayed to Regan his father's protection of Lear; while the meeting of both sisters with Edmund lays the foundation of the mutual intriguing which forms the further interest of the entanglement between underplot and main story. All the separate lines of action have thus moved to a common centre, and their concentration in a common focus gives opportunity for the climax of passion which forms the centrepiece of the play. Then the Enveloping Action comes in as a further binding force, and it has been pointed out above how throughout the fourth and fifth Acts all the separate actions, whatever their immediate purpose, have an ultimate reference to Dover as the landing-place of the invading army: in military phrase Dover is the common _objective_ on which all the separate trains of interest are concentrating. In this way have the actions of this intricate plot, so numerous and so separate at first, been found to converge to a common centre and then move together to a common _dénouement_. [_Turning-points._] The distinction of movement from the other elements of Plot leads also to the question of _Turning-points_, an idea equally connected with movement and with design. In the movement of every play a Turning-point is implied: movement could not have dramatic interest unless there were a change in the direction of events, and such change implies a point at which the change becomes apparent. Changes of a kind may be frequent through the progress of a play, but one notable point will stand out at which the ultimate issues present themselves as decided, the line of motion changing from complication to resolution, the line of passion from strain to reaction. [_The Catastrophe: or Focus of Movement._] Such a point is technically a _Catastrophe_: a word whose etymological meaning suggests a turning round so as to come down. [_The Centre of Plot._] In Shakespeare's dramatic practice we find a not less important Turning-point in relation to the design of the plot. This is always at the exact centre--the middle of the middle Act--and serves as a balancing-point about which the plot may be seen to be symmetrical: it is a _Centre of Plot_ as the Catastrophe is a Focus of Movement. The Catastrophe of _The Merchant of Venice_ is clearly Portia's judgment in the Trial Scene, by which in a moment the whole entanglement is resolved. [=iv.= i. 305.] In an earlier chapter it has been pointed out how the union of Portia and Bassanio--[=iii.= ii.] at the exact centre of the play--is the real determinant of the whole plot, uniting the complicating and resolving forces, and constituting a scene in which all the four stories find a meeting-point. In _Richard III_, [=iv.= ii. 45.] while the Catastrophe comes in the hero's late recognition of his own nemesis, yet there has been, before this and in the exact centre, a turn in the Enveloping Action, [=iii.= iii. 15.] which includes all the rest, shown by the recognition that Margaret's curses have now begun to be fulfilled. The exact centre of _Macbeth_, as pointed out above, [=iii.= iv. 20.] marks the hero's passage from rise to fall, that is from unbroken success to unbroken failure: the corresponding Catastrophe in this play is double, [=iii.= iv. 49; =v.= viii. 13.] a first appearance of Nemesis in Banquo's ghost, its final stroke in the revelation of Macduff's secret of birth. [=iii.= i. 122.] _Julius Cæsar_ presents the interesting feature of the Catastrophe and Central Turning-point exactly coinciding, in the triumphant appeal of the conspirators to future history. _Lear_, according to the scheme of analysis suggested in this work, has its Catastrophe at the close of the initial scene, by which time the problem in experience has been set up in action, and the tragedies arising out of it thenceforward work on without break to its solution. [=iii.= iv. 45.] A Centre of Plot is found for this play where, in the middle Scene of the middle Act, the third of the three forms of madness is brought into contact with the other two and makes the climax of passion complete. This regular union by Shakespeare of a marked catastrophe, appealing to every spectator, with a subtle dividing-point, interesting to the intellectual sense of analysis, illustrates the combination of force with symmetry, which is the genius of the Shakespearean Drama: it throughout presents a body of warm human interest governed by a mind of intricate design. [_Conclusion._] The plan laid down for this work has now been followed to its completion. The object I have had in view throughout has been the _recognition_ of inductive treatment in literary study. For this purpose it was first necessary to distinguish the inductive method from other modes of treatment founded on arbitrary canons of taste and comparisons of merit, so natural in view of the popularity of the subject-matter, and to which the history of Literary Criticism has given an unfortunate impetus. This having been done in the Introduction, the body of the work has been occupied in applying the inductive treatment to some of the masterpieces of Shakespeare. The practical effect of such exposition has been, it may be hoped, to intensify the reader's appreciation of the poet, and also to suggest that the detailed and methodical analysis which in literary study is usually reserved for points of language is no less applicable to a writer's subject-matter and art. But to entitle Dramatic Criticism to a place in the circle of the inductive sciences it has further appeared necessary to lay down a scheme for the study as a whole, that should be scientific both in the relation of its parts to one another, and in the attainment of a completeness proportioned to the area to which the enquiry was limited and the degree of development to which literary method has at present attained. The proper method for the nascent science was fixed as the enumeration and arrangement of topics; and by analogy with the other arts a simple scheme for Dramatic Criticism was found, in which all the results of the analysis performed in the first part of the book could be readily distributed under one or other of the main topics--Character, Passion, and Plot. Incidentally the discussion of Shakespeare has again and again reminded us of just that greatness in the modern Drama which judicial criticism with its inflexibility of standard so persistently missed. Everywhere early criticism recognised our poet's grasp of human nature, yet its almost universal verdict of him was that he was both irregular in his art as a whole, and in particular careless in the construction of his plots. We have seen, on the contrary, that Shakespeare has elevated the whole conception of Plot, from that of a mere unity of action obtained by reduction of the amount of matter presented, to that of a harmony of design binding together concurrent actions from which no degree of complexity was excluded. And, finally, instead of his being a despiser of law, we have had suggested to us how Shakespeare and his brother artists of the Renaissance form a point of departure in legitimate Drama, so important as amply to justify the instinct of history which named that age the Second Birth of literature. FOOTNOTES: [5] See note on page 74. [6] See note on page 74. TABULAR DIGEST OF THE PRINCIPAL TOPICS IN DRAMATIC SCIENCE. +--Single Character-Interest +--Interpretation | or Character-Interpretation | as an hypotheis | +--Canons of | Interpretation +--Character| | | +--Character-Contrast | | | and Duplication | +--Complex Character-Interest +--Character-Grouping | | +--Dramatic Colouring | +--Character-Development | +--Incident and Situation | +--Single Passion-Interest | +--Irony | | +--Effect +--Nemesis | | +--Dramatic | | Foreshadowing | | +--Scale of Passion-Tones | +--Complex Passion-Interest +--Mixture of Tones | | or Passion-Tone +--Tone-Play and | | | Tone-Relief | | +--Tone-Clash and | | Tone-Storm +--Passion| +--Poetic Justice: or Retribution as a | | | form of Art-beaty | | | Pathos: or [unretributive] Fate as a | | | form of Art-beauty | | | Dramatic | +--Movement | +--Destiny Criticism| [Motive | | rationalised | Force] | | +--Objectively | | | | in Irony | | | +--Subjectively | | | in Infatuation | +--The Supernatural | | +--Supernatural | Agency | +--Intensifying | | human action | +--Illuminating | | human action | +--The Oracular | +--Supernatural | Background | | +--Single Action +--General conception of Single | | | Actions | | +--Forms of Dramatic Action | | | | +--General conception of Complex | | | Action | | +--Analysis of Complex Action | | | into Single Actions, with | | | Canons of Analysis | +--Complex Action | | | | +--Contact | | | and Linking | | | +--Connection | | | | +--Interweaving | | +--Economy | +--Envelopment | | +--Dependence | | | | | | +--Balance +--Plot | +--Symmetry +--Parallelism | and Contrast | | +--Simple Movement: the Line of Motion a | | straight line | +--Action-Movement or Complication and | | Resolution: the Line of Motion a curve | +--Passion Movement or Strain and +--Movement | Reaction: the Line of Passion a [Motive Form] | +--Regular Arch | +--Inclined Plane | +--Wave Line | | +--Similar Motion +--Compound (or +--Contrary Motion | Relative Movement) +--Convergent Motion | | +--Catastrophe: +--Turning-points | or Focus of Movement +--Centre of Plot To which may be added +--Mechanical Construction [belonging to Art in general] +--Story as Raw Material [belonging to Literary History] APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIV. TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLOT OF THE FIVE PLAYS. THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. AN ACTION-DRAMA. _Scheme of Actions_. +--First Main =Cross Nemesis= Action: Story of the Jew: | complicated and resolved. | |+--Sub-Action to First Main, also Link | | Action: Jessica and Lorenzo: simple | | movement. | Main Plot.|+--_Comic Relief Action: Launcelot; +--Underplot. | stationary_[7]. | |+--Sub-Action to Second Main: Episode of the | | Rings: complicated and resolved. | | +--Second Main =Problem= Action: Caskets Story: simple movement. External Circumstance[8]: The (rumoured) Shipwrecks. _Economy_. Two Main Actions connected by Common Personage [Bassanio] and by Link Action [Jessica]. General Interweaving. Balance. The First Main Action, which is complicated, balances the Second, which is simple, by the additions to the latter of the Jessica interest transferred to it, and the Episode of the Rings generated out of it. [Pages 82, 88.] _Movement_. Action-Movement: with Contrary Motion between the two Main Actions. The First Main complicated and resolved by the Second Main [hero of Second, Bassanio, is Complicating Force; heroine of Second, Portia, is Resolving Force], the Complication assisted by the External Circumstance of the Shipwrecks--in process of resolving the First generates a Complication to the Second in the form of the Episode of the Rings, which is self-resolved. [Pages 66, 282.] Passion-Movement in the background: Wave-Line of Strain and Relief by alternation of the two main Stories; the Episode of the Rings is Final Relief to the Final Strain of the Trial. _Turning-points._ Centre of Plot: Scene of Bassanio's Choice (=iii.= ii.) in which the Complicating and Resolving Forces are united and all the Four Actions meet. [Pages 67-8.] Catastrophe: Portia's Judgment in the Trial (=iv.= i, from 299). FOOTNOTES: [7] Stationary, as having no place in the movement of the plot: its separateness from the rest of the Jessica Action only for purposes of Tone-effect, as Comic Relief. [8] 'External' as not included in any Action, 'Circumstance' because it presents itself as a single detail instead of the series of details necessary to make up an Action. An External Circumstance is analogous to an Enveloping Action: outside the other Actions, yet in contact with them at certain points. RICHARD THE THIRD. A PASSION-DRAMA. _Scheme of Actions._ Main =Nemesis= Action: Life and Death of Richard. +--CLARENCE has betrayed the Lancastrians | for the sake of the House of York: | | He falls by a treacherous death | from the KING of the House of | York.--To this the QUEEN and her | kindredh ave been assenting | parties [=ii.= ii. 62-5]: | +--The shock of Clarence's death as announced | by Gloster kills the King (=ii.= i. 131), | leaving the Queen and her kindred at the | mercy of their enemies.--Unseemly Exultation Underplot: System of | of their great enemy HASTINGS: =Cross Nemesis= | Actions connecting | The same treachery step by step Main with YORK side | overtakes Hastings in his of Enveloping Action. | Exultation [=iii.= iv. 15-95].--In | this treacherous casting off of | Hastings when he will no longer | support them BUCKINGHAM has | been a prime agent [=iii.= i, | from 157, =iii.= ii. 114]: | +--By precisely similar treachery Buckingham | himself is cast off when he hesitates to go | further with Richard [=iv.= ii. and =v.= i.] Link =Nemesis= Action connecting Main with LANCASTER side of Enveloping Action: Marriage of Richard and Anne (p. 113). Enveloping =Nemesis= Action: The War of the Roses [the Duchess of York introduced to mark the York side, Queen Margaret to mark the Lancastrian side]. _Economy_. All the Actions bound together by the Enveloping Action of which they make up a phase. Parallelism: the common form of Nemesis. Central Personage: Richard. _Movement_. Passion-Movement, with Similar Motion [form Nemesis repeated throughout (page 282)]. _Turning-points_. Centre of Plot: Realisation of Margaret's Curses [turn of Enveloping Action] in =iii.= iii. 15. Catastrophe: Realisation of Nemesis in the Main Action: =iv.= ii, from 45. MACBETH. A PASSION-DRAMA. _Scheme of Actions._ +--Main =Character= Action: Rise and Fall of Macbeth. +--=Character= Counter-Action: Lady Macbeth. +--=Character= Sub-Action: covering and involved in the Rise: | Banquo. +--=Character= Sub-Action: covering and involving the Fall: Macduff. [Pages 129, 142.] Enveloping =Supernatural= Action: The Witches. _Economy._ Parallelism: Triple form of Nemesis, Irony and Oracular Action extending to the Main Action, to its parts the Rise and Fall separately, and through to the Enveloping Action. Contrast as a bond between the Main and Counter-Action. Balance: the Rise by the Fall, the Sub-Action to the Rise by the Sub-Action to the Fall. [Page 276.] _Movement._ Passion Movement, with Similar Motion between all. _Turning-points._ Centre of Plot: Change from unbroken success to unbroken failure: =iii.= iii. 18. [Page 127.] Catastrophe: Divided: First Shock of Nemesis; Appearance of Banquo's Ghost: =iii.= iv. Final Accumulation of Nemesis: Revelation of Macduff's birth: =v.= viii. 12. JULIUS CÆSAR. A PASSION-DRAMA. _Scheme of Actions._ Main =Nemesis= Action: Rise and Fall of the Republican Conspirators. +--Sub-Action to the Rise [=Character-decline=]: The Victim Cæsar. +--Sub-Action to the Fall [=Character-rise=]: The Avenger Antony. Enveloping Action: the Roman Mob. _Economy._ Balance about the Centre: the Rise by the Fall, the Sub-Action to the Rise by the Sub-Action to the Fall. _Movement._ Passion-Movement, with Similar Motion between the Main and Sub-Actions. [The form of the Main is distributed between the two Sub-Actions: compare page 282.] _Turning-points._ The Centre of Plot and Catastrophe coincide: =iii.= i. between 121 and 122. KING LEAR. A PASSION-DRAMA. _Scheme of Actions._ Main Plot: a =Problem= Action: Family of Lear: falling into Generating Action: Lear's unstable settlement of the kingdom, [the Problem]. power transferred from the good to the bad. +--=Double Nemesis= Action: Lear receiving | good from the injured and evil from the | favoured children. | System of Tragedies +--=Tragic= Action: Cordelia: Suffering of the [the Solution]. | innocent. | +--=Tragic= Action: Goneril and Regan: Evil | passions endowed with power using it | to work their own destruction. Underplot: an =Intrigue= Action: Family of Gloucester: falling into Generating Action: Gloucester deceived into reversing the positions [the Intrigue]. of Edgar and Edmund. +--=Double Nemesis= Action: Gloucester receiving | good from the injured and evil from the favoured | child. | System of Tragedies +--=Tragic= Action: Edgar: Suffering of the [its Nemesis]. | innocent. | +--=Tragic= Action: Edmund: Power gained | by intrigue used for the destruction of | the intriguer. Central Link Personage between Main Plot and Underplot: Gloucester (page 283). +--From the good side of | +--First | the Main: Kent. +--Crossing | Pair: | | & complicating | +--From the evil side of | one another. | | the Main: Oswald. | | | +--From the good side of the Main Sub-Actions, linking | | assisting Nemesis on Evil Agent Main and Underplot, +--Second | of the Underplot: Albany. or different | Pair: | elements of the | +--From the evil side of the Main Main together. | | assisting Nemesis on Good Victim | | of the Underplot: Cornwall. | +--Third Pair: Cross Intrigues between | the Evil sides of Main and Underplot | {Goneril and Edmund} | {Regan and Edmund } culminating in | destruction of all three (=v.= iii. 96, 221-7, | and compare 82 with 160). _Farcical Relief Action: The Fool: Stationary._ Enveloping Action: The French War: originating ultimately in the Initial Action and becoming the Objective of the _Dénouement_. [Page 273.] _Economy._ The Underplot dependent to the Main (page 276). Especially: Parallelism and Contrast (page 277). Central Linking by Gloucester. Interweaving: Linking by Sub-Actions, &c., and movement to a common Objective. Envelopment in Common Enveloping Action. _Movement._ Passion-Movement, with Convergent Motion between the Main and Underplot, and their parts: the Lear and Gloucester systems by the visit to Gloucester's Castle drawn to a Central Focus and then moving towards a common Objective in the Enveloping Action. [Page 282.] _Turning-points._ Catastrophe: at the end of the Initial Action, the Problem being set up in practical action. [Page 205.] Centre of Plot: the summit of emotional agitation when three madnesses are brought into contact (page 223). INDEXES. GENERAL INDEX. _For particular Characters or Scenes see under their respective plays._ Abbott, Dr., quoted 15. Academy, French 18. Achilles and the River-god 193. Action a fundamental element of Drama 234-6 its threefold division 235 Plot as pure Action 236 or the intellectual side of Action 268. Action, Analysis of: 271-4 canons of Analysis 271-2 Enveloping Action 272-4 =Illustrations= of Enveloping Action: _Richard III_ 273, _Macbeth_ 273, _Julius Cæsar_ 273, _King Lear_ 273-4. 'Action-Drama' as substitute for 'Comedy' 280-1. Action, Economy of: 274-8. General notion and connection with Analysis 274-5 Economic Forms 275-8 Connection and Linking 275 Dependence 276 Symmetry 276-8 Balance 276 Parallelism and Contrast 276-8 Economy in Technical Analyses of the five plays 291-8. Actions, focussing of: 209. Action, Forms of Dramatic: 269-70, 125, 202. Action, Schemes of in Technical Analyses, 291-8. Action, Single and Complex 236, 270, &c. Action, Systems of: 108, 110, 208. Action, Unity of: 14, 235, 269-71 unity of action in Modern Drama becomes harmony 270. Actions, Varieties of: Character-Action 270; Comic Action 270, 291; Farcical 291; Generating 297; Initial and Resultant 208; Intrigue 270, 207; Irony 269; Link 81, 208; Main and Subordinate 270; Nemesis 269 &c.; Oracular 269 &c.; Problem 269, 202; Relief 291, 298; Rise and Fall 270, 119, 127; Stationary 291; Story 270; Tragic 270, 297; Triple 270, 125, 142. Actor, Acting 98, 231. [_See_ Stage-Representation.] Addison: on scientific progress 5 his Critique of _Paradise Lost_ 16 his list of English poets 16 his _Cato_ 17, 19 on rules of art 20 on Rymer 21. Analysis as a stage in scientific development 228-9. Analysis, Dramatic: 227, 271. [_See_ Action, Analysis of.] Ancient Drama 125, 259-60 Mixture of Tones an impossibility 252 the Supernatural its leading Motive 259 its unity of action different from that of the Modern Drama 270. Ancient Thought, points of difference from Modern: 44, 125-7, 137. Antithesis of Outer and Inner (or Practical and Intellectual) Life 144-6 as an element in Character-Interpretation 146 applied to the age of Macbeth 147 key to the portraiture of Macbeth and his wife 147-167 applied to the age of Julius Cæsar in the form of policy _v._ justice 168-71 connected with character of Antony 182, Brutus 171-6, Cæsar 176-81, Cassius 181 applied to the group as a whole 183-4. Apparitions: _Richard III_ 122, _Macbeth_ 135-6, 140, 167, 262-4. [_See_ Supernatural.] Apuleianism 15. Arch as an illustration of dramatic form 127, 280 applied to the Movement in Julius Cæsar 186, 280 to King Lear: Main Plot 209, Underplot 215-17. Aristotle: his criticism inductive 16 judicial 16 his position in the progress of Induction 230 made Stage-Representation a division of Dramatic Criticism 231 on the purification of our emotions in the Drama 259. Art applied to the repulsive and trivial 90 common terms in the different arts 168 Dramatic Art 40, 227 &c. topics common to the Drama and other arts 232 Art in general affords a fundamental basis for the Analysis of Drama 234 concrete and abstract elements in all the arts alike 234. Background of Nature as an element in dramatic effect 192-4 its widespread use in poetry 192 analysed 192 illustrated in _Julius Cæsar_ in connection with the Supernatural 193-6 used in Centrepiece of King Lear 214 considered as an example of the Supernatural illuminating human action 266. Bacon 28. Balance 82, 233 as an Economic form 276 in Technical Analyses 291, 295, 296. Barbarism of enjoying personal defects 218. Beaumont and Fletcher 13. _Betrothed, The_: as example of Oracular Action 132. Biblical citations: _Psalm_ II (Irony) 138 conclusion of _Job_ (Dramatic Background) 192. Blank Verse 13. Boileau on Terence 16 on Corneille 18. Bossu 17, 18. Brontë, Charlotte: 30. Buckingham 17. Byron 14. Caro, Hannibal: 17. Catastrophe, or Focus of Movement: 284-5 =Examples=: _Merchant of Venice_ 285; _Richard III_ 285, 120; _Macbeth_ 285; _Julius Cæsar_ 285, 198; _King Lear_ 285, 205 in Technical Analyses 291-8. Central Personages 119 Gloucester in _King Lear_ 206, 207 Richard 291. Centre, Dramatic: 67, 186 Shakespeare's fondness for central effects 186, 284. Centre of Plot 284 =Examples= 285 in Technical Analyses 291-8. Character: as an element in Judgment 56 as an Elementary Topic of Dramatic Criticism 235 subdivided 235. Character, Interest of: 237 and Chapter XII. Character in Drama presented concretely 237. Unity in Character-Interest 237-9 Complexity in Character-Interest 239-242 Development in Character-Interest 242-5. Character-Interpretation 237-9. Character-Foils 239 Contrast 240 Duplication 240 Grouping 241 Dramatic Colouring 241. Character-Development 242-5. Character-Contrast as a general term 239-42 strictly so-called 240, 144 and Chapter VII general and from special standpoints 144 from standpoint of Outer and Inner Life 144-7, 168-71 as an Elementary Topic of Dramatic Criticism 236 =Illustrations=: _Merchant of Venice_ 82-7 _Macbeth_ 144 and Chapter VII _Julius Cæsar_ 178, &c. Character-Development 242-5 =Illustration=: _Macbeth_ ib. Character-Duplication 240 =Illustrations=: Murderers in _Richard III_ &c. 240-1. Character-Foils 239 Illustrations: Jessica to Lorenzo 85 Jessica and Lorenzo to Portia and Bassanio 86 Cassius and Cæsar 179. Character-Grouping described 168 =Illustration=: _Julius Cæsar_ 169 and Chapter VIII. Character-Interpretation 236, 237-9 of the nature of a scientific hypothesis 237 canons of interpretation 238-9 applied to more than one Character becomes Character-Contrast 240 analytical in its nature 186 has swallowed up other elements of dramatic effect in the popular estimation of Shakespeare 233 =Illustration=: _Richard III_ 90 and Chapter IV. Chess with living pieces, an illustration of Passion 185. Cibber 17. Ciceronianism 15. Circumstance External 291. Clash of Tones: 253. [_See_ Tone.] Classical Drama: _see_ Ancient. Classification a stage in development of Inductive Method 228, 229. Climax in Passion-Movement 185-7 applied to _Julius Cæsar_ 186-8 and Chapter IX. Illustrated in _King Lear_ 202 and Chapter X. Gradual rise to the climax of the Main Plot 209-15 the climax itself 215 climax of Underplot 215-8 climax of the play double 217 and triple 218, 223. Coleridge 11. Collier, Jeremy: 35. Colouring. Dramatic: 241-2. =Illustration=: _Macbeth_ ib. 'Comedy' unsuitable as a term in Shakespeare-Criticism 280-1. Comic as a Tone 251-2. Complex distinguished from Complicated 74 (note) applied to Plot of _Merchant of Venice_ 74 and Chapter III Complexity distinguishes the plot of _King Lear_ as compared with that of _Julius Cæsar_ 186 traced in plot of _King Lear_ 202, 208-9, &c. not inconsistent with simplicity 208, 74 an element of Action 235, 236 applied to Character 239, Passion 250, Plot 270. Complicated distinguished from Complex 74 (note) Complicated Movement 279. Complicating Force 67. Complication and Resolution 66, 279 =Illustration=: _Merchant of Venice_ 67. Connection as an Economic form 275 by Link Personages and Actions 275 by Interweaving _ib._ by common Envelopment 276. Construction and Creation as processes in Character-Painting 30. Contrast as an Economic form 277, 295-8. [_See_ Character-Contrast.] Corneille: the Corneille Incident 18 his _Clitandre_ ib. Courage, active and passive 146, 179. Cowley 16. Creation and Construction as processes in Character-Painting 30. Criticism _à priori_ 24, 37. [_See_ Criticism Judicial.] Criticism, Dramatic: as an Inductive Science 40, 227, &c. surveyed in outline 227 indirectly by Studies _ib._ its definition 228-34 its method 228-30 its field 230-4 distinguished from Literary Criticism in general 231 need not include Stage-Representation 231-2 common ground between Literary and Dramatic Criticism 232 between Dramatic Art and Stage-Representation 232-3 Drama and Representation separable in exposition not in idea 233-4 fundamental divisions of Dramatic Criticism 234-6 its elementary Topics tabulated 236 General Table of its Topics 288. Criticism: History of 7-21. [_See_ Criticism, Judicial, Shakespeare-Criticism.] Criticism, Inductive: distinguished from Judicial 2 the two illustrated by the case of Ben Jonson 2-4 confusion of the two 4 gradual development of Inductive method in the history of Criticism 17-21 sphere of Inductive Criticism separate from that of the Criticism of Taste 21 three main points of contrast between Inductive and Judicial Criticism 27-40 (1) as to comparisons of merit 27-32 (2) as to the 'laws' of Art 32-7 (3) as to fixity of standard 37-40. =Difficulties= of Inductive Criticism: want of positiveness in the subject-matter 23-5 absence of 'design' in authors 26 objection as to the ignoring of moral purpose 35 arbitrariness of literary creation 35-7. =Principles= and =Axioms= of Inductive Criticism. Its foundation Axiom: _Interpretation is of the nature of a scientific hypothesis_ 25 its antagonism to comparisons of merit 27-9 concerned with differences of kind rather than degree 29-32 Axiom: _Its function to distinguish literary species_ 32 principle that each writer is a species to himself 30-2 the laws of Art: scientific laws 32-7 Inductive Criticism has no province to deal with faults 34 Axiom: _Art a part of Nature_ 36 Axiom: _Literature a thing of development_ 36 development to be applied equally to past and new literature 38. =Illustrations= of Inductive Criticism. Applied by Addison 16, 20; Aristotle 16; Fontenelle 19; Perrault 19; Gervinus 20; Dr. Johnson 16. Applied to the character of Macbeth 24; Music 29; to Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot 30; Beethoven 34. Criticism, Judicial: distinguished from Inductive 2 the two illustrated by the case of Ben Jonson 2-4 confusion of the two 4 three main points of contrast between Judicial and Inductive Criticism 27-40 (1) as to comparisons of merit 27-32 (2) as to the 'laws' of Art 32-7 (3) as to fixity of standard 37-40. Illegitimate supremacy of Judicial method in Criticism 4 connected with influence of the Renaissance 4 and Journalism 5 defence: Theory of Taste as condensed experience 6 the theory examined: judicial spirit a limit on appreciation 6. =History= of Judicial Criticism a triumph of authors over critics 7-21. Case of Shakespeare-Criticism 7-11 other authors 11-13 defeat of Judicial Criticism in the great literary questions 13-15 its failure to distinguish the permanent and transitory 15 its tendency to become obsolete 16 its gradual modification in the direction of Inductive method 17-21. Proper sphere of Judicial Criticism 21 outside science _ib._ and belonging to creative literature _ib._ Vices of Judicial Criticism: its arbitrary method of eliminating variability of impression in literary effect 24 its fondness for comparisons of merit 27 its attempt to limit by 'laws' 32-5 its assumption of fixed standards 37-9 its confusion of development with improvement 39. =Illustrations= of Judicial Criticism: applied by the French Academy 18; Aristotle 16; Boileau 16, 18; Byron 14; Dennis 19; Dryden 9, 12, 13, 17; Edwards 9; Hallam 12; Heywood 10; Jeffrey 12; Dr. Johnson 10, 12, 16, 19, 20; Lansdowne 9; Macaulay 13; Otway 9; Pope 10, 19; Rymer 8, 14, 17; Steevens 12, 15; Theobald 10; Voltaire 9, 14, 17. Applied to Addison's _Cato_ 17; Beethoven 34; Brontë 30; Buckingham 17; Eliot (Geo.) 30; Gray 12; Greek Drama 30; Herodotus 39; Jonson (Ben) 2, 17; Keats 12; Milton 11, 12, 14, 17, 39; Montgomery 13; Roscommon 17; Shakespeare's Plays 8-11, &c.; Shakespeare's Sonnets 12; Spenser 12, 17; Taylor (Jeremy) 39; Waller 17; Walsh 17; Waverley Novels 12; Wordsworth 12. Criticism of Assaying 2, 6. [_See_ Criticism, Judicial.] Criticism of Taste 2, 6, 21-2. [_See_ Criticism, Judicial.] Cross Nemeses 291, 293, 47, 51. Dancing (Greek) 231. Dennis 19. Dependence as an Economic form 276. Design, its significance in Criticism 26. Destiny interwoven with Nemesis in _Macbeth_ 125 and Chapter VI conception of it in Ancient and Modern Thought 125, 259-60 phases of Destiny in Modern Drama 127 the Oracular Action one phase of Destiny 130 Irony as a phase of Destiny 137-43 Destiny acting objectively 260 rationalised in Modern Drama 260 as a subjective force, Infatuation 261-2 rationalised in Shakespeare _ib._ Development in literature 37-9 as an element of Action 235, 236 applied to Character 242. Devices for increasing emotional strain 196. Differentiation of matter accompanying progress of Inductive Science 230 applied to Dramatic Criticism 231-4. Dover as the objective of the plot in _King Lear_ 274, 284. Drama: the word 'drama' 234 Drama a compound art 231 the Shakespearean a branch of the Romantic Drama 43 its relations with Stage-Representation 231-2, 233-4, 98 one of its purposes to interpret the beauty of fate 259. Dramatic Satire 3. Dryden on Spenser 12, 17 on Blank Verse 13 his _Essay on the Drama_ ib. his _Essay on Satire_ ib. on Milton's Blank Verse 17 on Shakespeare's English 15. Duplication 240. Economy of Action 274-8 [_see_ Action] an economy in Richard's Villainy 100. Edwards 9. Effect as a general term in Dramatic Criticism 248 strictly so-called _ib._ an element of Passion _ib._ distinguished from Situation and Incident 246 described 248-50 special Effects: Irony 248, Nemesis 249, Dramatic Foreshadowing 249. Elevated as a Tone 251. Eliot (Geo.) 30. Emerson, quoted 7. Emotion as a barrier to crime 93. Enveloping Action 273-4, 111 =Illustrations=: _Richard III_ 111-12; _King Lear_ 273-4 Analogous to External Circumstance 291 note in Technical Analyses 291-8. Envelopment as a kind of Connection 276. Euphuism utilised in Brutus's oration 175. Eusden 17. External Circumstance 291. Farcical as a Tone 251, 252. Fascination as an element in human influence 97. Fate, determinants of in Drama 255 [_see_ Motive Force] fate other than retributive included in Poetic Justice 257 function of Drama to interpret beauty of fate 259. Fault as a critical term 32, 34. Focussing of trains of passion in _King Lear_ 209. Foils 239. [_See_ Character.] Fontenelle 19. Foreshadowing, Dramatic: 249, 201. Free Trade and Free Art 35. Gervinus 11, 20, 127, 280. Gloucester: _see King Lear_ and _Richard III_. Goethe 11. Goldsmith 33. Gray 12. Grouping 241. [_See_ Character.] Hallam 11, 12. _Hamlet_, Play of 262. Hedging, Dramatic: 60, 78, 232-3. =Illustrations=: Shylock 58-61; Richard III, 105; Brutus 176. Heraclitus 28. Herodotus 39. Heroic as a Tone 251. Heroic couplet 30. Heywood 10. Hippolyta 111. Hippolytus 45, 126. History, its interpretation of events compared with the effect of the Oracular Action 265. Hogarth 7. Homer: Episode of Achilles and the River-god 193 _Iliad_ 23. Hugo, Victor: 11. Human Interest one of the two leading divisions of Drama 234 further divided, 235. Humour in agony 162-3 an example of Tone-Clash 254. Hybris 49, 262. Hysterical passion in _King Lear_ 210-15. Iago compared with Richard III 92 self-deceived 101. Idealisation as a dramatic effect 51 applied to the Caskets Story 51-4 of Incident 97. _Iliad_ 23, 193. Imitation as a force in developing madness 214-15. Incident as a division of Passion 246 distinguished from Situation and Effect _ib._ =Illustrations=: 246-7. Inclined Plane as a form of Passion-Movement 280. Inconsistency in characters a mark of unfinished Interpretation 238. Indirect elements of Character-Interpretation 238, 86. Individuality of authorship corresponds to differentiation of species 39 individuality an element in the Inner Life 169. Induction: its connection with facts 1 application to literature 22-40. [_See_ Criticism Inductive.] Stages in the development of Inductive Science 228-9 its progress accompanied by differentiation of subject-matter 230 application to Science of Dramatic Criticism 227 and Chapters XI to XIV to the definition of Dramatic Criticism 228. Infatuation: Destiny acting as a subjective force 261 prominence in Ancient Ethics 261 traces in Scripture expression 261 rationalised by Shakespeare 261-2. =Illustrations=: Antonio 262, 49; Cæsar 197; Macbeth 261-2. Inner Life 144-6. [_See_ Antithesis of, &c.] Interpretation by the actor an element in dramatic analysis 98 _see_ Character-Interpretation. Interweaving of Stories 43-4, 58, 66-73, 74 and Chapter III, 81-2, 87-8 of light and serious Stories 69-73. [_See_ Story.] Interweaving as a kind of Connection 275 in Technical Analyses 291, 298. Intrigue Action 207-8 the Underplot of _King Lear_ 207-8 Intrigues of Goneril and Regan, 206, 298. Irony as a phase of Destiny 137-9 the word 'irony' 137 Irony of Socrates, _ib._ illustrated by Story of Oedipus 138 in language of Scripture 138 modified in modern conception 138-9 connected with Oracular Action 139 combined with Nemesis 256 as an objective presentation of Destiny 260-1. Dramatic Irony as example of mixed Passion 73 as a mode of emphasising Nemesis 115-119, 120 as one of the triple Forms of Action in _Macbeth_ 139-42 as a Dramatic Effect 248-9 this a contribution of the Greek Stage 248. Dramatic Irony extended to the language of a scene 249 Comic Irony 249. =Illustrations=: in _Merchant of Venice_ 73, 249; _Richard III_ 115-19, 120, 121, 249, 256; _Macbeth_ 139-142, 256; Macduff 143; Banquo 142; the Witches Action 143; proclamation of Cumberland 260; _Julius Cæsar_ 249, 197; _King Lear_ 249; Story of Oedipus 248. Jeffrey 12. Jester 218. [_See_ King Lear: Fool.] Jew, Story of: 44, &c. [_See_ Story.] Feud of Jew and Gentile 60 Jews viewed as social outcasts, 83. Job, Book of: its conclusion as an example of Dramatic Background of Nature 192. Johnson, Dr.: on Shakespeare 10-11, 20 on Milton's minor poems 11 on Blank Verse 14 on Metaphysical Poetry 16 on Addison's _Cato_ 19 on the Unities 20. Jonson, Ben: 2-4 his Dramatic Satires 3 his Blank Verse 13 his _Catiline_ 17. Journalism: its influence on critical method 5 place of Reviewing in literary classification 21-2. Judicial Blindness 201, 261. [_See_ Infatuation.] _Julius Cæsar_, Play of: 168-201, Chapters VIII and IX. As an example of Character-Grouping 168 and Chapter VIII, 241 example of Enveloping Action 273 Balance 276 Regular Arch Movement 280 Similar Motion 282 Turning-points 285 Technical Analysis 296. _Julius Cæsar_, Characters in: Antony balances Cæsar 129 spared by the Conspirators 171 contrasted by Cæsar with Cassius 179-80 his general character 182-3 its culture 179-80 self-seeking 182 affection for Cæsar 183, 199 his position in the group of characters 183, 184 peculiar tone of his oratory 198 dominant spirit of the reaction 198 upspringing of a character in him 198 his ironical conciliation of the conspirators 199 his oration 199-200 Antony's servant 198. Artemidorus 196. Brutus: general character 171-6 its equal balance 171-5 its force 171 softness 173 this concealed under Stoicism 173, 174-5, 239 his culture 173 relations with his Page 173-4 with Portia 173, 174 with Cæsar 175 slays Cæsar for what he might become 175 position in the State 176 relations with Cassius 172, 173, 182 overrules Cassius in council 172 his general position in the Grouping 183. Cæsar: a balance to Antony 129 general discussion of his character 176-81 its difficulty and contradictions 176-8 his vacillation 176-7 explained by the antithesis of Practical and Inner Life 178 Cæsar pre-eminently the Practical man 178-9 strong side of his character 176-7 lacking in the Inner Life 178-9 compared with Macbeth 178 a change in Cæsar and his world 180-1 his superstition 180-1 position in the Grouping 183 different effect of his personality in the earlier and later half of the play 188, 195, 197. Calpurnia 194-5. Casca 172, 194, 195. Cassius: his relations with Brutus 172, 182 brings out the defective side of Cæsar 179 contrasted by Cæsar with Antony 179-80 his character discussed 181-2 Republicanism his grand passion, _ib._ a professional politician 182 his tact 182 his position in the Grouping 183-4 his relish for the supernatural portents 195 his nemesis 249 Cassius and the eagles 250. Decius 181, 195. Ligarius 172. Page of Brutus 173-4, 201. Popilius Lena 172, 197. Portia 173, 174, 196. Roman Mob 188, 200. Soothsayer 196, 250. Trebonius 249. _Julius Cæsar_, Incidents and Scenes. Capitol Scene 196-200 Conspiracy Scene 171, 172, 176, 181 its connection with storm and portents 193-4 Incidents of the Fever and Flood 178, 179 Funeral and Will of Cæsar 175, 199-200, 239. _Julius Cæsar_, Movement of: compared with movement of _King Lear_ 186 its simplicity and form of Regular Arch 186, 280 key to the movement the justification of the conspirators' cause 187. Stages of its Movement: Rise 188-96 Crisis 196-8 Catastrophe and Decline 198-201. Starting-point in popular reaction against Cæsar 188 Crescendo in the Rise 189-91 the Conspiracy formed and developing the Strain begins 191-6 suspense an element in Strain 191 Strain increased by background of the Supernatural 192-6, 266 the conspirators and the victim compared in this stage 194-6. Crisis, the Strain rising to a climax 196-200 exact commencement of the Crisis is marked 196 devices for heightening the Strain 196 the conspirators and victim just before the Catastrophe 197 the justification at its height 197 Catastrophe and commencement of the Decline 198 Antony dominating the Reaction 198 the Mob won to the Reaction 200. Final stage of an Inevitable Fate: the Strain ceasing 200-1 the representative of the Reaction supreme 200 the position of Conspirators and Cæsar reversed 201 judicial blindness 201 the justification ceases 201. Justice Poetic, as a Dramatic Motive 255-7 the term discussed 255 Nemesis as a form of Poetic Justice 255-6 Poetic Justice other than Nemesis 256-7. Keats 12. 'Kindness': the word discussed 149-50, 222 'milk of human kindness' 149-50. _King Lear_, Play of: as a study in complex Passion and Movement 202 and Chapter X compared with _Julius Cæsar_ 186 affording examples of Plot-Analysis 271 of Enveloping Action in the French War 273-4 of Parallelism and Contrast 277-8 of Convergent Motion 283-4 Turning-points 285 Technical Analysis 297-8. _King Lear_, Characters in. Cordelia: her conduct in the Opening Scene 203-4 her Tragedy 206 friendship for the Fool 223 question of her patriotism 257-8 an illustration of Pathos as a Dramatic Motive 257-9 connection with the Enveloping Action 274. Cornwall 212. Edgar: his Tragedy 208 his feigned madness and position in the Centrepiece 215-8, 223 his contact with his father and Lear in the hovel 215-8, 247 his madness an emotional climax to the Underplot 216. Edmund compared with Richard III 92 his charge against Edgar 206 an agent in the Underplot 207-8 his Tragedy 208, 216 example of Irony 249 connected with the Enveloping Action 274. The Fool: Institution of the Fool or Jester 218-20 modern analogue in _Punch_ 219 utilised by Shakespeare 219 function of the Fool in _King Lear_ 220-3 his personal character 223 friendship with Lear and Cordelia 223. Gloucester: the central Personage of the Underplot 206-7 Link Personage between Main and Underplot 275 the Chamberlain and friend of Lear 276 his connection with the Enveloping Action 274, 298 with the Convergent Motion of the Play 283-4, 298. Goneril 203, 206, 210, 213, 240, 256, 274, 283-4. Kent represents Conscience in the Opening of the Problem 204-5 his Tragedy 206. Lear: his conduct in the opening scene an example of imperiousness 203-5, 211 his nemesis double 205-6 gradual on-coming of madness 209-15 Lear in the Centrepiece of the play 214-5 after the centre madness gives place to shattered intellect 215 his connection with the Fool 220-3 with the Enveloping Action 274. Regan 203, 206, 212, 213, 240, 256, 274, 283-4. _King Lear_, Incidents and Scenes of: Opening Scene 203-5 Stocks Scene 211, 258 Outrage on Gloucester 247 Hovel Scene 215-8, 247. _King Lear_, Movement of: 202 and Chapter X its simplicity 208-9 Lear's madness a common climax to the trains of passion in the Main Plot 209 Rise of the Movement in the waves of on-coming madness 209-15 form of movement a Regular Arch, _ib._ connection of the Fool with the Rise of the Movement 220-23 passage into the Central Climax marked by the Storm 214-5 Central Climax of the Movement 214-8 effect on Lear of the Storm 214 of contact with Edgar 215 Edgar's madness a common Climax to the trains of passion in the Underplot 215-7 the Central Climax a trio of madness 217-23 an example of Tone-Storm 254. _King Lear_, Plot of: The Main Plot a Problem Action 202-6 the Problem enunciated in action 203-5 Solution in a triple Tragedy 205-6 Parallelism between Main and Underplot 206-8, 277-8, 297. The Underplot an Intrigue Action 207-8 its Initial Action 207 its resultant a triple Tragedy parallel with that of the Main Plot 207-8 Main and Underplot drawn together by common Central Climax 208 by Dependence 276 by Convergent Motion 282-4, 298. Kriegspiel 185. Laius 134. Lansdowne 9. Laureate, Poets preceding Southey: 17. Law as a term in Criticism and Science generally 32-7. Legal evasions 65. Lessing 11. Light as a Tone 251, 252. Line of Motion 278-9. Line of Passion 280. Linking 275. Lycurgus 45. Lyrics of Prose 22. Macaulay 2, 3, 13 on active and passive courage 146. _Macbeth_, Play of: affords examples of Dramatic Colouring 241-2 Enveloping Action (the Witches) 273 Balance 276 Parallelism and Contrast 277 Technical Analysis 295. Macbeth, Character of: an illustration of methodical analysis 24 compared with Richard 92 with Julius Cæsar 178 an example of Character-Development 243-5. General Analysis 147-154, 161, 243-5. Macbeth as the Practical Man 147-54 his nobility superficial 148, 161 his character as analysed by his wife 148-50 illustrated by his soliloquy 151-3 compared in action and in mental conflicts 153, 162 flaws in his completeness as type of the practical 154 Macbeth's superstition 154, 159, 162, 165-6, 167, 243-5 his inability to bear suspense 154, 160, 162, 163, 164-5, 243-5. Macbeth under temptation 158 in the deed of murder 161 his break-down and blunder 162 in the Discovery Scene 163 his blunder in stabbing the grooms 163 under the strain of concealment 164 confronted with the Ghost of Banquo 165 nemesis in his old age 167 and his trust in the false oracles 167. Macbeth an example of Infatuation 261-2 relations with the Witches 263-4 not turned from good to evil by their influence 263. Macbeth (Lady), Character of: 154-6 type of the Inner Life 154-6 her tact 155, 161, 164, 165 her feminine delicacy 156, 161, 162, 166 her wifely devotion 156. Lady Macbeth under temptation 159 in the deed of murder 161 in the discovery 163 her fainting 164 under the strain of concealment 165 her tact in the Ghost Scene 165 her gentleness to Macbeth 166 her break-down in madness 166. Macbeth, Lord and Lady, as a Study in Character-Contrast 144 and Chapter VII, 240 rests on the Antithesis of the Practical and Inner Life 147-56. The Contrast traced through the action of the play 156-67 relations at the beginning of the play 156-8 first impulse to crime from Macbeth 156 the Temptation 158-61 the meeting after their separate temptations 160-1 the Deed 161-3 the Concealment 163-5 the Nemesis 165-7. _Macbeth_, other Characters in. Banquo: his attitude to the supernatural compared with Macbeth's 154, 159, 263 the attempt against Banquo and Fleance the end of Macbeth's success and beginning of his failure 127 binds together the Rise and Fall 137 Macbeth's exultation over it 153 the Banquo Action balances the Macduff Action 129 gives unity to the Rise 127-9 partakes the triple form of the whole play 142. Fleance: _see_ Banquo. Lennox 128, 163. Macduff: massacre of his family 130, 141 his position in the scene with Malcolm 140, 247 the Macduff Action balances the Banquo Action 129 gives unity to the Fall 129-30 partakes triple form of the whole play 142 example of Oracular Action 265-6. Malcolm 139, 247. The Porter 253. The Witches 129, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141 their use to rationalise Macbeth's Infatuation 262 an example of the Supernatural intensifying human action 263-4 their different behaviour to Macbeth and Banquo 263-4 their exact function in the play 264 the Witches Action an Enveloping Action 295, 143 partakes the triple form of the whole play 143. _Macbeth_, Incidents and Scenes in: Witches Scene 158-9, 263-4 Apparitions Scene 130, 135, 140 Ghost Scene 165-6, 247 Proclamation of Cumberland 135, 151, 260 Dagger Scene 153, 247 Discovery Scene 163 Flight of Duncan's Sons 139, 164, 261 Macduff with Malcolm in England 140, 247 the Sleep-walking 166-7 Final Combat 261. _Macbeth_, Movement of: its four Stages 158-67 The Temptation 158-61 The Deed 161-3 The Concealment 163-5 The Nemesis 165-7. _Macbeth_, Plot of: the interweaving of Nemesis and Destiny 127 and Chapter VI its Action multiple in form 127, 270. _Macbeth_ as a Nemesis Action 127-30 the Rise 127 the Fall 129 the Rise and Fall together 127. _Macbeth_ as an Oracular Action 130-7 the Rise 134 the Fall 135 the Rise and Fall together 136. _Macbeth_ as an Irony Action 139-43 the Rise 139 the Fall 140 the Rise and Fall together 141. Madness distinguished from Passion 209 connected with inspiration 218 madness of Lear: its gradual oncoming in waves of hysterical passion 209 change in its character after the Centrepiece 215 it makes the Passion-Climax of the main Plot 209 the madness of passion 217 madness of Edgar: the madness of idiocy 217-8 feigned 216 common Climax of the passions of the Underplot 215-8 madness of the Fool: professional madness 218-23 madness-duett 217-8 madness-trio 218, 223. Malone 15. _Measure for Measure_, Play of: 281. Mechanical Construction 233, and Chapters II and III generally. Mechanical Details utilised 77, 233. Mechanical Difficulties, their Reduction: 76-7 the three months' interval in the Story of the Jew 77 the loss of Antonio's ships 77 not always necessary to solve these 77. Mechanical Personages 75 their multiplication in Romantic Drama _ib._ Melodrama 118. Mephistopheles compared with Richard 92. _Merchant of Venice, The_, Play of: as an illustration of the construction of Drama out of Story 43-89 Story as the Raw Material of the Romantic Drama 43 the two main Stories in the _Merchant of Venice_ considered as Raw Material 43 Story of the Jew gives scope for Nemesis 44-51 Antonio side of the Nemesis 47-9 Shylock side of the Nemesis 49-51 Caskets Story gives scope for Idealisation 51-7 Problem of Judgment by Appearances idealised 52-4 its solution: Character as an element in Judgment 54-7 characters of the three Suitors 55-6. Working up of the two Main Stories 58 and Chapter II. Reduction of Difficulties 58-66 Monstrosity in Shylock's Character met by Dramatic Hedging 58-61 Difficulties as to the pound of flesh 61-6 significance of the discussion on interest 61-4. Interweaving of the two Stories 66-73 assistance it gives to the movement of the play 66 to the symmetry of the plot 67-9 union of a light and serious story 69-73. Further multiplication of Stories by the addition of an Underplot 74 and Chapter III. Paradox of simplicity by means of complexity 74-5 uses of the Jessica Story 75-87 characters of Jessica and Lorenzo 82-7 uses of the Rings Episode 87-9. The play illustrates every variety of Tone 251-2 Tone-Play 253 Turning-points 285, 68 Complication and Resolution 279, 66-7 Central effects 67-8 Interweaving 275-6 Wave Form of Passion-Movement 280 Contrary Motion 282. Plot analysed 271 Technical Analysis 291-2. _Merchant of Venice_, Characters in: Antonio 247 his nemesis 47-9 general character 47 friendship with Bassanio 47, 85 conduct in Bond Scene 48-9, 61, 262 centre of the serious side of the play 69-70 the loss of his ships 77 his sadness 250 his pathetic humour 254. Arragon 55, 240, 251. Bassanio: friendship with Antonio 47, 85 as a suitor 56 his part in the Bond Scene 61 in the Trial 73 in the Rings Episode 72, 88 a scholar 76 set off by Lorenzo 86 a Link Personage 88, 275 seen at a disadvantage in the play 86, 238 example of Tone-Clash 254. Bellario 66. Duke 64, 65. Gobbo 76, 252. Gratiano 60, 76, 84, 239, 249, 252. Jessica, her Story 75-87, 68, &c. her character 82-7 a compensation to Shylock 80 her attraction to Portia 87 foil to Portia 86 in Moonlight Scene 247. Launcelot 76, 83, 84, 252. Lorenzo: his character 85-7 its alleged inconsistency 238 a foil to Bassanio 86 in Moonlight Scene 247. Morocco 55, 240, 251. Nerissa 76, 239, 252. Portia as centre of the lighter side of the play 69-70, 252 in the Trial Scene 49-51, 65-6, 70-3 her plea an evasion 65 playing with the situation 70-2 her outburst on mercy 73, 251 the Rings Stratagem 72 relations with Jessica 85-6 her character 88-9. Salarino 48, 60, 76, 84. Salanio 60, 76. Salerio 76. Shylock as a study of Nemesis 49-51 in the Trial Scene 49-51, 247 his character 59-61 sentence on him 60, 80, 257 relation with Jessica 78-81, 83. Tubal 60, 76, 79, 239, 247. _Merchant of Venice_, Incidents and Scenes in: Bond Scene 48-9, 61-4, 262 Scene of Bassanio's Choice 55, 56, 68, 253, 275 Scene between Shylock and Tubal 79, 247 Trial Scene 49 its difficulties 64-6 its mixture of passions 70-2, 73 as an Incident 246 its Comic Irony 249 its Tone-Clash 254 sentence on Shylock 257. Moonlight Scene 247. Merivale on Roman Life 170. _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Play of 111. 'Milk of human kindness' 149-50. Milton's _Paradise Lost_ 11 minor poems 11, 12 versification 12, 13, 14 his Satan 123 on the Inner Life 144 his use of the Background of Nature 192. Mixture of Tones 251-3. [_See_ Tone.] Mob in _Julius Cæsar_ 296, 188, 200. Molière 16. Montgomery, Robert 13. Motion, Line of: 278-9. Motion, Modes of: 281-4 Similar Motion 282, 294, 295, 296 Contrary Motion 282, 291 Convergent Motion 282-4, 298. [_See_ also Movement.] Motive, Dramatic: 255-67. [_See_ Motive Force.] Motive Force, or Dramatic Motive: 254-67 General idea 254-5 distinguished from Motive Form _ib._ =Leading Motive Forces=: Poetic Justice 255-7 Pathos 257-9 the Supernatural 259-67. Motive Force in _Richard III_ is Nemesis 119 in _Macbeth_ the original oracle of the Witches 137. Motive Form distinguished from Motive Force 254 general exposition 278-87. Movement: as an element in Drama 185 Arch form applied to 186 simple in _Julius Cæsar_, complex in _King Lear_ 186, 202 traced in _Julius Cæsar_ 185 and Chapter IX in _King Lear_ 202 and Chapter X. Movement as one division of Action 235, 236 applied to Character as Character-Development 242 applied to Passion 254 [_see_ Motive Force] applied to Plot 278 [_see_ Motive Form]. Movement shown in the Technical Analyses 291-8. Movement, Centre of, Focus of: 284-5. [_See_ Catastrophe.] Movement, Single[9] 278-81 its division into Simple and Complicated 278-9 Action-Movement and Passion-Movement 279-80 this distinction the basis of the main division of Shakespeare's plays 279-81 varieties of Passion-Movement 280. Compound Movement 281-4 general idea 281 its three Modes of Motions: Similar Motion 282 Contrary Motion 282 Convergent Motion 282-4. Movement, Varieties of: Single[9] 278 Compound 281-4 Simple[9] and Complicated[9] 278-9 Action and Passion 279-81, 291-8 Regular Arch 280 Inclined Plane 280 Wave 280 Similar 282 Contrary 282 Convergent 282-4. Multiplication of Actions 269-71 of Stories 74. [_See_ Story.] Nemesis as a dramatic idea 44 ancient and modern conception 44-5 its change with change in the idea of Destiny 126 its distinction from Justice 44 connection with Fortune 44 with risk 45 proverbs of Nemesis 46 connection with _hybris_ 49. Nemesis needed to counterbalance Richard's Villainy 106 woven into history in _Richard III_ 107 and Chapter V a system of Nemesis Actions in the Underplot of _Richard III_ 108-119 modes of emphasising 114-18 its multiplication a suitable background to Richard's character 118. Nemesis interwoven with Destiny in _Macbeth_ 125 and Chapter VI applied to the plot of _Macbeth_ 127-30. Nemesis as a Dramatic Effect 249 as a Dramatic Motive 255-6. Nemesis, Varieties of: Surprise 47 Expectation and Satisfaction 49 Unlooked-for Source 256 Equality, or Measure for Measure 49, 120, 127, 208, 256 Sureness or Delay 120, 256 Suddenness 198, 256 Repetition and Multiplication 256, 107 and Chapter V generally Self-inflicted 256 the Prize of Guilt 256 Combined with Mockery 256 and compare 115-9 Double 47, 205-6, 207-8 Cross Nemeses 291, 293, compare 47, 51. Nemesis, =Illustrations= of: Anne 113 Antonio 47 Buckingham 109 Cæsar 197 Cassius 249 Clarence 108 the Conspirators in _Julius Cæsar_ 201, 256 Edmund 208, 216-7 King Edward IV 108 Gloucester (in _King Lear_) 207-8, 216-7 Goneril and Regan 206, 256 Hastings 109 Hippolytus 45 in the Story of the Jew 46 Lear 205-6, 209-15, 220-3, 256 Lycurgus 45 Macbeth 217-30, 165-7, 256 Lady Macbeth 166 Macduff 129 Pentheus 45 Polycrates 45 Queen and her kindred (_Richard III_) 108 Regan 206, 256 Richard III 119-24, 256 Shylock 49, 256 Wars of the Roses 111-3. Objective to the plot of _King Lear_ 284, 298. Observation as a Stage of Inductive Science 228-9. Oedipus as an example of Oracular Action 134 of Irony 138. Omens 193, 201. [_See_ Supernatural.] Oracular Action 130-4 applied to Macbeth 134-7 as an example of Supernatural agency illuminating human action 265-6 compared with the illumination of history 265. =Illustrations=: of the first type 131, 134, 135 of the second 132, 134 of the third 133, 136. _Othello_, play of: Rymer on 8, 9 Iago 92, 101. Otway 9. Outer and Inner Life 144-6. [_See_ Antithesis.] Overwinding as an illustration for the Movement of _Macbeth_ 137. Paradox of simplicity by means of complexity 74. Parallelism 276-8 [_see_ Action, Economy of] between Main and Underplot in _King Lear_ 206-9, 277-8, 297 other illustrations in the Technical Analyses 291, 295. Passion 246 as an element in Drama 185-6 its connection with Movement _ib._ as an Elementary Topic in Dramatic Criticism 235 subdivided 236. =Examples:= _Julius Cæsar_ 185 and Chapter IX; _Lear_ 202 and Chapter X. 'Passion-Drama' as substitute for 'Tragedy' 280-1, 293, 295, 296, 297. Passion, Interest of: 246 and Chapter XIII general description 246 unity in Passion-Interest 246-50 [_see_ Incident, Situation, and Effect] complexity in Passion-Interest 250-4 [_see_ Tone] Movement applied to Passion 254-67, 236 [_see_ Motive Force]. Passion, Line of: 280. Passion-Movement 254-67, 236. [_See_ Motive Force.] Passion-Strain 186 Strain and Reaction 280. =Examples:= _Julius Cæsar_ 191-201; _King Lear_ 208, 215. Pathos as a Dramatic Motive 257-9. St. Paul and Nemesis 47. Pentheus 45. Perrault 19. Perspective in Plot 118. Pharaoh an example of Infatuation 261. Physical passion or madness in Lear 210-5 external shocks as a cause of madness 214. Plato's _Republic_ and its treatment of liberty 170. Plot as an Elementary Topic in Dramatic Criticism 236 the intellectual side of Action, or pure Action 236 Shakespeare a Master of Plot 69, 269 close connection between Plot and Character illustrated by _Richard III_ 107 and Chapter V this play an example of complexity in Plot 107 perspective in Plot 118 _Macbeth_ an example of subtlety in Plot 125, 142 Plot analytical in its nature 186 simple in _Julius Cæsar_, complex in _King Lear_ 202 effect on the estimation of Plot of dissociation from the theatre 233 the most intellectual of all the elements of Drama 233 Technical Analyses of Plots 291-8. Plot, Interest of: 268 and Chapter XIV. Definition of Plot 268-9 its connection with design and pattern 268, 269, 270, 272, 108, 111, 118, 202 its dignity 268. Unity applied to Plot 269-70 [_see_ Action Single; Action, Forms of] complexity applied to Plot 270-8 [_see_ Action Analysis, Economy] complexity of Action distinguishes Modern Drama from Ancient 270 Unity of Action becomes in Modern Drama Harmony of Actions 270 Shakespeare's plots federations of plots 271. Movement applied to Plot, or Motive Form 278-85. [_See_ Action Single and Compound, Turning-points.] Poetic Justice 255-7. [_See_ Justice.] Polycrates 45, 126. Pope 10, 17, 19. Portia: see _Merchant of Venice_ _Julius Cæsar_. Practical Life 144-6. [_See_ Antithesis.] Problem Action 202-6, 224, 269 of Judgment by Appearances 52-6. Prometheus 122-3. _Proverbs_, Book of: quoted 144. Proverbs of Nemesis 46. Providence as modern analogue of Destiny 125. Puritan Revolution, its effect on Dramatic Criticism 232. Pye 17. Quilp compared with Richard III 92, 94. _Rambler_ 17. Raw Material of the Romantic Drama 43, 232. Reaction 198. [_See_ Passion-Strain.] Reduction of Difficulties an element in Dramatic workmanship 58, 233 illustrated: _Merchant of Venice_ 58-66. Reed 8. Relief 253. [_See_ Tone.] Renaissance and its influence on critical method 4, 18, 230 Shakespeare a type 287. Representation 231. [_See_ Stage.] Resolution 67, 279. [_see_ Complication.] Resolving Force 67. Reviewing, the lyrics of prose 22. Rhymed couplet 30 its usage by Shakespeare 135. _Richard III_, Play of: an example of the intimate relation between Character and Plot 107 treated from the side of Character 90 and Chapter IV from the side of Plot 107 and Chapter VI its Enveloping Action, the wars of the Roses 273, 276 its Turning-points 285 its form of Passion-Movement 280 affords examples of Situations 247 of Dramatic Foreshadowing 250 of Similar Motion 282. Richard III, Character of: 90 and Chapter IV Ideal Villainy 90-1, 237 in scale 91 development 91, 243 not explained by sufficient motive 92 an end in itself 93. Richard as an Artist in Villainy 93-6 absence of emotion 93 intellectual enjoyment of Villainy 95-6. His Villainy ideal in its success 96-103 fascination of irresistibility 97, 103 use of unlikely means 98 economy 99 imperturbability and humour 100-1 fairness 101 recklessness suggesting resource 101, 239 inspiration as distinguished from calculation 102 his keen touch for human nature 102. Ideal and Real Villainy 104 Ideal Villainy and Monstrosity 105. [Also called Gloster.] _Richard III_, Characters in: Anne 94, 113, 115 [_see_ Wooing Scene] Buckingham 91, 96, 100, 109, 115, 118, 121, 240 Catesby 117, 240 Clarence 108, 114, 116 his Children 109 his Murderers 240-1 Derby 117 Dorset 120 Elizabeth 121 Ely 100, 121 Hastings 91, 98, 109, 114, 115, 117, 240, 249 King Edward IV 99, 108, 114, 117 King Edward V 100, 240, 250 Lord Mayor 99 Margaret 94, 112, 115, 247 Queen and her kindred 98, 108, 114, 115, 116 Richmond 120, 121 Stanley 117, 123 Tyrrel 94, 240 York 99, 240 Duchess of York 95, 111. _Richard III_, Incidents and Scenes in: Wooing Scene 247 analysed 103-4 an example of fascination 94, 97 Richard's blunders 102, 239. Margaret and the Courtiers 94, 247 Reconciliation Scene 99, 117 Murder of Clarence 116, 240-1, 246. _Richard III_, Plot of: 107 and Chapter V. How Shakespeare weaves Nemesis into History _ib._ Its Underplot as a system of Nemesis 108 its Enveloping Action a Nemesis 111 further multiplication of Nemesis 112 special devices for neutralising the weakening effect of such multiplication 114-8 the multiplication needed as a background to the villainy 118 Motive Force of the whole a Nemesis Action 119. Fall of Richard 119-23 protracted not sudden 119, 256 Turning-point delayed 120 tantalisation and mockery in Richard's fate 121-4 Climax in sleep and the Apparitions 122 final stages 123 play begins and ends in peace 123. Roman political life 169-71 and Chapter VIII generally its subordination of the individual to the State 170 a change during Cæsar's absence 180, 183. Romantic Drama: Shakespeare its Great Master 40, 43 its connection with Stories of Romance 43. _Romeo and Juliet_, Play of: 9. Roscommon 17. Rowe 17. Rymer the champion of 'Regular' Criticism 8 on Portia 8 and _Othello_ generally 8 on _Paradise Lost_ 11 on Blank Verse 14 on Modern Drama 17 on _Catiline_ 17 on Classical Standards 18 his _Edgar_ 21. Satire, Dramatic 3. Scale of Passion-Tones 251. Schlegel 11. Science of Dramatic Art 40, 227. [_See_ Criticism.] Scudéry 18. Serious as a Tone 251. Shadwell 17. Shakespeare-Criticism, History of, in five stages 8-11. Shakespeare's English 15 his Sonnets 12. Situation, Dramatic: 247-8. Socrates 230. Sophocles 270. Spenser 12, 17, 30. Sprat 16. Stage-Representation: an element in Interpretation 98 an allied art to Drama 231 separated in the present treatment 231-2 in exposition but not in idea 233-4. Stationary Action 291 note. Steevens 12, 15. Stoicism 144, 173, 174, 175, 179, 188. Storm in _Julius Cæsar_ 192-6, 214 [_see_ Background of Nature] in _King Lear_ 214-5. Story as the Raw Material of the Shakespearean Drama 43 and Chapter I, 232 construction of Drama out of Stories illustrated in _The Merchant of Venice_ 43-89 two Stories worked into one design in _The Merchant of Venice_ 58 and Chapter II in _King Lear_ 206 Multiplication and Interweaving of Stories 66-73 effects on Movement 66-7 of Symmetry 67-9 interweaving of a Light with a Serious Story 69-73 effects of Human Interest 70 of Plot 70 of Passion 70-3. Story of the Jew 43, 44-51. Its two-fold Nemesis 46-51 its difficulties met 58-66 Complicated and Resolved 67 connection with the Central Scene 68 its mechanical difficulties 76-7. Story of the Caskets 44, 51-6. An illustration of Idealisation 51 careful contrivance of inscriptions and scrolls 53, 54 its problem 52 and solution 54 connection with the central scene 68. Story of Jessica 75-87. Its connection with the central scene 68 an Underplot to _The Merchant of Venice_ 75-87 its use in attaching to Plot the Mechanical Personages 75 and generally assisting Mechanism 76-7 helps to reduce difficulties in the Main Plot 77-80 a Link Action 81 assists Symmetry and Balance 82 assists Characterisation 82-7. Story [or Episode] of the Rings: its uses in the Underplot of _The Merchant of Venice_ 87-9 compare 68, 72. Strain of Passion 186. [_See_ Passion-Strain.] Sub-Actions: Launcelot 76, 291 Cæsar and Antony 282, 296 in Technical Analyses 291-8. Supernatural, The, as a Dramatic Motive 259-67. Different use in Ancient and Modern Drama 259 rationalised in Modern Drama 260. In an objective form as Destiny 260-1 in a subjective form as Infatuation 261-2. Supernatural Agencies 262-7 not to be explained as hallucinations 262 Shakespeare's usage of Supernatural Agency: to intensify human action 263-4 to illuminate human action 263-4 the Oracular 265-6 the Dramatic Background of Nature 266. =Illustrations=: the Apparitions to Richard 122 the Ghost of Banquo 165-6 the Apparitions in _Macbeth_ 135, &c. the Witches 158, 263 portents in _Julius Cæsar_ 193-4 the Ghost of Cæsar 201 omen of Eagles to Cassius 201. Symmetry as a dramatic effect 68, 233 as a form of Economy 276-8. =Illustrations=: _Merchant of Venice_ 67-8; _King Lear_ 207-9, 277-8. Systematisation as a Stage of scientific progress 228, 229. Table of Elementary Topics 236 of general Topics 288. Taste as condensed experience 6. [_See_ Criticism.] Tate 17. Taylor (Jeremy) 39. _Tempest_, Play of: 10. Terence 16. Thackeray on the Inner Life 144. Themistocles, Story of: 131. Theobald 10. Theseus and Hippolyta 111. Tieck 11. Tito Melema compared with Richard 91. Tone as a dramatic term: the application of complexity to Passion 236 Passion-Tones 250-4 Scale of Tones 251. Mixture of Tones 251-4 this unknown to the Ancient Drama 252 mere mixture in the same field 251-2 mixture in the same Incident: Tone-Play 253 Tone-Relief _ib._ Tone-Clash _ib._ Tone-Storm 254. Topics as a technical term in science 229-30 topical stage of development in sciences 229 applied to Dramatic Criticism 229-30 and Chapter XI Elementary Topics of Dramatic Criticism 236 General Table of Topics 288 Topics common to Dramatic and other arts 232. Touchstone 223. 'Tragedy' or 'Passion-Drama' 280-1 Tragedies of Lear 205-6, &c., 209-15, 220-3 of Cordelia and Kent 206 of Goneril and Regan 206 of Gloucester 207-8, 216-7 of Edgar 208, 216-7 of Edmund 208, 216-7 Systems of Tragedies 208-9. Tragic as a Tone 251. Turning-points 284-5, 291-8. Double in Shakespeare's plays: Catastrophe or Focus of Movement and Centre of Plot 284-5. =Illustrations= 284-5, compare 68, 120, 127, 186, 198, 205, 216-7. Tyrtæus 132. Ulrici 11, 26. Underplot 74 and Chapter III =Illustrations=: _Merchant of Venice_ 74 and Chapter III, 291 _Richard III_ 108-19, 293 Lear 206-9, 215-8, 223, 271, 283-4, 297-8. Union of Light and Serious Stories 69-73. Unity as an element of Action 235 applied to Character 237 to Passion 246 to Plot (Action) 270-71 the 'three unities' 14. Unstable equilibrium in morals 45, 205. Utilisation of the Mechanical 76-8, 233. _Variorum Shakespeare_ 8. Villainy as a subject for art treatment 90 Ideal Villainy 90 and Chapter IV. Voltaire 9, 14, 17. Waller 17. Walsh 17. Warton 17. Wave-form of Passion-Movement 280, 292 waves of hysterical passion in Lear 210-5. _Waverley Novels_ 12. Whitehead 17. Wit as a mental game 219. Wordsworth 12. Workmanship, Dramatic: 58 and Chapter II, 233. FOOTNOTES: [9] The reader will remember that 'Single' is used as antithetical to 'Complex,' and 'Simple' to 'Complicated.' See note to page 74. INDEX OF SCENES ILLUSTRATED IN THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS. _Clarendon type is used where the passage referred to approaches the character of an analysis of the scene._ JULIUS CÆSAR. Act I. Sc. i. 180, =188-9=. ii. 172, =178-80=, 180, =189-91=. iii. =191-4=, =195-6=. Act II. Sc. i. 171-2, 172, 174, =175-6=, 176, 180-1, 187, 191, =194=. ii. 177, =194-5=. iii. 196. iv. 196-7 Act III. Sc. i. 172-3, 177, 177-8, 182, 183, =196-9=, 285. ii. 175, =199-200=. iii. 180, 200. Act IV. Sc. i. 200. ii. and iii. 172, 173-4, 182, =200-1=. Act V. Scs. iii, v. 171, 172, 201. KING LEAR. Act I. Sc. i. =203-5=, 206, 285. ii. 206. iv. =210=, =220-1=. v. =210-1=, =221-2=. Act II. Sc. i. 283. ii. 258, note. iv. 209, =211-4=, =222-3=, 283. Act III. Sc. i. 209, 214, 215, 223. ii. 209, 215, 223. iii. 209, =215=, 216. iv. 209, 215, =216=, 217-8, 223, 285. v. 209, 283. vi. 207, 209. vii. 209, 216, 247. Act IV. Sc. i. 216, 217. vi. 215. Act V. Sc. iii. 208, 215, 259. MACBETH. Act I. Sc. iii. =135=, 136, 141, 154, =158-9=, 244, =263-4=. iv. =135=, 150-1, 244, 260. v. =149-50=, 156, =159-60=. vii. =151-3=, 157, =160-1=. Act II. Sc. i. =153-4=. ii. 154, 155, =161-3=, 244. iii. =139-40=, =163-4=, 253, 260. iv. =140=, 164. Act III. Sc. i. 129, 154, =164-5=. ii. 154, =164-5=, 244. iii. =127=, 285. iv. 130, 154, =165-6=, 285. v. 262, 264. vi. =128-9=. Act IV. Sc. i. 130, =135-6=, 140, 167, 264. ii. 130, 140. iii. =140-1=. Act V. Sc. i. =166-7=. iii. 167. v. 167. vii. and viii. 130, 167, 285. MERCHANT OF VENICE. Act I. Sc. i. 48, 61, 70, 76. ii. 54, 56, 70. iii. 48-9, =61-4=, 262. Act II. Sc. i. 53. ii. 76. iii. 76, 84. iv. 84, 85. v. 60, 76, =83=. vi. 84, 85. vii. 53, 55. viii. 78. ix. 55-6. Act III. Sc. i. 60, 76, 78, 79, 85. ii. 54-5, 56, =67-9=, 76, 78. iii. 60, 76, 78. iv. 85, 86. v. 76, 85. Act IV. Scs. i. and ii. =49-51=, 60, =64-6=, =70-3=, 80, 87-8, 88-9, 254, 257, 285. Act V. Sc. i. 85, 247. RICHARD III. Act I. Sc. i. 92-3, 96, 100, 101, 123. ii. 93, 94, =96=, =97-8=, 99, 101, 102, =103-4=, 113. iii. 95, 96, =111-3=, 115. iv. 108, 114, =116=, 240-1. Act II. Sc. i. 99, 101, 108, 116, 117-8. ii. 95, 100, 109, 111-2. Act III. Sc. i. 91, 99, 100. ii. 109, =117=, 249. iii. 114, 115, 120, 285. iv. 98, 100, 114, 115. v, vii. 96, 99. Act IV. Sc. i. 104, 111-2, 116. ii. 110, 262, 280, 285. iii. 94, =120-1=. iv. 91, 95, 111-2, 115, =121-2=. Act V. Sc. i. 115, 118. iii. 95, =122-3=. iv. and v. 123. Corrections. The first line indicates the original, the second the correction. p. 64: It has further been ushered in in a manner It has further been ushered in a manner p. 310: his inability to bear suspense 154, 160, 162, 163, 163, 164-5, 243-5. his inability to bear suspense 154, 160, 162, 163, 164-5, 243-5.