IDDCA7I01I LIBB^ REEF POINT GARDENS LIBRARY The Gift of Beatrix Farrand to the General Library University of California, Berkeley Digitized by the Internet Arciiive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englishcompositiOOnichrich BY THE SAME AUTHOR, BYRON. Crown 8vo, is. 6^., Sewed, is. [English Men 0/ Letters. A TH E NyE [/M :~" DQcidtdly one of the most careful and valuable of the whole series. When a book is so good as Professor Nichol's, there is little to be said about it, except to recommend it as widely as may be." CARLYLE. Cro7vn 8vo, is. 6^., Sewed is. [English Men of Letters. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. By John Nichol, M.A., LL.D., and W. S. M'Cormick, M.A'. Globe 8vo. ' [In preparation, ENGLISH COMPOSITION. i8mo. Cloth, is. [Literature Primers. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES ON ENGLISH COMPOSI- TION. By Prof. Nichol and W. S. M'Cormick, M.A., Professor of English Litp:rature, University College, Dundee. iZmo, Cloth, is. MACMILLAN & CO., LONDON. THE DEATH OF THEMISTOCLES, and other Poems. Extra Foolscap Svo, Cloth, js. 6d. TABLES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY, LITERATURE, SCIElSrCE, AND ART, from a.d. 200 to 1888, and of AMERICAN HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND ART. Nev) and greatly efilarged Edition, printed in five colours. Royal 8vo, Cloth js. 6d. TIMES: — "The tables are clear, and form an admirable companion to the student of history, or indeed to any one who desires to revise his recollection of facts." TABLES OF ANCIENT LITERATURE AND HISTORY, from B.C. 150010 A.D. 200. ^to, Cloth, 4^. 6d. OBSER FEE :—'' They constitute a most successful attempt to give interest to the chronology of literature, by setting before the eye the relation between the literature and the practical life of mankind." J. MACLEHOSE & SONS, GLASGOW. l^itcraturt Primers. Edited by j. R. Green. ENGLISH COMPOSITION. BY JOHN NICHOL, M.A. Balliol, Oxon, LL.D., LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. MACMILLAN AND CO., AND NEW YORK. 1893. \_The right of translation and reproduction is reserved,^ lUCiTION LISBs. [First Edition, 1878. Reprinted 1879, i88i, 1883, 1886, 1888, 1889, 1891, 1892, 1893.] CONTENTS. PART I. Introductory- pages Chapter i. Definitions, Synthesis of Sentences. . 5-9 ,, 2. Punctuation 9-14 ,, 3. The General Laws of Style. . . 15-17 PART II. Accuracy and Purity- Chapter i. Correct Grammar, Common Solecisms. 18-33 ,, 2. Purity in the use of Words, Barbarisms. 33-38 ,, 3. Propriety in the use of Words. . . 38-43 PART III. Clearness and Precision- Chapter I. Simplicity. . . . . . 44-47 ,, 2. Brevity, Tautology, Verbosity, &c. . 47-56 ,, 3. Precision, Ambiguous Words. . . S7~^3 ,, 4. Perspicuous Arrangement. . . 63-71 PART IV. Strength and Grace — Chapter i. Choice of Words, Figures of Speech, Metaphors, Antithesis, &c. . . 72-93 ,, 2. Number of Words 93-98 ,, 3. Order of Words, Inversion, Climax, &c 98-106 PART V. Versification — Chapter I. Definitions, Tone, Quantity, Accent. 107-111 ,, 2. Rhythm, Metrical Feet, Pauses, &c. 111-116 ,, 3. Rhyme, Alliteration. . . . 11 6-1 21 „ 4. English Metres. . . , . 1 21-128 ^^7 PRIMER OF h/5-15 ENGLISH COMPOSITION.^^^^ PART I. lUrar^ INTRODUCTORY, CHAPTER I. DEFINITIONS. SYNTHESIS OF SENTENCES. I. Literary Composition is putting words together in order to convey our thoughts to others. Good composition conveys our thoughts correctly, clearly, and pleasantly, so as to make them readily understood and easily remembered. To express ourselves well we must first have some- thing to say. If we have not been able to come to any definite conclusion about a subject, we should be silent. We must next choose the right names for the things or actions of which we are going to speak. This is not always easy, for we are apt to talk loosely of quantities and qualities ; to say there are " thou- sands" when there are only hundreds, to call an event "marvellous" when it is only unusual, or to refer to " ages " when there are only years. Lastly, we must arrange our words in the right way, so that they shall fit one another and combine to make good sense : just as we must put bricks or stones together properly to make a building stand. All language is a construction; it is the building or binding of words. 2. The term Sentence is applied to every arrange- ment of words expressing a complete sense, that is, a thought, judgment, or decision. Every sentence involves a mental realization of two things and an assertion of some connection between 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. I. them. When I say '^ I am here" I have an idea of my- self, of a present place, and of my being in it. When I say " Cain struck Abel " I have the idea of Cain, of his brother, and of a blow passing from one to the other. The verb in the latter case is transitive, in the former intransitive: in each we make no more than one plain assertion, and the result is a Simple Sentence. But when I say " James and I met John ^' I make, in short space, three statements : — I met John. James met John. I and James were together. The result is a Compound Sentence. 3. Frequently we have to make statements modified by some qualification. This qualification may be ex- pressed by a single w^ord, as " I ran home quickly " / by a Phrase, or set of words without a subject and predicate, as " I met him on my way home'''' ; or by a Clause, or set of words containing a subject and predicate, as "I met him while he was on his way homer Clauses may often be expressed by phrases, and phrases may be shortened into words — e.g.^ " when he was acting as an enemy," or " acting as an enemy," or " hostilely." Co-ordinate Clauses are parts of sentences otherwise independent but connected by conjunctions, as " They gave up the attempt and retreated to their fortresses^ A Subordinate Clause is a clause the construction and meaning of which is dependent on the principal or leading assertion, as " He ran quickly that he might get home firsts Sentences containing subordinate or secondary clauses are sometimes called Complex Sentences. A sentence may be both compound and complex ; it may convey an indefinite number of statements, and each may be qualified by an indefinite number of clauses. There should, however, in every instance be a leading statement, obviously more important than the others, and giving a unity to the whole. Other- wise the facts or thoughts should be expressed in several sentences. CH. I.] DEFINITIONS. 7 4. Clauses have been called adjective, relative, ad- verbial, or conjunctive, according to the parts of speech which introduce them : but it is of more consequence to observe that they are expansions in form, in matter, various modifications, either in the way of extension or restriction, of the main subject and predicate. Half the art of composition consists in keeping the subordinate parts of the sentence in proper relation to the principal parts. Making the main assertion clear is to a writer what making his house stand firm is to a builder. Details of ornament are minor matters. 5. To this end the practice of Grammatical Analysis — or splitting compound and complex sen- tences into their elements {see Primer of Grammar) — is an aid. By a converse process. Grammatical Synthesis, these elements, the expressions of the separate judgments a sentence contains, are bound together. Take the following : — Sir Philip Sidney was wounded. He was at a battle. It took place near Zutphen. The wound was inflicted by a musket ball. It broke the bone of his thigh. This led to his death. These assertions are easily gathered up into a single compound and complex sentence : — " Sir Philip Sydney, at the battle near Zutphen, was wounded by a musket ball whkh broke the bone of his thigh and led to his death." Or take a different kind of construction — He sacrificed his country. He sacrificed his friends. He sacrificed his home. He sacrificed his personal honour. He sacrificed them to a cause. He was now deserting it. Ail these facts failed to influence his decision. 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION-, [PT. I. Condense thus : — *^ That he had sacrificed country, friends, home, and personal honour to the cause he was now deserting did not influence his decision." [Syntheses of a greater number of assertions into variously qualified unities may be made to forfu the stcbjects of more difficult but highly useful exercises?^ 6. Modifying phrases and subordinate clauses often occupy much more space than the principal clause, but the latter is the pivot of the sentence. The qualifications may either — {a) Follow the main assertion ; (p) Precede it ; or, (J) Be inserted between its members. Take the following as examples of the three modes of their introduction : — {a) " The castle consists of a square keep or tower, several storeys high, encompassed by a square em- battled wall, which has circular towers at each angle." {b) " While the multitudes below saw only the flat sterile desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by a near horizon, or diversi- fied only by some deceitful mirage, he was gazing, from a far higher stand, on a far lovelier country." (c) " The two opposite parties who professed in specious terms, the one a preference for moderate aristocracy, the other a desire of admitting the people at large to an equality of civil privileges, made the state which they professed to serve in reality the prize of their contention." 7. The first of these is called a Loose sentence ; because it might end with " tower " and yet convey a distinct and apparently complete sense ; the adjective clauses are thrown upon what precedes, as if they were afterthoughts. The second and third, where the assertion does not appear till the close, are called Periods. In some instances the former, in others the latter mode of construction is ureferable. CH. II.] PUNCTUATION. 9 8. A succession of sentences relating to the same view of the same subject is called a Paragraph, the close of which is generally indicated by the next sentence beginning with a new line. The separate sentences explain or illustrate one another, and have the same kind of relation to the paragraph that the clauses have to the sentence. A series of paragraphs make up a Theme, Speech, or Essay, or Chapter of a Book. CHAPTER 11. PUNCTUATION. The relation of the parts of a sentence to one another should be made as plain as possible by proper arrange- ment : but it is sometimes made more clear in spoken language by proper pauses, and in written or printed language by Punctuation. The following are the Points common in EngHsh, and the main rules for their use : — 1. The Full stop {>), ox Period, marks the close of a sentence, whether simple or compkx, loose or periodic. It indicates that the construction is com- plete and that an assertion has been fully made ; though other sentences in the same paragraph may follow to modify the thought. The Period is also employed to mark abbreviations, as in Christian names or titles— T. B. Potter; Lord Beaconsfield, K.G. 2. The Colon ( : ) generally indicates that the sentence might grammatically be regarded as finished, but that something follows without which the full force of the remark would be lost : — " Study to acquire a habit of thinking : no study is more important." This point is used after a general statement followed by the specification of two or more heads : — " Three proper- ties belong to wisdom: nature, learning, and experi- ence." A direct quotation is often introduced by a 10 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. i. colon : — " He was heard to say : ' I have done with the world.'" 3. The Semicolon ( ; ) is used similarly, but it indicates a closer connection in the clause that follows. Reasons are preceded by semicolons — " Economy is no disgrace ; for it is better to live on a little than to outlive a great deal." So are clauses in opposition when the second is introduced by an adversative — "Straws swim at the surface; but pearls lie at the bottom." Without the adver- sative, prefer a colon — " Prosperity sheweth vice : adversity virtue." Several members dependent on a common clause follow semicolons — e. g., " Philo- sophers assert that nature is unlimited; that her treasures are endless ; that the increase of knowledge will never cease." 4. The Comma ( , ) represents the shortest natural pause in reading or speaking the sentence. It groups the words immediately related in grammar or sense, and indicates where their connection is interrupted. There is considerable latitude in the use of commas. Avoid using them lavishly; mere adjective or adverbial phrases do not require them. The following, for instance, needs none : — " By carefully pandering to the passions of the half-educated mob you will hardly fail to secure their votes." But this does : — " By pandering to the passions of the mob, who in this part of the country control the elections, you will secure their votes." Some special uses of the comma are worthy of note. It is employed — (a) To separate adjectives in opposition but closely connected : — " Though deep, yet clear." CH. II. ] PUNCTUA TION. i j (b) After adjectives, nouns, and verbs, in compound sentences, where ^' and " is omitted : — " Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils. Shrunk to this little measure ? " "■ He fills, he bounds, connects and equals all." So with pairs of words : — " Old and young, rich and poor, wise and foohsh, were involved in the ruin of the Glasgow Bank." Similarly, to separate a series of assertions relating to the same nominative and not connected by a con- junction : — *^ He rewarded his friends, chastized his foes, set Justice on her seat and made his conquest secure." {c) Before a qualifying clause introduced by a relative : — " Peace at any price, which these orators seem to advocate, means war at any cost." Note that a relative clause not necessary to the antecedent must be marked off by commas; thus : — ** Sailors, who are generally superstitious, say it is unlucky to embark on a Friday." When the clause is an essential part of the ante- cedent only one comma is used : — " The sailor who is not superstitious, will embark on any day." The adjective is followed by a comma because the nominative *' sailor " is not immediately followed by the verb. (d) When the nominative is a clause, a comma is often placed after it. " That he had persistently disregarded every warning and persevered in his reckless course, had not yet undermined his credit with his dupes." {c) On both sides of an explanatory clause, without which the sentence would be verbally complete. 12 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [PT. i. " The shield was oblong, four feet in length and two in breadth, and was guarded by plates of brass." " The coast, as far as we have been able to explore it, is rocky." (/) After an address — "My son, give me thy heart." {g) After the adverbs, nay^ finally^ at least ^ &c. — " Finally, let me sum up the argument." {h) After a nominative, where the verb is under- stood — " To err is human; to forgive, divine." The importance of accuracy in the use of the comma is illustrated by the different meaning which its insertion at one place or another may give to such sentences as the following — " You will be rich if you be industrious in a few years." Lord George Sackville on trial for an alleged offence was accused of contempt of court for making an ambiguous pause in saying — " I stand here as a prisoner unfortunately that gentleman sits there as my judge." In the latter instance, however, the ambiguity was perhaps intentional, and it is to be observed that where so much depends on a Point there is commonly some fault in the construction of the sentence. As a rule, beware of relying on the punctuation to indicate the sense : it ought to appear from the words chosen and from their arrangement. 5. The Point of Interrogation (?) is used after questions put by the writer or questions reported directly — "He said *when do you mean to come back?'" It should not be used when the question is reported indirectly — " He asked me when I intended to return." 6. The Point of Exclamation ( ! ), used after apostrophes or expressions of violent emotion, should CH. II.] PUNCTUATION, 13 rarely appear in ordinary prose. It is quite out of place in narrative or historical composition ; e.g. — " Hurrah for Argyle at last ! From this time forth he is openly a Covenanter." 7. The same remark applies to the Parenthesis, ( ) or the still more abrupt break indicated by the Dash ( — ). It has been faii^ly observed that these signs are often a mere cover for the writer's ignorance of the points : they are however, admissible when a clause is obviously thrust in, having less connection with the rest of the , sentence than would be indicated by commas, as : — '' He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend." *' Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days." The following is a good example of the proper em- ployment of the dash : — "At the last stage — what is its name I have forgotten in seven and thirty years — there is an inn with a little green and trees before it." A colon with a dash after it ( : — ) frequently in- troduces a quotation, especially when given as an instance or example. 8. A shorter line ( - ) called the Hyphen is used — (a.) To connect parts of a word divided at the end of a line. Remember to take care that you divide words according to the component parts of their derivation : — anti-dote, not an-tidote ; con-suit, not cons-ult. {b.) To connect two or more nouns, adjectives, or particles, so as to form them into a single compound, as — " Dry-as-dust history" ; "That never-to-be-forgotten day"; ^* That man-monkey." Such compounds should be used sparingly- J 4 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. i. 9. The marks ( ** '* ) should be employed wherever a quotation is made, or a speech directly reported. In dramatic dialogue however, they are omitted, it being taken for granted that the words are in the mouths of imaginary speakers. 10. Contractions. The following signs are uni versally recognized : — i.e.y for id est, that is to say, to expand or explain. e.g.y for exe^npU gratia, for example's sake, to illus- trate. viz,, for videlicet, to wit, to give an instance or enumerate the parts before referred to generally. &*c., for etcetera, and the rest, when all the parts necessary to illustrate the proposition have been named and it would be waste of time to complete the catalogue. A , for insert, Cobbett calls this sign " the blunder mark." * The apostrophe before the s of the possessive, and to mark contractions or elisions — '^ Nought's got, all's spent When our desire is had without content." This latter use should be mainly confined to poetry-. 11. Capitals are properly employed to mark— The first word of a sentence, or of a line of verse. The first word of a direct quotation. The first personal pronoun, I, and the interjection, O. Proper names, high titles, and names of the Deity. Very emphatic words, and names of personified objects. 12. Italics are admissible to emphasize. They are of frequent and hardly avoidable occurrence in short treatises like the present, to mark a portion of a sentence or paragraph to which special attention has to be called. But, in ordinary writing, the fewer italics we use the better. CH. III.] STYLE, IS CHAPTER III. STYLE. I. Style (Lat. stylus) is the mode in which we express ourselves; it is the art of choosing words, setting them in sentences, and arranging sentences in paragraphs. It is the architecture of thought. The result of careful and tasteful composition is a good style. 2. Style varies to suit the circumstances of various nations and men, and the temper and manner in which we handle various subjects. As different occasions call for different conduct, so different themes demand different treatment. A familiar letter, a speech and an essay are each regulated by special rules ; the proper style of poetry is not the same as that of prose. Good prose merely versified would be but tame poetry; poetry stripped of its rhythm would often appear as turgid prose. Style should be as natural as dress, and fit the time, the place, and the person as a glove fits the hand. But there are limits to this variety. Manners and conduct fortunately differ, or we should be wearied by every one behaving in the same way : but there are rules of civil discipline, of good conduct and good manners, laws that bind and laws that ought to bind us. So it is with style : the rules of grammar are its imperative laws— it must be accurate ; the canons of taste its manners — it ought to be strong and graceful, 3. A preliminary question meets us. Whence are the laws of style derived: who enacts them and makes them obeyed : to whom or what are we to refer on difficult or disputed points ? Most rhetoricians, ancient and modern, have answered that we must be guided by Custom, — national, reputable, and recent ; that is, by the practice of the majority of celebrated writers of our own country, who have lived near our own time. This is a very useful, and in practice often a decisive test. On many minor points it is perhaps the only i6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. i. test. Custom holds a real, and, within limits, a legiti- mate sway over such questions as the naturalization of foreign or the acceptance of new words. It de- cides on the disuse of old inflections, the shifting of accents and the currency of contracted forms. But in making Usage the absolute or sole standard of Accuracy and Taste there is some confusion between cause and consequence. I am likely to act rightly if I follow the example of good men : but it is not their example which makes my action right. I am pretty sure to compose correctly if I follow approved models. But why are they approved ? An author may be famous for political or moral influence, or even for the strength of his imagination, and yet be far from a model of style. If he be a model, it is because he has in his writings conformed to the Jaws of grammar and taste. A great thinker may have a vicious style ; a historian famous for his knowledge of musty records and his power of interpreting facts may express himself in a manner wearisome and dull. Their examples should never be used to justify solecisms or confusion of language, harsh words or lumbering sentences. 4. The parts of speech have, in accordance with the principles of universal grammar, a logical relation to one another which regulates their number, case and time. No amount of wilsdom in the writer can ex- cuse the use of a really singular noun with a plural verb, or of the reverse (the Greek neuter plural may be regarded as a collective), or of an ambiguous rela- tive, or of a mixed metaphor. The rules you find in grammars were not made by the grammarians, whose province it is to state and explain, nor by the writers of books, whose province it is to obey them, but by the genius of the language ; e.g., the rule5 of arrange- ment in an uninflected must be more stringent than those in an inflected speech. ; 5. The laws of style fall under one or other of two classes— CH. III.] STYLE. 17 Those regarding Accuracy and Clearness are re- quisite in all kinds of writing to ensure the faithful presentation of thought. Those regarding Strength and Gi'ace are more especially applicable to the higher branches of Prose composition and to Poetry. CORRESPONDING VIOLATIONS OF THE RULES. C/3 o H < t3 Purity prescribes the use of Perspicuity prescribes Correct Forms and Concords. Classic or Good English words. Proper words, i.e., words fit for the Simplicity. Brevity. Precision. Wrong forms. Solecisms. I Barbarisms. Improprieties. Round about, in- flated or pedan- tic words or phrases. Tautology. Pleonasm. Verbosity. Ambiguity or Obscurity. a. In words. b. In sentences, from bad ar- rangement. 1 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [PT. 11. PART II. ACCURACY OR PURITY OF STYLE. CHAPTER I. CORRECT GRAMMAR. No expression can form part of a good composition unless it be constructed in accordance with the laws of the language to which it belongs. An inaccurate expression may be clearly intelligible, but the habit of inaccuracy is sure to result in confusion. Every sentence is inaccurate which gives wrong forms of the parts of speech, or violates the rules of syntax. These rules are laid down in English gram- mars ; but as they are frequently transgressed even by standard writers, it is proper here to refer to some of the most common errors : these are of two kinds : — {a) Errors in the use of Single Words or forms. lb) False Concords, />., wrong Genders, Numbers. Cases, and Tenses. A. • Some special cautions in relation to the first head seem requisite : — 1. The Article. '^ A" and "The" should be re- peated when they introduce two or more nouns or adjectives referring to distinct things, e.g.^ " She had a black and white dog." If two dogs are meant it should be " She had a black and a white dog'.' " The Queen sent for the secretary and treasurer " should be " the secretary and the treasurer," unless it means to imply that the two offices were combined in one person. 2. The Noun. The wrong number is not un- frequently assigned to foreign words. Addison writes CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 19 " The zeal of the Seraphim as the character which is given us of him.^^ Seraphim is plural. The Possessive Case suggests several notes. It is often used interchangeably with the genitive after '' of" '' My Father's house " and '' The house of my Father " are identical : but the latter form is more accurate when the subject is neuter. Prefer "the roof of the house" to "the house's roof"; "the history of Servia" to "Servia's history." Where two possessives, one personal, the other a mere genitive, come together, the result is bad English : — " In Hannibal's march's expected line " should be " In the expected line of Hannibal's march." The possessive, however, is used in expressions of time, as " a long day's march." Whose is permitted after a neuter; we may say " The country whose fertiHty is great," but prefer "The fer- tility of which." Before a participle in such cases as " The cry of the Church's being in danger " the noun may be in the pos- sessive, but it is like a double genitive and it is therefore better to say "of the Church being in danger." The pos- sessive form only attaches to the last term of a title, as — " The King of France's decree," and generally comes close to the related noun. Hence the awkwardness of saying "England's Mediterranean power": it should be " The power of England in the Mediterranean." Observe, however, the difference in the following : — " Peter's, Joseph's, and Richard's estate " means that each had a separate estate. " Peter, Joseph, and Richard's estate" means their joint property. The possessive of one noun is often used wrongly with another noun followed by a relative — " They attacked Northumberland's house, whom they put to death," means they put the house to death : it should be "the house of Northumberland"; "I await the lady's opinion for whose use it was intended," read "the opinion of the lady." "A copy of his idea who made it " is at least a questionable expression. Better read " a copy of the idea of the original contriver " or 2 o ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. ii. "thinker." A more glaring error is employing both " of" and the possessive, as in the phrase—" that of other men's." Avoid the use of the possessive where its active and passive senses are apt to be confounded — " Have you heard," asked a friend of an old gentleman, " have you heard of your son's robbery ? " " Not yet," was the reply ; " whom did he rob ? " As regards the Gender of Nouns, observe that some masculine forms have a common or inclusive sense, and may without impropriety be applied to females ; but note the difference between saying " Mrs. Siddons was the greatest actress," and saying she was "the greatest actor of her age." The latter form amounts to the assertion that she was the greatest genius, among actors and actresses, on the stage. 3. Adjectives. One adjective cannot qualify an- other ; in apparent exceptions, as " red-hot poker," "• pale-blue sky," red and pale are adverbs. Some adjectives logically incapable of degree, as, certain, free, false, true, honest, squa7'e, round, even, accurate, occasionally admit of comparison with re- ference to their approach to the standard or the amount of the quality they display. This license, however, should be cautiously used. " More perfect " is hardly admissible. " More preferable," " most en- tire," are mere redundancies. Remember to use the comparative of the adjective when only two things are compared. "He is the taller," not the tallest, "of the two brothers." The superlative may, however, go with a singular form when the latter has a collective meaning, as — " the oldest of the family." " His eyes are the worst of his face " means the worst of all the features of his face. Some words, as "fast," may be either adjectives or adverbs. Be careful to discriminate the one use from the other, and abstain in prose from using adjectives for adverbs, or vice versa, " Excessive wrong," " that being the now estimate," &c., are incorrect expressions. CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 2 1 Note that an adjective does not necessarily become an adverb by accompanying a verb ; e.g. — : *' Uneasy lies the head," " we get wet.'' "Uneasy" may be an adjective, "wet" certainly is. 4. Verbs. Some former distinctions between past tenses and perfect participles of irregular verbs have ceased to be maintained; but it is still regarded as a violation of grammar to confound, as is often done, broke and bf-oken^ boi'e and borne^ began and begun, drank and drunk., stole and stolen., wove and woven, arose and arisen, went and gojie. The auxiliary be, which goes with intransitive verbs, is sometimes wrongly used for have, which generally goes with transitive verbs, e.g. — *'I am just arrived at Geneva"; "I found she was gone out of the house" is incorrect, for the addition of "out of" makes the verb transitive. But when " gone " is used for " dead " it may be preceded by was, " Mary was gone." The frequent confusion of shall and ^vill may be obviated by attending to a few rules and distinctions of some nicety. In common conversation the ist person is generally followed by ''shall;' the 2nd and 3rd by " wiliy The word " shall " denotes simple but certain futurity ; " will," intention or resolve. In this sense and with this force they are employed in the ist person. In the 2nd and 3rd the above distinction seems to be not only lost, but almost inverted. The seeming inconsistency is explained when we bear in mind that the motive power of the action is supposed to lie with the speaker. His will is assumed as its source. " You shall " indicates my conviction of the certainty of your future action in consequence of my determina- tion that it is to take place. Hence the "absolute shall," which in the 3rd person appears most frequently in the promulgation of laws. In the phrase " you will," as I can have no sure know- ledge of your determination ; the " will " drops into the sense of a milder or less emphatic assertion of futurity. 22 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. ii. In the interrogative "will you?" there is a request to know your wish in the matter. The affirmative answer to this must be " I will," not " I shall." On the other hand, " shall " is appropriate in the mouth of an inferior, in answer to a command. In the trite instance, " I will be drowned : nobody shall help me," we have a type of the wrong use of the words : Burns's lines — " We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free," supply a conspicuous example of the correct use. In some cases the writer may use either form. The expression — " An extract from Mr. Hallam shall close the present section " may be defended if the assertion is meant to be emphatic. But "shall" and "will" must never be used together with the same nominative. " I shall detain you no longer, but conduct you where I will point out " is wrong. Note. The infinitive of the verb is now only used, substantively, as a nominative. Such a construction as the following is inadmissible in prose : — " For not to have been dipped in Lethe's stream Could save the son of Thetis from to die'' B.— FALSE CONCORDS. I. Mistakes in gender are almost confined to con- fusions in the use of figurative language; e.g., "The cities who contended for Homer" is an over-violent personification. Observe that " which " is no longer applied, as in Shakespeare's time, to persons, except in asking a question — " Which of the brothers ? " or in reference to an alternative, " I know not which of the two." ^^Thafy' on the other hand, may be used of both persons and things — " We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea." II. Wrong Cases occur most frequently in the use of the pronouns, especially when they are sepa- CH. I.J CORRECT GRAMMAR, 23 rated, by some intervening clause, from the nouns to which they refer ; e.g. — " We shall speedily become as poor as them^ ^^ He that can doubt whether he be anything I speak not to." '' Who of all the men in the world do you think I saw?" " Whom do men say that I am ? " These and similar errors may be detected by supply- ing the omitted words, or by changing the construction. Note that "than" does not govern the accusative — " The Duke of Argyll, than whom no man was heartier in the cause" is wrong. Otherwise the distinction between "you love him more than I," and "you love him more than me " could not be maintained. Observe that " I esteem you more than they " or " more than them " is equally correct in grammar. But the two phrases have different meanings ; the first being equivalent to " I esteem you more than they do," the second being equivalent to " I esteem you more than I esteem them." Beware of using such expressions as " It is me^^ " It is him^' " Between you and /," " It cannot be me you mean" contracted from "It cannot be I whom you mean." The indefinite use of " it," as an expression for a state of being or the subject of discourse, is, however, unobjectionable. Note, the verb must agree with the " it." " It is I," " It is they," not " It am I," " It are they." Hence we have "'Tis two or three, my lord." The most frequent abstract use of "it" appears in apposition to general phrases, as ^^ It is impossible to say," and as representing natural processes, as " // rains," " // snows." Note that the English form of expression corre- sponding to the Latin ablative and the Greek genitive absolute is in the nominative — " He made as wise proverbs as anyone has done since, him only excepted who, &c.," should be " >^^ only excepted." Otherwise I 24 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. il. might say, " This happened, me being present." The accusative absolute found in Milton is obsolete. But a whole clause thrown into the objective may be introduced by a relative in the nominative — '* He went on speaking to who would listen to him^\* '*who" is here elliptical for "those who." ' III. Wrong Numbers are frequently met with when there are intervening or qualifying clauses and the nearest noun or group of nouns is mistaken for the nominative ; e, g. — " The quality of the apples were good." "A plurality of subjects reqicire a plural verb." ** The dropping of cumbrous words are a real gain." " He was fonder of nothing than wit and raillery, but he is far from being happy in //." The collective force of " and " or the disjunctive force of '^ or " is forgotten in the following : — " Both minister and magistrate is compelled to choose between his duty and his profession." " A feeble, harsh or obscure style are always faults." " When the helplessness of childhood or the frailty of women make an appeal." Sometimes, however, two subjects are so closely con- nected as to make a single notion. " Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing " is admissible. So in Shake- speare, " All is but toys : Renown and Grace is dead." Similarly, it is hypercriticism to object to "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory " where each in turn is regarded as the nominative. The full expression would be " Thine is the kingdom, thine is the power, thine is the glory." Excepting in poetry " you " is used in English for " thou "; but it must be followed by the plural of the verb. It is wrong to say, " I am as well as when you was here." As a rule the verb agrees with the subject, but it may agree with the predicate when the latter comes first in the sentence, as — CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 25 '^ The reward of the sovereign is the love and respect of his people." The coupling of a singular and plural should, how- ever, as much as possible be avoided. The following, for instance, are extremely awkward : — '' The only remaining circumstance is the prm- ciples. ** The only other part of speech which partakes of the weakness remarked in conjunctions is preposi- tions,^^ Alter the construction, and read, " Among the other parts of speech prepositions alone partake, &c.^' Where different persons are associated by a disjunctive, the verb agrees with the last person. " He or you or I am expected." Many collective nouns — as People, Clique, Ministry, Meeting, League — may be followed indif- ferently by either a singular or a plural verb. But it is absurd to vary the number of the verbs or pronouns agreeing with the same noun in the same sentence ; e. g,— "No people ever was more rudely assailed by the sword of conquest than those of this country; none had its chains, to appearance, more firmly rivetted round their necks." " The mob is cruel and they are ignorant." Note, that the title of a book is always a singular. " * The Annals of Florence ' are a most imposing work " is wrong. "Property" is singular; we cannot say "Property should be returned to their rightful owners." But "Wages" should be followed by the plural; "the men's wages are distributed every Saturday,'^ is right. Sometimes a nominative is singular merely in form, and having a distinctly plural meaning should be fol- lowed by a plural verb — " The greater number of such periods is ungraceful and obscure." The " is " here should rather be "are." 26 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. ii. On the other hand, a general term is erroneously separated into its component parts in the sentence — '' It gives pain to the mind and memory and ex- poses the unskilful hearer to mingle the particulars together. It leads them into a thick wood instead of into open daylight." The pronoun "them" gram- matically refers to " particulars," which makes non- sense : it is meant to refer to hearers^ but the antecedent is " hearer." The Distributives each, every, either, neither are improperly followed by the plural of the verb ; e,g. — " I am not certain that either of us were there." " How far each of the ihree epic poets have distin- guished themselves." " Neither hear any sign of case at all." " Let everyone please themselves. As well as, and None ^ No one, take the singular. It is wrong to say, " Homer as well as Virgil were studied ;" " None have come." And not, after a singular, takes a singular verb; e.g. — " My poverty, and not my will, consents. Many a, properly takes the singular; e.g. — " Full many a flower is born to blush unseen." It is wrongly followed by the plural in the following couplet — " And many a holy text around she strews That teach the rustic moralist to die." With, may be followed by either the singular or the plural. " Prosperity with humility renders its possessor amiable," is right, "with humility" being regarded as a modification of "prosperity." But when two or more things act together the plural is correct — "The king with the lords and commons form a good government." • IV. Wrong Mood and Tense. The most CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 27 frequent errors in English under this head may be avoided by attending to the following rules. A. Be careful to distinguish between the indefinite Fast, or Aorist, and the Perfect, Remember that the latter brings the close of the action down to the time of speaking; e.g. — "I ate my breakfast at nine this morning, and now I have just finished my dinner." The Perfect cannot therefore be properly applied to an event which is referred to as complete at a past date; e.g. — " You may do what you have done a century ago," should be ''did:' "Omx club has commenced last Friday." Omit "has:' Similarly, the Pluperfect marks an event occurring at a definite time. " He had lost his wife 7iDhile he was governor of Gaul," should be "lost — while" or "had lost — ^when." B. Observe the Sequence of Tenses. {a) Generally a Past tense goes with a Past tense ; a Present with a Present or a Future tense. The fol- lowing false sequences will illustrate the rule. " No writer wotUd write a book unless he thijiks it willht read." This must be either " no writer will unless he thinks it willj" &c., or, " no writer would unless he thought it would,'' &c. " Before six months were past the paper was known in almost every village ; while at the extremities of the country it circulates every morning." The second statement should be made in a separate sentence. "But the influences under which its institutions were to have been formed will no longer be exclusively Russian" should ho," are to be formed." " A week elapses ere the postman returns, and so it 7mll happen that a mail steamer for Europe shall 28 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. ii. have departed," read, " so it frequently happens that the steamer has departed." {b) In vivid narrative, past scenes and events may be described as if they were actually before us, and we make use of the Present tense; e.g, — "When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America, can we separate the man from the living picture : does not the new world clothe his form with her palm groves and savannahs.'' But we must preserve this historical present through the whole paragraph. A common error of young writers is incongruously shifting from present to past, and vice versa; e.g. — "The dews a7^e falling, it is growing chill, our excursion was over, we turned ior home." {c) In reporting a speech directly, that is in the words of the speaker, we use the Present tense in inverted commas. "Lord B. said ^I cannot believe that the nation will consent to this.' " In indirect narration the tense of a reported speech is dependant on that of the verb in the clause which introduces it. The Present or Future-Present follows the Present. " What does he say ? He says he cannot believe that the nation will ever consent." The Past follows the Past. " Lord B. said he could not believe that the nation ever would consent." {d) The use of the Infinitive after a principal verb requires attention. It should be in the present when it expresses what is either future or contemporary at the time indicated by the principal verb, whether that verb be in the Present or the Past tense; e.g. — "I in- tend to write," " He intended to write," " He seems to be a literary man," " He appears to have studied," "He appeared to study," "He appeared to have studied," are all correct expressions. But " I found CH. I.J CORRECT GRAMMAR. 29 him better than I expected to have found him " is wrong. It is as if one were to say " It is long since I commanded him to have done //." Here we must read " to fijid him " and '^ to do it^ The following illustrate the same error — " I expected from the promises of the noble lord to have seen the bank paying in gold," should be ^^ to see!' " They, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey," read, " supposing him to ^^." '^ Had this been the fate of Tasso, he would have been able to have celebrated^' should be " to celebrated The same rule applies to the Participle. " When I wrote that letter I had not the pleasure of hearing his sentiments," should be " had not the pleasure of having heard,'^ or, " had not had the pleasure of hearing.'^ When there are two clauses, one subordinate to the other, we must carry our thoughts back to the time of the principal verb ; and then consider what relation the time of the subordinate verb bears to it. Observe that the "to" which usually precedes the infinitive is omitted after the auxiliary verbs and also after bid, dare, feel, hear, let, and make ; but poetry sometimes assumes the license of introducing it. '' Bid me to live and I will live Thy Protestant to be." C. Error often arises from an elliptical expression after an auxiliary, e.g. — " The following facts may or have been adduced as reasons." " May" has no concord with "have been," — so read " may be or have been!'' " The book has, is, or shall be published,'* should be " has been, is being, or shall be published." "Religious principle is the only power that ever has or ever will combat these seductions," read " ever has combated," &c. " Polygamy never has and never can be a vice of the great body of the people," read "never has been," occ 30 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. ii. D. The Subjunctive Mood. Some writers make a very sparing use of this mood. " If it is," " If it be," " If it rains," " If it rain," are employed almost indif- ferently. But the following rules may be laid down. Use the Indicative where there is no real uncertainty about the condition being fulfilled ; e. g, — ** If virtue is good." Use the Subjunctive where you disbelieve in the condition being realized or protest against its being accepted — "If virtue feeble weref " If she be a traitor, why so am I." "If he desert his friends to save himself he is a coward." The Subjunctive is properly used — {a) In reference to future events about which there must be doubt. " If thou read this, O Caesar, thou may'st live." (b) After *^ though " (which may also take the indi- cative) — " Though the v^orXd fi^own I care not." {c) After "might," "would," "could," or ''should." Do not say " Of his prose we might say much that was favourable," but "that were," or ''that would be favourable." V. Miscellaneous. Some common errors not reducible to a distinct head may be mentioned here. 1. An absurd but not unfrequent inaccuracy consists in changing the construction of a sentence or com- bining two constructions so as to leave both incom« plete; e. g.— " It is owing to this advice the plan is to be as- cribed." Here it curiously results that by increasing the number of words we prevent either part of the sentence from being finished. The tautology of "owing," as it were, stops the way. The above should be either " The plan is to be ascribed to this advice," or "The plan is owing to this advice." " As to how far Shakespeare believed this has been a matter of dispute," read " How far." 2. A like incongruity results from the use of ^^and tvas^^ ^' and who ^^ ^^ and which, ^^ ^^ such 7uhich,'^ y^hexo. CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 3 1 the " and " and " such " are superfluous. " The Attorney-General, whose malignity induced him to be extremely violent, and was listened to by the judges." This is nonsense. If we say " and who was," we have a legitimate extension of the nominative, but no verb. Strike out the " and." " Languages taught by the possessors are called the learned ; and which appellation is at the same time intended," &c., read ''and this," or "which." '' Refinement in writing expresses a less natural and less obvious train of thought, and which it required a peculiar line of genius to pursue," read " one which." " And which " is always wrong unless another " which " has preceded. " Such which " should never be used ; e. g. — " We have brought you back peace ; such a peace which I hope moreover will satisfy our sovereign." Strike out " such," or read " as " for " which " and omit "moreover." 3. Avoid the following improper collocations — " Them who,^^ " they whoj^ " such whose,^ " scarcely than,^^ '^ so than^^ ''''superior than^'' '^ other but^' '''all seldom ;^^ e.g. — "We should regard them who are wise and good." Or in the following otherwise awkward expression — " Those paragraphs exhibit a style which they who can imitate should esteem themselves happy." Supply "persons," which is understood, and it becomes evi- dent we should say " those who.^^ " They should never be ventured on except by such whose reputation gives them some degree of dictator- ial power," read ''those authors ivhose.^^ " We feel a superior satisfaction in surveying the life of animals than that of vegetables," read " In survey- ing, &c., we feel a satisfaction superior to that we feel in the case of vegetables." " All discourse addressed to the understanding seldom permits much inversion," omit " all." 32 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. ii. 4. Be careful in using '' That," and rarely use '' But that.'' The various meanings of "that" appear in the following sentence : — " I said that ^ that ^ that ^ that * you used was super- fluous." 1 Conjunction, ^ Demonstrative, ^ Noun, ^ Relative. Let it everywhere appear in which sense you employ it, and avoid a jingle like the above. ^' That " as a relative is distinguished from " which '■ mainly in these respects : — {a) It cannot stand for a clause or a sentence. (p) It may be used in reference to either persons or things. (c) It cannot take a preposition before it. We may say "This is the assertion to which I object"; but we must say '■Uhat I object /y^ of " the imperious sea," — or the attribution of a fully conscious life — as when Milton writes, ''Earth felt the wound," or Addison imagines the heavenly bodies ''proclaiming their great Original," or Shelley makes the cloud say, " I am the daughter of earth and water," or calls the moon " an orbed maiden^ The Apostrophe is a Personification accompanied by an address, or an address to an absent person. This image is frequent in the classics ; e.g, — " Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres," and in the so-called poems of Ossian ; e.g. — " Happy are thy people, O Fingal ; thine arm shall fight their battles. Thou art the first in their dangers: the wisest in the days of their peace." " Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains, And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell." " Quid non mortalia pectora coges Auri sacra fames ? " 4. Allegory, under which head fall Fables and Parables, is an extended Metaphor generally accom- panied by Personification. It does not, however, like the Simile assert that one thing resembles another, nor, as with the ordinary Metaphor, does it directly figure one thing to be another. Allegory chooses a like subject, and talks of it so as to suggest the other. It is a hieroglyphical painting where words are used instead of colours. Sometimes, as in the Parables of the New Testament and some of the Fables attributed to ^sop, an interpretation is appended at the close. More frequently, as in the allegorical passages of the Hebrew Prophets, e.g.^ " Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt ; " in Spenser's Faery Queen, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the reader, with the aid of aptly chosen names and circumstances, is left to interpret the story for himself 8o ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. Extended personifications, as Milton's Sin and Death, are sometimes called Allegories. A Metaphor which implies is generally preferable to a Simile which expresses a Comparison, because it is more terse, and leaves room for an agreeable mental exercise in detecting the exact points of likeness. Shelley in the *' Prometheus Unbound " speaks of the wind " shepherding " flocks of fleecy clouds along the mountains, which is better than if he had said that the wind blew them about as a shepherd drives his flock. So, in his address to Time, " Unfathomable sea whose waves are years," the last part of the metaphor ex- plains the first : but where we have a more remote analogy, as towards the close of the " Adonais," " Life like a dome of many-coloured glass Stains the white radiance of Eternity/ we require the Comparison to be fully drawn out. The most important of the general rules that apply to all these figures are the following : — (a) The image must be suited to the subject. We must not degrade dignified material by mean com- parisons, nor attempt to exalt insignificant themes by magniloquent phrases. The latter is the more com- mon error. Metaphors and poetical epithets are the colours of speech : where the idea is great the " large utterance " which answers to it is like the natural glow of the complexion in health : but the attempt to dig- nify poverty of thought with sonorous words only brings into stronger relief the flatness of the matter. {b) The image must not be far-fetched or over- strained. The bad habit of drawing out consequences from a figure^ of crowding images together, of weaving metaphor on metaphor, is constantly illustrated in Cowley's poetry, and frequently in Dr. Young's ^' Night Thoughts ; " e.g,— " Walk thoughtful on the silent solemn shore Of that vast ocean, it must sail so soon And put good works on board and wait the wind That shortly blows us into worlds unknown." CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 8 1 (c) The metaphor must be consiste?it throughout, and nothing should be brought forward in the para- graph to which it belongs that cannot be applied to the subject in both its literary and figurative use; e.g., in the following this rule is violated — " Long to my joys my dearest lord is lost, His country's buckler, and the Grecian boast, Now from my fond embrace by tempests torn Our other colwnn of the state is borne, Nor took a kind adieu, nor sought content." Mixed Metaphors ought to be sedulously shunned, for they directly traverse the purpose which the judicious use of figurative language is designed to fulfil, and instead of making the idea more vivid blur it over with incongruities. The following are glaring in- stances of this offence : — " Comets importing change of times and states. Brandish your chrystal tresses in the sky, And with them scourge the bad revolting stars." Tresses can hardly be made of glass, or used as whips. " When even an archbishop begun to hold his nose, and to complain of the air being poisoned in the vicinity of his palace, the pressure became irresistible." " Those whose minds are dull and heavy, do not easily penetrate into the folds and intricacies of an afifair; and, therefore, they can only scum off what they find at the top." " You are in the morning of life, and that is a season for enjoyment." Youth may be compared to the morning, but that is not a season. " Lord Kimberley said that in taking a very large bite of the Turkish cherry the way had been paved for its partition at no distant day." We cannot well be said to pave the way for the partition of a cherry. " Lord Roseberry said the key-note of the policy of the Government would be wrapped in that obscurity 82 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. IV. which the Government have endeavoured to keep up" This is a medley of metaphor, as are the following : — " They sailed in the same boat on the hustings, and Mr. M. was sandwiched between them." " In a mo- ment the thunderbolt was on them, deluging the country with invaders." " There is not a single view of human nature that is not enough to extinguish the seeds of pride." Note, however, that the same subject may be illus- trated by a succession of apt metaphors, and that where they are kept distinct from one another they present themselves to the mind like a series of scenes. There is thus no improper mixture of imagery in the following eloquent passages: — " It seems to me a strange and a thing much to be marvelled that the labourer to repose himself has- teneth as it were the course of the sun ; that the mariner rows with all force to attain the port, and with a joyful cry salutes the descried land ; that the traveller is never contented nor quiet till he be at the end of his voyage ; and that we in the meanwhile, tied in this world to a perpetual task, tossed with continual tempests, tired with a rough and cumber- some way, yet cannot see the end of our labour but with grief, nor behold our port but with tears, nor approach, our home and quiet abode but with horror and trembling. "This life is a Penelope's web, wherein we are always doing and undoing ; a sea open to all winds ; a weary journey through extreme heats and colds over high mountains, steep rocks and thievish deserts : and so we term it in weaving at this web, in rowing at this oar, in passing this miserable way. Yet we when Death comes to end our work, when she stretcheth out her arms to pull us into the port, when, after so many dangerous passages she would conduct us to our true home and resting place, instead of rejoicing at the end of our labour, of taking comfort at the CH. L] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 83 sight of our land, of singing at the approach of our happy mansion, we would fain retake our work in hand, we would again hoist sail to the wind, and willingly undertake our journey anew. We fear more the cure than the disease, the surgeon than the pain, more the feeling of death the end of our miseries, than the endless misery of our life ; we fear that we ought to hope for, and wish that we ought to fear." This passage is also a conspicuous example of the successful employment of antithesis. — K infra. {d) Never jumble together literal and figurative statements in the same sentence ; e.g. — " The heroic Spanish gunners had no defence but bags of cotton joined to their own unconquerable courage J^ Courage cannot be glued to bags. " To thee the world its present homage pays The harvest early, but mature the praise.^* " Praise " should be " crop " but it would not rhyme. " Channing's mind was planted as thick with thoughts as a backwood of his own magnificent land." Add " with trees," or the expression is absurd. The following drop from a laboured image to a plain statement is little better : — " Present appearances in the political, religious, and commercial departments of our civilized world hang with a gloom of heavy clouds over the dawn of the 'prospect of a pacific era, but we . . . may be allowed to hold good against the suggestions of utter discouragement." Observe that the appropriateness oi 2. Metaphor m2.y often be tested by drawing out the implied compari- son, and so converting it into a Simile. II. Figures founded on Association — I. Autonomasia is a figure of concentration, which singles out a type and makes it stand for the kind to 84 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. iv. which it belongs : it rests partly on resemblance and partly on historical association. The most common form is where a proper name is taken to represent a class — as " some village Hampden," " some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood." Addison in the Spectator employs this form almost to excess, but on the whole it adds greatly to the vivacity of his narra- tive : so also Virgil in his Eclogues. Pope perpetually employs it — " May every Bavius have his Bufo still." In common discourse we talk of a Solomon, a Croesus, a Demosthenes, a Cato ; and similarly, of Chloes and Corydons as types of soft-hearted shepherdesses and sentimental swains. The rule is to ascertain that the names will readily suggest to the readers the char- acter they are designed to represent. A habit, derived from the classics, of substituting for the agencies of nature or the works of man the names of the heathen gods who presided over them — i.e., of saying Ceres for bread, Bacchus for wine, Neptune for the sea, the Muse for poetry — once pre- vailed in our literature; but this practice has been justly censured as alien to our natural modes of thought, and therefore incongruous and untrue. A Figure, akin to Autonomasia, consists in substi- tuting the individual named by his leading character- istic, for the general rank or class to which he belongs, as when we make " the fool " stand for " folly," " the king" for his royalty, &c.; e.g. — " Nor durst begin To speak : but wisely kept the fool within." Dryden's couplet, " Who follow next a double danger bring, Not only hating David but the king^^ would lose its point if we had to say, "Not only hating the man but his reign.". A good instance of this figure CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 85 is the answer of Louis XII when urged to resent an offence received before his accession : — ** It does not become the king of France to avenge the injuries of the Duke of Orleans." Another modification of the same concentrating process is the adoption of an abstract term instead of the persons to whom it is applicable. In this case we put one term denoting the quality of the class for the individuals, and say "Youth" for the young, "Beauty" for the fair, "Wisdom" for the wise. Similarly, we have such expressions as — " Up goes my grave impudence to the maid," " You are not vicious, you are vice.^^ So the object of an act is identified with the act itself " The peoiple's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision^ and the old man's dreamt 2. Synecdoche occurs where the part is taken for the whole, the species for the genus, the material for the thing made of it, where the person is designated by the most conspicuous trait of his character or the effect he produces. Thus we may speak of " all hands being at work," of so many "head" of cattle, of "bread" for food in general, of "winters" or "summers" for years, of the " steel " for the sword, of the Deity as " the refuge of the oppressed and the terror of evil- doers," of a favourite statesman as "the nation's hope." Synecdoche is admissible only when that part is selected which is the most prominent or the most interesting at the time when we are contemplating the objects : in both cases it is natural, and represents what is uppermost in our minds. Thus we may speak of seeing a fleet of ten sail at sea, but not of so many " sails" in the dock, or of " sails" ploughing the main. We may allude to houses as "roofs" when we are thinking of shelter, " I abjure all roofs," but we must not say "he laid the foundations of a roof." 86 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. 3. Metonymy — ^w^here the effect is put for the cause — e.g., "bringing a man's gray hairs to the grave"; or the cause for the effect — e.g., "basking in the sun " depends for its force on the same princi- ple. A good instance is " Neque unquam Solvitur in somnis, oculisve aut pectore nodem Accipit. " And could not draw The quiet night into her blood." Similarly, we have an adjunct or symbol for the thing or rank — e.g., " the crown," " the lawn," " the ermine," for the king, the bishops, and the law lords ; " Cedant arma togae ; concedat laurea linguae." The containing for the contained appears in — "The palace and the cottage," " From the cradle to the grave," " Hausit spumantem pateram," &c. We may say " the bar " and " the bench" for barris- ters and judges, "the pen" and "the sword" and " the press " for the members of the professions who use them, only when we are thinking of them as members of those professions. "This is the unani- mous opinion of the bench" is a legitimate phrase; but it would be an absurd affectation to say, " I invited a large portion of the bar to dinner." III. Figures founded on Contrast — I. Antithesis. — Our natural love of variety or surprise is illustrated by the frequent recurrence in literature of this figure or mode of expression, whereby things belonging to the same general class, but with some marked feature of difference, are brought into sudden opposition. Thus we contrast "life and death," " heat and cold," " youth and age," " peace and war," or speak of the range of an author's style, "from gay to grave, from lively to severe"; or of unexpected events in the phrase, " Great results from CH. 1.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 87 little causes spring," or of a rontrast between quantity and time, " Ten thousand ministers were driven from their manses in one day." A judiciously-chosen con- trast is an agreeable surprise ; its effect is that of a strong light and shade, or a quick change in a scene. Antitheses often combine a double opposition — that of sound and of sense — and containing in themselves a rise and fall, are frequently used to supply the place of a period ; e.g. — ** Every man desires to live long; but no one would be old." " I am too proud to be vain." " Spes et praemia in ambiguo, certa funera et luctus." "Praesens imperfectum; plusq^uam-perfectum futu- rum." When sufficiently sharp Antitheses become Epi- grams. These exhibit a real sequence under an apparent contradiction, or startle by some surprise. "The statues of Brutus and Cassius were con- spicuous by their absence." " The child is father to the man." " The more hurry the less speed." " He was so good, he was good for nothing." "An educated man should know something of everything and everything of something." " Verbosity is cured by a large vocabulary." " He was of rich but honest parents." " To the wisest and best of men I dedicate these volumes. Those for whom it is intended will accept and receive the compliment ; those for whom it is not will do the same." Long descriptions of character, as Dryden's "Zimri" and Pope's "Atticus," often hang on Antitheses; e.g.— " Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne ; View him with scornful yet with jealous eyes. And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 88 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. IV. Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike ; Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend ; Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged : Who would not smile, if such a man there be, Who would not weep, if Atticus were he." Whole novels and dramas sometimes depend for much of their interest on a similar opposition of semblance and reaUty. Thus we may contrast the confidence of Macbeth in the juggling oracles with their real interpretation, or note the juxtaposition of Shakespeare's Hamlet and Horatio, of Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The legitimate, that is, the temperate use of Anti- theses on appropriate occasions, undoubtedly adds to the /igour of style; but, as everything in the world has something opposed to it, this form of expression is, from its very facility, apt to be abused. Sydney Smith has parodied the antithetical style in the fol- lowing sentence from an imaginary review — " They have profundity without obscurity, perspi- cuity without prolixity, ornament without glare, terse- ness without barrenness, penetration without subtilty, comprehensiveness without digression, and a great number of other things without a great number of other things." Mere verbal oppositions, as in "The Two Gen- tlemen of Verona" — "Nay, I was taken up for laying them down" — are apt to degenerate into poor puns ; and in more serious matters we are often tempted to overstate the truth for the sake of the antithesis; €,g,— "All public praise is private friendship ; all public CH. L] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 89 detraction is private hate." Frequent examples of this are to be found in the works of Lord Macaulay and of Pope, as in the line on Bacon — " The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." But the excess itself into which some writers have fallen is an evidence of the emphasis which Antitheses are calculated to give to expression. Their merit lies in their condensation, and their affording to the mind a distinct resting-place in the sentence. Their danger is their tendency to pervert facts by overstatement and neglect of modifying circumstances. When they follow each other too fast, they are apt to produce a jerky style : the writer who leaps from one to another is like an opera-dancer posing in artificial attitudes. 2. The Hyperbole, which concentrates the atten- tion on some single feature and exaggerates it, also appeals to our love of surprise. The statement it makes is in contrast to our ordinary experience and the usual course of nature. It is admissible in pas- sionate description, as when we speak of '* rivers of blood," or Milton writes of Satan, " Hell grew darker at his frown," or makes him exclaim " Myself am Hell," or it is said of lean cattle "Vix ossibus hserent." It is common in the exaggerations on which certain forms of humour — notably that most familiar in America, and frequently illustrated in the works of Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb — largely rely. Note that hyperbolical writing may either be delib- erate burlesque as in these authors, or a feature of an exaggerated style as frequently in the works of Victor Hugo. The judicious use of the hyperbole requires considerable skill. In the hands of unpractised writers it is apt to become merely bombastic or nonsensical. It may be introduced as a parody, e.g.^ in the player's speech, " Hamlet,'' Act II, sc. 2, or with dramatic propriety to indicate an excited state of mind, as in Hamlet's challenges over the grave of Ophelia. go ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. 3. Irony and Insinuation or Innuendo are othei forms under the same head, where satire is veiled under the guise of a comphment, or obscurely, because incompletely, expressed. The writings of Swift, of Junius, and of Heine abound in these, e.g, — "The minister generally remains in office till a worse can be found." " I shall beHeve it to be so, though I happen to find it in his lordship's history." ** To cleanse the Theatre is harder than to cleanse the Augean stables, for in this case the oxen are in the stalls." Modern abuse is frequently ironical — " He is full of information, like yesterday's Times. "He did his party all the harm in his power, he spoke for it." The Euphemism by which bad or dangerous things are spoken of in gracious terms — as the Greek fashion of addressing the Furies as the Eumenides, is a form of polite irony. In a like fashion we say death is " parting " or " falling asleep." Similarly, a disgrace- ful bankruptcy is referred to as " stopping payment," &c. N.B. — Distinguish Euphemism from Euphuism^ an affected mode of writing, marked by the use of fine words and the abuse of antithesis, which was a fashion of the Elizabethan age. The same half-decorous obscurity often refines the edge of an oratorical Retort; e.g. — A nobleman had said that Providence had inflicted on Mr. B. a disease of the brain as a penalty for the misuse of his faculties. Mr. B. replied, " It may be so ; but, in any case, it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the noble lord to know that the disease is one which even Providence could not inflict upon him." " His ancestors came over with the Conqueror. I never heard that they did anything else." CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 9 1 " I hope he thought he was speaking the truth : but he is rather a dull man and liable to make blun- ders." IV. Miscellaneous Figures — The following names are given to modifications of the above, or to other figures less generally used and not reducible to a distinct head : — 1. Interrogation is an animated form of address somewhat similar to apostrophe. Conspicuous ex- amples are found in the Scriptures, as : — " Your fathers, where are they ? And did the pro- phets live for ever ? " " Hath he said it and shall he not do it?" Compare the famous passage in Demosthenes be- ginning, " Is Philip sick ? " or Cicero's appeal, " How long, O Cataline, will you abuse our patience ? " 2. Exclamation is a yet more passionate address, e.g.— " Heu Pietas, Heu prisca Fides ! " " Oh, what a revolution ! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall ! " 3. Vision is a vivid use of the present tense applied to past or future events, or to absent objects, e.g, — " I seem to myself to behold this city, the ornament of the earth, and the capital of all nations suddenly involved in one conflagration." Compare Byron's animation of the statue in the Capitol — " I see before me the gladiator lie," or the close of Macaulay's second Essay on Lord Chatham. 4. Frolepsis, or Anticipation, is a figure by which future events are spoken of as if they had already happened, as in Milton's reference to Adam and Eve — " The loveliest pair That ever since in love's embraces met." 92 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. iv. or these lines in Keats' Fot of Basil— ** So the two brothers with their murdered man Rode past fair Florence," where "murdered man" stands for "the man they were about to kill," or in the exclamation of Isabella in Measure for Measure^ " I had a brother then," meaning my brother is doomed to die. Another noticeable use of the Past is in such an expression as — " Fuimus Troes, fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum," meaning " Troy is no more." 5. 'Metalepsis is applied in Rhetoric to playing on one word in different senses. See any of the punning passages in Shakespeare. 6. Asyndetofi is etymologically applied to a succes- sion of assertions unconnected by any conjunction : its force depends on its abridging the time that must have elapsed in a series of events. " Veni, Vidi, Vici " is an example ; so the following, " The enemy said: I will pursue; I will overtake; I will divide the spoil, . . . my hand shall destroy them; thou blewest with thy breath ; the sea covered them :" where each clause sums up matter for paragraphs. 7. Aposiopesis is a breaking off in the middle of a sentence, leaving the suppressed sentiment or state- ment to be understood; e.g. — " Quos ego — sed motos prsestat componere fluctus." " It pleased the Almighty to give us in their stead — I know not what — Our enemies will tell the rest.'' Correction is another form of the same kind, but here we generally strengthen a previous statement. " All these families were ruined — ruined did I say ? they were utterly undone." 8. Catachresis is a term applied to words used in a sense obviously different from that naturally belonging CH. 11.] NUMBER OF WORDS. 93 to them, as when we speak of a " high man " for a " tall man," " A voice beautiful to the ear," "A face melodious to the eye," or use such phrases as " Altum mare," " That thy days may be lo7ig in the land." Catachresis is a violent and rarely justifiable metaphor. As a rule young writers ought to be chary of using figures of speech. They ought never to be sought for, or manufactured, or thrust into discourse. They ought to grow naturally out of the writers' thought. Plain narrative requires few metaphors, lively descrip- tion admits of more, the passion of the orator and the fancy of the poet indulge in most. CHAPTER II. NUMBER OF WORDS. The same rule applies to Force as to Perspicuity of Style. Whatever we have to say the more briefly it is said the greater, with few exceptions, is the energy of our expression. Concentration of phrase is like a burning glass, which adds to the brightness and the heat of the rays it gathers into a focus. The same sentiment which diffused over several paragraphs will appear as a platitude, when condensed into a sentence will seem original. Contrast, ** Shakespeare is the most universal genius the world ever saw: he is equally at home in tragedy, comedy, and history," with Haz- litt's epigram, ** Shakespeare's characteristic is every- thing." We have spoken of Tautology as a transgression of Perspicuity. In the following it is an offence against our time and patience — " The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, And heavily, in clouds, brings in the day." " The glories of proud London to survey. The sun himself shall rise, at break of day." Almost every page in the work of weak writers 94 ENGLISH COMPOST! ION. [pt. iv. illustrates a similar defect. They beat the ingot of the thinker into a volume of gold leaves of commen- tary. Those who write against time are persistently verbose. Their paraphrastic style has been compared to a torpedo, which benumbs everything it touches : but it requires some education to feel its offen- siveness. The object of a strong writer is to attain his end at the least cost of brain to the hearer, and he will endeavour to cast out every unnecessary word, e.g. — instead of saying " Being content with deserving a triumph, he refused it," he will write " Content with deserving, &c.," for " There is nothing which disgusts us sooner than the empty pomp of language," he will say " Nothing disgusts us sooner, &c." In order to attain the terse, concise style almost everywhere associated with strength, the following rules are worthy of note : — (a) Use no unnecessary adjectives, rather employ nouns that are self-sufficient : e.g. — "murder" instead of " a planned homicide." An exception occurs when in addressing a popular audience it is desirable to unfold the full meaning of what is implied in the noun, as when an advocate speaks to a jury of a " cool, deliberate, premeditated murder." (b) Use suggestive adjectives, leaving as much as may safely be left to the imagination of the reader. Pope's epigrammatic line on Atossa has often been quoted to illustrate this — " From loveless youth to unrespected age No passion gratified except her rage." It implies "from youth, when if ever she should have enlisted love, to age, when if ever she should have commanded respect." (i) Similarly, as far as is consistent with good gram- mar and clearness, suppress whatever can be readily CH. ii.J NUMBER OF WORDS, 95 supplied. This form of brevity is especially adapted to precepts, as in Paradise Lost: — *' Nor love thy life, nor hate ; but what thou liv'st Live well ; how long or short permit to Heaven/' And to epitaphs, as this, by Sir H. Wotton : '^ He first deceased ; she for a little tried To live without him, liked it not and died." But the excess of this aphoristic and antithetic style is apt to become obscure ; or, as frequently even in Bacon's essays, disjointed. id) Reduce, as far as possible, the number of auxiharies; e.g.^ it is better to say, "If Thou hadst been here my brother had not died," than "my brother would not have died." Poetry has a further license in this respect, as when " Long die thy happy days before thy death," stands for " May your happi- ness cease long before your life ceases ; " />., " May you live long and miserably." An exception occurs when the auxiliary is emphatic — " I doubt whether he went." The proper affirmative answer is "he^/^go," not "he went." {e) Avoid indirect or prefaced modes of expression, except when they are emphatic as " // was I who did it." " There appeared to them a strange vision." (/) Avoid an accumulation of little words. The luggage of particles is an impediment to strong speech and a jar in the harmony of style \ e.g. — " Now as that we may love God it is necessary to know Him, so that we may know God it is necessary to study His works." Write, " As to love God we must know Him, to know Him we must study His works." Especially shun the frequent repetition of conjunc- tions and of pronouns. The shortness of the Latin " Veni, vidi, vici " is in this respect seldom attainable, but we should aim after it as far as is consistent with the idiom of our language. " I came, saw, con- quered." 96 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. The following, from Tillotson, is a " reductio ad absurdum " of the common reckless use of " and " with other tautologies ; — "He forgave His enemies all their ill-will towards Him and all their vile aiid malicious usage of Him : most remarkably at His death, when the provocations were greater and most violent, when they fell thick and in storms upon Him, and when they were more grievous and pressing in the agony and anguish of His suifering. In these hard a7id pressing circumstances He was so far from breathing out threatening and revenge that He did declare His free forgiveness of them and perfect charity towards them." Precisely the same sense may be conveyed thus : — "He forgave His enemies all their ill-will and malignant usage. Even at His death when their assaults came upon Him in violent storms, and pressed more grievously on His agony, far from breathing out revenge. He declared to them His forgiveness and perfect charity." Whenever the circumstances follow one another quickly, or in a mass, it is better to omit the " and." Thus— " So strength first made a way, Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure." But when each particular is so emphasized that a pause is proper before it, the " and " or other conjunction should be repeated, thus — " While the earth remaineth seed-time a7id harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease." " Such a man would fall a victim to power, but truth and reason and liberty would fall with him." " For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God." CH. II.] NUMBER OF WORDS. 97 An emphatic consequence is properly introduced by and. We do not say " the wind passing," or when the wind passes, " it is gone," but, " The wind passeth over it, and it is gone.'* Similarly with pronouns. In ordinary narrative they should be repeated only when necessary for the sake of clearness, but the same pronoun is often repeated for emphasis — " He suggested the scheme ; he urged its execution ; he carried it into effect." " Te dulcis conjux, te solo in littore secum, Te veniente die, te decedente canebat." {g) Do not search about for tropes, but use them when they convey the idea in shorter space and there- fore more vividly than ordinary language would have done ; e.g, — " He has shed the blood of war in peace " is forcibly terse for " He has shed in time of peace as much blood as might have been shed in time of war." " They devour widows' houses " for " consume the support of widows' houses." In order to reconcile clearness with conciseness a good writer will often have recourse to repetition. The iteration of a word or phrase frequently adds to the force of a rhetorical argument or poetical apostrophe, as in the following elegiac passage : — n" By foreign hands the dying eyes were closed, By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed. By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned. By strangers honoured and by strangers mourned." With this we may compare the repetition of " fallen " in Dryden's " Alexander's Feast " ; or of *' drifting " in Longfellow's " Seaweed." In these instances there is no verbosity, for the writer is not flapping wings in the air, but striking blows on the anvil. A master of style will not crowd too many thoughts )r cram many references into the same page ; he will D 98 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. aim at suggesfweness, setting the reader's mind into the right track and giving it an impulse in the desired direction. He will carefully study the arrangement of his sentences. CHAPTER HI. ORDER OF WORDS. Rhetorical considerations frequently permit and sometimes enjoin a departure from the ordinary rules of sequence in prose. As far as is consistent with good grammar and perspicuity, we should endeavour to " arrange the elements of a proposition in the order in which the ideas represented by them naturally suggest themselves to the mind." The disposition of words in a sentence should be like those of figures in a picture, the most important should occupy the chief places. The greatest advantage which an inflected possesses over an uninflected language is the greater freedom which the former enjoys in the disposal of its words. Inflections are as significant as attached numbers would be in indicating their reference. The ancients could therefore always set the most emphatic words in the most prominent positions, whereas we are often left to indicate their emphasis by the voice or by italics. ** Will you ride to town to-morrow ? " might be written in Greek or Latin in five different ways. But even in English there is in this respect considerable latitude ; and the temperate use of Inversion adds greatly to the precision as well as vigour of style. The following rules may be safely observed in animated prose, though they are of still more frequent use in poetry : — I. When the predicate or object are much more impressive or mentally prominent than the subject they may with advantage precede it ; e.g. — CH. III.] ORDER OF WORDS, 99 " Great is Diana of the Ephesians " is preferable to " The Diana of the Ephesians is a great goddess " for, besides that the former rendering is more concise, " great " is the emphatic word. For the same reason the translation of the parable of the house is more effective in the authorized version of St. Matthew, " and great was the fall thereof," than in the corre- sponding version of St. Luke, " and the ruin of that house was great," so the Beatitudes, " Blessed are the peacemakers," or such phrases as " Blessed is he that Cometh in the name of the Lord." Any special emphasis may justify inversion, as, " There appeared unto him Elias with Moses." It is frequently used to indicate a swift or abrupt action — " Up goes the fool, and gets sent down again." Commands frequently assume this form and owe to it half their force ; e.g., " Go he shall." *' Stay not here." The license of arrangement allowed in poetry is employed to great advantage by the best writers ; e.g. — " Sweet is the breath of morn." " Low she lies who blessed our eyes." ' " The night winds sigh, the breakers roar, And shrieks the wild sea mew." " Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear." " Never to mansions where the mighty rest Since their foundations came a greater guest." A conspicuous instance of the verb coming first is in "Julius Caesar," " Then burst his mighty heart " ; of the pronoun in Milton, " Me though just right and the fixed laws of heaven Did first create your leader." Place the " me " after " create " and half the defiance of the fallen archangel disappears from the sentence. lOO ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. iv. The same loss of energy would be felt were the following to be reduced to the common order : — " With these [swords] we have acquired our liberties, and with these we will defend them." 2. The close, as well as the beginning, of a sentence being prominent may also draw to itself the emphatic word, which attracts the more attention from its position being unusual ; e.g. — " Silver and gold have I fioiie.^^ " All these have we hetrayedJ' " The wages of sin is deathP " Add to your faith virtue.^^ 3. Therefore avoid concluding the sentence with a weak or insignificant word as a pronoun, adverb, or a preposition. The following are bad examples : — " The Trinity is a mystery which we firmly believe the truth of and humbly adore the depth of!' " Envy is a vice that clever men are often guilty of!' " He drew his sword which he killed her with!' " I could not though I wished to!' In these cases the preposition is left, as it were, dangling in the air. The following exceptions to the above rule should be noted : — a. When the otherwise weak word is made strong by emphasis ; e.g. — " In their prosperity my friends shall never hear of me, in their adversity always." ** Historians can seldom differ on a matter of fact without hating each oth^x personally." b. When the particle is attached to the verb so as practically to form a compound ; e.g. — '* There is no great harm in him that I know of." " We have finished the work we have so long been busy about!' " It is this I wish to clear up!' GH. IIL] ORDER OF WORDS. lOi c. When we wish to avoid a broken construction ; e.g.— "He arrived at and was ultimately confirmed in this decision ;" rather write, ''He arrived at this deci- sion and was ultimately confirmed in it." 4. The same rule applies to circumstances or qualifying clauses. These may follow the main assertion when they are emphatic, as — " His changes of opinion were rapid, to say no worse^'' insinuating that they were interested. But generally they should precede it, as the sheep go before the dogs. Of the three forms — " This battle is decisive if the telegrams are correct," "This battle, if the telegrams are correct, is decisive," " If the telegrams are correct, this battle is decisive," prefer the last. This especially applies to adjective and conditional clauses ; e.g.-^ " Inebriated by self-conceit though he was, he at last found that he was addressing the air." "If thou didst ever thy dear father love, Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder." When a number of circumstances are introduced it is desirable, especially in poetry, to introduce them first, and then to wind up with the principal verb and nominative. See the opening lines of Paradise Lost, B. II.— " High on a throne, &c., Satan exalted sat" : Or those of Keat's Hyperion : — " Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and Eve's one star Sat grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." One advantage of this arrangement is that we know when the sentence is done. In loosely constructed clauses we are kept in suspense about the conclusion, and every fresh unexpected phrase is a mental jolt, 102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. iv. like an unexpected step on a stair in the dark. Dr. Campbell gives the following instance of this : — "We came to our journey's end, at last, with no small difficulty, after much fatigue, through deep roads and bad weather," and proposes to read — "At last after much fatigue, through deep roads and bad weather, we came with no small difficulty to our journey's end." Mr. Spencer further reforms it thus: — "At last with no small difficulty and after much fatigue we came, through deep roads and bad weather, to our journey's end." Disjointed sentences are frequent even in our standard writers j e.g. — " However, many that do not read themselves are seduced by others that do; and thus become unbelievers upon trust, and at second hand; and this is too frequent a case." In the following a host of details are jotted down as they occurred to the author without any attempt at arrangement — " Last year a paper was brought here from England called a dialogue between the Archbishop of Canter- bury and Mr. Higgins which we ordered to be burnt by the common hangman as it well deserved, though we have no more to do with his Grace of Canterbury than you have with the Archbishop of Dublin, whom you tamely suffer to be abused openly and by name by that paltry scoundrel of an observator: and lately upon an affair wherein he had no concern, I mean the business of the missionary of Drogheda wherein our excellent prelate was engaged and did nothing but according to law and discretion." A sentence like this deserves to be burnt by the common hangman. Such constructions in the works of Dean Swift show the need of some canons by which to test even great composers, and raise the question how are we to reform loose sentences. They may be dealt with in one of two ways, either by breaking them up into a number of small sentences, or by recasting and throwing them into periods. According as we adopt CH. III.] ORDER OF WORDS. 1 03 the one or the other of those methods, we shall fall into the one or the other of two Styles, the Isolated or the Periodic. The former has the advantage in clearness and facility, but in excess it wants dignity and music. A number of small sentences leaves the same paltry impression on a page that a number of small words does on a sentence. The frequent recurrence of long periods, on the other hand, suggests constraint ; and when the form of our expression is more dignified than the thought, we may fairly be accused of pomposity. In Dr. Johnson's works generally, and, though to a less degree, in Gibbon's History, the reader is fatigued by the length of the periods. Modern newspaper writers, on the other hand, are apt to fall into a clipped, jerky, and insignificant style. A judicious alternation of long and short sentences will, ceteris paribus, make the best style. Composition has been defined as the art of varying well, and we should be able to exhibit variety in the disposition of our clauses as in the choice of our words. A page even of the smoothest verse made up of lines all pitched in the same key or balanced in the same rhythm seldom fails to be monotonous. 5. With regard to the arrangement of sentences in a Paragraph — to which on a larger scale the same laws apply as to the sentence — it may be remarked that the best effect is generally produced when the long sentence precedes and the short sentence follows, striking, as it were, the nail on the head, and con- centrating the sentiment which has been previously amplified. In the following passage from Burke's Reflections 071 the French Revolution, the mind is prepared by the foregoing illustrations to appreciate the summary at the close : — " When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which by freeing kings from fear freed both kings and subjects from the precaution of tyranny, shall be extinct I04 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. iv. in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive con- fiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honour and the honour of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.^'' Sometimes a long array of descriptions is intro- duced to lead in some striking fact. This is a favour- ite fashion with Macaulay, whose genius for panoramic history has never been surpassed. See especially his account of the burial of the Duke of Monmouth in the cemetery of the Tower, where the deaths of his predecessors are recounted like a solemn roll of drums before the funeral, and the whole is clenched by the closing clause, " Such was the dust with which the dust of Monmouth mingled ! " 6. Arrange the members of a sentence in an ascend- ing scale. This method of passing from the common to the rare, from the ordinary to the wonderful, from the rule to the exception, from the known to the previously unimagined, is called Climax, a figure of arrangement depending for its force on the fact that the vividness with which the mind reahzes a succession of images has much to do with the order in which they are presented to it. Among favourite instances of this figure in English may be mentioned the passage in "The Tempest," beginning, "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces " ; Macbeth's adjuration to the witches ; Manfred's appeal to the shade of Astarte; CampbelFs "Fall of Poland"; the description of Waterloo in "Childe Harold"; Thomson's "Hymn of the Seasons"; the battle in Scott's "Marmion"; the address of Satan to Beelzebub in " Paradise Lost," Book I, beginning, "All is not lost"; and Milton's lines on Death — " Black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell." CM. III.] ORDER OF WORDS. 105 The following terse climaxes are famous, among others, in Latin literature : — "Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit." " Crudelis ubique Luctus, ubique pavor et plurima mortis imago." " Estne dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aer Et coelum et virtus ? Superos quid quaerimus ultra ? Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quocunque moveris." Climax is to the emotional what a *^ Sorites" in Logic is to the intellectual part of our nature. We are led in the one by a subtle reasoner, in the other by an eloquent speaker, to assent to propositions which would have at first appeared too strong, but which we are brought by a succession of steps to regard as natural. The most remarkable instance of an oratorical Climax in English is the speech of Antony in Shakespeare, where it is employed along with Antithesis, so as to produce an overwhelming effect. Of more purely poetical Climax there is no finer example than the concluding lines of Coleridge's " Mont Blanc." Anti-Climax, the comic converse of the above, depends for its effect on the same law as that which regulates Antithesis; but it is a more sudden fall, generally from a longer ascent. Anti-Climax is of three kinds : — {a) The most frequent is intentional burlesque. This is a favourite form in the works of Byron and Hood. It gives much of their point to the "Rejected Addresses," "The Anti-Jacobin," "The Ingoldsby Legends." There are traces of it in almost every page of Pope's satires \ e.g. — " Go teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule. Then drop into thyself and be a fool." " Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes. And screams of horror rent the affrighted skies ; Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are cast When husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their last." lo6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. iv. It is found in ironical epitaphs : — " Beneath this stone my wife doth lie, She's now at rest; and so am I." And in mock sentiment : — " Lead us to some sunny isle Yonder o'er the western deep, Where the skies forever smile And the blacks forever weep." (p) The second kind of Anti-Climax is serious throughout. It is an extended Antithesis with a sharp edge, of which the speech of Hamlet, beginning, ** What a piece of work is man ! " may serve as an example. (c) The third is unintentional hm'lesque or falsi climax^ frequent in the works, especially the verses, of bombastical writers : — " Alas ! I see him pale, I hear his groans : He foams, he tears his hair, he raves, he bleeds ; I know him by myself — he dies distracted T In panegyrics, as — "And thou, Dalhousie, the great god of war, Lieutenant-colonel to the Earl of Mar ; " and in epitaphs, as — " Robert Boyle, the father of Chemistry and brofher of the Earl of Cork." " He was a devoted husband, an exemplary parent, an honest man, and a jfirst-rate shot." Note, however, we must distinguish from burlesque the mingling of humour and pathos so common in Richter, Byron, and Carlyle, where a familiar phrase is introduced to dispel the suspicion of sentimen- talism; e.g. — " Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of expec- tation as day died, were still a Hebrew speech for me; nevertheless I was looking at the fair illuminated letters, and had an eye for the gilding." PT. v.] VERSIFICATION, iq^ PART V. VERSIFICATION. Verse is a particular arrangement of words in reference to their sounds. The sounds of the syllables which make up words may be regarded : — I. By themselves {a) As to Quality or Height of Tone. \b) As to Quantity or Length of Time. \c) As to Accent or Stress of Voice. 2. In their relation to other sounds; and this may be:— {a) A relation of succession, Le.^ Rhythm. (p) A relation of consonance, i.e.y Rhyme. I. The distinctions under the first head may be illus- trated by a reference to the common musical stave. (A) Quality or Height. — The position of the notes, up or down on the scale, indicate various de- grees of shrillness or gravity in the sounds, which may be conveyed by the instrument or by the human voice in singing. The variety in the sounds of the vowels, in reading or speaking, is greater than our five characters a e i o u seem to indicate, and is analogous to the ascent or descent of the notes. A judicious choice and arrangement of the vowel io8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION, [pt. v. sounds is an important element in the music of all verse — e.g.^ in the following, full low tones predom- inate: — " The splendour falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory." In the following, high shrill tones : — " O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going \ O. sweet and far from cliff and scar. The horns of Elfland faintly blowing." The time is the same, the accents are the same, the metre is the same, but there is a whole octave between the two sets of notes. The Quality or Height of the syllables has nowhere been adopted as a basis of versification. (B) The Quantity of a sound or syllable is the length of time we dwell upon it. In music it is indicated by the amount of the bar occupied by a note. In simple common time the longest note — i.e.^ the Semibreve — occupies the whole bar — A. The bar may be otherwise occupied by any equiva- lent of the Semibreve — e.g.^ by 2 Minims, 4 Crochets, S Quavers, 16 Semiquavers, &c. j or by 2 Crochets + 4 Quavers, as in B. The range of time possible to the voice in singing is nearly as great. That of the voice in reading or speaking is considerable, but more limited. Where verse, as in Greek and Latin, depends on the Quantity PT. v.] VERSIFICATION. 109 of Syllables they are theoretically regarded as either long or shorty the long syllable being assumed to have twice the quantity or length of the short, e.g, — Quantity in English may vary indefinitely. It de- pends on the length of the vowels. A short vowel is not made longer by position. A double consonant following tends rather to shorten the vowel as in smite smttte?i, chid chidden, &c. Difference of quantity makes a very perceptible difference in the flow of English verses. To illustrate this, Dr. Guest contrasts the following: — {a) Short vowels predominant. " The biisy rivulet in humblS vallSy Slippeth away in happiness ; it evSr Hurrieth on, a s51itude around, but Heaven above it." (p) Long vowels predominant, ** The I5nely tarn that sleeps upon the mountain, Breathing a holy calm around, drinks ever Of the great presence, even in its slumber, Deeply rejoicing." The verses are otherwise the same, they have exactly the same number of syllables ; and, in the main, the same disposition of accents, but they make very dif- ferent impressions on the ear. This is the effect of quantity. A more familiar instance of the same dif- ference may be found on comparing almost any verse of Milton's " UAllegro " with most any verse of his " II Penseroso," e.g. — {a) Short Quantity — " Haste thee. Nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles." no ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. v. (b) Long Quantity — " Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure. Sober, steadfast, and demure. All in a robe of darkest grain. Flowing with majestic train. And stable stole of Cyprus lawn. Over thy decent shoulders drawn." But though Quantity thus affects its flow and modi- fies its impression, EngHsh verse does not depend upon Quantity. Beyond the occasional license of contracting two short syllables, e.g. spirit, into one, and the general injunction to preserve the accord of sense and sound, the rules of our Prosody take no account of Quantity. (C) Accent is the stress which is thrown upon the pronunciation of a syllable. Accents have been divided into the acute', the grave \ and the circumflex *; but the last is not in use in English, and the grave is prac- tically equivalent to an absence of accent. An accented syllable is one with the acute accent \ others are com- monly said to be unaccented. The chief accent or stress in music falls upon the first note of the bar, other accents may follow, according to definite laws. Special accentuation is sometimes indicated by the signs >, or A, above the note. The ordinary ac- centuation, with its various degrees of stress and relation to the unaccented notes, may be indicated thus : — f^^^^ «=p»: 1221 -) — h . Accent, though the acute more frequently falls on long than on short syllables, has no necessary con- nection with quantity; the former may be like a short sharp blow as distinguished from a lingering touch. It has no connection with quality, height, or pitch of sound. PT. V. ] VERSIFICA TION. 1 1 1 A long or a short syllable in Greek rt/xtos tXos ; or in Latin " primus," " cano " \ or in English " cheap," " chip," may equally have the acute accent. Similarly a syllable undoubtedly long may have no accent ; e,g.^ " Our thoughts, as boundless, dnd our souls as free." Note, however, that accent tends to lengthen the quantity, and that it is a defect to let the accent, as in the above line, fall on so insignificant a word as| " and." We say lovely, not lovely, &c. The same syllables preserving the same quantity may in English change their accents, as, " Not all bldck birds are blackbirds." Note also that while accent tends to make a syllable loud, it is not exactly synonymous with loudness : the former referring to the sharpness of the stroke, the latter to the volume of voice expended. Accent may vary in degree, e.g. in the line " Sweet are the uses of adversity " there is a stronger accent on "sweet" than on any other word. When two emphatic syllables follow one another, more stress is laid on the one than on the other, and that on which greater stress is laid is generally regarded as the sole accented syllable. Two consecutive syllables can, however, be equally accented by making a pause between them — as in the line, " Virtue, beauty, and speech did strike — wound — charm." IL A. Rhythm {pvOyLos, a measured motion) in its widest sense applied to any symmetry of parts, as the arrangement of stones in a building or movements in a dance, is with us restricted to mean a harmonious succession of sounds, and especially that definite succession which constitutes verse. The Greeks and Romans made Time the basis of their verse. All other European nations have rested it upon Accent. 112 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. v. In Greek and Latin lines we have both quantity and accent : — ^'AvSpa fioL cVveTTC M.ovo-a iroXvrpoTrov 6s fidXa irokXa; Arma virumque cano Trojse qui primus ab 6ris ; but in these the sum total of the quantities is fixed, that of the accents not. Classical poetry may have been, in some manner not now understood, affected by Accent, but it is regulated by Quantity. Latin and Greek verse is a regular recurrence of quantities. English verse, on the other hand, though modified as we have seen by quantity, is a more or less regular succession of accents within the compass in each line of a more or less definite number of syllables. The elements of verse are the syllable, the foot, and the line. A Syllable has been defined as a collection of letters formed by one impulse of the breath. The letters of a syllable may be fairly said to form a single sound, although not necessarily a simple one. Every syllable must have at least one vowel. Two vowels coming together are often pronounced as one, even where they do not form one of the usual diphthongs ; e.g. msLXision, nation. Similarly "heaven" and "prayer" are commonly regarded as monosyllables. Poetry often assumes the license of expanding these and others; e.g., "As that the air, the earth or ocean"; and an opposite license of contracting dissyllables, e.g. — " Of great Messiah shall sing." " You taught me language, and my profit orit Is I know how to curse." • " Though real friends I Vlieve are few." But this liberty should be sparingly indulged, for it is apt to be abused. A foot is a syllable or a succession of two or more syllables, one of which must be accented, assumed as the basis of the line. PT. v.] VERSIFICATION, 113 Monosyllabic feet are rare, but they seem to occur in English in such lines as the following — " Toll I for the brdve." " St^y I the king has thrown his wdrder down." The feet commonly used in our verse are dissyllabic or trisyllabic. Observe that in applying to them, as is customary, the names of the classic feet, we take an English accented as the equivalent of a Greek or Latin long syllable, an U7iaccented as the equivalent of a short syllable; e.g, — Dissyllables. Iambus^ . {Lat.^ ^ — ) Eng,^ return. Trochee, ■ . ( „ — ^) j? respite. Spondee, . . ( „ ) „ sunbeam. Trisyllables. Dactyl, . {Lat.^ _ w >^) Eng.^ mfeily. Amphibrach, ( „ w — w-) ^^ receiving. Anapaest, ( „ --' w _ ) ^^ c616nndde. A line is a succession or combination of feet, generally containing a fixed number of syllables — an exception occurs when two unaccented take the place of one accented — and having, as a rule, a regular re- currence of accents. The disposition of the Accent being the most im- portant point in the regulation and scansion of the line, the following rules should be borne in mind : — (a) Avoid letting it fall on a syllable on which it would not fall in prose, i.e,^ let the verse accent fall on the natural accent of the word. The following from Spenser violates this rule — '^ Flesh may impair, quoth she, but reason can repair." So this — " And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade.^* 114 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [PT. V. ip) Accent the root and not the termination; e.g,^ lover, not lover. {S) Accent the most important part of a com- pound — thrdldom, not thrald6m ; mischance, not mischance. {d) Do not let the accent rest on a particle, as "and," " the," " on," " in," &c. This rule is violated in the following — " Up6n the floor the fresh plucked roses fell." (e) Nor conspicuously on a pronoun, as "that," " this," unless where the sense gives to the pronoun an unusual emphasis; e.g. — " Richard is Richard, that is /am /.'* (/) The same rule applies to adjectives and adverbs and auxiliaries, and is liable to the same exception; e.g. — " Lest the great Pan do awake." English verse is also affected by the Pause. Besides the rest of the voice natural at the close, there is in the course of every line, unless it be very short, another pause more or less marked, the posi- tion of which affects the rhythm. The following are examples of the varieties of cadence thus intro- duced — " Sweet I are the uses of adversity." " But look I the morn in russet mantle clad." " I know a bank | whereon the wild thyme grows." " Round broken columns | clasping ivy twined." " Those seats of liixury | debate and pride." " The quality of mercy | is not strained." This Pause is preceded by a syllable, either imme- diately as in the first three, or with an interval as in the last three examples, which is more strongly accented than any other in the line. This special, or PT. V. ] VE RSI PICA TION. 1 1 5 line accent, gives a key-note to the rhythm, and cor- responds to the stress laid upon the first note of the musical bar. Rarely the strongest accent is quite separate from the Pause. " Fling but a stone | the giant dies." Emphasis is the result of accent or pause or both combined, and in the last case it is strongest. [It is essential to good poetry to let the rhythm emphasis fall on the chief part of an emphatic word.] When the Pause cuts a word in two, e.g., "Clime of the un] forgotten brave," it is properly called a Caesura. The term has been with less propriety extended to all medial Pauses. Note that where there are several pauses in a line, one should be more marked than the others ; e. g. — " Glows I where he reads || but trembles | as he writes." " Reason | the card || but passion | is the gale." Where the pauses are equipollent the effect is unpleas- ing to the ear; e.g. — " Outstretched he lay || on the cold ground || and oft Looked up to heaven." In irregular verses the pause may sometimes take the place of a syllable ; e.g. — *' Spreads his | light wings || and | in a mom|ent flies." " Offend her || and | she knows | not to | forgive. Oblige her || and | shell hate | you while | you live." More than two unaccented syllables rarely come together in English, e.g., — In " merrily" every syllable is short, but the first is accented. It would be a Tribrach in Latin, it is an English Dactyl. Two accented syllables rarely come together; but such Ii6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION. [pt. v. words as " sunbeam," " moonbeam," are used as spondees, and by the help of the Pause blank verse can be made spondaic. B. Rhyme. — In all verse regulated by accent the consonance or similarity of sound in syllables plays an important part, as it gives greater force to the accents, especially to the last accents in the Hne. The source of English rhyme is uncertain, some referring it to the popular Latin of the lower Empire, others to the Arabic, others to the Welsh or the Scandinavian. It first appeared in our verse towards the close of the tenth century. I. Terminal Rhyme, or the standard rhyme of English poetry, is a resemblance of sound in the last syllable or syllables of successive or proximate lines. It is either Single^ Double, or Triple, The rules of Single Rhyme are as follows : — (a) The last vowel sounds must be identical and the preceding consonants must be different — " If she seem not fair to me, How care I how fair she ^^." (Assonantal rhyme.) (h) When consonants follow the last vowels, these consonants must be identical in sound. " What though his mighty soul his grief contains , He meditates revenge who least complainsJ^ {c) Rhyming syllables must have the strong accent. Weak terminations such as " ty," " ly," **ing," should not be made to bear the weight of the single rhyme. In Double Rhyme only the first in each pair of chiming syllables must be accented. " The meeting points the sacred hair diss^^r From the fair head for ever and for ever.'^ " Blow bugle, blow, set the wild tcho^B, flying, And answer, echoes answer, dying, dying, dying J^ In Triple Rhyme the last two syllables are un- accented. The accented syllable strikes the chime, PT. v.] VERSIFICATION. 117 the others follow like fainter reverberations. Triple rhymes are frequent in German and Italian poetry. In English they are less so, and, giving an air of levity to the verse, they are generally vehicles of humour; e.g. — " Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious^ O'er a' the ills o' life vidbi'ious.'^ " O ye lords of ladies m\.€ilectual^ Inform us truly have they not \iQx\pecked you all.^^ Bad Rhymes, of frequent occurrence, are mainly due to the following errors : — I. Violations of Rule (a) are of two kinds- — (a) When the preceding consonants are the same, as"aw/^" and " pyra;^/^," ^^ lighf and " satel//V., Wrong Genders, Numbers, Cases, and Tenses. I. Refer to some of the obvious causes of the most common errors in Concord. CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR. 25 2. Under what circumstances may a singular verb follow two or more nominatives ? 3. " Characterize the collective nouns which are properly followed by a singular, and those which are properly followed by a plural verb. Why is ^' army " singular, and *' mob " plural ? 4. What is meant by the " historical present " ? State and explain its correct use. *5- Suggest an explanation of the fact that in Greek a neuter plural is followed by a singular verb. 6. When is "if properly followed by the indica- tive, and when by the subjunctive, mood ? 7. " Explain carefully, with illustrations, the accurate use of : — {a) the auxiliary " do " ; (b) the double negative ; {c) " and " with the relative ; \d) " but that " ; (e) " none " ; (/) " which " and " that.'' "^Z. Examine, and give examples of, the use of the Double Negative (a) in Greek, (b) in Latin, (c) in old English, (^) in recent English. 9. Correct the following sentences : — (i) " Had my father continued in that situation, I must have marched off to have been one of the little underlings about a farmhouse." (2) *' It was on this occasion that the leather-seller Cleon first comes prominently forward." (3) " A man may lay claim to these quaHties ; but the hour when he should exert them would test his sincerity." (4) " He hoped that money should have been given him." (5) " He had lost an arm while he was in Spain with Wellesley." (6) " They supposing him to have been in the country went a day's journey." (7) "Valencia is one of the most delightful cities which is to be found in Europe." (8) " I did not speak yesterday as I wished to have done." 26 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES [pt. ir. (9) " No one would write a book unless he thinks it will be read." (10) " We must remember it is their circumstances, not they, who are to blame." (11) " One or other are wrong." (12) "This theory involves certain contradictory conclusions, and which are not at first sight readily seen." (13) " The head masters, from he of Harrow down- ward, agreed on this point." (14) "A general cry arose, ^ to the Bastille.' Armed crowds gather round the fortress. . . . Thither with incessant cries . . . the multitude of Paris gathered. Before them stood the enormous mass. . . For hours they stand face to face — De Launay . . . staunch for no surrender, the mob outside roaring for admittance. . . . They were driven back by a storm of grape shot. . . . They seized De Launay, and dragged him back from the magazine. . . . The Bastille prisoners were paraded through the streets. The old Governor is taken as prisoner to the Hotel de Ville. But in spite of the efforts of the officers he was torn to pieces by the way." (15) *'Eachof the sexes should keepwithin its proper bounds, and content themselves with the advantage of their particular districts." (16) "The oars are dipping in the water, which was shimmering beneath the moon ; it has warned us to make haste home." (17) " Party spirit rages as it too generally does in Dublin at this time, and was attended by party duels, in superseding which there is undoubtedly some im- provement." (18) " Swift but a few months before was willing to have hazarded all the horrors of a civil war." (19) "The work of national ruin was pretty effec- tively carried on by the ministers, but more effectually by the paper-money makers than they." CH. I.] CORRECT GRAMMAR, 27 (20) *' William of Orange has exercised a powerful influence on the history of his century. " (21) " England was a great maritime power and has traded with all the world.'' (22) " In proportion as either of these qualities are awanting, the language is awanting." (23) " Sully bought one of the finest Spanish horses that ever was seen." (24) " Of his prose we might say much that was favourable." (25) " The Duke of Wellington is not one of those who interfere with matters over which he has no con- trol." (26) *' These kind of statements, only to be made by such whose experience guarantees their accuracy, occur everywhere throughout the work." (27) " Of these mistakes none are very serious." (28) " In no part of its career have the United States been so successful as in literature." (29) "It is not fit for such as us to sit with the rulers of the land." (30) "The innovations of Chaucer and his less illustrious successors did not, however, take firm hold on the language, or emasculate the vigour which it derived from * Piers Plowman ', Wicliffe, and the admirable translation of the Bible by the ripe scholars of the time of James the First, and is still maintained in the speech of the uneducated peasantry." (31) " But the coinage of anglicised words of Latin origin is still too abundant, and either overload the language by their superfluity or enfeeble it by dilution and by distinctions without differences." (32) "Failing, as others have, to reconcile poetry and metaphysics, he succeeds better in speculations inspired by the revelations of lens and laboratory." (33) "Such an argument has not, and never will, convince any unprejudiced mind." (34) "We then came upon a stream, which after 28 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. we had followed about quarter of a mile down, led us into a fertile plain." 10. Correct or justify the following, giving your reasons : — (i) "The civil government was then very submis- sive, and heretics almost unknown." (2) "A few hours of intercourse is enough for form- ing a judgment on the case." (3) " It was a question which neither party were contending." (4) " This woman, with her twelve children, were notorious thieves." (5) " Mankind is appointed to live in a future state." (6) " The number of those who had to pay 6 millions, were not more than 2,000, and mostly poor." (7) ** The other party is by no means inferior in the felicities of their style." (8) " Neither men nor money were wanting for the service." (9) " Much depends on a pupil's composing fre- quently." (10) " This sentence of the bishop's is itself ungram- matical." (11) " The army whom its chief had abandoned pur- sued their miserable march." (12) "Large installations of electricity introduce fresh risks. There is danger to property if quantity is very great, even though potential be low. There is danger to life if potential be high." (13) "The young writer of the interesting, but slender study of a great subject tells us that he had been lent by Mr. Tindal Harris a manuscript copy of the English Life of De Mar say'' (14) " He was under the feet of the evil spirits, who seemed to be given power to deal with him as they pleased." CH. II.] PURITY IN THE USE OF WORDS, 29 (15) *' Given an escape of gas, and the theatre might have been set on fire." (16) "I shall have great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation." (17) *' I should like very much to have seen him." (18) "We now come to one of the causes of ship- wreck which has never been duly considered." CHAPTER II. PURITY IN THE USE OF WORDS. 1. Distinguish between Purity, Perspicuity, and Precision. How does " purity " of language differ from *' purism " ? 2. Define "• obsolete." How does it differ from *' old " ? 3. When is the use of archaic words permissible ? Why are they more frequent in poetry than in prose ? ■^4. "Multa renascentur quae jam cecidere, cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula." On what conditions is the revival of words justi- fiable ? 5. State and illustrate the legitimate and the illegitimate use of so-called ^' slang " expressions. 6. Discriminate (a) between Barbarism, Pedantry, and Impropriety; (b) between Provincialism, Vulgar- ism, and Idiom. 7. By what principle should we be guided in our adoption or employment of foreign words or phrases ? 8. " Technical terms should be used only in scientific, professional, or didactic treatises." Are there any exceptions to this rule ? *9. " The masters of our literature rarely coin words." Comment on this. 30 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. lo. Give your opinion on the use in standard English of the itahcized words in the following sentences : — A — Obsolete Words, or Words Used in an Obsolete Sense. (i) "The King repented him of provoking such dangerous enemies." (2) "The Queen whom it highly imported that the two monarchs should be at peace essayed mediation." (3) " Shrewd is the time this morning." (4) " He had as lief Iti it alone." (5) " Elizabeth's object was to amuse Mary ; but the latter was not deceived." (6) " Consult what Quintilian has delivered in the ninth book of his institutions." (7) "The character of Sir Roger de Coverley discovers more genius than the critique on Milton." (8) " Him-seemed they wended to the West." (9) "I was much beholden to thee!^ (10) " After they had dotie on their diverse gear they went to truck with the strange folkP B — So-called ^ Slang' Expressions. (i) "I am afraid of being ploughed., and have resolved to scratchJ^ (2) "He is a second artful dodger.''^ (3) "Thafs a S7veet thing in costumes." (4) " She was awfully intense,''^ (5) "The Burne Jones was too utterly utterJ^ (6) " He has always cast a loving eye on his own advancement." (7) "This last month he has been cramming up for his little go.'' (8) " There were four sons, e^fery one uglier tha^i the other three^ (9) " He made 2, flukey hit, and scored three." CH. II.] PURITY IN THE USE OF WORDS. 31 (10) "He puts on the haw-haiv of a regular masher^ but in vain/' (it) " His hedging '^di?^ blown upon, so he hooked it." (12) " His little game was found to be a plant, and ended in smoke, ^^ (13) '^The books are sort of united by Prince Arthur appearing in each. . . Instead of twelve books which Spenser intended to write, only six are extant, which is quite plenty ^ (14) '^ An Irishman is that patriotic, that he would rather be hanged in Ireland than die a natural death anywhere else." (15) "Justinian was great for reorganizing the Empire." (16) "The Jew accepts the invitation, and while he is at supper Lorenzo and Jessica slope.^^ (ly) "I calculate he has got the go-by ^ (18) "This book is the very ticket,^' (19) "The poor man is next door to an idiot.'' (20) "The whole business was ratheryf^/^j^^." (21) " He never could stand chaff, and cut up rough?^ (22) "When they talk shop I always shut them up.'' (23) "If you had been in such 2. funk as I, you would have skedaddled,^' (24) " This is a time when the people of England ought to take stock'' (25) " My fellow-traveller was a cute party," (26) " Did you spot that false quantity?" (27) "To put the matter in home-spun, Mr. M. and his friends hope to squa7'e the church and sell the society." (28) " The country refuses to be governed by a back- stairs policy, now that better advisers are to the fore" (29) "Those of them that are supposed to know something of the mind of Prince B. tell us that now is the time to go in and win." (30) " We have no doubt the man who would palm off an empty mine for a swinging sum to an innocent 32 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. Brttishe7% would excite an enthusiasm before which justice would not have \}i\^ ghost of a chanceP (31) ^' He said pigs would be a drug, and he is in the swimP (32) *^They were a heavy and phlegmatic lot^ {^^"^ " A find was made by the explorers." (34) " My brother sculp' s and I warble." (35) "I hope the visitors will do the handsome thing 2X the stalls." (36) " The woman told us, she could eat a hundred boarders, but could only sleep fifty." (37) " Whether the Angle assimilated the Briton or the Briton assimilated the Angle, there was some * Anglo ' element in the business.^' {'Ty'^) "He has up all the tips and wrinkles on the subject, and is dead sure oi pulling through.^^ C — Technical or Pedantic Terms. (i) "This aspect of the question has been thoroughly ventilated,'^ (2) "He will not grow to mental maturity, for his potentiality will remain a dead letter.'' (3) "The encyclopcedic text-books of scientists and educationalists are not illaudible attempts to convey 7nultum in partm." (4) " His invertebrate placidity was phenomenal." (5) " Notions co-ordinated in the whole of comprehen- sion are, in respect of the discriminating characters, different without any similarity." (6) "Allegory is not a fit theme iox fictive art." (7) " In studying the soul-engrossing actuality of life. Cousin was observational and generalizing rather than analytic and discriminating." (8) '* There is much perturbation of mind a7ient the state of affairs." (9) " The traffic was congested by the interest of the window." CH. ir.] PURITY m THE USE OF WORDS. 33 (10) "In Shakespeare the subjective and objective are concordant, and often synchronous.''^ (11) " This conjecture suggests a new departure in the integration of ideas." (12) "The prob^biHty of the creditors being re- couped depends on the solvability of the debtors." (13) " Those now in the Grosvenor are hardly to be differentiated from hundreds of other drawings by the same proHfic artist." (14) "The ladies of the club, in the line of the SociaHsm now in vogue, tried the experiment last night of bringing the upper and lower strata into contact." (15) "A speculative philosophy consequently must be a chain of mutually sub-relating counter-parts.^^ (16) " By this distinction we find OMx^tlvts polaiized into two factions." (17) "In this piece his power was exploited.''^ (18) "From M. Laffitte the Anglo-Comtist School received its doctrinal exequator, (19) "The zenithal jirmament^ as we returned, was a deep blue, the western sky a fiery crimson." D — Foreign Terms. (i) "Distinguish the style periodique from the style coupeJ^ (2) '^ Malgre his protestations, he did not come off sans reprochey (3) " I wish to deal tenderly with the susceptibilities and respect the amour propre of my confrere.''^ (4) "Bacon prosecuted some of his quondam friends." (5) "These reformers have suddenly shifted their venue, and it is easy to see the raison d^etre of the change — cela va sans dire^ (6) " His style is 2, pot-pourri of all languages." (7) " Her manner of writing was suggestive and infime.^^ B 34 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. (8) " The museum of the beaux arts was crammed with bric-a-brac and objects of vertu.^^ (9) " Sidney was the beau ideal preiix chevalier of the Elizabethan age." (10) "Her manner and conversation aHke were charmingly naive '^ (11) '* Apart from detail, the tout ensemble of the Eiffel tower is imposing." (12) "He was quite au fait in the mise-en-schne.^^ (13) "The exhibition comprises some Japanese curios. ^^ (14) "The critical study of the Scriptures will, for the future, be, to this extent, less of a te7'ra incognita, except to professional divines." (15) " All this required vanch. finesse and delicatesse.'" (16) "The gardens were void of simplicity and ele- gance, and exhibited much that was glaring and bizarre.'^ (17) "The effect of his compliments was marred by an evident arriere pensee of regret for an estrange- ment of which he himself had been the cause." (18) "Can you prefer the adoration of a relative beauty to the cultus of the true beauty?" (19) "What teacher could ever so save us from that bondage to which we are all prone, . . . the bondage of . . . das Gemeine^ E — Coined or Affected Terms. (i) " The post-prandial talk of Rogers was characterized by an acerbity at singular variance with the even tenour of his verse." (2) ^^ Penology, like philanthropy, has been de- veloped into a science." (3) "It is hard to conserve our impression of the poet beside this analyzation of the man." (4) "He was interviewed on the causes of the unsuccessfulness of his mission." (5) " The proofs of his unwisdom and impractic- ality were irrefragable'^ CH. II.] PURITY IN THE USE OF WORDS, 35 (6) " The catalogue contained sixty-five reproduc- tions of humorous exhibits^ ( 7 ) " Th e operatives^ tXQ for the most part inebriates. " (8) " These writers represent the most pronounced section of the impressionist school. '^ (9) " He is an individual eaten up by egoism.^^ (10) "The cortege was worthy of his ambassadorial rankr (11) "Such a devagatton into Harcourtism is dangerous to one not to the manner born." (12) " Onward through the immense vastitudes which the Almighty has sprinkled with suns and morld- systems, our being is linked with worlds rising above worlds ; while, at the same time, it is protended to the age-distant periods of their unswerving circum- volvingsT (13) " How honour-worthy are those who, surveying the relations of civil life, devote their genius to the ingrafting of these thought-growths in the minds of men.'' (14) " YL^x life-work was a ^^2^x1 oi world-history T (15) "This band of enthusiastic disestablishers and perinissivites have thus been compelled to strike out of their programme all mention of their cherished views." (16) "Dr. H.'s liberationist friends are taking a note of these utterances." (17) "A training of which the aim is TXXi all-rotmd well-informedness is destitute of all the chief elements of education." (18) "Switzerland is a tri-lingual country." (19) " But in this matter legislation was not entirely privative,''^ (20) "The outcome of all these oratorial displays will make little impression on this work-a-day world." (21) "His ignorance of Chaucer is measurable; his ignorance of Shakespeare is immeasurable, colossal, pyramidal^ unimaginable." 36 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. it. (22) ^* The sculpture galleries at the Royal Academy contain each year an increasingly large number of works evidencing individuality and talent/' (23) "Browning attempted not only to give the emotive iridescence of the poetic afflatus, but also at the same time to suggest the accompanying inrush of clustering thoughts." (24) "Such superfluity of words is disgustful to every reader of correct taste." (25) " His tender-hearied-ness was equalled only by his wrong-headed-nessJ^ (26) " Twenty-five eventual centuries have left these victories unequalled." (27) "Let us turn to Lord R 's reasons for cold-shouldering Scotch Home Rule." (28) "Might not one compose for oneself a very respectable creed by simply collecting all the known truths, all the clear indubitabilities, within one's reach." (29) " Racy Saxon monosyllables, close to us as touch and sight, he will intermix readily with those long, savoursome Latin words, rich in second intention." (30) "The model restores the then aspect of the city and castle." (31) " Poetry admits of greater latitude with respect to new-compounding words." . (32) "Walking, as prose does, on terra firma, and not merely poised on ascending and descending wings, it can push its way through the thick and miscellany of things P (33) " It is as the doyen of British politics that he will be toasted on Monday. As such men of all shades of party may panegyrize him with an easy conscience." (34) " I hope none of my correspondents will measure my regard for them by the frequency, or rather seldomcy^ of my epistles." CH. 1 1 1. ] PROPRIE TV IN THE USE OF WORDS, 3 7 CHAPTER III. PROPRIETY IN THE USE OF WORDS. A. — Wrong Sequences of Particles. Correct the following sentences : — (i) " We should ask at the sister sciences." (2) " Concrete words present a more vivid picture before the mind." (3) "Shakespeare treated on the whole of human nature, but Ben Jonson treated only with that particu- lar part connected with his own time." (4) " To explain and illustrate upon the foregoing paragraph we must first of all look back upon the change the language underwent." (5) " Language grows coeval to the changes and advances in a nation." (6) *^ I have heard how some critics have been paci- fied with a supper." (7) " Man was ordered to till the earth with the sweat of his brow." (8) " The use of the word clever is an advantage over its present meaning." (9) " Read Chaucer with no other aid but the notes." (10) " We may seek among the Fates and Furies for the source of this conception." (11) "I have seldom or ever seen him fail in his duty." (12) " The only other part of speech which partakes of the weakness^remarked in conjunctions is preposi- tions." (13) "The orator's speech was characterized with eloquence, and during its delivery the audience were breathless in attention." (14) " The selection only retains such that are worthy." 38 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. (15) "The Danish is probably from the same root with the Saxon." (16) "I will doubtless find some person at whom to make these inquiries." (17) " Scarcely had Richard taken up the cross than his admirers afforded a very notable specimen of the mischievous inequality of chivalrous ethics." (18) "The better papers are singularly free of blemishes, even of composition." (19) " This is the new number to a very useful series of Primers." (20) "The Czar's resistance of the Pope's overtures was successful." (21) "An objection more plausible may be formed against criticism." (22) "Addison has reduced the Pleasures of the Imagination under three heads." (23) " For his special theological tenets I had no sympathy." (24) " Its judgments on the relations between man and man are corollaries from its primary truth." (25) "No doubt the reason why he was so dis- satisfied was, because they were absent." (26) " In one way this added, in another, it de- tracted from his reputation." (27) "The army divided the spoil between them." (28) "If the question is considered only in this point of view, its full difiiculty is net realized." (29) "This proposal was one with which all agreed and not a single dissent was expressed." (30) "These men had quite a different ideal of the duties of society than that now prevalent." (31) "In supporting and encouraging musical studies James V. was equally ardent as his royal predecessor." CH. III.] PROPRIETY IN THE USE OF WORDS. 39 B. — Synonyms. ■^ I. " Synonyms are like gradually receding circles, first coincident, then intersecting, finally in mere con- tact." Explain and illustrate what is meant by this. 2. Comment on the assertion of Dr. Blair: — "The great source of a loose style is the injudicious use of synonymous terms." 3. Why is the difficulty of discriminating between so-called synonyms greater in the English than in any other modern European language ? ■^4. Are there any real Synonyms — i.e. words con- veying precisely the same meaning — in the English language? If so, mention some of them, and explain their occurrence. 5. Explain the i}) arrangement of Synonyms under the following heads; — (a) Generic and Specific; (b) Active and Passive ; {c) Expressing different Degrees of Intensity; {d) Positive and Negative ; and distin- guish carefully between the following related terms : — {a) Answer, Reply ; Courage, Bravery ; Audacity, Temerity; Custom, Habit, Manner; Analogy, Parallel; Fear, Terror, Fright ; List, Catalogue ; Negligence, Neglect ; Cause, Occasion ; Praise, Applause ; Dis position. Temper, Humour ; Expect, Hope ; Give, Grant ; Gain, Win ; Have, Possess; Ridicule, Deride; Try, Attempt, Endeavour ; Ancient, Antique ; Recent, Modern ; Clear, Distinct ; Whole, Entire, Complete ; High, Tall ; New, Novel ; Strong, Robust. {b) Ability, Capacity ; Consent, Assent, Comply, 1 The ground of this classification suggested by Mr. F. G. Grahame, in his able work on the subject, will be apparent to every teacher. It is illustrated in the subjoined lists. Observfe that in distinguishing between the related terms the pupil or student must not be satisfied with merely giving definitions from a dictionary. The words must be carefully compared, and their proper use exemplified by sentences containing them, or by con- trasting them severally with their respective opposites. Each head will be found to supply material for more than one exercise. 40 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. Concur ; Example, Instance ; Faith, Belief, Opinion ; Intellect, Understanding ; Proposal, Proposition \ Re- pentance, Contrition ; Value, Worth j Persevere, Persist; Trust, Credit ; Awkward, Clumsy; Efficient, Effective ; Expert, Experienced ; Impracticable, Impossible ; Un- avoidable, Inevitable ; Peaceable, Peaceful ; Reason- able, Rational ; Sociable, Social ; Vacant, Empty. {c) Compunction, Remorse ; Intention, Purpose ; Persuade, Convince ; Slander, Calumny ; Temperance, Abstinence ; Alter, Change ; Confuse, Confound ; Enlarge, Increase ; Excite, Incite ; Prompt, Instigate ; Lament, Deplore ; Overcome, Conquer ; Remember, Recollect ; Hear, Listen ; See, Look ; Should, Ought ; Surprise, Astonish ; Understand, Comprehend ; Con- demn, Contemn; Scarce, Rare. {d ) Bankrupt, Insolvent ; Disabled, Unable; Free- dom, Liberty ; Bold, Fearless ; Patient, Invalid ; Simulate, Dissimulate, Dissemble ; Cruel, Heartless ; Different, Unlike ; Doubt, Uncertainty, Dubiety ; Guiltless, Innocent ; Perpetual, Incessant ; Permit, Allow. 6. Similarly note the various shades of difference in meaning between the following pairs or among the members of the following groups of words: — Anger, Rage ; Respect, Esteem ; Compose, Com- pound ; Mingle, Mix ; Rise, Soar ; I doubt, I fear ; King, Emperor ; Greatness, Magnitude ; Retrieve, Recover ; Guard, Preserve ; Escape, Elude, Evade, Avoid; Honest, Sincere, Frank; Frailty, Fault, Foible ; Small, Slight, Little ; Handsome, Pretty, Beautiful ; Contest, Conflict ; Accede, Acquiesce ; Austerity, Rigour, Severity ; Era, Epoch ; Oral, Verbal ; Obser- vance, Observation ; Veracity, Truth ; Truism, Plati- tude ; Attribute, Impute ; Withdraw, Retract ; Com- mentary, Illustration ; Avenge, Revenge ; Conciliate, Reconcile ; Authentic, Genuine ; Union, Unity ; Copy, Imitate ; Equivocal, A^mbiguous ; Subtle, Acute ; Con- CH. III.] PKOPRTRTY IN Til/:: US£: OJ7 WORDS. 41 templation, Meditation; Pleasure, Happiness; Wisdom, Prudence ; Hate, Detest, Abhor ; Concise, Brief ; Proud, Haughty, Vain, Conceited ; Modest, Bashful, Shy, Reserved; Idiotic, Mad, Insane; Satirical, Ironi- cal, Sarcastic, Cynical ; Impertinence, Insolence, Rudeness; Coerce, Compel, Control; Separate, Divide, Distinguish ; Abbreviate, Abridge ; Comic, Absurd. ■^ 7. Robertson tells us that " When one of the old Scottish kings was making an inquiry into the tenure by which his nobles held their lands, they started up and drew their swords. 'By these said they we acquired our lands, and with these we will defend them/ " How does this expression illustrate the pro- per use of the prepositions *by' and *with.' Similarly discriminate the right uses of 'only' and * alone'; * be- tween,' 'among'; ' while,' * during,' * throughout ' ; *at,' * in,' ' beside ' ; * away,' ' off.' ■^ 8. Refer to serious confusions of thought due to the vague or ambiguous use of the following words and phrases : — False, Untrue ; ' Right ' and ' Wrong ' views ; Religion; Infidel; Nature is the rule of life; Education; Law ; Authority ; Liberty ; Civilization ; The Voice of the People. * 9. Illustrate the limits to the rule, that in the exact use of words we should be guided by their etymology. 10. Point out the words wrongly employed in the following sentences, and substitute others accurately conveying the meaning intended : — (i) "For want of interrogating facts we fall into absurdities." (2) " I could not do the exercise as I was engaged in learning for the examination." (3) " He won't do more than he can help." (4) " By his knowledge that perfection was only accomplished by zeal allied to industry, he attained his predomination among the writers of his age." 42 ENGLISH^ COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. (5) *' Some may doubt that his partiality has carried him too far." (6) "This is effected by a small alteration in the arrangement." (7) '* By this mean they will judge what to choose." (8) " I propose to endeavour the entertainment of my countrymen." (9) *' We cannot read a page of Virgil without per- ceiving what has fascinated the world, and without concurring in the fascination." (10) "The difficulty which has arisen would have been denounced as an impossibility had any one been disposed to indulge in the prophetical delineation of it six years ago." (11) " His object was to form subordinary alliances with the native princes." (12) " The evidence to be collected from Herbert is precarious." (13) "Some historians tell us that no fruit grows originally among us." (14) " It is curious to observe the various substitutes for paper before its invention.". (15) " Though he professed to hold this theory, he never demeaned himself so far as to put it into practice." (16) " Herein Mr. M. makes use of the same inac- curacy as Mr. G." (17) "The Asiatics at no time relished anything but what was full of ornament, and splendid in a degree that we should denominate gaudy." (18) "It is a scientific vocabulary, containing not less than 30,000 words." (19) " Sidney schemed a pastoral romance in English.'' (20) " It remains still an undecided point whether nature or art confer most towards excelhng in writing and discourse." (21) "When we name criticizing, prejudices may perhaps arise of the same kind with those which I mentioned before with respect to rhetoric." CH. III.] PROPRIETY IN THE USE OF WORDS. 43 (22) "Criticize and correct the following pieces of grammar and style." (23) " From those facts we may derive a prognosti- cation." (24) " There is no newspaper in which the precise platform here adopted is taken up." (25) '^ I hope he will tell you a bit of the sad cir- cumstances." (26) " A race-horse is looked upon with pleasure ; but it is the war-horse * whose neck is clothed with thunder ' that carries grandeur in its idea." (27) "Precision signifies retrenching superfluities." (28) "It was in this situation of affairs that Sir Arthur Wellesley (who shall hereafter be called Wellington) landed at Lisbon." (29) "For my own part I doubt the application of the Danish rule to the English language." (30) " Two great sins of omission and one of com- mission have been committed." (31) " This arises from the number of nomad tribes which pervade every part of the territory." (32) "It is unnecessary to have recourse to the complex mechanism of double elections." (33) " Our middle class (we beheld something of this kind in the 13th century) has an amazing love of cumbrous Latin words." (34) " By this we have another proof of his insatiable activity." (35) " This opinion is natural to one of the feminine persuasion." (36) " We cannot but see that, carried to so great a pitch, this habit of reserve must inevitably have rendered the development of such invaluable qualities as charity and sympathy almost impossible." (37) "A few days later a shopman moving a metal show-case was done to death ; in his shoe a projecting nail pierced the stocking, and thus helped on his fate." 44 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. ii. (38) "By these incursions the Celts made them- selves hated worse than ever." (39) " Mr. L. will to-morrow be revealed as member for the constituency." (40) " Does it deteriorate from Milton's peculiar greatness that he could not have given us the concep- tion of Falstaff?" (41) " It stands unsurpassed for its beautiful blend- ing of the grand, the tender, the humorous, the grotesque, the awful, and the horrible, pervaded by a strong undercurrent of wit and common sense." (42) "The centaur is angelic in form and beauty from the middle upwards, but with beastly extremities." C. — Ambiguous, Careless, and Absurd Sentences. Improve the following, substituting other sentences expressing accurately the meaning intended to be conveyed by the writer : — (i) " Prisoner at the bar, God has given you health and strength, instead of which you go about stealing ducks." (2) " Mr. B. thought that their primary duty should be to ask what was reasonable and fair, and accept as much less as they possibly could." (3) " Would that man could be removed to another sphere of usefulness ! " (4) " I then related a case in which this operation had succeeded in the brute creation ; since which time I have had an opportunity of performing it upon the human family." (5) "So I promised to say nothing which I hoped would conciliate them." (6) " Over and above the mission going on in this house a whole family lives underground." (7) " Here we find the battered copper vessels, old brooms, cobwebs, apple parings, and the like which CH. III.] PROPRIETY IN THE USE OF WORDS, 45 the Flemish painters scatter so freely about their interiors.'* (8) *' He rode to the village and on his arrival there turned his horse into a stable." (9) " A furrier requests ladies to bring to him their skins which he promises shall be converted into muffs and boas." (10) " She looked at her own neat white stockings and thought how glad she would be to cover their poor feet with the same." (11) " Chaucer has been divided into three parts." (12) **He had no doubt that notable woman's gift of steering off the rocks and shoals of conversation." (13) "When did you tell him you were to arrive?" (14) **He is as Hkely to make a name for himself as his brothers have done." (15) " He cannot help his language being anything but pointed." (16) ^' He had no suspicion that his end was near, while he sang and jested with his courtiers, or per- haps these last hours had been spent in a difterent way." (17) " Is it not a national disgrace that England of the past, which supplied Europe with her best horses, should now be dependent upon Continental countries for her useful supplies ? " 46 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. PART III. CLEARNESS OR PERSPICUITY. CHAPTER I. SIMPLICITY AND DIRECTNESS. 1. Under what modifications may we accept the rule that the simplest language is the best ? 2. On what conditions is the importation of foreign words justifiable ? 3. " A nation which trades with all the world must borrow words for all the world's products." Comment on this. ■^ 4. Show that the application of old or common terms to new or rare ideas or things is apt to result in obscurity. 5. What are the main causes of obscurity or ambiguity in English composition ? Why are they so numerous ? ■^ 6. " In a good writer a large vocabulary is an aid to clearness ; in a careless writer it is a source of obscurity." Account for and illustrate the amount of truth in this statement. *7. Distinguish between the kinds of obscurity which result from inexperience, and those more properly ascribed to affectation. 8. Criticize, and reproduce in a more natural form the following sentences : — (i) " If every author introduced words from other tongues, the knowledge of our language would be proportionately circum- scribed and no writer would wish to communicate his thoughts by a vehicle so multifarious and evanescent. " (2) *'The teacher needs to quicken the mental alertness by artificial means when there is a dormancy of mere indolence. CH. I.] SIMPLICITY AND DIRECTNESS. 4? He has to waken his pupil from the state significantly named indifference, the state where different impressions fail to be recognized as distinct." (3) " If the day of poetry were in the ascendant I should say that a sweet volume might be culled out of their productions : but, as it is, they must be left to the dispersion of their first birth and perhaps the only recognition of them to be found in this brief notice by an old friend who has to mourn them, nearly all amongst the lost from his earlier affections." (4) '* The moral sense is that natural affection or anticipating fancy which makes the sense of right and wrong. . . . Self- examination is a man's dividing himself into two parties, becoming a self-dialogist, entering into partnership with himself and practically forming within himself the dual number. " (5) "Critical efforts to limit art apriorihy anticipations regard- ing the natural incapacity of material with which this or that artist works, as the sculptor with solid form, or the prose-writer with the ordinary language of men, are always liable to be discredited by the facts of artistic production ; and while prose is actually found to be a coloured thing with Bacon, picturesque with Livy and Carlyle, musical with Cicero and Newman, mystical and intimate with Plato and Michelet and Sir Thomas Browne, exalted or florid it may be, with Milton and Taylor, it will be useless to protest that it can be nothing at all, except something very tamely and narrowly confined to mainly practical ends — a kind of ' good round-hand ' ; as useless as the protest that poetry might not touch prosaic subjects as with Wordsworth, or an abstruse matter as with Browning, or treat contemporary life nobly as with Tennyson." * 9. Give the substance of the following in simpler and clearer terms : — (i) "Forty years ago the popular art of Gibson swayed to exaggeration in the direction of what was ideal and classic : in the decay of this school came Mr. Boehm with his unflinching realism, and the pendulum flew back to lively presentments of the modern coat and trousers : . . the weight never swings back without some result from the last preceding pressure." (2) The dilettante would doubtless ill requite his regard and have a painful sense of his rawness, the crudity of his critical appre- hension, and the zeal of his conduct and demeanour in general. It is indeed the crudity of his critical perception joined to an invincible native rectitude that prevents him from seeing any peril from dilettantism, with which however his acquaintance is extremely slight, and focusses his reprehension upon the pitfalls of Philistinism which on the other hand yawn around him and 48 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. from which in his inward parts he cherishes the conviction that he has been saved so as by fire." (3) *' As, in the case of an individual, a temporary malevolence of atmospheric conditions, or of other conditions of nature out of himself, may depress his mental energy and actually lessen the worth of all that he thinks and says while the adverse conjunction lasts ; so may there not be cosmical conditions, conditions of total nature outside of Humanity, tremors telluric and even blasts sidereal along the earth's orbit, or along the mightier path in which our whole system is voyaging, of a kind sometimes to cause epidemics which sweep through the life of the globe, and seem like admonitions that the globe itself might be replunged into the fell Adamite state whence it emerged to support man, and, at other times, without any such glaring stroke of decima- tion and death, to lead with equal certainty to weaknesses and untoward intellectual variations?" "^ 10. Note the affected phrases and needless allusions which merely serve to confuse the following sentences; and express the meaning, in each instance intended to be conveyed, in simpler and more appropriate terms : — (i) "Lord D. can hardly but admit that the Egyptian plough alone is one that, having put his hand to it, he cannot turn back from — at all events for a time that cannot at present be cal- culated." (2) *' His works, it may be, exhibit no perfect crystal of artistic form, but each is a menstruum saturated with form in solution. He fears to lose the instinctive in any process of elaboration, the vital in anything which looks like mechanism." (3) " This rather startling proof that in Khartoum all did not go as merry as a marriage bell or as peacefully as an orthodox honeymoon has no charms even for Mr. A., capable as he is of surveying mankind from China to Peru, and willing as he doubt- less is to repeat the sublime egotism of the elder Pitt, and to declare that only one man can save the nation, and that is himself " (4) "The writer should look askant at words that come from the Latin ; they are too often traps for the unwary ; although the Lady of the even trench and the bristling mound is indeed a high and mighty Queen, when seated on her own throne." (5) "From the Ladies' Gallery these splendid visions of the sublimity of millinery were viewed with unutterable longing. Even the sterner masculine mind was moved with twinges of temptation towards predatory feats when so useless an accumula- tion of wealth was displayed near at hand as a mere matter of personal adornment. The younger of the two Princes was robed in white satin, the elder in purple ; and the turban of each CH. I.] SIMPLICITY AND DIRECTNESS. 49 gave every promise of being * a joy for ever ' by making good its title to be considered * a thing of beauty.' " (6) *' Among the pills of good advice that used to be concealed in the delectable jam of the Latin grammar, and so conveyed to the mind in childhood's happy hour of discipline, a prominent place was given to the great truth that the best sauce is hunger. Tempoi-a mutantur, and with them have changed the thoughts that breathe and words that burn in copy-book headlines and exercise-books, and which, according to an eminent politician, play the part of ethical beacons amid the distractions of adminis- tration and the emergencies of party conflict. In these days, at all events, when confirming the feeble knees is evidently so desirable in politics and public life, there might be invented a worse headline or passage for translation into Latin, by way of inspiring or warning the embryo Democratic statesman, than such a declaration as * The best stiffening is knowledge.'" (7) ^' The cat of the Transvaal was let out of the bag last night. Why it should have been kept tied up so long we do not know ; but one may presume at all events that it had to be freed at last. For the last few days it has been rumoured that peace was to be made at, or near about, any price." (8) "A large rhythm sustains the verse, similar in nature to the movement of a calmly musical period of prose, but at best the music of the lines is a measurable music ; under the verse there lies no living heart of music, with curious pulsation, and rhythm, which is a miracle of the blood. The carefully executed lyrics of Juan and Fedalma are written with an accurate knowledge of what song is, and how it differs from speech. The author was acquainted with the precise position of the vocal organs in sing- ing ; the pity is she could not sing. The little modelled verses are masks taken from the dead faces of infantile lyrics that once lived and breathed. " (9) " Lord S. 's efforts to help a lame dog over a stile are worthy of the respect of the Tory party. If the contest of Friday next should result in the return of Mr. W., it would be unfair to refuse a good share of the credit to the yeoman services of ' the senior member.' Ministers, as a rule, are content if their * echoes roll from soul to soul ' until they reach the western sea- port ; but Lord S. figures not only as the President of the Board of Trade, but as a representative of Liverpool, and in both respects he may be regarded as the 'big brother' from whom Mr. W. would naturally look for aid in the time of trouble." (10) " Should it prove to be the case that the negotiations with the Boers end in the virtual restoration of independence to the Transvaal, it may prove to be one of those stones of concession which manage to kill at one and the same time two birds of difficulty." 50 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iii. ( 1 1 ) ** Many and celebrated as our great Scotchmen have been, it would be difficult to find another name — especially the name of a poet — wherewith to conjure to greater popular results." (12) " The noble leader of this side of the House had ventured to humbly ask for information, and I think we may fairly com- plain that when we have asked for bread we have been treated in an unscriptural manner, and been given a stone." CHAPTER 11. BREVITY. T. Mention or illustrate some of the exceptions to the rule that the best composition expresses most ideas in fewest words. 2. Distinguish carefully between : — (i) Tautology, Pleonasm, and Repetition. (2) Laconic, Curt, and Terse, as applied to style. ■^ 3. " Verbosity is cured not by a small but by a large vocabulary." " Fox said — I never want a word, but Pitt never wants the word." Show how the habit of precision in writing is conducive to Brevity. 4. Give an example of a sentence obscure because of its length, and reconstruct it. 5. Adduce instances of nouns or verbs that frequent usage permits to go in pairs .^ 6. Clearly indicate the distinction between the un- grammatical and the rhetorical use of the Double Negative. When is the latter appropriate ? * 7. In what circumstances does an allusion or quota- tion conduce to Brevity? 8. Under what conditions are such caveats or cir- cumlocutions as *' we may add that," " it may be remarked that," " as seems to me," etc., permissible ? 9. When is the repetition of words or ideas justifiable or desirable ? ^ Note that the love of alliteration, as in *' meddle and muddle," or of terminal consonance, as in " plunder and blunder," often suggests or confirms this use. CH. II.] BREVITY. 51 10. Excise the unnecessary words in the following sentences : — (i) ''A superfluity of unnecessary words is altogether improper." (2) "Spelling reform would be a great boon to the language at large." (3) "A nation and its language go hand in hand inseparably bound up together." (4) " Her Majesty the Queen has been compelled to give her assent to the worst possible form of govern- ment that at this moment exists." (5) " We passed under the umbrageous shade of the forest." (6) " His speech was eloquent, but his remarks were confined only to one solitary aspect of the question." (7) "There were very few passengers who escaped without serious injury." (8) " In the great region of the comic in particular it may be questioned whether prose has not the wider range, and the more searching, furious, and door- breaking license." (9) " On this plan we should have to say that, while both our novehsts are masterly artists, the art of Dickens is the wider in its range as to object and circumstance." (jo) " If I am not mistaken, the year 1848 will have to be referred back to for several generations to come as an epoch commencing much in European history." (it) "In the ancient Greek world it was the men who were called Sophists who took fees for their teaching ; the philosopher Socrates had his bread otherwise." (12) " He had lost an opportunity which never again returned; for at that period of the youthful adolescence of the country they were totally exempt from all taxes." (13) "Hence the universal testimony which the nations of the earth have conspired to give to some few works of genius." 52 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. (14) **Mr. L. and I are both agreed upon this point." *ii. Simplify and condense the following : — ( 1 ) * * Now it is admitted — we have never denied — that the policy which we have pursued during the last five or six years, a policy which, we maintain, has saved Europe and England from war, has caused an expenditure which has been in excess of the nor- mal expenditure of the country and to which we intend to recur. " (2) *'But if they think that in order to do their best for their party they must endeavour to win more than one seat, it seems impossible, for the reasons given above, that Mr. G. should be asked to be one of their candidates, or that he should accept the offer if made : unless, indeed, between the present time and the next dissolution some new issue between the parties should arise which should throw the county franchise question into the shade, and should make Liberal electors work hard for the best candidates they could get without reference to their peculiar opinions on the virtues and claims of the agricultural labourer." (3) " We do not propose to revert to questions that were suffici- ently discussed three weeks ago, and as to which the result of the election set its seal to the accuracy of our views ; but while the memory of the contest is fresh in our readers' minds it may be as well to invite attention to a state of things which may be described as handicapping, somewhat heavily, any champion who assumes the defence of the Established Church in Argyllshire." (4) " Still, we cannot but regret that the hope that this incom- patibility would not be considered so positive as to forbid his holding office has been thwarted." (5) "There are but few amongst us who think, or at least allow they think, that India is of so little value to us that we need not put out our whole strength for its defence." (6) "If for example we never mutter this word 'improbability ' in reading Keats' Endymion, or Spenser's Faerie Queene, simply because we know that we are in a world of fantastic conditions, then, so far as we admit that Prose may make similar excursions into the realms of pure imagination, our attachment to probability of incident must in prose fiction also be permitted to grow weak." (7) "With respect to one of the lectures — the third — it might even be obliging if the reader were to remember specially that it was prepared for an Edinburgh audience." (8) " One may certainly agree with Goethe when he says that the predominance of the humorous spirit in the literature of any period is a sign of approaching decrepitude ; and I do not know but that at present when comic literature appears to be in ascendancy among us, and when even our men of greatest talent CH. II.] BREVITY. 53 find it necessary to wear the cap and bells, it might be well to bear that observation of the German sage in mind." (9) *' Although scepticism is, as a rule, a virtue to be practised in regard to news received from Afghanistan, it would probably be carrying it to excess not to believe that on the 2nd inst. a battle was fought 30 miles east of Herat between forces repre- senting Ayoub Khan and Abdurrahman, that after a severe conflict victory declared itself on the side of the Ameer." (10) "This statement does not explain the grounds on which those who have signed it are of opinion that such an inroad as they would approve might be made without injustice on the rights now enjoyed by owners of tithes under an Act of Parliament which has for more than half a century been accepted as a final settlement of a very difficult question. (11) *' It is hard to discover proof that the claim to inspira- tion which is made for them, and which they would not, per- haps, claim for themselves, is one that cannot be denied." ■^12. Reconstruct and simplify the following sen- tences : — (i) " Now, if the fabric of the mind or temper appeared to us, such as it really is ; if we saw it impossible to remove hence any one good or orderly affection, or to introduce any ill or disorderly one, without drawing on, in some degree, that dissolute state which, at its height, is confessed to be so miserable ; it would then, undoubtedly, be confessed, that since no ill, immoral, or unjust action can be committed, without either a new inroad and breach on the temper and passions, or a further advancing of that execution already done : whoever did ill, or acted in pre- judice to his integrity, good nature, or worth, would, of necessity, act with greater cruelty towards himself, than he who scrupled not to swallow what was poisonous, or, who, with his own hands, should voluntarily mangle or wound his outward form or con- stitution, natural limbs or body." (2) " If the peculiar regions of Prose — not those into which it may penetrate, or into which, perhaps, it will yet penetrate, but those which were first assigned over to it, and where its rule is least disputed — are the regions of the comic, and the historically complex, the didactic, and the immediately practical ; while Verse retains a certain superior, though not exclusive, mastery in the realms of the sublime, the elemental or ideal, and the highly impassioned ; then British Society, when it lost, if it did lose, those peculiarities of sustained ideality of conception, of faith in things metaphysical, and of resoluteness in impassioned aims, which had formerly borne it up to the poetic pitch, and fell into a comparative flat of complicated and bustling activity, with Whiggism and Toryism regulating the currents, did, at least, by 54 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. that very change, present a state of things favourable to the in- crease of Prose Literature as regards relative quantity, and also to the use of new and special prose forms. " (3) " Yorick was this parson's name, and what is very remark- able in it (as appears from a most ancient account of the family, wrote upon strong vellum, and now in perfect preservation) it had been exactly so spelt for near, — I was within an ace of saying nine hundred years ; — but I would not shake my credit in telling an improbable truth, however indisputable in itself ;— and there- fore I shall content myself with only saying — it had been exactly so spelt, for I do not know how long ; which is more than I would venture to say of one half of the best surnames in the kingdom ; which in a course of years* have generally undergone as many chops and changes as their owners." 13. Under what circumstances and within what limitations is obscurity justifiable ? Distinguish be- tween obscurity and vagueness. * 14. ^' The obscurity of metaphysical writers is for the most part owing to the indistinctness of their own conceptions." How far is this true? ■^15. Refer to instances of obscurity due: — (a) to the grandeur, remoteness, or subtlety of the subject ; {b) to the writer's over-estimate or under-estimate of the intelligence of his readers ; {c) to extreme caution or reserve on the part of the writer. 16. What special licenses in respect of obscurity are permissible in satiric and dramatic writing ? 17. Show how the element of vagueness adds to the sublimity of the following passages : — (i) "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face ; the hair of my flesh stood up ; it stood still ; but I could not discern the form thereof; an image was before mine eyes; there was silence ; and I heard a voice, ' Shall mortal man be more just than God?'" (2) ^' Yet from those flames No light but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe." CH. II. J BREVITY. 55 (3) " His stature reached the sky." (4) " The other shape. If shape it might be called, that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called, that shadow seemed, For each seemed either; black it stood as night . . . . . . What seemed his head, The likeness of a kingly crown had on." * 18. Refer to authors whose writings are frequently obscure from over-brevity, and give examples from their works. 19. Amplify the following sentences, so as to re- move ambiguity, absurdity, or impropriety : — (i) "The infirmary was never so full, which I was at a loss to account for." (2) "A figure is a form of speech differing from the common." (3) "The historian has no other labour than of gathering facts and explaining." (4) " I do not intend to help you because you are my enemy." (5) " Silence has its excuses, when it only breaks the rule to be abusive." (6) " In what we read and what we hear we always seek for something in one respect or other new, which we did not know or at least attend to before." ( 7) " The Italian hath doubtless more sweetness, the Spanish more majesty, the German perhaps more bluster ; but none of them is in this respect so various as the English and can equal it in all the quaHties." (8) *' The result of his investigation appears to be, that the position of idealist and materialist is un- tenable." (9) " There are many things which we every day see others unable to perform, and yet can hardly allow to be difficult." 5^ ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. (lo) " As sentences should be cleared of redundant words, so also of members." (ti) '* Dr. Johnson sat in his easy-chair, and drank tea, and dictated to the literary world, and for fifty years he kept his position." (12) " The subscriber having had the good fortune to commence his career as a grocer the same year as Her Most Gracious Majesty, he has determined to make his jubilee year a successful one in the way of doing business." (13) " One report is that the Pretender is dead, another is that he is alive ; for my part I believe neither." (14) "He extracted several corns from my feet, without pain, along with a member of my family, which have not since returned." (15) "When the connection in thought is very distant the copulative appears absurd, and when very close, superfluous." (16) " Having had much experience on this subject, the reader may rely on the truth of the following observations." (17) "On attempting to extract the ball, the patient rapidly began to sink." (18) "Students are requested to sign a requisition to Mr. S. at present lying in the reading-room." (19) "The belief is growing that Russia will on no provocation hazard a rupture." (20) "He was heir to half a plum, as the citizens call ;^ioo,ooo." (21) "We feel a superior satisfaction in surveying the life of animals than that of vegetables." (22) " Not only every author known to fame, but hundreds whose names have scarcely survived them- selves, have been or will be carefully read, and every just occurrence, every happy use, every forcible ex- ample of each word accepted for introduction into the dictionary." CH. III.] PRECISION— AMBIGUITY IN V/ORDS, 57 (23) '' She united the great body of the people in her and their interests." (24) " At this meeting he said publicans detested drunkards as much as teetotalers." (25) *' Quixote was not more unlike Sancho than these two friends." (26) " Tickets, one shilling ; children half-price, may be had at the office." CHAPTER HI. PRECISION— AMBIGUITY IN WORDS. *i. " The words which a man uses to express his ideas may be faulty in three respects. They may either not express that idea which the author intends, but some other which only resembles it; or they may express his idea, but not quite fully; or they may ex- press it together with something more than he intends. Precision stands opposed to all these three faults, but chiefly to the last." Comment on this. "^2. Distinguish carefully between Perspicuity and Precision, and refer to writers whose style is clear but not precise. 3. " The mind can clearly view only one subject at a time. Feeble writers are always going about it and about it ; but never just hit the thing. The image as they set it before you is always seen double, and no double image is distinct." Illustrate this statement by examples. 4. Re-write the following sentences, removing am- biguities : — (i) "I have been so much pleased with your re- markable countenance, that I venture to apply to you again." (2) "My brethren, we are met here for no earthly purpose." 58 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. (3) "This warehouse is perfectly unapproachable." (4) " Wanted, a boy for cutting up." (5) "Wanted, a servant for sale, and a man to turn in wood." (6) " He sent his daughter to this school and pro- mised her masters to help her with her home lessons." (7) " Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others; and think that their reputation obscures them, and their commendable virtues stand in their light, and therefore they do what they can to cast a cloud over them that the bright shining of their virtues may not obscure them." (8) " He told his friend that his brother was sur- prised that he had given so small a contribution, for he was a very rich man, in spite of his recent losses and the bad state of trade, compared with himself" (9) " Any dog found without his master, who, on being asked his name, refuses to give it, will be shot." (10) "The old Pictish tongue died out before the spread of Christianity." (it) " Mankind never employed so many figures of speech as when they had hardly any words for express- ing their meaning." (12) "I have six children, and I never saw one of them." (13) "I am not bound to receive any messenger that you send." (14) " All discourse addressed to the understanding seldom permits much inversion." (15) " Licias promised his father never to abandon his friends." (16) "Every man cannot distinguish between pedantry and poetry; every man therefore is not fit to innovate." (17) "The manuscript contains only one religious poem by Henryson." (18) " Of the poem no other copy is known to afford any various readings." CH. IV.] ARRANGEMENT. 59 CHAPTER IV. ARRANGEMENT. 1. Show how the lack of inflection in English words increases the difficulty of attaining precision in expres- sion, and of giving ideas their due emphasis. 2. Briefly state and illustrate the rules regarding the arrangement of adverbs, of relatives, and of relative clauses in an English sentence. 3. Give examples of sentences in which inversion is an aid to clearness. 4. Remove the inaccuracies, ambiguities or absurd- ities in the following sentences, either by re-arrangement or by altering the form of expression: — (i) " Many a student has been compelled to reluc- tantly sit here for months." (2) " Imagination only creates what fancy decor- ates." (3) " The heavens are not open to the faithful only at intervals." (4) *' Thoughts are only criminal when they are chosen and then continued." (5) '* He not only offered me money, but, what was of greater value, advice." (6) " I never remember to have heard of such a case." (7) "At night they objected to work as much as the rest of us." (8) " The colon may be properly applied in the three following cases." (9) " The horse ran away with a gig, threw out the driver and cut a severe gash in one of his hind legs." (10) "Any person found Sticking bills on this church door will be prosecuted according to law, or any other nuisance." (11) "Instances of books belonging to students 6o ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. deposited on this bannister having gone astray, all who do so are requested to note the fact.'' (12) " The dissenters might not have counted Lord Eldon among the members of the Church of England on the score of his exceedingly scant attendance on her public services." (13) " The Turkish bath is peculiarly adapted for invalids of ample cubic space and highly ventilated." (14) "Toulouse is a large town containing 60,000 inhabitants built entirely of brick." (15) " Wanted a mahogany child's chair.'' (16) " In the proceedings of the High Court (1878) an instance is reported in which the conviction for murder of a subordinate court was on appeal set aside." (17) *'This kind of wit w^as very much in vogue among our countrymen, about an age or two ago, who did not practise it for any oblique reason but purely for the sake of being witty." (18) "We nowhere meet with a more glorious and pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun which is wholly made up of those different stains of light which show themselves in clouds of a different situa- tion." (19) " Please excuse my absence yesterday, as I was consulting a doctor for insomnia during the class hour." (20) " Hence he considered marriage with a modern political economist as very dangerous." (21) " Wolsey left at his death many buildings which he had begun in an unfinished state." (22) "The pretended confession of the Secretary was only collusion to allay the jealousies of the King's favouring popery, which still hung upon him, notwith- standing his writing on the Revelation, and affecting to enter on all occasions into controversy, asserting in particular that the Pope was Anti-Christ." cii. IV.] ARRANGEMENT. 6i (23) " In Glasgow three time guns were fired not one of which was ever heard in many parts of the city." (24) "From a habit of saving time and paper, which they acquired at the University, many write in so diminutive a manner that they can hardly read what they have written." (25) ** The following verses were written by a young man who has long since lain in his grave for his own amusement." (26) " It is made clear from Mr. Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell that the Parliament elected in January, 1835, did not contain a majority of members prepared to eject Sir Robert Peel from the office which he had just assumed by a vote of no- confidence." (27) " Lost an umbrella belonging to a gentleman with a curiously carved ivory head." (28) " Few people learn anything that is worth learning easily." (29) "John Keats, the second of four children, like Chaucer and Spenser, was a Londoner." (30) " The minister and kirk-session of Alloway desire to acknowledge the receipt of ;£2 from W. M . Esq., being the sum paid by trespasser in pursuit of game on Newark estate for the j)oor of the parish." 5. What is meant by the unity of a sentence ? Illustrate the confusion or clumsiness arising from changing the nominative or the construction, from multiplying parentheses, or from the too frequent in- troduction of qualifying clauses. 6. Reconstruct the following sentences so as to express their meaning more clearly and effectively : — (i) "Let him know that I shall be over in Spring, and that by all means he sells the horses." (2) " I have, notwithstanding this discouragement^ attempted a dictionary of the English language, which, 62 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. hi. while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected." (3) " Others which I considered as useful or know to be proper, though I could not at present support them by authorities, I have suffered to stand on my own attestation, claiming the same privilege as my predecessors of being credited without proof" (4) " But I confess myself attached to them as to the other historical institutions of my country, and that it appears to me that the worst thing that can be done with them is to abolish them." (5) " Circumstances having thus changed, and having been compelled to leave his family and friends, he settled for a time in Germany." (6) "And this prevents their attending enough to what is in the Bible, and makes them battle for what is not in the Bible, but they have put it there." (7) "After his vessel being forced on from the island of Prota, and seeing no other way out of the difficulties. Sir John Duckworth took advantage of the first fair wind to retrace his steps through the Sea of Marmora." 7. Recast the following, giving in simpler language what you conceive to be the meaning of the author : — (i) " True, also, it maybe questioned whether — seeing that an exact and complete knowledge of the past, and especially of the distant past, is impossible, and it is always only the past as per- ceived and shaped by his own spirit, and as represented by his own present mode of thinking, that any historian can give us — that which is valuable and permanent in any history is not more the meaning than the materials ; in other words, either the poetic significance with which the materials are invested by a mind see- ing them in that haze which already generalizes them for the imagination and blots out the particular, or the philosophic bearing on universal life which the mind can the more easily detect in them for a similar reason." (2) " For in personal intercourse reserve has a positive side, and its positive side is an influence of great power, though in the present day it is very economically used, the fashion being, as this author says, to assume that everything that can be ex- pressed ought to be expressed ; and, we may add, that a great CH. IV.] ARRANGEMENT, 63 deal which cannot be expressed ought to be more or less violently expelled or extruded upon the world from minds in which it was rather a pervading influence than a conscious idea." (3) "The unusual notes struck by William Blake, in any case appealing but to one class and a small one, were fated to remain unheard, even by the student of poetry, until the process of regeneration had run its course, and, we may say, the Poetic Revival gone to seed again ; seeing that the virtues of simplicity and directness the new poets began by bringing once more into the foreground are those least practised now." 8. Which are the leading defects in style exhibited in the two following sentences? Reconstruct them, and re-arrange some of the clauses : — "Now I think it very much amiss, that a man cannot go quietly through a town, and let it alone, when it does not meddle with him, but that he must be turning about and drawing his pen at every kennel he crosses over, merely o' my conscience, for the sake of drawing it : because, if we may judge from what has been wrote of these things, by all who have wrote and galloped, or who have galloped and wrote, which is a different way still ; or who, for more expedition than the rest, have wrote gallop- ing, which is the way I do at present — from the great Addison who did it with his satchel of school books hanging at his back and galling his beast's crupper at every stroke, there is not a galloper of us all who might not have gone on ambling quietly in his own ground (in case he had any) and have wrote all he had to write, dry shod, as well as not. For my own part, as heaven is my judge, and to which I shall ever make my last appeal — I know no more of Calais (except the little my barber told me of it, as he was whetting his razor) than I do this moment of Grand Cairo ; for it was dusky in the evening when I landed, and dark as pitch in the morning when I set out, and yet by merely know- ing what is what, and by drawing this from that in one part of the town, and by spelling and putting this and that together in another, I would lay any travelling odds, that I this moment write a chapter upon Calais as long as my arm ; and with so distinct and satisfactory a detail of every item which is worth a stranger's curiosity in the town, that you would take me for the town clerk of Calais itself — and where, sir, would be the wonder? was not Democritus, who laughed ten times more than I, town clerk of Abdera? and was not (I forget his name) who had more discretion than us both, town clerk of Ephesus ? — it should be penned moreover, sir, with so much knowledge and good sense, and truth and precision." 64 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. PART IV. STRENGTH AND GRACE OF STYLE. CHAPTER I. THE CHOICE OF WORDS AND PHRASES. A. Plain Words. 1. "When it is possible to use Saxon words, no others should be employed." Refer to, and illustrate, some of the exceptions to this rule. 2. Criticize the following : — (i) "The English language is what it is in great measure because it is much more than Anglo-Saxon." (2) "To revert to the language of our semi-bar- barous ancestors is as if we should discard modern apparel to resume the skin cloaks of the rudest age." 3. Show that the English language is in great measure indebted for its euphony to the variety of sources from which its vocabulary is drawn. 4. "The most concrete terms are the most effective." Illustrate this rule, and state any excep- tions that occur to you. 5. Express the full meaning of the following in words mainly of Anglo-Saxon origin : — (i) ** Although Chaucer had indubitably studied the produc- tions of those celebrated authors, anterior to this felicitous inter- view, it appears probable that these excursions gave him a revived appreciation of their compositions and extended his familiarity with the Italian fables. His foreign expeditions enabled him to cultivate the Proven9al languages with the greatest success, and induced him to polish the asperity and enrich the sterility of his native versification with more harmonious cadences and a more copious and variegated phraseology." CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 65 (2) " The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us, that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the prodigality of life ; he that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground. " (3) ^^ Concerning Anthropoids. — Anthropoid infants resemble human infants exceedingly ; puberty generally introduces considerable divergence ; finally animal peculiarities, including especially, diminutive crania, largely developed occipito- parietal crests, facial regions prognathously developed, etcetera, in- variably predominate." (4) ' ' The ceremonial was the occasion of considerable felicita- tion, and invitations to participate in the nuptial festivities were extended to numerous operatives in the surrounding localities." (5) '* The prime and sole initiation of beneficence is that due reverence for the August Ruler of all things celestial and terres- trial which by the sapient grace of the sacred Spirit illumines our mental opacity, and directs our course into r-egions more glorious than the Elysian plains of the poets. " (6) "Whoever was acquainted with him was certain to be solicited for small pecuniary contributions, which the frequency of the request made in time considerable ; and he was therefore quickly shunned by those who were become sufficiently familiar to be acquainted with his necessities ; but his rambling manner of life, and constant appearance at establishments of public resort, invariably procured him a new succession of friends, whose kind- ness had not been exhausted by repeated requests ; so that he was seldom absolutely without resources, but had in his utmost exigencies this comfort, that he always imagined himself sure of speedy relief. It was observed, that he always requested favours of this description without the least submission or apparent con- sciousness of dependence, and that he did not appear to regard a compliance with his request as an obligation that deserved any extraordinary acknowledgements ; but a refusal was resented by him as an affront, or complained of as an injury ; nor did he readily reconcile himself with those that either denied to lend, or gave him subsequently any intimation that they expected to be repaid. He was occasionally as far compassionated by those who were cognizant of both his merit and his distresses, that they received him into their families ; but they presently discovered him to be a very incommodious inmate ; for being always accus- tomed to an irregular manner of life, he was unable to confine himself to any stated hours, or pay any regard to the regulations of a family, but would prolong his conversation till midnight, C 66 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. without considering that business might require his friend's appli- cation in the morning ; and when he had persuaded himself to retire to bed, was not, without equal difficulty, aroused to dinner : it was therefore impossible to render him any distinction without the entire subversion of all economy, a kind of establishment which, wherever he peregrinated, he always appeared ambitious to overthrow. It must therefore be acknowledged, in justification of mankind, that it was not always by the negligence or coldness of his friends that Savage was distressed, but because it was in reality very difficult to preserve him for more than a brief period in a condition of ease. To supply his pecuniary requirements was an impracticable attempt ; for no sooner did he discover himself master of a sum sufficient to liberate him from solicitude for a day than he became profuse and luxurious." ^6. Express the following in more varied, yet natural, language : — (i) " Short ivords on Speech- Craft, Sir, — I see that a shrewd man whose name is Barnes has writ a book on the speech-craft of our tongue, in the which book he has laid on his head a new task, to wit, to show forth all this lore in words of sheer home growth. Now I dare say this is a thing which must need great wit to do, and for aught I know he has done it right well. But though it may take a shrewd man to do this, yet I do not think it fit work for a wise man, and with your leave I will tell why. Our tongue, which we speak and write, is not a poor one but a rich one, and its wealth is of long words as well as short, and of words brought from far as well as of words born in our own folk. Now to cast off half this good store of wealth and make no use of it seems to me not the deed of a wise man nor a thing of praise, if it be not by way of sport to show that such a thing can be done for a while if a man have a mind to it ; just as a man may write, if he will take some small pains for that end, all in quite short words, like as I now write these lines to you. But you must look right long ere you find a man who will choose to write in this way all his days ; I am sure that man will not be I. So I think a wise man who would show forth fair speech in our tongue will not shun long words, nor yet the words that have come to us from France and the lands far off, but will use all our wealth of words with wit and skill ; not as a fool doth, who spends his breath in great words of which he knows not the sense and weight. That the fool knows not how to use them is no cause to let the wise man from his right and just use." (2) "A great shout followed on his words, and he sat down again. But Fox of Upton came forth and said : ^ "O aldermen, we have yeasaid the fellowship of the valiant men who have come to us from out of the waste ; but this we CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 67 have done, not because we have known them, but because we have seen clearly that they will be of much avail to us in our war- fare. Now, therefore, if the tall chieftain who sitteth beside thee were to do us to wit what he is, and whence he and his are come, it were well, and fain were we thereof ; but if he listeth not to tell us, that also were well. " (3) ** People began to gather about these chapmen at once when they fell to opening their bales and their packs, and unloading their wains. ... So presently they fell to chaffer : for the carles brought them little bags of the river -borne gold, so that the weights and scales were at work ; others had with them scrolls and tallies to tell the number of the beasts which they had to sell, and the chapmen gave them wares therefor without be- holding the beasts ; for they wotted that the Dalesmen lied not in chaffer." (4) "Then the eager young men and the hunters, and those who knew the mountain best drew together about the hearth and . . . said that they who were fain of the hunting of the elk would have no likelier time than that day for a year to come. Short was the rede betwixt them, for they said they would go to the work at once and make the most of the short winter daylight. So they went each to his place and some to their fathers' houses to fetch each man his gear. ... So Face-of-god did on his hauberk over his kirtle, and over it he cast his foul-weather ward, so that none might see it ; . . . therewithal he took his skids and went forth of the hall to the gate of the Burg ; whereto gathered the whole company of twenty-three, and Goldmane the twenty-fourth. And each man there had his skids and his bow and quiver, and whatso weapon seemed good to him. So they went out-a-gates, and clomb the cliff." 7. Contrast the style of the two following letters, and rewrite the first in the manner of the second, the second in the manner of the first. (I) Dear Fanny, I am afraid I shall not pass in my examination ; Miss C. says she thinks I shall. I shall be glad when the Serpentine is frozen over, for we shall have such fun ; I wish you did not live so far away, then you could come and share in the game. Father cannot spare Willie, so I have as much as I can do to teach him to cipher nicely. I am now sitting by the school fire, so I assure you I am very warm. Father and mother are very well. I hope to see you on Christmas Day.. Winter is coming ; don't it make you shiver to think of? Shall you ever come to smoky old London again ? It is not so bad, after all, with its 68 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. bustle and business and noise. If you see Ellen J. will you- kindly get her address for me. I must now conclude, as I am soon going to my reading class ; so good bye. From Your Affectionate Friend, M. (2) My Dear Parents, The anticipation of our Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights. Not only that its "festivities," its social gatherings, and its lively amusements crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest commended to your hospitable love by the performance of all you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and flowers. And time has fled fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate. It is with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of my excellent tutors and the example of my excellent parents. We break up on Thursday, the nth of December instant, and my impatience of the short delay will assure my dear parents of the filial sentiments of Theirs very sincerely, N. P.S. — We shall reassemble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P. present their respectful compliments.^ 8. When are Quotations and Allusions properly, and when improperly, introduced? In what kinds of composition are they most frequently admissible ? ■^9. "A Quotation has a limited term of life." Refer to trite quotations apt to disfigure the style of inferior writers. * 10. Examine and illustrate the statement that a quotation, like a trope, is admissible only when it is, in effect, a condensed argument. "^11. "Quotations well employed quicken the thought or stir the emotion of the reader ; misused, ^ We are indebted to the publishers for permission to reprint those letters from the late Mr. Matthew Arnold's " Reports on Elementary Schools," pp. 131-133. CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS, 69 they merely display the erudition or the ignorance of the writer." Criticize and illustrate this assertion. *i 2. Compare and contrast the first and second with the third of the following passages — {a) as to their - general style ; (b) with special reference to the use of quotation and allusion. (i) '* How would Christianity have affected him? in what measure would it have changed him ? . . . What would he have said to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew ? What would have become of his notions of the exitiabilis sicperstitio^ of the * obstinacy of the Christians ' ? Vain question ! Yet the greatest charm of Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless ; yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms for something beyond, — tendentemque manus ripae ulterioris amore. " (2) * ' I speak not the language of party. I feel above the level of party. I speak as I have ever endeavoured to speak on behalf of the unenfranchised, the almost voiceless millions of my countrymen. Their claim is just and it is constitutional. It will be heard, and it cannot be rejected. To the outward eye monarchs and parliaments seem to rule with an absolute and unquestioned sway; but — and I quote the words which one of our old Puritan poets has left for us — ' There is on earth a yet auguster thing. Veiled though it be, than Parliament or King.' That auguster thing is the tribunal which God has set up in the consciences of men. It is before that tribunal that I am now permitted humbly to plead, and there is something in my heart — a small but an exultant voice — which tells me that I shall not plead in vain." (3) " Thinking of those her days of youth, and comparing them with the present, which, though groaning under the accumulating cumbrousness of scholastic apparatus, lack the vitality and bloom of real erudition, I seem to hear the genius of the past say, that to fulfil our generation work under the conditions, and with the vastly increased advantages of the new time, we need a revival of the ancient love of learning for its own sake, the ancient estima- tion of it as poor Scotia's fittest dowry for her children, not for- getting the lifting up of our hearts to the rich inheritance in the deathless clime, which so captivated the finest spirits of our fathers, who saw it only * under the opening eyelids of the morn. '" *i3. Define " Affectation." To what extent, and in what forms, is it found in the writings of the following 70 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. authors ? Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Sterne, Words- worth, Lamb, Carlyle, Browning, Matthew Arnold. 14. State distinctly what is meant by the following .terms and expressions : — bombast ; fustian ; rhodo- montade ; allusive pedantry. 15. What is meant by the expressions " fine- writing " and a " florid style " ? Show that they may be legiti- mately applied to sentences in which the individual words are simple. *i6. ** There are silences in nature more impressive than her storms." Contrast the force of a reserved with the weakness of an effusive style. "^17. Distinguish between sentimentaHsm and senti- ment, and give examples of the manner of each. 18. Criticize the style of the following passages, and express their meaning more effectively : — (i) *' She then went out to water the thirsty flowers, which turned up their faces to be washed with the silent delight which was their thanks." (2) " Seventy years have elapsed since then ; but is it, or needs it be different now ? No ; a thousand times No ! The old city is there still, hacked by the pickaxe, and scathed by fires, and maltreated, perhaps more than was necessary, by so-called improvements, but destined to resist the pickaxe, and fires, and improvements, till the picturesque ceases from the earth and the Castle has a Russian garrison. . . . Chalmers came from Anster village, and Glasgow and St. Andrews had him first ; but Edinburgh had the honour of his old white head — which, oh, that never I can see again ! Wilson, the magnificent, had his dwelling here ; here he chanted his prose-poetry, and shook, so savage, his yellow mane." (3) *' Hardly had she been able to lisp the primary accents of infancy when a French bonne was procured for her." (4) "A Liberal programme of seven folio pages in length which does not include that point of Liberal principle seems to me rather like the play of Hamlet with the part of the Prince of Denmark omitted." (5) " So far as this country is concerned, we need be under no apprehension that it will visit our shores. Its wave may never reach the Russian frontiers ; and if it should, it ought to be beaten back at the barriers raised by Germany and Austria. Even should these not avail, it would still have a large portion of Europe to traverse, and the * silver streak ' would have to be CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 7^ crossed before it could attack us. We are not forgetting that though the wave of the disease could hardly reach us, there are other means by which it might be imported." (6) "The inevitable in the finance of Turkey has been long delayed, but it has come at last. Yesterday, there was a " writing on the wall " of the London Stock Exchange that caused an immediate panic. It was a telegram sent by the Director-General of the Ottoman Bank announcing the receipt by him of a decree authorising the payment of the coupons partly in cash and partly in 5 per cent, bonds." (7) " A Chamber of eldest sons, claiming to impose their will on the nation because their ancestors stole something or killed somebody centuries ago, cannot be long endured. Happily, the Peers have now dug a pit into which they themselves have fallen. Salisbury's blunder is the people's opportunity. Let us strike the iron while it is hot." (8) * * Ever since the Psalmist longed for the wings of a dove, there has been an irrepressible craving in the human breast for aerial locomotion. Nay, even prior to the Psalmist the desire must have existed. We find evidence of it in the history of the ingenious Daedalus, who, among his many inventions, fitted himself and his son Icarus with a pair of serviceable wings. Icarus, it is true, came to grief by means of his, but rather through his own foolish ambition than through any defect in his father's mech- anism. Like too many other people, he would fly too high, until he singed his wings in the heat of the sun, fell ignominiously into the sea, and thereby created the first record of baptism by immersion." (9) '* This country has not yet confessed to the soft impeach- ment. . . . They have been so often accused of giving the cheek to the Gallic smiter that Lord G's. final snub to him on Saturday may be reckoned a feather in his cap." (10) " Like the voice of a mother calling to her lost child, the familiar accents of Christmas time fall upon the ears of a some- what bewildered and wondering world. . . . Why not for one day treat these hard, confusing, saddening riddles of existence as the little ones do a conundrum too difficult to find out ? . . . The banquet hall of life, with its hangings of gold and blue and white by day, and its curtains of spangled velvet by night, is common to all ; so are the manifold pictures on the great book of existence, so are mother's love and home affections, and play and sleep, and dreams and dawn." (11) "That beautiful July day, as we went on board at Liverpool, the sun was blooming, like a flower of light, in the bright blue skies, and the soft balmy air was laden 'with the briny kisses of the great sweet mother.' . . . Then sten- torian lungs shouted ' all for the shore,' and departing friends 72 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. and relatives swarmed down the steep wooden wall of the vessel. . . . . As night came on, we seemed to realize the fact that here, in our huge iron-hearted home, we were alone on the wide world of waters — the same living restless waters whereon Christ had walked, and whose waves he had bidden 'Peace, be still.'" (12) "In the common walks of life, with what delightful emotions does the youthful mind look forward to some anticipated scene of festivity ! Imagination is busy sketching rose-tinted pictures of joy. In fancy, the voluptuous votary of fashion sees herself amid the festive throng, 'the observed of all observers.' Her graceful form, arrayed in snowy robes, is whirling through the mazes of the joyous dance ; her eye is brightest, her step is lightest in the gay assembly. In such delicious fancies time quickly glides by, and the welcome hour arrives for her entrance into the Elysian workl, of which she has had such bright dreams. How fairy-like does everything appear to her enchanted vision ! Each new scene is more charming than the last. But after a while she finds that beneath this goodly exterior, all is vanity ; the flattery which once charmed her soul, now grates harshly upon the ear ; the ball-room has lost its charms ; and with wasted health and embittered heart, she turns away wdth the conviction that earthly pleasures cannot satisfy the longings of -the soul" (13) "The fairest of Mays was smiling upon France. On battle-fields that last year's rain of blood had fertilised, the green promise of harvest covered the soil from which dead faces had looked piteously up to heaven ; and the beneficent goddess, kindest Ceres, moved in bounty across the land that war had desolated, hiding with vine-leaf and corn-stalk the broad track of ruin that had been left where German feet had marched on Paris. As fair of face as in the days when she was Queen of Nations, France hid the fetters that the Teuton had clasped on her wrists, and the vulture of civil war that tore her bosom, beneath a robe of green and wreaths of flowers. — It was one of the brightest days of early May, and Nature had still the freshness of spring, but was all glowing and flushed with the approach of summer ; and the sky above was unclouded, and the earth all sunny and smihng." B. — Figurative Language. I. — Figures founded on Resemblance. 1. Discriminate carefully between Simile, Metaphor, Personification, Allegory, Parable and Fable. 2. Give instances of physical terms applied to mental states and vice versa. CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS, 73 3. To what purposes is metaphorical languages most appropriately applied ? "^4. " All words are tropes." " A metaphor lurks in every expression of our thought." Examine and illustrate these statements. 5. State the ground of exception to mixed meta- phors. How far does the objection apply to a rapid succession of metaphors ? 6. Discriminate between mixed metaphors, properly so called, and the application of figurative adjectives to terms that have lost their originally metaphorical force. "^7. Illustrate some of the disadvantages of crowding figures together, or of drawing out consequences from them. 8. How far is it true that the language of early times abounds more in figurative terms than that of later times ? 9. Turn the following Metaphors into Similes : — (i) ** Cunning is the ape of wisdom." (2) " Mountains, on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest." (3) " Unfathomable sea whose waves are years." (4) " Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt." (5) ^ • • •. " Twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad." (6) ** Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The birth of each day's life, sore labour's bath. Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast." (7) " To husband out life's taper to its close And keep the flame from wasting by repose." (8) " Arethusa arose from her couch of snows Shepherding her bright fountains." 74 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. (9) " But yonder comes the powerful King of day, Rejoicing in the East." (10) '* I warmed both hands before the fire of life, It sinks, and I am ready to depart." 10. Criticize, and extend into Simile, Ruskin's description of a wave breaking against the rocks : — *' One moment, a flint cave, — the next, a marble pillar, — the next, a fading cloud." 11. Turn the following Similes into Metaphors : — (i) " Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark ; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other." (2) " Fortune has somewhat of the nature of a woman, that, if she be too much wooed, she is further off." (3) "As the flower is gnawed by frost, so every human heart is gnawed by faithlessness." (4) " The quality of mercy is not strained, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath." (5) "Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea." (6) " How far that little candle throws his beams ! So shines a good deed in a naughty world." 12. Expose the absurdity of the following mixed, confused, or incongruous metaphors, and express the same sense in consistent terms : — (i) "The rattle of firearms is looming in the dis- tance." (2) ^* The harvest season is now drawing near, and it is time to unleash the dormant sickle." (3) " That which lies beneath the surface only the future can adequately explore." CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 75 (4) " He unravelled all these obscurities, and with his penetrating illustrations threw light on all these unparalleled complications." (5) " But while he (Chaucer) extracted the kernel from the literature of France and Italy, he so breathed into it the spirit of his own genius, that it shone with a new lustre that far surpassed its former light ; and in the new setting which he gave it, it gained more than the old setting lost ; if some of the old metal remained, it received a new stamp and a fresh polish, and the addition of that which gave it the true genuine ring of worth." (6) " Wit often seizes its prey with a leonine grip ; yet sometimes it has to wander far in search of an appropriate soil — in vain do its seedlets fall upon minds without a sense of humour." (7) " He talked of eight measures as more or less likely to succeed, of which at least a half might be as dead as door nails now for any chance they have of living. He may put forth the tender leaves of hope with the prospect of blossom following as regards at least one Scotch measure — the Education Bill; but the other of the twins, the Endowed Schools Bill, does not look thriving." (8) *' In a great campaign, ruin's ploughshare passes over the proudest cities, and the humblest hamlet sends its fiery smoke heavenward." (9) "We had hoped that our contemporary was giving evidence of a return to fair play : but this week we observe he goes back to his wallowing in the mire of bigotry and confusion of ideas in which he evidently delights to wriggle." (10) "But alas all this golden time there did exist a cloud which grew and gathered, as one may say, behind the sinister shoulder of Fate, which took the maleficent delight of letting it swim like a baleful star into the lover's ken, cooling and destroying his love." 76 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. (ii) "Sterne had a somewhat unclerical if not cracked reputation." (12) "He flung aside the mask and showed the cloven foot." (13) "The curses of Mr. A. B. like chickens will come home to roost against him." (14) " Chaucer could clothe his shafts with delicate wit and poetic imagery to a degree unsurpassed." (15) " Shakspeare's verse was forged on the anvil of Marlowe's brain." (16) "And then the hearts Of all his people shall revolt from him And kiss the lips of unacquainted change And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath Out of the bloody fingers'* ends of John." (17) "Then let the peebles on the hungry beach Fillip the stars ; then let the mutinous winds Strike the proud cedars Against the fiery sun." (18) "The Gospel trumpet which Paul planted and ApoUos watered has been bearing good fruit in our midst." (19) "The majority skim over the thoughts of the few, and after they have chewed them and taken most of the flower away leave us the husks." (20) " The storm of the civil wars had swept over England, and but a few of the stately trees remained to rear their wrinkled brows above the ruin." (21) "In his satire his arrow is stretched to the utmost and drawn to the head." (22) " He re-lights the torch of poetry at the foun- tain head." (23) " The love of glory seems to be a spring im- planted by Nature to give motion to all the latent powers of the soul." (24) "Allow me to inform you, my lord, that if you do away with the feather bonnet you will make your- CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS, 77 self unpopular in Scotland. You must not tread upon the nationality of our country's toes." (25) *' It sketched the growth of the tongue spoken in this country from its root in the poem of ' Beowulf/ up to the fruit which it has borne in modern times." (26) " To one so gifted in the prodigality of Heaven can we approach in any other attitude than that of prostration ? " (27) " The drama in that degenerate age was sunk to the highest pitch of grossness." (28) "All the ancient sources were ransacked in the most beautiful manner." (29) "By the following year it was evident to all that the Corporation had saddled themselves with a white elephant." (30) " The bone of contention is still rampant among us." 13. Indicate the justification of the metaphors in the following expressions: — Imperious sea; gates of death; eating cares; altum mare; sea of troubles; pallida mors; morning of life; merciful clime; fleecy winter; tottering state; shallow fears; reasoning in a circle; Athens, the eye of Greece; the dying day; winged words; blind affection; grovelling superstition ; heavy sorrow. 14. Criticize, and re-write without figures of speech, the following sentences : — (i) ** As the history of Friedrich in this Custrin epoch, and indeed in all epochs and part, is still little other than a whirlpool of simmering confusions, dust mainly, and sibylline paper-shreds, in the pages of poor Dryasdust, perhaps we cannot do better than snatch a shred or two (of the partly legible kind, or capable of being made legible) out of that hideous caldron ; pin them down to their proper dates ; and try if the reader can, by such means, catch a glimpse of the thing with his own eyes." (2) "Discarding the heavy guns, fired at long intervals, as lumber- ing, the writers of the Saturday Review and its tribe discharge weekly volleys of slinging rifle balls and smashing round shot from their light twelve-pounders often with tremendous effect. Within a year or two there has come upon our tables a flood of 78 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. cheaper periodicals, and riding on the highest crest of the wave, the rich maize-coloured Cornhill^ which numbers its readers by the 100,000, and supplies for a solitary silver shilling a monthly crop of heavy golden grain reaped from the finest brain soils in the land." (3) ** As long as the well -compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Zion ; as long as the British monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds and dykes of the low flat Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France." (4) *' The clouds were now tumbling up out of the sea, and slanting athwart the stars pretty thickly, and the water was full of shadows, amid which the moonshine fell down in lines like slender cascades of molten silver, touching the black troubled surface here and there with points of brilliance as sparkling as the flash of diamonds, while the breaking waves glittered like the star-dust in the sky, as their foam crossed the path of these beams." B.— Figurative Language. II., III., IV. — Figures founded on Association^ Contrast^ etc. 1. Carefully distinguish between Autonomasia, Synecdoche, and Metonymy ; and explain the service rendered to style by each. 2. What is meant by saying that Autonomasia is the opposite of Personification ? ■^3. Give instances of the illegitimate use of figures founded on association. 4. To what does Antithesis owe its force? Give instances of its use and of its abuse. 5. Refer to writers in prose and in verse notable from their excessive use of Antithesis. 6. Distinguish between the following pairs : — Hyper- bole, Bombast : Irony, Innuendo : Euphemism., Euphuism. CH. I.] THE CHOICE OF WORDS. 79 *7. " The age of Elizabeth superabounded in metaphor : the age of Anne revelled in antithesis ; the age of Victoria is overburdened by quotation." Illustrate this by reference to some of the representa- tive works of each of the periods referred to. 8. Distinguish between Interrogation, Exclamation, and Apostrophe ; and give examples of each. 9. What are the limits to the use of Aposiopesis, Prolepsis, and Catalepsis. 10. Criticize the following, naming the figures of speech employed : — (i) "They recovered hope when they saw the blue bonnets approaching." (2) "A stupid moment motionless she stood." (3) "A cry that shivered to the tingling stars." (4) ** Smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled." (5) " I am of ladies most deject and wretched, That sucked the honey of his music vows." (6) "Adam, the goodliest man of men since born." (7) *' Put out the light, and then put out thy light." (8) " He set the glittering terror on his brow." (9) " Declamation roared, while passion slept." (10) "Shades of the Dead! have I not heard your voices Rise on the night roaring breath of the gale!" (11) "Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her works gave sounds of woe." (12) "Impious sons their mangled fathers wound." (13) " Aut conjurato descendens Dacus ab Istro." (14) " Music's golden tongue Flattered to tears this aged man and poor." 8o ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. (15) " Love seldom haunts the breast where Learn- ing lies, And Venus sets e'er Mercury can rise." (16) "O heavens 1 die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year ; but, by 'r lady, he must build churches then." (17) " Me miserable ! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair ? Which way I fly is Hell, myself am Hell, And in the lowest depth, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heaven." (18) "Strange! that the three greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all ended miserably. Castlereagh cut his own throat : Louis XVIU. rotted on his throne ; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor in Gottingen." (19) " He stood upon the dizzy cliff." (20) " It is evidently the work of a facile pen." (21) "From the gloom of the tunnel we emerged to the glad sun." (22) "The cup that cheers but not inebriates." (23) " But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters' pale." (24) " He would have been a Catiline, but for his cant." (25) "The voice comes deepest from the sepulchre, and a great name hath its root in the dead body." (26) " Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing." (27) "The glory of the priesthood and the shame Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age." (28) " I do the most that friendship can, I hate the viceroy, love the man." (29) "That star that at your birth shone out so bright. It stained the duller sun's meridian light." CH. II.] NUMBER OF WORDS. 8i (30) "Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa Catoni." (31) "A universe of death ! which God by curse Created evil — for evil only good ; Where all life dies, death lives ; and nature breeds Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things." (32) " So easy still it proves in factious times With public zeal to cancel private crimes." (33) " After I had resided at college for seven years, my father died, and left me — his blessing." (34) " Hunting for figures is invita Minerva'^ (35) "One thing, and one thing only, could make' Charles dangerous — a violent death.'' CHAPTER 11. NUMBER OF WORDS. :r. " Brevity is the soul of wit" Examine and illustrate this, and refer to exceptions. 2. Discriminate between verbosity and verbiage. 3. What is meant by an epithet^ as distinct from an adjective 1 Why are epithets, as a rule, more fre- quently admissible in speaking than in writing ? 4. Reduce the number of words in the following sentences : — (i) "I could quote from the same author hundreds of examples of similar errors ; but were there this only to be found in a work which was composed of matter which Avas read in the way of lectures by a professor of law to students in the University of Oxford, even this one ought to be sufficient to convince you of the importance of attending to the precepts which I have given you relative to this part of our subject." (2) " If the most forcible denunciation of the foreign pohcy of the Government and the promise of inquiry into the demand for an Irish Parliament cannot turn out a Tory in the one case, and actually put in a Tory in the other, it would obviously be well to do without one of them, and there can be no doubt as to which that is." 82 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. (3) " We see Mr. Thackeray stretching his hand through the intervening century, and grasping the hand of Fielding, as of the man in that time whom he could on the whole like best. " (4) Circumstances lent themselves greatly to further the con- spirators' treacherous plans, the execution of which was rendered more easy by the fact that the king was compelled to sojourn in the Abbey of Blackfriars which was the only convenient place in the town for him to reside in, for unfortunately there was no accommodation for his guards and the officers of his household in the Abbey, on account of which they had to seek quarters among the citizens and leave the king unprotected." (5) "One fact more is enough to discredit this theory; it is that Buddhism, at the time when it was dominant, never in the slightest interfered with caste in the countries where it happened still to exist ; and not only did it not do so — it was it which in ' all probability imported caste into countries where it did not yet exist. " 5. Break up the following into shorter sentences, also reducing the number of words. (i) " Lest therefore so noble a creature as man should be shut up incurably under a worse evil by an easy mistake in that ordi- nance which God gave him to remedy a less evil, reaping to himself sorrow while he went to rid away solitariness, it cannot avoid to be concluded that if the woman be naturally so of dis- position as will not help to remove but help to increase that same God-forbidden loneliness which in time draws on with it a general discomfort and dejection of mind not beseeming either Christian profession or moral conversation, unprofitable and dangerous to the commonwealth ; when the household estate, out of which must flourish forth the vigour and spirit of all public enterprises, is so ill-contented and procured at home and cannot be supported, such a marriage can be no marriage whereto the most honest end is wanting." (2) "As the greatest brunt of the danger was diverted by these poor people in his night-marches on foot, with so much pain and torment that he often thought that he paid too dear a price for his life before he fell into the hands of persons of better quality and places of more conveniency, so he owed very much to the diligence and fidelity of some ecclesiastical persons of the Romish persuasion, especially to those of the order of St. Bennet, which was the reason that he expressed more favours after his restora- tion to that order than to any other, and granted them some extraordinary privileges about the service of the queen, not con- cealing the reason why he did so, which ought to have satisfied all men that his majesty's indulgence towards all of that pro- fession by restraining the severity and rigour of the laws which CH. II.] NUMBER OF WORDS. 83 had been formerly made against them had its rise from a fountain of princely justice and gratitude and of royal bounty and clemency." (3) "Conversation which, among men whom intimacy and friend- ship have relieved from restraint and reserve, is liable when left to itself to so many inequalities, and which as it becomes rapid, so often diverges into separate and collateral branches in which it is dissipated and lost, being kept within its channel by a simple limitation of this kind which practice renders easy and familiar, flows along in one full stream and becomes smoother and clearer and deeper as it flows." (4) "But their brave efforts were futile, for the strong men easily burst in, even though one of the women courageously put her arm through the staple in place of the bar which had been so treacherously removed, for what is the strength of flesh and bone compared to that of iron, and, however brave and strong the heart which prompted Catherine Douglas to do that noble action, her arm being but weak was quickly shattered, and the murderers crushed triumphantly in, knocking down and tramp- ling under foot such of the ladies as came in their way, and one of them even turning aside from his search for James to attack the unhappy Queen who stood, her heart dying within her at sight of these bloodthirsty men who seemed so intent on taking the life of him she loved so well." 6. In what species of composition is repetition or iteration defensible. Show the propriety of its use in the following : — (i) " Though fallen on evil days, On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues." (2) "They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed ; but thou art the same ; and thy years shall have no end." (3) " Busk thee, busk thee, my bonny, bonny bride. Busk thee, busk thee, my winsome marrow.'' (4) " No, my good lord : banish Peto, banish Bar- dolph, banish Poins ; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company, 84 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. banish not him thy Harry's company ; banish plump Jack, and banish all the world." (5) " Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth its silver lining on the night ? I did not err, there does a sable cloud Turn forth its silver lining on the night'' (6) " Pol. My honourable lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. Ham, You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal : except my life, except my life, except my life." CHAPTER HI. ORDER OF WORDS. I. State and illustrate some of the rules conducive to the Unity of EngHsh sentences. When is Inversion justifiable ? "^2. Compare the following expressions of the same idea, and further illustrate the difficulty of transferring to English the full force of Latin inversions : — " Tantam mansuetudinem, tam inusitatam inaudi- tamque clementiam, tantumque in sum ma potestate rerum omnium modum, tacitus nullo modo praeterire possum." " It is impossible for me to pass over in silence such remarkable mildness, such singular and unheard of clemency, and such unusual moderation, in the exercise of supreme power." 3. Distinguish between a Loose Sentence and a Period, and refer to the main advantages and dis- advantages of each mode of construction. 4. " Short sentences give animation to style." How far is this true ? 5. Criticize and, if necessary, improve the following sentences : — CH. III.] ORDER OF WORDS. 85 (i) "It is not to the superficial observer that these nice qualities are evident." (2) " The men whom you are so anxious to discover I have already got information of." (3) *' Very touching are the reminiscences of the sweet singer whose short life-story it is our purpose to tell." (4) " May the happy message be applied to us, in all the virtue, strength, and comfort of it." (5) " This agreement of mankind is not confined to taste solely."' (6) " It is absurd to think of judging these poets by precepts which they did not attend to." (7) "Shall the narrow-minded children of earth . . . dare to treat as visionary objects which they have never made themselves acquainted with." (8) " Its speedily rising into open defiance of the constituted authorities was only the natural conse- quence of the irresolution with which it was at first dealt with." (9) ^^ I found in Past and Present strokes of de- scriptive power unequalled in my experience, and thrills of electric splendour which carried me enthusi- astically on." (10) " It is evident that Brahmanism, in order not to die of exhaustion, was condemned to violate constantly its own peculiar principles, while Buddhism, on the contrary, in order to spread wider, had only to practise its." 6. Indicate and correct defects in the construction' of the following sentences, which result from extending them beyond their natural close : — (1) In this uneasy state, both of his public and private life, Cicero was oppressed by a new and cruel affliction, the death of his beloved daughter TuUia, which happened soon after her divorce from Dolabella, whose manners and humours were entirely disagreeable to her. (2) The usual acceptation takes profit and pleasure for two different things ; and not only calls the followers or votaries of S6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. them by the several names of busy and idle men, but distinguishes the faculties of the mind that are conversant about them, calling the operations of the first, wisdom^ and of the other, zvit^ which is a Saxon word used to express what the Spaniards and Italians call ingeniOf and the French esprit^ both from the Latin ; though I think tuit more particularly signifies that of poetry. (3) " But now we must admit the shortcomings, the fallacies, the defects, as no less essential in forming a sound judgment as to whether the seer and artist were so united in him as to justify the claim first put in by himself and afterward maintained by his sect to a place beside the few great poets who exalt men's minds, and give a right direction and safe outlet to their passions through the imagination, while insensibly helping them toward balance of character and serenity of judgment by stimulating their sense of proportion, form, and the nice adjustment of means to ends." (4) " Let us now consider the nature of an art creation, and some of the methods by which the poet effects his end ; and also contrast to some extent these with other artistic methods — such as those of painting and sculpture ; merely premising here that each art (as, indeed, every other agency) has its special powers and its peculiar sphere, within which it will find its highest development ; whereas, if it invade another sphere and en- deavour to usurp other methods than its own, then it abandons and loses its own special powers, as is often the case in, for instance, allegorical painting, picturesque poetry, and perhaps also in the uses to which music is put, both on the stage and in the church." *7. " Climax is to the emotional what a Sorites in logic is to the intellectual part of our nature." Explain this statement. 8. Illustrate the legitimate and the excessive use of Climax and of Anti-Climax. 9. Carefully distinguish between Anti-Climax and ■ Antithesis. 10. Criticize the following : — (i) "Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks, And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks." (2) "Under Indian palm-groves, amid Austrahan gum-trees, in the shadow of African mimosas, and beneath Canadian pines, our goods are sold at a profit." CH. III.] ORDER OF WORDS, 87 (3) " William Shakespeare was the sun among the lesser lights of English poetry, and a native of Strat- ford-on-Avon." (4) " She wrote a brief letter, naming the dastardly threat, but expressing her fearless trust in the shelter- ing care of her God, and in the generous sympathy and protection of the men of Maybole." (5) " The statue of Diogenes is a most striking one, and almost a perfect hkeness of the late Mr. Potter." (6) " The poem is unsurpassed in grandeur by any in our language and is written in blank verse." II. Show the force gained by inversion in the following passages : — ( 1 ) " Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea ! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony." (2) " Sweet are the uses of adversity." (3) " Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell, Then shrieked the timid and stood still the brave." (4) " The Border slogan rent the sky, A Home ! a Gordon was the cry, Loud were the clanging blows; Advanced^ forced back, now low, now high. The pennon sunk and rose, As bends the bark's mast in the gale, When rent are rigging, shrouds, and sail, It wavered 'mid the foes." ■^12. Is the expression, the "prosody of prose" de- fensible ? How does the rhythm of the following passages differ from that of verse % Indicate some of the conditions on which their beauty depends. (i) ^' Of law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and 88 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. iv. earth do her homage; the very least as feeh'ng her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power : both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy." (2) " O eloquent, just, and mighty Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out and despised ; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched great- ness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hie facet r (3) *'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." (4) " It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles : and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in ; glittering like the morning star ; full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh ! what a revolution ! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion, that elevation and that fall." (5) " There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave : there are no voices, O Rhodope, that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last." (6) *^ If, two thousand years ago, we had been per- mitted to watch the slow settling of the slime of those turbid rivers into the polluted sea, and the gaining upon its deep and fresh waters of the lifeless, impas- CH. III.] ORDER OF WORDS. 89 sable, unvoyageable plain, how little could we have understood the purpose with which those islands were shaped out of the void, and the torpid waters enclosed with their desolate walls of sand ! How little could we have known, any more than of what now seems to us most distressful, dark, and objectless, the glorious aim which was then in the mind of Him in whose hand are all the corners of the earth ! how little imagined that in the laws which were stretching forth the gloomy margins of those fruitless banks, and feed- ing the bitter grass among their shallows, there was indeed a preparation, and the only preparation possible^ for the founding of a city which was to be set like a golden clasp on the girdle of the earth, to write her history on the white scrolls of the sea surges, and to word it in their thunder, and to gather and give forth, in world-wide pulsation, the glory of the West and of the East, from the burning heart of her Fortitude and Splendour." 90 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. v. PART V. PROSODY. I. Distinguish between Tone, Quantity, Accent, Emphasis, Pause, Caesura, Rhyme and Rhythm. "^2. State your view of the relation of the laws of Versification to those of Music. 3. Refer to and illustrate the leading rules of English versification : how do they differ from those that regulated Greek and Latin verse ? 4. Define : — a syllable, a foot, a line, a couplet, and a stanza, giving examples of the last three. 5. Adduce instances of assonantal, consonantal and medial rhyme, and of bad or defective rhymes. *6, Examine the statement that double and triple rhymes are proper only in humorous or comic verse. ■^7. Illustrate the difference between literal and suggestive Onomatopoeia. ■^8. Give instances in which the choice of words and their arrangement have been made to imitate or suggest : — (a) audible sounds, \b) quick or slow motion, (c) size, (d) difficulty and ease, \e) various moods of mind. 9. Illustrate the use of Alliteration in Engfish verse, and refer to some writers who employ it to excess. 10. On what principle is it that a freer use of figurative language, more numerous archaic forms, and more frequent inversions are permitted in poetry than in prose? II. Refer to other characteristics of poetic diction. PT. v.] PROSODY, 91 1 2. Indicate the nature and limits of rhetorical and poetic license. 13. Explain and illustrate the following terms : — Iambic and Trochaic Metres ; Dactyl, Anapaest, and Amphibrach. *i4. "The measure of Classic (Latin and Greek) verse is regulated by quantity and affected by accent : the measure of English verse is regulated by accent and affected by quantity." Explain and illustrate this. ■^15. Refer to some of the difficulties in the way of adopting classic metres in our language. 16. What are the metres indicated by the following titles : — Rhyme Royal or the Chaucerian Heptastich, The Spenserian Stanza, Ottava Rima ? Show their relation to each other. 17. Give examples of the favourite measures of Pope, of Scott, and of Burns. *i8. Illustrate the latitude in the disposition of the Pause and of the Accents assumed by writers of blank verse. 19. Scan the following verses and name the measures in which they are written : — (i) " I the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time." (2) " Half a league, half a league, half a league onward Into the valley of death rode the six hundred." (3) " The battle hurtles on the plains, Earth feels new scythes upon her, We reap our brothers for the wains, And call the harvest — honour." (4) " We look before and after And pine for what is not." (5) '* Thee, the voice the dance obey. Tempered to thy warbled lay." (6) " Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care." 92 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. v. (7) *' The black bands came over The Alps and the snow." (8) " Send but a song over sea for us, Heart of their hearts who are free ; Heart of their singer can be for us, More than our singing can be." *2o. Quote or refer to passages from well-known writers in verse in which the following poetic licenses are abused : — {a) the use of adjectives for nouns ; (b) the employment .of archaic words ; (c) the omission of pronouns or connectives \ (d) other contractions. 21. Restore the following to their metrical forms : — (i) '*The silent man need never care a feather for all the world, the man is altogether hidden beneath the silent tongue." (2) " When the tree is shaken by the wind there's not a bough or leaf can fall, but heed is taken of its falling by One that sees and governs all." (3) *' That philosophy which bids us smile at care must be true, since whether mortals cry or laugh, they must bear what happens." (4) " The parting year is mild, and the odour of the falling spray sweet ; more rudely fleet life passes on, and its closing day is balmless." (5) " I have tottered on to my ninth decade, and now no soft arm bends to steady my steps ; she, who once led me where she would, is gone, so Death shall find me ready when he calls me." 22. " It is much easier to write well in a regular than in an irregular measure." Give the reason of this. PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 93 PART VI. MISCELLANEOUS QUESTION PAPERS. [N.B. — In the following Exercises, examples of false construction, vulgarism, impropriety, obscurity, need- less caveat, double negative, injudicious inversion, mixed or absurd metaphor, stale quotation, " fine writing," and other violations of sense or taste are given, without being ranged, as in the preceding pages, under distinct heads. Where the examples are very numerous the exercise may be divided.] Exercise I. Point out and correct the errors in the following : — ( 1 ) "In our University, there is a great disproportion between the teachers and taught." (2) " No less than six men were engaged in this work." (3) "I intended to have written, but I had not time to." (4) * ' Mazzini may have been said to have done more for the unity of Italy than any living man (1865)." (5) " Mr. A. presents his compliments to Mr. B. I have got a hat which is not his ; if he have got a hat which is not yours, no doubt they are the missing one." (6) " He has to guard against possible fraud by cumbrous machinery, the protection against which is most expensive." (7) " Her hand was so severely injured that unless she has the forefinger amputated she will entirely lose the use of it." (8) "I am happy to hear it was his horse and not he who fell in the combat." (9) * ' Mr. J. , Mr. I. , Mr. C. and myself were out for a day's ramble." (10) "It had been my intention to have collected the remnants of Keats's compositions." (11) " Horace trembling for the life of Virgil is an interesting moment in the history of poetry and friendship." 94 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. (12) "Scarcely was breakfast over than the message was brought. " (13) ** Women of forty are more cherished and as advantage- ously married as chits of sixteen. " (14) ** Ornate and grotesque music have common faults." (15) " He quite forgets in his love for the naif old painter that he is painting him." (16) " The great difference lies between the labourer who moves to Yorkshire and he who moves to Canada. " (17) "The poems of Chatterton and Ossian are veiled in mystery." Exercise II. Criticize and rewrite the following sentences, noting the figures of speech, or improprieties of expression: — (i) " Immersed in the politics of Europe, and moulding the destinies of nations, was very different from either guiding his spindle or directing the loom, and must have exerted a cor- responding different influence on their intellectual powers." (2) " In stooping down to drink, the weight of the cart forced the mare's head just into the water, and before she could be re- leased was drowned. " (3) " Probably the tenant-farmers who have already got their rents fixed, have no lively sense of favours to come to urge them to the greasing of palms which have already toiled for them." (4) "At Monmouth he makes the acquaintance of the book- seller's two very pretty daughters, of whom his highness observes, as Lyell or Murchison would of lumps of nickel, they were the most perfect specimens of innocent girls I ever met with. " (5) ** The name of Flaxman is among the most distinguished of British sculptors." (6) "Amen said Yeo ; and many a honest voice joined in that honest compact and kept it too like men." (7) " Close as we stood to the choir, it was well-nigh impos- sible to distinguish the separate voices ; each blended into one another with such perfect harmony." (8) " These are the sterile battles over those defunct and mori- bund bodies." (9) " The unnatural marriage was divorced in the same year." (10) " I kindled a seed of future troubles." (11) " They did reject him of course, but his speech remains as a warning for all who may adopt another course." (12) " The idea which underlies most of his plays is a struggle of virtue assailed by external or inward temptations. " PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 95 (13) *' Undoubtedly one of the very first aims of all inventors is to reduce trained mechanical labour to as near the absolute zero point as possible. But possibly the whole of Sir W. T. 's inventions cannot claim that characteristic." (14) " During the recess you will continue to gather that prac- tical knowledge and experience which form the solid basis of legislative aptitude. " Exercise III. Rewrite the following sentences, removing the blemishes due to pompous or incongruous expres- sions : — (i) ** During this week Dalgetty has been very much to the front, groaning under the load of unreal theological tests, bursting with the mission of extra-muralism, gnashing his teeth at the State church, and in general acting as the spokesman of the fads and follies of the ragged regiments of intellectual conceits and social discontents which he really represents. The good industrious creature must not be too severely blamed for acting in this fashion. He has his patrons to please, and his bread and butter to win." (2) *' There is no reason to believe that when Prince B. is no longer working in the * roaring loom of time,' he will seem less than he does now. Generations which look back on him will see him, as we see him, towering from the sword hilt upwards over all his contemporaries. . . . C.'s part in the work was such that we can safely assert that had he not been there Italy would have attained to her unity in a very different way, much later, and at a greater cost. " (3) "There was no registrar in Zuvendis, where, if fond memory does not beguile us, the ceremony was performed." (4) *' It will not be impertinent nor unnatural to the present discourse to set down in this place the present temper and con- stitution of both Houses of Parliament and of the court itself, that it may be the less wondered at that so prodigious an alteration should be made in so short a time, and the crown fallen so low, that it could neither support itself nor its own majesty nor those who would appear faithful to it." (5) ** It seems the chief Liberal whip was for once not equal to the occasion and none of his bright particular stars would consent to shine on the audience. . . . We cannot rejoice in a star of the first magnitude, nor of the second, nor, perhaps, even of the third : but if it is so much as an asteroid let us be thankful and make ready our eyes for the unaccustomed effulgence, used as they are only to the farthing-candle lights of our own more homely products." 96 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. Exercise IV. Simplify and re-arrange the following : — (i) "A sensible augmentation of the post-horse duty collected in Scotland, took place immediately after the publication of the Lady of the Lake ; and from that year to the present time the stream of proud gazers on the picturesque scenery described by the * Wizard of the North ' has gone on increasing till it may almost be said that for everything Scotch, including the grouse and black-cock of our Highland hills and morasses, there is something like a mania, even on the part of persons not usually given to sentiment." (2) "Are there any compensating respects in which in the same business Prose has the advantage of Verse ? . . . What can Verse do in the business of narrative fiction which Prose cannot do, or has not been found to do so easily ? . . . Verse em- balms and conserves the contained meaning, whatever may be its intrinsic merit. When, however, a writer who has attained the art of verse by following a constitutional tendency to it . . does take the trouble of throwing a fictitious narrative into the form of verse, it is almost obvious that he sets out with a pre- determination that the matter shall be of a rich or serious kind, about the very best in its order that he is able to produce." (3) " My ancestors on the father's side were Tories and Cava- liers, who fled from the tyranny of Cromwell and settled in Barbadoes. For several generations, himself included, they were clergymen." (4) '* There are many places scattered over the world that are hallowed ground in the eyes of Englishmen ; but the most sacred of all would be the spot (could we only know it) where our forefathers dwelt in common with the Hindoos!" (5) "In Milton's time flourished Sir Thomas Browne, whose mantle long afterwards fell on Dr. Johnson, and who has there- fore much to answer for as regards the corruption of English prose." (6) "The ministry of 1757 was based upon all the high and all the low parts of our nature. Something of the like kind may be remarked in 1873 ^s to the men who keep the English printing press at work." (7) " When we go a little lower down, we alight upon the penny-a-liner. He scorns to abuse or revile his foes, much more to rate or miscall them, so long as he can vituperate them. Mr. Justice Keogh in 1872 was accused by many Irish pens of having vituperated the Galway clergy, but never of having sinned with the four other verbs in italics." (8) "The knowledge of English is a point well worth recom- mending to those who are to fill our pulpits." PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 97 Exercise V. Correct the errors in the use of words, phrases, and figures, exhibited in the following : — ( I ) " Let the excellence of his manner discover its propriety and artifice to good judges, never let it push itself forward to inter- cept the view of his principal object." (.2) " This merit is to be obtained by studying criticism." (3) *' He who examines the meaning of words will introduce clearness among his ideas." (4) "The infinitive approaches the nature of a substantive noun." (5) "The members participate the vivacity of short sentences." (6) " We gain perspicuity by accommodation to the order of nature." (7) " It is our interest to fortify ourselves against innovations into which we are certainly prone to deviate." (8) " No one will affirm but that the language of Chaucer seems not yet to have attained its manhood, but there is a glorious future in store for her." (9) " Many reputations are cut up if not blasted by persons of unchallengeable respectability who condescend to perform in the drama of life that most enjoyable of characters, the social scandalmonger, or. as it ought to be called, the moral vivisector." (10) " The most superficial student knows better than to decry the state of British literature to-day with its state during any anterior period. It does not need a profound knowledge of ancient history to demonstrate that the condition of ruined empires in the matter of literature has no parallel with the literature of to-day in any country, much less in Britain." (II) "I have reflected on the question whether A meant to injure B, and concluded he had no idea of such a thing." (12) " However this may be, it would be well for the liberals to ' tak' tent in time ' and be prepared. Unless they do so, they will inevitably reap the whirlwind, and their mouths will be filled with but the ashes of Dead Sea fruit." Exercise VI. Rewrite the subjoined sentences, strengthening them by the omission of caveats, trite quotations, indirect assertions, and vulgarisms. (i) " The Russian assault at Plevna, for which great prepara- tions had been made, appears to have been attended with heavy losses on both sides ; but the assailants have gained an important advantage in taking three redoubts. But the decisive attack has D 98 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pp. vi. yet to take place. At the same time what has happened must be very embarrassing to the Turks. ... If Plevna is evacuated and the tide of war rolls in the direction of Sofia the ostensible hesitation of the Servian Government will at once be abandoned. . . . The ostensible merit of the contrivance of arbitration was that it was a remedy co-extensive with the evil, for every quarrel must it was supposed admit of judicial settlement instead of solution by force. " (2) * ' If Henrietta Maria sinned against a code of morals whose day of ascendency was at hand, we may be sure that this code would to her have been as absolutely unintelligible as the political standpoint of the tite rondes for whom she is said to have invented the name. " (3) " The constituency has returned to its first love. The fact that the Home Rulers were slightly happier with the one than with "t'other dear charmer" does not prove that the policy of trying to win the backing of this faction is more pleasing to Liberals than to Conservatives, and so far as that is concerned the candidates may be said to have started fair at the polling booths." (4) *' Mr. B. has obviously been embarrassed by the fact that he was compelled to keep his best wine to the last. There is no doubt, however, as to either the body or the bouquet of yester- day's beverage. Mr. B. felt himself placed on the defensive by the Manchester speeches, and he in consequence performed the act known in the slang of athleticism as striking out straight from the shoulder." Exercise VII. Correct the inaccuracies or inelegancies in the following sentences : — (1) "I never remember to have felt an event more deeply than his death." (2) " That she was a somnambulist I know, as I have seen her under its influence. " (3) " All the parts of speech do not undergo a change of form. " (4) **If we look within the rough outside, we shall be richly rewarded by its perusal." (5) "Nobody ever put so much of themselves into their work." (6) *'The Lord Chancellor's infirm eyesight has not percep- tibly increased if it has not in some measure diminished. " (7) **Few precise rules can be given which will hold without exception in all cases ; but much must be left to the judgment of the writer. " PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 99 (8) *' In all beauty simplex munditiis is a capital quality." (9) "His sermons are of the order represented by the adjective excellent, and his pulpit exhibitions at once impress the mind." (10) "There is as much difference between comprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language, and that of an ordinary writer, as between seeing an object by the light of a taper and the light of the sun." (ii) "His bravery under this painful operation and the forti- tude he had shown' in heading the last charge in the recent action, though he was wounded at the time and had been unable to use his right arm, and was the only officer left of his regiment, out of twenty who were alive the day before, inspired every one with admiration." (i2) "I must confess after having surveyed the antiquities about Naples and Rome, I cannot but think that our admiration of them does not so much arise out of their greatness as uncommon- ness." (13) *' Such a Minister of Education, should he be appointed, would not need to wander in the bewildering mazes of etymology, where he would be almost as certain to lose his way as his pre- decessors have done, but might marshall the literary words of our language into a compact army without enquiring into the pedigree of every soldier in the ranks. It is these generals and commanders of the noble army that fights all the battles of civilization with pens for sword, and thoughts for cannon-balls, and that ought not to be encumbered with the ragged rabble of camp-followers who pollute the wholesome- air with their crazy shibboleths and make use of base slang, of no more literary value than the hissing of geese or the lowing of cattle." Exercise VIII. ■^Criticize the following farrago, and express all that is conveyed by it in a few English sentences. If you can, adduce other examples of the misuse of a smattering of languages. *' Du lieber Gott ! Das ist ein Fund ! a hymn by Columba, by a veritable Celt, in the veritable island of lona. That is the best epjJLalov that a good God has sent in my way since I left Gottingen. And, in the third place, will you allow me to interpolate myself into your rhetorical eTrideL^ts by reading " " A Gselic oran gaoil unmutilated and unadorned is apt to sin against the ro irpeirov. " " Nt? tov K^val Here's another of the same lean brood ! (a Scotch student) for all the world like a potato that has grown up tall and thin and white in a dark cellar." '* Per Baccho ! as we roo ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. used to say in Naples — in the name of all that is genial and jolly, there comes my friend Hilarius." *' Had Homer been a Scot, no doubt he would have made a sea diddTjjjia of it " (a fern). *'Kat diKaLOL ye 'iiradev, as we used to say at Christ-church ; served him right." "Perish Connell ! and so perish every man *6Wis rotaOrd 76 pi^oL,' as Homer says. ^"Icofiev,' as Plato says. Andiamo— let us go! Exeunt all towards the inn." " Well, gentlemen, ir^Kaaov ra iroTTjpLa, as we used to say at Balliol — trim up your glasses!" "The trans- Grampian Celt . . . moves in an atmosphere the very reverse of that which favoured the light blood of the merry Greek." "T£ 7e\a?s ; why do you laugh." "I stood with the iroKixjAoia^os hum of the shimmering waters of Loch Migdale behind me." Exercise IX. Criticize the following, naming the figures of speech, and pointing out where they are and where they are not justified. [N.B. — Neither in this or in the following exercise are all the passages adduced for censure.] (i) " Man to himself Is a large prospect raised above the level Of his own creeping thoughts." (2) " The world spirit is a good swimmer, he snaps his finger at laws." (3) " Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the apron-string of the past." (4) " I am not I if there be such an I, Or those eyes shut that make thee answer I." (5) " Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, And therefore I forbid my tears." (6) " O so light a foot Will ne*er wear out the everlasting flint." (7) " New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes ancient good uncouth ; They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth. PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. loi Lo, before us, gleam her camp-fires ; we our- selves must pilgrims be — Launch our ' Mayflower,' and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key/' (8) " This my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine. Making the green one red." (9) " Sir Henry Savil said once that he thought poets the best writers — next to them that writ prose." (10) "I am not sure that it is true, for it has not yet been contradicted by her Majesty's Government." Exercise X. Point out and name the figures of speech or the rhetorical forms in the following, and state where they are used with consistency and propriety and where they are tasteless or forced. (i) "The Lord is my song, he is become my sal- vation." (2) " Why leap ye, ye high hills." (3) '* Like flame within the naked hand His body bore his burning heart." (4) " Craterus loves the king, but Hephestion love? Alexander." (5) " He was condemned, and passing into the hands of the master of the high works was in due course sus- pended." (6)" " Nothing is there to come, and nothing past. But an eternal Now does always last." (7) "I will now take two well known legends in early English history, and attempt to dissect them and to trace their several elements to their respective sources. I02 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. In both cases we shall find a certain kernel of truth, round which a whole tissue of romance has been woven." (8) "The lately-fledged Liberal Association desires to air its pinions in as lofty a flight as was attempted two years ago, when it got Lord to attend a meeting." (9) " Toiling up the steeps of a late civilization : nearing the summit now, and hoping soon to go down into the happy and genial valley below : shall the icy chilling breath of suspicion and jealousy come from us?" (10) " He drew the tail of his claw-hammer coat temptingly along the platform, but his shillelagh is, after all, only his tongue." (11) " Experience to fools is like a stern lantern, it only lights the past." (12) " O conspiracy ! Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night. When evils are most free ? " (13) " Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." • Exercise XL ■^Distinguish between the parts played by Fancy and by Imagination in the following quotations : — (i) " Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine. The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet. The musk-rose, and the well attired woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears." PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, 103 (2) " O Proserpina, For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's waggon ! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses. That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength." (3) " There is pansies, that's for thoughts." (4) " Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky, And fan our people cold." (5) "Who is she that looketh forth as the morning; fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners ? " (6) "Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars." (7) " Hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose." (8) " The rude sea grew civil at her song And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music." (9) " If you do love old men, if your sweet sway Allow obedience, if you yourselves are old. Make it your cause." (10) "I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness ; I never gave you kingdom, called you children." (r i) " What, have his daughters brought him to this pass ? " (12) " Her feet beneath her petticoat. Like little mice, stole in and out." (13) " Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity." 104 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. Exercise XII. "^On what depends the force of the Satire, Wit, or Humour m the followmg passages? Under which head does each fall ? (i) "Sir, I admit your general rule. That every poet is a fool : But, you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet." (2) ''In all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og, For every inch that is not fool is rogue." (3) "Blest paper-credit ! last and best supply That lends corruption lighter wings to fly." (4) "My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the pubHc, that if in the following lines a compliment or expression of applause should escape me I fear you would consider it a mockery of your established character, and, per- haps, an insult to your understanding. . . . You have done good by stealth. The rest is upon record." (5) "Wit, like tierce claret, when't begins to pall, Neglected lies and's of no use at all ; But in its full perfection of decay Turns vinegar, and comes again in play." (6) " You beat your pate and fancy wit will come : Knock as you please, there's nobody at home." (7) " By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye. Why, hear you, my masters : was it for me to kill the heir-apparent ? should I turn upon the true prince ? why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules : but beware instinct; the lion will not touch the true prince." (8) "Good morrow, fool," quoth I. " No, sir," quoth he, "Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune" : And then he drew a dial from his poke. PT. VI.] MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 105 And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says very wisely, " It is ten o'clock : Thus we may see," quoth he, ''how the world wags : 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, And after one hour more 'twill be eleven : And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot ; And thereby hangs a tale." (9) "I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove : I will roar you, an't were any nightingale," (10) "I do remember him at Clement's Inn like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring : when a' was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife ; a' was so forlorn, that his dimensions to any thick siglit were invincible : a' was the very genius of famine." (11) " No wh-er so busy a man as he ther nas : And yet he semed besier than he was." (12) " Oh, I sink, I sink (cried Panurge in a storm). Oh to be but once again on dry ground ; never mind how or on what condition : oh, if I was but on firm land, with somebody kicking me." (13) "A young man claimed to be exempt from con- scription, because he was the only son of a widowed mother — who supported him." (14) " Accept a miracle instead of wit, See two dull lines by Stanhope's pencil writ.'^ (15) ''It would be very ungrateful in me to desire to leave your ladyship : because as why, I should never get so good a place." (16) "A poniard decked her girdle as the sign She was a sultan's bride — thank heaven, not mine." io6 ENGLISH COiVPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi. (17) " We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb ? " (18) "But Satan now is wiser than before And tempts by making rich, not making poor." (19) " Wise Peter sees the world's respect for gold, And therefore hopes this nation may be sold." (20) " Heine, when dying, said to his wife, " Marie, I hope you will marry again." "Why? Heinrich." " That one man may regret my death." (21) " Bright like the sun her eyes the gazers strike, And like the sun they shine on all alike." (22) " Don Jose and the Donna Inez led For some time an unhappy sort of life ; Wishing each other not divorced but dead. They lived respectably as man and wife." (23) "What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before Prove false again ? Two hundred more." (24) '' I never read the books I review, lest the reading should prejudice my judgment." (25) " It is harder to cleanse the Theatre than the Augean stables ; for, in this case, the oxen are in the stalls." (26) "Our worst misfortunes are those which never befall us." (27) "When Bishop Berkeley said 'there was no matter,' And proved it — 'twas no matter what he said." PT. VII.] THEMES FOR ESSA YS. 107 PART VII. THEMES FOR ESSAYS. A. — General Themes. 1. A description of a scene in nature. 2. An estimate of some great historical character. 3. What is your favourite work of fiction ? Give reasons for your choice. 4. Write a letter, as to a friend, giving a short account of a journey, real or imaginary, by land or sea. 5. A letter to a friend recounting an imaginary interview with some eminent person and recording your supposed impressions of his conversation and character. 6. Write the letter of an applicant for a situation and the answer of the patron or employer. 7. Write two letters, one in answer to the other: the one in homely English, the other in a Latinized style. 8. An imaginary dialogue between a student of Natural Science and a student of Language and Litera- ture ; each maintaining the superior utility and interest of his favourite pursuit. 9. A short address in the character of a candidate for election to Parliament, rejected by one constituency and applying to another. 10. An imaginary State Paper from a Russian Minister demanding the extradition or surrender of a Nihilist, and the English Minister's reply. 11. In what respects should the teaching of a Uni- versity differ from that of a School ? io8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCTSES. [pt. vii. 12. The advantages and disadvantages of public school education compared with that received from a private tutor at home. B. — Grammar and Style. 1. '* Illogical grammar is an unstable convention." Examine the relation of Logic and Grammar. 2. Comment on the statement that '' No man can of his own will add one word to a language or take one away.'' 3. Discuss the tendencies of syntax in the present day and the new influences brought to bear on it. Quote phrases and words that are struggling to be recognized as correct English. 4. " To parse an English sentence you must first understand it : to understand a Latin sentence you must first parse it." Explain and illustrate this. 5. " Modern EngHsh is the least inflected and the most composite of all languages.'' Refer to some of the gains and losses incident to these characteristics. 6. Briefly compare our language with any other with which you are acquainted. What are its advantages and disadvantages in regard to clearness, strength, and grace as compared with any other widely extended language. 7. Refer to the present prospects of the English language. To what dangers is it chiefly exposed ? 8. '* The language of a country is its moral baro- meter." Show how the changes that have passed over the meanings of some words throw a light on the tendencies of the national mind. 9. The relationship of language to character, (a) in nations, (h) in individuals. 10. "He who writes badly thinks badly." Com- ment on this. PT. VII.] THEMES FOR ESSAYS. 109 11. Examine the following statements : — {a) Consider the thoughts deeply and the words will take care of themselves. (p) " We may spoil our style by paying too much attention to it." 12. "Etymology is not always a safe guide to the meanings of words." Explain this remark, and illus- trate it by examples. 13. In what circumstances can it be maintained that gesture is more emphatic than speech. 14. " The best style is the most forcible." How far is this true ? 15. Recount the chief causes of feebleness in writing. 16. "Metaphors, antitheses and quotations have in- jured more than they have adorned the style of our writers." Criticize this. 17. "A French family settled in England and edited the English language." What does our language owe to its Latin and Romance elements ? 18. Estimate the impress made on English style by our intercourse with France, Germany, and America. 19. Gibbon has been charged with having in his autobiography forgotten the .difference between him- self and the Roman Empire. With what reservations may the terms ' pompous ' or ' florid ' be applied to the styles of Gibbon and of Johnson? 20. What schools of deliberately artificial writing have at any time become fashionable or obtained currency in our country? Refer to some of the lead- ing authors whose works illustrate those fashions, and to some of the historical causes that introduced or favoured them. 21. Indicate the leading faults in the styles of the following novelists : — Dickens, Trollope, Guida. 22. Refer to authors whose style answers to any one of the following epithets : — Diffuse, obscure, no ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vii. elliptical, florid, pedantic, antithetical, affected, col- loquial. 23. " No epithet should be used, which does not express something not expressed in the context, nor so implied in it as to be immediately deducible." On what principles does this rule rest, and with what reservations may it be accepted ? 24. " Perhaps it is when the Imagination flies the lowest, that we see the hues of her plumage." Com- ment on this. 25. " The infallible test of a blameless style is its untranslateableness in words of the same language, without injury to the meaning.'' Examine this. C. — Oratory and Other P'orms. 1. Refer to the requisites of a writer compared with those of a speaker, and to the main differences between spoken and written composition. 2. Distinguish carefully between Oratory, Rhetoric, Declamation, and Eloquence. 3. Briefly compare the qualifications of an Historian, an Orator, a Poet, and a Critic. 4. Account for the fact that few great orators have been even considerable writers. 5. " The Essayist cannot be too terse, nor the Orator too diffuse." Criticize this. 6. Illustrate the use and the abuse of Aphorisms. 7. Illustrate the use and the abuse of Quotations. 8. Refer to and criticize examples of the stationary and the narrative form of Descriptive writing. 9. The advantages and disadvantages of the Dia- logue in the exposition of argument. 10. '* In science, on the other hand, in history so far as it conforms to scientific rule, we have a literary domain where the imagination may be thought to be always an intruder." " A great historian requires only a lesser amount of imagination than a great poet." PT. VII.] THEMES FOR ESSAYS. Ill Strike the balance between those views. 11. When and how far is appeal to emotion per- missible in scientific treatises. 12. " The artist may be known by what he omits." How far is it true that the approach to perfection of a writer's style may be measured by the number of his exclusions and rejections ? 13. "Thucydides and Demosthenes lay it down as a rule, never to say what they have reason to suppose would occur to the auditor and reader, in consequence of anything said before; knowing that every one is more pleased, and more easily led by us, when we bring forward his thoughts indirectly and imperceptibly, than when we elbow them and outstrip them with our own." Discuss this. D. — Taste, Poetics, Criticism. 1. " Poeta nascitur. Orator fit." With what limita- tions may this be accepted as true? 2. Wherein, apart from versification, consists the main difference between prose and poetry ? Give a list of the chief English prose works which are essen- tially poetical. 3. Carefully illustrate the distinction between Fancy and Imagination, Wit and Humour. 4. Distinguish carefully between Epic and Narrative, Ballad and Lyric Poetry, illustrating your distinction by reference to a representative example of each class. 5. Compare as Epic Poems : — The Iliad ; The ^neid; Paradise Lost; The Divina Commedia. How far is the last entitled to the name ? 6. Show that the following are not Epic Poems : — The Canterbury Tales ; The Faery Queen; The Idylls of the King. 7. " Rhyme in English is, if not inconsistent with the sublime, at least very unfavourable to it.'' On what grounds may this be maintained ? 112 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vir. 8. '' Balance is to prose what regular Rhythm is to poetry." How far is it true that an overstraining after either shackles thought ? 9. Give instances of writers whose style is strong, though diffuse. 10. " Critics are men who have failed in Literature and Art." What may be said for this sarcasm ? 11. "Time overthrows the illusions of opinion, but establishes the decisions of Nature." What light is thrown on this by the fluctuations of opinion in the history of English criticism ? 12. "A genius for any of the fine arts always sup- poses Taste." Examine this. E. — Miscellaneous Themes and Questions for Advanced Students. 1. The Relation of Theory to Practice in writing. 2. " In the lower kinds of composition style is the vesture, in the higher it is the tissue of thought." Explain and illustrate. 3. Discriminate between : — Talent, Genius, Origin- ality. 4. Discriminate between : — Learning, Education, Culture, Scholarship. 5. Discriminate between Plagiarism and Eclec- ticism, referring to well-known or representative examples of each. 6. Refer to some of the limits to the use of Allegory in prose or verse. Why is allegory inapplicable to the plastic arts ? 7. What do you understand by Hyper-criticism? Illustrate your answer by references. 8. Examine the statement that Truth, Order, and Freedom are the main canons or tests of Beauty. 9. Is there any fixed standard of Taste ? 10. What are the main elements of Sublimity as distinguished from Beauty ? PT. VII.] THEMES FOR ESS A VS. 113 11. Comment on De Quincey's opposition between *^ the Literature of Power and the Literature of Facts." 12. Distinguish between Art generally and Fine Art. How far do Art collections have any civilizing effect ? 13. "A weight of learning is seldom worn lightly: it is indeed apt to mar the grace of style.'' Define Pedantry, and refer to its influence in various periods of the history of literature. 14. " Nothing great was ever done with ease." " Nothing great was ever done with great effort." What light is thrown by literature on the amount of truth in each of those two statements ? 15. '' Ubicunque ars ostentatur, Veritas abesse videatur." Comment. 16. How far is popularity a test of literary excel- lence ? 17. The advantages and disadvantages of general culture as compared with those of concentrated study. 18. " Eminent posts make great men greater and little men less." — La Bruyere, 19. " Only great men have any business with great faults. " — Rochefoucauld. 20. ^' A complete education teaches us to aim at knowing a little of everything and everything of some- thing." 21. "The obscurity of the sophist is not Hke a mist which dims the appearance of things, but like a coloured glass which disguises them." Examine and illustrate. 22. " Poetry is a criticism of life." Discuss the relation of Art to Morality. 23. Can it be fairly maintained that the pursuit of literature as a profession has tended to its deteriora- tion? 24. On what grounds has it been alleged that a copious Memory is rarely found along with a fertile Imagination ? 1 14 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. viii. PART VIII. PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION OR PARAPHRASE. 1. Render the following into idiomatic English Prose : — *' When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste : Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancel I'd woe. And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight : Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, "Which I now pay as if not paid before. But, if the while I think on thee, dear friend. All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end." 2. Give the exact sense of the following in modern English : — " What need we any spur but our own cause To prick us to redress ? what other bond. Than secret Romans that have spoke the word. And will not palter ? and what other oath. Than honesty to honesty engaged, That this shall be or we will fall for it ? Swear priests, and cowards, and men cautelous. Old feeble carrions and such suffering souls That welcome wrongs ; unto bad causes swear Such creatures as men doubt : but do not stain The even virtue of our enterprise Nor the insuppressive metal of our spirits To think, that, or our cause, or our performance Did need an oath." PT. VIII.] PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION, 115 3. Rewrite the following passages in prose, replacing peculiar or antiquated phrases by equivalents in the idiom of the present day. (i) *' There is a division, Although as yet the face of it be covered With mutual cunning, 'twixt Albany and Cornwall Who have — as who have not, that their great stars Throned and set high ? — servants, who seem no less, Which are to France, the spies and speculations Intelligent of our state : what hath been seen Either in snuffs and packings of the dukes. Or the hard rein which both of them have borne Against the old kind king : or something deeper Whereof perchance these are but furnishings : " — (2) " Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou Perform'd, my Ariel ; a grace it had, devouring : Of my instruction hast thou nothing bated In what thou hadst to say : so, with good life And observation strange, my meaner ministers Their several kinds have done. My high charms work, And these mine enemies are all knit up In their distractions ; they now are in my power ; And in these fits I leave them, while I visit Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd, And his and mine loved darling." (3) "Begin then, sisters of the sacred well, That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring ; Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string : Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse, So may some gentle Muse With lucky words favour my destin'd urn ; And as he passes turn, And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud. For we were nurst upon the self-same hill, Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd Under the opening eyelids of the Morn, We drove afield ; and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultiy horn, Batt'ning our flocks with the fresh dews of night, Oft till the star that rose at ev'ning, bright, 1 1 6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. viii. Toward Heav'n's descent had slop'd his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to th' oaten flute ; Rough Satyrs danc'd, and Fauns with clov'n heel From the glad sound would not be absent long, And old Damoetas lov'd to hear our song." 4. Convey the full meaning of the following in ordinary English prose :- — (1) " Him the Almighty Power Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquish t, rolling in the fiery gulf. Confounded though immortal : but his doom Reserv'd him to more wrath ; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes. That witness'd huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdurate pride and stedfast hate : At once as far as angels ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild ; A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace flam'd." (2) " He above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent Stood like a tow'r ; his form had yet not lost, All her original brightness, nor appear'd Less than Arch-angel ruin'd, and th' excess Of glory obscur'd : as when the sun new-ris'n Looks through the horizontal misty air. Shorn of his beams ; or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs. Darken'd so, yet shone Above them all th' Arch-angel : but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride Waiting revenge : cruel his eye, but cast PT. VIII.] PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. IT7 Signs of remorse and passion, to behold The fellows of his crime, the followers rather, Far other once beheld in bliss, condemn'd For ever now to have their lot in pain, Millions of spirits for his fault amerc'd Of heav'n, and from eternal splendours flung For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood, Their glory wither'd : as when heaven's fire Hath scath'd the forest oaks or mountain pines. With singed top their stately growth, though bare, Stands on the blasted heath." 5. Give in ordinary prose the full force of the subjoined : — (i) " He scarce had finisht when such murmur fill'd Th' assembly, as when hollow rocks retain The sound of blust'ring winds, which all night long Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Sea-faring men o'er-watcht, whose bark by chance Or pinnace anchors in a craggy bay After the tempest : such applause was heard As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleas'd. Advising peace : for such another field They dreaded worse than Hell : so much the fear Of thunder and the sword of Michael Wrought still within them ; and no less desire To found this nether empire, which might rise By policy, and long process of time In emulation opposite to Heav'n." (2) " Our purer essence then will overcome Their noxious vapour ; or inured not feel ; Or changed at length, and to the place conformed In temper and in nature, will receive Familiar the fierce heat, and void of pain ; This horrour will grow mild, this darkness light ; Besides what hope the never ending flight Of future days may bring, what chance, what change Worth waiting, since our present lot appears For happy though but ill, for ill not worst. " 6. Translate into ordinary idiomatic English prose : " In climes beyond the solar road Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam, The Muse has broke the twilight gloom To cheer the shivering native's dull abode. 1 1 8 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi i i . And oft, beneath the odorous shade Of Chili's boundless forests laid, She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat In loose numbers wildly sweet Their feather-cinctured chiefs and dusky loves. Her track, where'er the goddess roves, Glory pursue, and generous shame. The unconquerable Mind and P'reedom's holy flame. Woods that wave o'er Delphi's steep, Isles that crown the Aegean deep. Fields that cool Ilissus laves, Or where Mseander's amber waves In lingering lab'rinths creep, How do your tuneful echoes languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish ! Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around ; Every shade and hallowed fountain Murmured deep a solemn sound : Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains." 7. Re-write each of the following passages in modern idiomatic English prose : — (i) "Neither hath learning an influence and operation only upon civil merit and moral virtue, and the arts or temperature of peace and peaceable government ; but likewise it hath no less power and efficacy in enablement towards martial and military virtue and prowess ; as may be notably represented in the examples of Alexander the Great and Caesar the Dictator, men- tioned before, but now in fit place to be resumed ; of whose virtues and acts in war there needs no note or recital, having been the wonders of time in that kind ; but of their affections towards learning, and perfections in learning, it is pertinent to say somewhat." (2) "They who to States and Governors of the Common- wealth direct their speech, High Court of Parliament, or want- ing such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the public good, I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds : some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure ; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak. And me perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was PT. VIII.] PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION. 119 whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected ; and likely might in these foremost expressions now also disclose which of them swayed most, but that the very attempt of this address thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, far more welcome than incidental to a Preface. Which though I stay not to con- fess ere any ask, I shall be blameless if it be no other than the joy and gratulation which it brings to all who wish and promote their Country's liberty ; whereof this whole Discourse proposed will be a certain testimony, if not a Trophy. For this is not the liberty which we can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth ; that let no man in this World expect ; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply con- sidered, and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained, that wise men look for. To which if I now manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter that we are already in good part arrived, and yet from such a steep disadvantage of tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will be attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance of God our deliverer, next to your faithful guidance and undaunted wisdom. Lords and Commons of England." (3) " We must not think to make a staple commodity of all the knowledge in the Land, to mark and licence it like our broad cloth and our wool packs. What is it but a servitude like that imposed by the Philistines, not to be allowed the sharpening of our own axes and coulters, but we must repair from all quarters to twenty licensing forges. Had any one written and divulged erroneous things and scandalous to honest life, misusing and forfeiting the esteem had of his reason among men, if after conviction this only censure were adjudged him, that he should never henceforth write but what were first exam- ined by an appointed officer, whose hand should be annexed to pass his credit for him that now he might be safely read, it could not be apprehended less than a disgraceful punishment. Whence to include the whole Nation, and those that never yet thus offended, under such a diffident and suspectful prohibition, may plainly be understood what a disparagement it is." (4) *' For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout, what can be more fair than when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily trom house to house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing publish to the world what his opinion is, what his reasons, and wherefore that which is now thought can- I20 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. viii. not be sound ? Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself, that he preached in public ; yet writing is more public than preaching, and more easy to refutation, if need be, there being so many whose business and profession merely it is, to be the champions of Truth ; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth, or inability ? " (5) "To come within the narrowness of Household Govern- ment, observation will shew us many deep Counsellors of State and Judges do demean themselves incorruptly in the settled course of affairs, and many worthy Preachers upright in their Lives, powerful in their Audience ; but look upon either of these Men where, they are left to their own disciplining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient they are in the regulating of their own Family ; not only in what may concern the virtuous and decent composure of their minds in their several places, but that which is of a lower and easier performance, the right possessing of the outward Vessel, their Body, in Health or Sickness, Rest or Labour, Diet or Abstinence, whereby to render it more pliant to the Soul, and useful to the Commonwealth : when if men were but as good to discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their Horses and Hawks, it could not be so gross in most households. " (6) ' ' Thomas Wotton, of Bocton, Malherbe, Esquire, son and heir of the said Sir Edward, and the father of our Sir Henry, that occasions this relation, was born in the year of Christ 1 521. He was a gentleman excellently educated, and studious in all the liberal arts ; in the knowledge whereof he attained unto great perfection ; who, though he had (besides those abilities, a very noble and plentiful estate, and the ancient interest of his predecessors) many invitations from Queen Eliza- beth to change his country recreations and retirement for a court, offering him a knighthood, (she was then with him at his Bocton- Hall), and that to be but as an earnest of some more honourable and more profitable employment under her ; yet he humbly refused both, being a man of great modesty, of a most plain and single heart, of an ancient freedom, and integrity of mind : — a commendation which Sir Henry Wotton took occasion often to remember with great gladness, and thankfully to boast himself the son of such a father ; from whom indeed he derived that noble ingenuity that was always practised by himself, and which he ever both commended and cherished in others." (7) " And he was most happy in his wife's unforced compli- ance with his acts of charity, whom he made his almoner, and paid constantly into her hand a tenth penny of what money he received for tithe, and gave her power to dispose that to the poor of his parish, and with it a power to dispose of a tenth part PT. VIII.] PASSAGES FOR TRANSLATION, I2I of the corn that came yearly into his barn : which trust she did most faithfully perform, and would often offer to him an account of her stewardship, and as often beg an enlargement of his bounty, for she rejoiced in the employment ; and this was usually laid out by her in blankets and shoes for some such poor people as she knew to stand in most need of them. This as to her charity. — And for his own, he set no limits to it, nor did ever turn his face from any that he saw in want, but would relieve them : especially his poor neighbours ; to the meanest of whose houses would he go, and inform himself of their wants, and relieve them cheerfully, if they were in distress ; and would always praise God, as much for being willing, as for being able to do it. And when he was advised by a friend to be more frugal, because he might have children, his answer was, * He would not see the danger of want so far off; but being the Scripture does so commend charity, as to tell us that charity is the top of Christian virtues, the covering of sins, the fulfilling of the law, the life of faith ; and that charity hath a promise of the blessings of this life, and of a reward in that life which is to come ; being these and more excellent things are in Scripture spoken of thee, O charity, and that, being all my tithes and Church-dues are a deodate from thee, O my God ; make me, O my God, so far to trust thy promise, as to return them back to thee ; and by thy grace I will do so, in distributing them to any of thy poor members that are in distress, or do but bear the image of Jesus my master.' " (8) *' We have now overtaken Dr. Sanderson at Boothby parish, where he hoped to have enjoyed himself, though in a poor, yet in a quiet and desired privacy ; but it proved other- wise ; for all the corners of the nation were filled with Covenan- ters, conflision, committee-men, and soldiers, serving each other to their several ends, of revenge, or power, or profit ; and these committee-men and soldiers were most of them so possessed with this Covenant, that they became like those that were infected with that dreadful plague of Athens ; the plague of which plague was, that they by it became maliciously restless to get into com- pany, and to joy (so the historian saith) when they had infected others, even those of their most beloved or nearest friends or relations : and though there might be some of these Covenanters that were beguiled, and meant well, yet such were the generality of them, and temper of the times, that you may be sure Dr. Sanderson, who though quiet and harmless, yet an eminent dissenter from them, could not live peaceably ; nor did he ; for the soldiers would appear, and visibly disturb him in the church when he read prayers, pretending to advise him how God was to be served most acceptably : which he not approving, but con- tinuing to observe order and decent behaviour in reading the 1 2 2 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. vi i i. church -service, they forced his book from him, and tore it, expecting extemporary prayers." (9) " But I told you before they would give him no money, but with a condition he should cut off the Heads of whom they pleased, how faithfully soever they had served him : and if he would have sacrificed all his Friends to their Ambition, yet they would have found other excuses for denying him Subsidies ; for they were resolved to take from him the Sovereign Power to themselves, which they could never do without taking great care that he should have no money at all. In the next place they put into the Remonstrance as faults of them whose Counsel the King followed, all those things which since the beginning of the King's Reign were by them misliked, whether faults or not, and whereof they were not able to judge for want of knowledge of the Causes and Motives that induced the King to do them, and were known only to the King himself, and such of his Privy Council as he revealed them to." (10) " That which was above, or equal to, all this, was, that by his majesty's enacting those two bills he had upon the matter approved the circumstances of their passage, which had been by direct violence and force of arms ; in which case he ought not to have confirmed the most politic or the most pious constitutions. Male posita est lex quae ttwiultttarie posita est, was one of those positions of Aristotle's which hath never been since contradicted ; and was an advantage that, being well managed and stoutly insisted upon, would, in spite of all their machinations, (which were not yet firmly and solidly formed,) have brought them to a temper of being treated with. But I have some cause to believe that even this argument, which was unanswerable for the rejecting the bill, was applied for confirming it ; and an opinion that the violence and force used in procuring it rendered it absolutely invalid and void made the confirmation of it less considered, as not being of strength to make that Act good which was in itself null. And I doubt this logic had an influence upon other Acts of no less moment than these : but it was an erroneous and unskilful suggestion ; for an Act of Parliament, what circumstances soever concurred in the contriving and framing it, will be always of too great reputation to be avoided, or to be declared void, by the sole authority of any private persons on the single power of the King himself. And though the wisdom, sobriety, and power of a future Parliament, (if God shall ever bless the kingdom with another regularly constituted,) may find cause to declare this or that Act of Parliament void, yet there will be the same temper requisite to such a declaration as would serve to repeal it. And it may be then, many men, who abhorred the thing when it was done for the manner of doing it, will be of the civilian's opinion, y^m non r-r. VIII. ] PASS A GES FOR TRANS LA TION, 1 2 3 debnifj factum valet, and never consent to the altering of that which they would never have consented to the establishing : neither will that single precedent of the judges in the case of King Henry the Seventh, when they declared the Act of attainder to be void by the accession of the crown, (though if he had in truth been the person upon whom the crown had lineally and rightfully descended, it was good law,) find, or make, the judges of another age parallel to them till the king hath as strong a sword in his hand, and the people as much at his devotion and disposal ; and then the making and declaring law will be of equal facility, though, it may be, not of equal justice." (11) "When the English fleet came to the mouth of the bay of Santa Cruz, and the general saw in what posture the Spaniard lay, he thought it impossible to bring off any of the galleons ; however, he resolved to burn them, (which was by many thought to be equally impossible,) and sent Captain Stayner with a squadron of the best ships to fall upon the galleons ; which he did very resolutely ; whilst other frigates entertained the forts, and lesser breast-works, with continual broadsides to hindet them firing. Then the general coming up with the whole fleet, after full four hours' fight, they drove the Spaniards from their ships, and possessed them ; yet found that their work was not done ; and that it was not only impossible to carry away the ships, which they had taken, but that the wind that had brought them into the bay, and enabled them to conquer the enemy, would not serve to carry them out again ; so that they lay exposed to all the cannon from the shore ; which thundered upon them. However, they resolved to do what was in their power ; and so, discharging their broadsides upon the forts and land, where they did great execution, they set fire to every ship, galleons, and others, and burned every one of them ; which they had no sooner done, but it happened the wind turned, and carried the whole fleet without loss of one ship out of the bay, and put them safe to sea again." (12) '*It was towards the end of the year 1633, when the king returned from Scotland, having leff it to the care of some of the bishops there to provide such a Liturgy, and such a book of Canons, as might best suit the nature and humour of the better sort of the people ; to which the rest would easily submit : and that, as fast as they made them ready, they should transmit them to the archbishop of Canterbury, to whose assistance the king joined the bishop of London, and Doctor Wren, who by that time was become bishop of Norwich (a man of a severe, sour nature, but very learned, and particularly versed in the old liturgies of the Greek and Latin churches) ; and after his majesty should be this way certified of what was so sent, he -would recommend and enjoin the practice and use of both to that his native kingdom." 124 ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXERCISES, [pt. viii. 8. Compare the prose style of the seventeenth cen- tury, as exhibited in the preceding passages, with that of the present time, carefully noting changes in the use of words, phrases, and constructions. 9. Convert into Addisonian English (in dialogue or other form) the following passage from Carlyle : — " Talent for literature, thou hast such a talent ! Be slow to believe it. To speak or to write, Nature did not peremptorily order thee, but to work she did. And know this, there never was a talent even for real literature, not to speak of talents lost in doing sham literature, but was primarily a talent for something better of the silent kind. Of literature, in all ways, be shy rather than otherwise at present. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with the hand of a man, not of a phantom ; be that thy unnoticed blessedness and exceeding great reward. Thy words let thenrj be few and well-ordered. 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