ENGLISH
COMPOSITION
Barrett Wendell

ALBERT EMANUEL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

FREDERICK UNGAR PUBLISHING CO.
NEW YORK

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Republished 1963

BARRETT WENDELL
First published as ' 'Eight Lectures," 1891

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Printed

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th e U nited States of A menca
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Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 63-12917

Professor of English at Harvard College,
was born in Boston in 1855 and died in
Portsmouth, N.H. in 1921. His love for
traveling won him the distinction of
being a man of the world, as well as a
man of letters and a scholar. To his
students he was a teacher of rare provocative power, having an original and
fertile mind, and an agile, ·distinctive
wit. He was much in demand as a lecturer in England and France. A voluminous writer, a few of his most notable
works are Cotton Mather, A Literary
History of America, and Stelligeri and
Other Essays Concerning America.

Institute,

0.

Any

y obliga.

[ill, Pro>rofessor
tment of
seemed
B. W.

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NOTE.
Firs

lectures were given at the Lowell Institute,
Boston, in November and December, 1890. Any
student of the subject will at once perceive my obligation to the textbooks of Professor ·A. S. Hill, ProTHESE

fessor Bain, Professor Genung, and the late Professor
· McElroy. My excuse for offering a new treatment of
· the subject is that I have found none that seemed
quite simple enough for popular reading.
B. W.
BosToN, September, 1891.

Print ed in the unue11 - i)l,UtC.T

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Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 63-12917

CONTENTS.

I.
'.rHE ELEMENTS AND THE QUALITIES OF
STYLE.
Style is the expression of thought and feeling in written words. All style
must impress us, more or less, in three wayR, -intellectually, emotionally,
and resthetically; in other words, it must possess or lack Clearness, ]force,
and Elegance. But all style consists solely of arbitrary signs - letters which common consent makes symbolic of arbitrary sounds - words which common consent in turn makes symbolic of the immaterial reality
- thought and emotion - which forms our conscious life. In choosing words,
we must be governed wholly by this common consent, which we call Good
Use. In composing words, we find three distinct stages of composition, groups of words, which we call Sentences; groups of sentences, which we
call Paragraphs; and larger groups, which we call Whole Compositions.
In making any of these compositions, we may to advantage observe three
general principles. The first, the principle of Unity, concerns the substanc1>
of a composition: every composition should group itself about one central
idea. The second, the principle of Mass, concerns the external form of
a composition: the chief parts of every composition should be so placed
as readily t.o catch the eye. The third, the principle of Coherence, concerns the internal arrangement of a composition: the relation of each part
of a composition to its neighbors should be unmistakable. In composing
sentences, the operation of these principles is greatly limited by good use,
in the form o! grammar. In composing paragraphs and whole compositions, good use hampers u;i less and less. And all style may be regarded as the result of a constant conflict between good use and the prinriples of composition • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Page 1.

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CONTENTS.

II.
WORDS.
Words are the names by which good use has agreed that we shall describe
ideas. In our choice of words we may never stray beyond the limits of
good use. In judging whether a given word be admissible, we may best ask
ourselves whether it is a Barbarism - a word not in the language - or an Impropriety, - a word used in a sense not sanctioned by good use. If nei.t11er,
we may accept it. Within the limits of good use we may produce widely
various effects by using, for different purposes, different kinds of wo~ds ~nd
different numbers. In considering these effects, we should keep m mmd
three facts: first, that the agreement of good use is not precise, but approximate ; secondly, that every word we use does not exhaust ~ts
power by identifying the single idea to which good use has attached it;
but, thirdly, that at the same time it inevitably suggests a n~mber of
other ideas. In choosing words, then, we must always consider two
things, - their denotation, what they name; and their connotation, what
they suggest • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Page 41.

III.

CONTENTS.

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z1.nd as paragraphs, essentially elements of written discourse, are almost un•
trammelled by good use, we may now lay down these principles with more
decision. A paragraph should generally group itself about one central idea;
its chief ideas should generally be in its most conspicuous places; and the
relation of each sentence to the context should generally be unmistakable.
By varying the arrangement of paragraphs, and by constantly applying
these principles, we may indefinitely vary our effects in denotation and
connotation alike • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Page 114.

v.
WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.
In composing whole compositions, we are, even more than In paragraphs,
free from the hampering influence of good use. We may, then, almost unchecked, apply to our work the principles of composition. And by so doing,
we may almost infinitely \'ary our effects, in denotation .1tnd connotation
alike . • •
• . . • . • • • • • • • • . Page 150.

VI.
CLEARNESS.

SENTENCES.
A l!entence Is a series of words so composed as to make complete sense.
In judging whether a given sentence be grammatical, - authorized by goo_d
use -we may best inquire, first, whether it makes good sense, and if
not' whether idiom sanctions it; if neither, we may best avoid it as a Solecis~. Within the limits of good use we may compose val'ious kinds of sentences. To all these kinds we may apply the principles of Unity, Mass, and
Coherence, - principles to which good use apparently is tending to conform.
And by varying our kinds of sentences, and applying to all kinds the
broadly simple principles of composition, we may indefinitely vary our
effects, in both denotation and connotation • • • • • • Paga 76.

Clearness Is the distinguishing quality of a style that cannot be misunderstood. It is a relative quality; but a generally clear style is a style
addressed to the average man. To write with clearness we must of course
make ourselves as certain as possible of what we wish to say. Then,
remembering that any quality of style can be conveyed to a reader only
by means of our choice and composition of the elements, we may ask
ourselves whether the elements of style possess any trait distinctly favorable to clearness. And we discover that the secret of clearness lies in
denotation • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . . • • Page 193.

VII.

IV.
PARAGRAPHS.
A paragraph Is to a sentence what a sentence ls to a word. The principles which govern the arrangement of sentences in paragraphs, then, are
identical with those that govern the arrangement of words in sentences.

FORCE.
Force Is the distinguishing quality of a style that holds the attention. It
consists in such choice and composition of the elements of stvle as shall not
only denote our meaning. but also connote the emotions w~ have In mind.
'l'ropes, - figures of ~peech,-which carry the process of forcible selection

CONTENTS.
one step further, and actually name a connotation, leaving the denotation to
be inferred, are the most typical devices we can study with force in view.
From a study of them we are brought to see that to cultivate force we must
cultivate ourselves in three ways: we must cultivate our perception of what
we would express, our knowledge of the human beings we would address,
and our mastery of the technical methods at our disposal. We must
learn, too, the limits of our powers, lest, straying too near them, we plainl,v
reveal them. And all this means at bottom that the secret of force lies in
connotation
• • • • • • • • • • • • • Page 234 .

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THE ELEMENTS AND THE QUALITIES OF STYLE.

VIII.

the past ten years I have been chiefly
occupied in teaching, to undergraduates of Harvard
College, the principles of English Composition. In
the course of that time I ha.ve been asked a great
many questions concerning the art, mostly by friends
who found themselves writing for publication. Widely
different as these inquiries have naturally been, they
have possessed in common one trait sufficiently marked
to place them, in my memory, in a single group: almost
without exception, they have concerned themselves
with matters of detail. Is this word or that admissible ? Why, in a piece of writing I once published, did
I permit myself to use the apparently commercial
phrase " at any rate " ? Are not words of Saxon origin invariably preferable to all others? Should sentences be long or short ? These random memories are
sufficient examples of many hundreds of inquiries.
They have in common, as I have just said, the trait
of concerning themselves almost wholly with matters
of detail. They have too another trait: generally, if
not invariably, they involve a tacit assumption that
any given case must be either right or wrong.
DURING

ELEGANCE.
Elegance is the distinguishing_quality of a style that pleases the taste. As
critics of style we must not concern ourselves with substance, but must grant
a writer the privilege of choosing what thought and emotion he wnuld ex·
press, and confine ourselves to considering how he has expressed. it. So
doing, we discover that the secret of elegance lies in the most eJ!Puisite
possible adaptation of our means to our end. To attain elegance
we must strive to develop into mastery both our power of expression
and our power of perception in life and in art; for the greater our mastery
the greater our power of adaptation. And the secret of elegance lies in
udaptation • • • • • • • • • • , • • • • • • • Page 272.

IX.
SUMMARY. -Page 308.

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

These two traits -the one indicative of rather sur·
prising ignorance of the nature of the matter in hand,
the other of a profound error - are what has prompted
me to prepare this book. Year by year I have seen
more and more clearly that although the work of a
teacher or a technical critic of style concerns itself
largely with the correction of erratic detail, the really
important thing for one who would grasp the subject
to master is not' a matter of detail at all, but a very
simple body of general principles under which details
readily group themselves. I have seen too that although a small part of the corrections and criticisms
I have had to make are concerned with matters of
positive error, by far the greater, and incalculably the
more important part are concerned with what I may
call matters of discretion. The question is not
whether a given word or sentence is eternally right
or wrong ; but rather how accurately it expresses
what the writer has to say, - whether the language we
use may not afford a different and perhaps a better
means of phrasing his idea.
The truth is that in rhetoric, as distinguished from
grammar, by far the greater part of the questions
that arise concern not right or wrong, but better or
worse ; and that the way to know what is better or
worse in any given case is not to load your memory
with bewilderingly innumerable rules, but firmly to
grasp a very few simple, elastic general principles.
Consciously or not, these principles, I believe, are
observed by thoroughly effective writers. Of course,

nothing but long and patient practice can make any·
body certain of writing, or of practising any art, well.
Of course too if the principles I state be, as I believe
them, fundamental, whoever practises much cannot
help in some degree observing them ; but the experience of ten years' teaching leads me more and more
to the belief that a knowledge of the principles is a
very great help in practice.
I may best begin, I think, by stating these principles
as briefly and as generally as I can. Then I shall try
to show how they apply to the more important specific cases that present themselves t.o writers. Each
case, I think, presents them in a somewhat new light.
Certainly, without considering them in various aspects
we can hardly appreciate their full scope. First of all,
it will be convenient to fix a term which shall express
the whole subject under consideration. I know of
none more precise than Sty le. A good deal of usage,
to be sure, and rather good usage too, gives color to
the general impression that style means good style,
just as criticism is often taken to mean urifavorable
criticism, or manners to mean civil behavior. Very excellent authorities sometimes declare that a given
writer has style, and another none; only a little while
ago, I heard a decidedly careful talker congratulate
himself on having at last discovered, in this closing
decade of the nineteenth century, a correspondent
who, in spite of our thickening environment of newspapers and telegrams, wrote letters that possessed
style. I dwell on this common meaning of the word

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style for two reasons: in the first place, clearly to de·
fine the sense in which I mean not to use the word;
in the second place, to emphasize the fact, which we
shall find to be highly important, that in the present
state of the English language hardly any word not
unintelligibly technical can be trusted to express a
precise meaning without the aid of definition. Style,
as I shall use the term, means simply the expression
of thought or emotion in written words ; it applies
equally to an epic, a sermon, a love-letter, an invitation
to an evening party.
This definition brings us face to face with an obvious trait which the art we are considering shares with
all the other arts of expression, - painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, and indeed those humbler arts,
not commonly recognized as fine, where the workman
conceives something not yet in existence (a machine,
a flower-pot, a sauce) and proceeds, by collaboration
of brain and hand, to give it material existence.
Thought and emotion, the substance of what style expresses, are things so common, BO incessant in earthly
experience, that we trouble ourselves to consider them
as little as we bother our heads about the marvels
of sunrise, of the growth of flowers or men, of the
mystery of sin or death, when they do not happen to
touch our pockets or our affections. But for all that
they are with us from morning till night, and not seldom from night till morning, - for all that together
they make up the total sum of what to most of us is
a very commonplace affair, our earthly existence, -

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

thought and emotion, when we stop to consider them,
are the most fascinatingly marvellous facts that human
beings can contemplate. They are real beyond all
other realities. What things are, no man can ever
know ; analyzed by astronomy, the material universe
vanishes in infinite systems of spheres revolving about
one another throughout infinitely extended regions of
space, in obedience to law that may be recognized, but
not comprehended; analyzed by physics, this same
material universe vanishes again in infinitely small
systems of molecules bound together by the same
mysterious forces that govern the stellar universe.
The more we study the more we learn that neither
the heavens nor the very paper on which I write
these words are what they seem, and that what they ·
really are is far beyond the perception of any faculty
which the history of the human race can lead us
rationally to hope for even in our most remote posterity. But what we think of all these marvels, the
forms in which they present themselves to us, we
know as we know nothing else. Our whole lives, from
the day when our eyes first open to the sunlight, are
constant series of thoughts, sometimes seemingly
springing from within ourselves, often seeming to
come from without ourselves, through the medium of
those senses that in careless moods we are apt to think
so comprehensive. To each and all of us, the final
reality of life is the thought, which, with the endless
surge of emotion,-now tempestuous, again almost imperceptible~ - makes up conscious existence.

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Final realities though they be, however, thought
and emotion are essentially things that in our habitual
thoughtlessness we are apt to call unreal. As we
know them, they are immaterial. No systems can
measure their extent or their bulk ; and though they
are in some degree conditioned by time, it is so
slightly that we may almqst say - as in a single
instant our thought ranges from primeval nebulre
to cosmic death and celestial eternity - they are free
from time-limit, as well as from the limits of space.
Real at once, then, a:°-d unreal, or better, real and intangible, real yet immaterial, each of us who will stop
to think must find the thought and the emotion that
together make that fresh marvel, - himself. Each of
us, I say purposely; for there is one more thing that we
must _remember here. Like one another as we seem,
like one another as the courses of our lives may look,
there are no two human beings who tread quite the
same road from the cradle to the gra.ve. No one of
us in any group has come from quite the same origin
as any other; no two, be they twin brothers or husband and wife, can go thence by quite the same path.
The laws of space and of time forbid; unspeakably
more the still more mysterious laws of thought
forbid that any two of us should know and feel
just the same experience in this world. If two or
three of us, habitually together, suddenly utter the
same word, we are surprised. The thought and
emotion of every living being, then, is an immaterial reality, eternally different from every other in

the universe; and this is the reality that style must
express.
And style, we remember, must express this reality
in written words ; and written words are things as
tangible, as material, as the thought and emotion behind them is immaterial, evanescent, elusive. The
task of the writer, then, is a far more subtile and
wonderful thing than we are apt to think it : nothing
less than to create a material body, that all men may
see, for an eternally immaterial reality that only
through this imperfect symbol can ever reveal itself
to any but the one human being who knows it he
knows not how.
When a piece of style - a poem, a book, an essay,
a letter - is once in existence, it may perhaps best be
considered for the moment from the point of view of
readers, of those to whom it is addressed. Any piece
of style, we all know, impresses us in a fairly distinct
way, which we rarely take the trouble to define.
Most readers never know more about it than that it
interests or pleases them, or bores or annoys. A little
consideration, however, will show, I think, that the
undefined impression which any piece of style makes
may always be resolved into three parts. Present
in widely different degrees in different pieces of style,
no one of these factors can ever, I believe, be asserted
quite absent. In the first place, you either understand
the piece of style before you, or do not understand it,
or feel more or less in doubt whether you understand
it or not. In the second place, .you are either inter-

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

ested, or bored, or left indifferent. Finally, you &.re
either pleased, or displeased, or doubtful whether you
are pleased or not. And the more you analyze your
impressions of style the more you will find, unless
your experience differs surprisingly from most, that
the third state of things I suggest - indifference or
doubt - is the rarest. In short, every piece of style
may be said to impress readers in three ways, - intellectually, emotionally, resthetically; to appeal to
their understanding, their feelings, their taste. Every
quality of style that. I know of may be reduced to
one of these three classes; and these three-and
these three only - are different enough to deserve
distinct and careful consideration. Briefly, then, I
may say that the qualities of style are three, -intellectual, emotional, and resthetic. It is convenient to
name these qualities; the terms I choose are on the
whole the best I have found, - those which Professor
Hill, of Harvard College, uses in the most sensible
treatment of the art of composition I have yet found
in pririt. To the intellectual quality of style he gives
the name " Clearness ; " to the emotional, " Force ; "
to the resthetic, " Elegance."
To define this generalization, a concrete example is
perhaps worth while. In choosing one from personal
experience, I commit what many may call a positive
sin of egotism. My defence must rest on what I have
said already. Style is the expression in words of
thought and emotion ; each man's thought and emetion differs from every other man's. I confess to a

growing belief that the best thing any one can do,
when occasion serves, is to tell us what he himself
knows. It may be of small value, but at worst it
is not second-hand. When Robert Browning died,
then, I found running in my head two lines from a
poem of his I had read some years before - the
" Grammarian's Funeral," -

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'' This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,
Borne on our shoulders."

I remembered of the poem only that it was a long
funeral chorus, if I may use the term, put into the
mouths of the pupils of an old Italian professor. At
daybreak, one fifteenth-century morning, they are
bearing him up to his grave in one of the hill-cities
of Central Italy. I turned to the poem and read it
through ; I was deeply interested from beginning to
end. I thought the· poem, as I think it still, profoundly characteristic of the writer in that it is among
the permanently forcible pieces of our literature. On
the other hand, when I had finished the reading, I
had very little more notion of what the poem meant
in detail than I had had before; again 1 found it profoundly characteristic of the writer, in that on a single
reading it was about as far from clear as human perversity could make it. Finally, in spite of the undoubted fact that there was in it something which
not only interested but fascinated me, I found only
one passage that at first reading thoroughly pleased

me:-

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

" Sleep, crop and herd. Sleep, darkling thorp and cxoft,
Safe from the weather !
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft, ,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo ! "

we have experienced, but what we have seen. Clearly,
we have seen nothing but written or printed words,
- black marks on white paper. It is something
inherent in these black marks which has produced
the knowledge or the ignorance or the puzzle, the
interest or the tedium, the pleasure or the annoyance, uf which we are conscious. For the moment,
then, we must turn our attention to these written
words, these curious black marks, and satisfy ourselves, if we can, what there is in them to produce
such notable results.
,
In themselves, these black marks are nothing but
black marks more or less regular in appearance.
Modern English type and script are rather simple to
the eye. Old English and German are less so ; less
so still, Hebrew and Chinese. But all alphabets present to the eye pretty obvious traces of regularity ; in
a written or printed page the same mark will occur
over and over again. This is positively all we see, a number of marks grouped together and occasionally
repeated. A glance at a mummy-case, an old-fashioned tea-chest, a Hebrew Bible, will show us all that
any eye can ever see in any written or printed document, The outward and visible body of style consists
of a limited number of marks which, for all any
reader is apt to know, are purely arbitrary.
Whoever knows an alphabet, however, as all of us
know the twenty-six letters that compose written
English, sees in these black marks, not the marKs
themselves, but the ideas they stand for. In a rough

And even the pleasure I found in the full-throated
melody of this refreshingly simple passage was marred
by the thought that before I could be sure of what a
thorp is or a croft, I should have to consult a dictionary. Elegance, then, save for the splendidly sustained funereal rhythm, I found as notable for its
absence as clearness; herein, again, the poem was
profoundly characteristic of the writer. But for all
its lack of clearness and elegance, the poem had a
force I could not resist ; I read it over again and
again. Each reading made it clearer; each gain in
clearness diminished in some degree the annoyance I
felt in its apparently deliberate perversity of diction ;
and now, after some dozens of readings, I think I can
understand at least nine lines out of every ten, and I
am sure that I find in the poem both an emotional
stimulus that constantly strengthens, and a constantly
growing if permanently incomplete delight.
In all pieces of style as truly as in this "Grammarian's Funeral," clearness, force, and elegance or their absence - may readily be detected. The
question that naturally presents itself now is how
they are produced. To answer this we must approach the subject afresh, and ask ourselves not what

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way - a very rough way in English - each of these
marks is a symbol which stands for one of a limited
number of articulate sounds. The sounds for which
some of them stand -b, for example, r, k, s - are
very well fixed ; the sounds for which others stand
- c, notably, and most of the vowels - are various.
But in almost any given case, a reasonably trained
eye recognizes at a glance what sound a given mark
stands for. Now, so far as we can see, there is no
relation whatever between the symbol in question and
the sound, - not so much as there is between the
black marks on a sheet of music and the notes the
musician produces in obedience to them, for these at
least run up and down the scale as the marks are
higher or lower on the written page. What gives to
letters the significance which we all understand almost intuitively is simply and solely the tacit agreement of the people who have used them. The only
reason why we should not spell selwoner as a small
boy lately spelled it - squner - is that the practice of a century or so agrees that it should be spelled
otherwise; and that the practice of a number of centuries and languages agrees that in the compound
letter qu, the u has no open vowel-sound. What
makes us see in these black marks, then, the sounds
the writers mean them to symbolize is exactly what
prevents us from seeing in Chinese or Arabic writing
anything more than the marks themselves : in the one
case we are familiar with the practice on which those
who use the letters are tacitly agreed; in the other

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

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we are not. Common consent, general practice, is
what makes the English alphabet signify anything.
In this fact lies the rather comical hopelessness of
the efforts now and then made by innocent dogmatists, not possessed of despotic authority, to reform
spelling ; for spelling, like other things we shall
consider in a moment, is a matter, not of law, but of
practice. The question in a given instance is not
what ought to be the case, but what is. And to the
state of things which enables us to decide in spelling,
as in othe~- fashions, what the case is at any given
moment, we give, for convenience' sake, the name
" Good Use."
I have dwelt on this elementary phase of good use
because the reason why the articulate sounds these
black marks symbolize are anything more to us than
meaningless noises is precisely the same as the reason
why letters are anything more than meaningless
marks. Language, as the very origin of the word
shows, - it means almost exactly what we sometimes
express by its synonym tongue, - is originally spoken.
Utterance, in the history of the human race, indefinitely precedes writing. But language itself consists
at bottom only of a limited number of articulate
sounds, mostly as arbitrary to our ears as the marks
that stand for them are to our eyes. Our own language, and perhaps a few others, we understand so
· intuitively that we are apt to forget how purely arbitrary they are; but we have only to listen to the talk
of foreigners - even of Europeans, far more of grunt-

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

ing Indians or clicking Hottentots - to be reminded
that the sounds we hear and utter are purely symbolic,
and that we understand them only because we happen
to know what the practice, the common consent, the
good use, of those who use them has agreed that they
shall stand for.
Perhaps the simplest way of realizing how all language is originally formed is just to recall how we
come to know people by name. We meet for the first
time a man of whom we know nothing except that he
is clothed and to all appearances in his right mind.
Somebody tells us that his name is John Jones; thereafter, when we wish to mention him, we utter the
monosyllables - in themselves mere arbitrary sounds
- John Jones. Pretty soon the syllables in question
cease to be arbitrary sounds, and arouse in our minds
the extremely specific idea of a human individual,
washed, dressed, and amiably disposed, - eternally
different too in certain aspects from any other human
being on the planet. Or, to take a quite different example : Some years ago I happened to be in a small
Sicilian town, infested by contagiously good-humored
beggars. When they pressed abmit me inconveniently,
I turned on them, and uttered, among other expressions unhappily not remarkable for politeness, the
word Bkedaddle. Somehow it caught their fancy :
'' Skedaddo ! " they shouted in chorus. When I next
went out of doors, I was greeted with shouts of " Buon
giorno, skedaddo ! " The rascals had named me, and
called me by the name for the remaining hours of my

stay among them ; and a Sicilian gentleman subse·
quently told me that very probably the word Bkedaddo might become, in the town in question, a
permanent generic noun signifying a light-haired foreigner of excitable disposition.
Just as we name or nickn ame people, our ancestors
have named and nicknamed the various ideas which
in the course of their history they have had occasion
to express. Nowadays there are in the world a great
many different languages, many of which, now mutually unintelligible, may easily be traced to a common
origin; from Latin, for example, have sprung French,
But the numerous
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese.
changes whose accumulation has separated and distinguished these modern languages have all taken
place by means of local and increasing differences in
use, - in consent as to what a giYen sound shall
mean. Thus, from Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French
has sprung the curious hybrid English with which we
are chiefly concerned,-the articulate sounds by which
the people of England and her dependencies have
been agreed, during the past four or five centuries, to
express whatever thoughts and emotions they have
known.
Now, the first question before any one who would
use the English language efficiently - as a vehicle by
which thought and emotion may be conveyed to somebody else -is what words are at his disposal. It is
clear that we must use the words - the arti culate
sounds - -to which the English-speakin g peoples of

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

the present time agree to attach definite significance ;
a11d what these words are we can discover only by
such constant observation and care of what is going
on about us in the whole English-speaking world as a
child or a foreigner would give to a language he was
trying to learn. Dictionaries and grammars, to be
sure, may codify what exists at any given moment.
Regarded as codes, they are invaluable ; but at best
they are codes of common law, not legislative enactments. The only sanction behind them is that of
practice, of usage. · Before we can use language with
certainty we must understand that beneath all these
codes lies the great fact of common human consent.
We must learn instinctively to feel this for ourselves,
to appreciate it, to judge it. In English, as in every
other language, the final test of what words we may
use is inevitably the usage of those who speak and
write it ; the test of what words we should use is the
usage of those who speak and write it best, - in other
words, good use.
To illustrate this, we may well consider the differexists between the words we ourence that alwavs
•
selves speak and those we write. Closely similar,
written language and spoken are yet inevitably different. Whoever says habitually, " He does not," or," I
will not," talks not like a human being, but like a.
prig; whoever habitually writes, ''He doesn't," or," I
won't," writes with something like vulgarity. For
general purposes we speak the language of the people
we address, with all its colloquialisms. In writing,

which we use to communicate thought and emotion to
we know not whom nor how many, we must carefully
employ only such forms as good use, in its broadest
sense, sanctions.
We are now in a position to answer the question we
asked ourselves a little while ago. Why is it, we
asked, that a certain number of apparently arbitrary
black marks on white pages should convey to us all
the infinitely varied impressions-in ·-ellectual, emotional, resthetic - that we find in literature ? Why
is it that style- whose visible body is never anything
more or less than these black marks - - should impress
us primarily as something that p0ssesses or lacks
Clearness, F orce, and E legance ? Simply and solely
because the tacit agreement, the good use of many
generations of human beings, who at least linguistically are our ancestors, has consented in t he first place
that certain articulate sounds shall be fixed as symbols
for certain distinct ideas, and in the second place that
certain arbitrary marks shall be fixed as symbols for
certain distinct sounds. Good use, and good use alone,
is the basis on which all sty le rests. A knowled ge of
good use so familiar as to be practically instinctive is
the basis on which any writer who would be certain
to write with clearness, force, and elegance must
ultimately rest his own style. The limits of good use
are wide and flexible ; but finally they grow rigid.
Whoever strays beyond them errs; whoever keeps
within them may write, for various reasons, ineffec·
tively, but cannot be convicted of uositive error.
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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

Every question of positive right and wrong in style
is a question concerning nothing whatever but good
use.
Good use, then, !Ilust be the basis of all good style.
The next thing to ask ourselves is how to recognize
good use. And here we are met by a fact that
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more than any other I know of, confuses most people
who begin seriously to consider tho matter in question. For various reasons, the chief of which is that
five centuries ago pretty much everything worth reading was comprised in what survived of the literatures
of Greece and Rome, the education of civilized Europeans and Americans is still based on a prolonged
and not always very fruitful study of classical Latin
and Greek. Now, what makes Latin or Greek letters
stand for Latin or Greek words, and what makes
Latin• or Greek words stand for the thou<Yhts
and
b
emot10ns which are not only Latin and Greek, but
broadly human too, is precisely what makes English
letters and words stand for the thoughts and emotions that make up our conscious lives; namely, that
many thousands of human beings tacitly agreed what
this double system of symbols should symbolize, and
so that good use arose. But between the classical
languages, which we call dead, and the modern languages, whose life is more vigorous than the life of
any human being, there is a broad distinction, not
very often kept in mind. Good use, like all other
vital things, not only comes into being and flourishes,
but it passes out of being too; and Latin use and

Greek passed out of being with the nations whose political and intellectual lives they expressed. So completely are they things of the past, indeed, that so far
as I can learn from friends who have given their lives
to the classics, nobody to-day on earth has any real
knowledge of how Latin or Greek was pronounced. At
Harvard College, and elsewhere, to be sure, they have
supplanted the unquestionably barLarous English pronunciation by one which they call probably ancient;
but whethBr Pericles or Cicero could understand the
most punctiliously learned nineteenth-century professor is a question not to be settled this side of
Elysium. In short, though we know pretty accurately
what words classical letters symbolize, and what
thoughts and emotions are symbolized by classical
words, one part of the classical languages - the
sound, the thing that made them true languages or
tongues - is as dead as .Alexander or Cresar. And
along with the sound has perished the vital principle
of the languages, - the constantly changing use which
brought them from the rude jargons in which they
began into the exquisitely finished forms in which
their literatures preserve them. In other words the
'
classical languages, like other things that have passed
out of this world, are complete. Nothing but the occa·
sional discovery of a manuscript or an inscription can
add a syllable to them; nothing but the demonstration of a corruption or a forgery can take a syllable
away. Nothing, in all human probability, can supply
the place of that troublesome caret which used to

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bother us so much in the old Latin grammars. Here
lies the distinction between the classical languages
and the modern, the dead and the living. Latin and
Greek are complete ; dictionaries and grammars can
codify them with final authority. English, on the
other hand, like every living tongue, must remain incomplete so long as it retains life enough to be spoken
and written by living men ; and so dictionaries and
grammars can at most be mil~-stones in its progress
through this world.
Now, of course the unlearned in matters of sty le
look for authority to the learned. And the learned,
brought up from childhood on the authority, in matters of classical style, of Latin and Greek dictionaries
and grammars, are accustomed to display what little human frailty survives the process of culture by
attaching to dictionaries and grammars themselves
an importance second only to that which good men
attach to Holy Writ.
They do not stop to remember, or at all events to remind us, that what
makes Latin and Greek books of reference so finally
authoritative is not that they are books of reference,
but that the languages therein codified have long
since ceased to grow ; and so that these tongues
can be codified with something which approaches
perfection.
To be certain of what good use is in a living language, then, we must have other things to rest our
case on than the fact that some maker of dictionaries
or grammars has registered - and given chapter

and verse for - the words or phrases we would defend. There are other tests of good use to which we
must turn. The most notable, I think, are that it
must be Reputable, National, and Present, -Reputable as distinguished from vulgar, slangy, eccentric ;
National as distinguished from local or technical ;
Present as distinguished from obsolete or transient.
In view of the fact that every question of right or
wrong in style must ultimately be referred to good use,
these three phases of good use are worth separate
attention.
Reputable U1'e is the use of no single writer, however eminent; it is the common consent of the great
body of writers whose works, taken together, make
up what we mean when we seriously use the term
English Literature, - a term which of course includes
any literature written in the English language,
Scotch, Irish, American, Australian. The fact that
Shakspere uses a word, or Sir Walter Scott, or Burke,
or Washington Irving, or whoever happens to b{l
writing earnestly in Melbourne or Sidney, does not
make it reputable. The fact that all five of these
authorities use the word in the same sense would go
very far to establish the usage. On the other hand,
the fact that any number of newspaper reporters agree
in usage does not make the usage reputable. The
style of newspaper reporters is not without merit; it
is very rarely unreadable ; but for all its virtue it is
rarely a well of English undefiled. And just here, I
may say, lies perhaps the most crying fault of con·

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

temporary style in general. For better or worse, the
fact remains that our grandfathers used to read the
Bible morning and night, and that we read instead the
morning and evening newspapers. Our spontaneous
vocabularies differ from theirs accordingly, - not
wholly for the better. And when, now and then,
somebody raises a feeble voice in protest, the reporters,
who as a class are very human beings, grow much
excited, forgetting that no known system of logic
can warrant the conclusion that because all good
style is rea~able, all readable style is necessarily
good.
But an example or two of style that is national and
present, but not reputable, and so not good, will make
the matter clearer than all the generalization in the
world. In Mr. Mallock's "New Republic," you may
remember, is a tale of how a fastidious gentleman refrained from offering himself to a pretty girl because
she asked him if he was partial to boiled chicken. In
e.ny newspaper you may find a comfortable house deicribed afi an " elegant residence " or a " costly home;"
and so on.
National use is the use of neither England, Ireland,
Scotland, America, nor Australia; nor yet of any single body of men, however learned. It is the use which
ls sanctioned by the common consent of the whole
English-speaking world.
Whoever uses technical
words, or foreign, or local, violates this rule of good
use. The use of technical words, still more the use of
foreign, is commonly a conscious affectation, which any

sane man may avoid. The use of local terms is often
spontaneous ; here lies the chief danger of falling into
a style not national.
A few examples of style that is reputable and present, but not national, and so not good, will make the
matter clear. "Ecteronic appendages," I find in the
first book of physiology I open, " not found in man,
"I
make their appearance in other animals."
noticed a dirty gamin," writes a student; _and
another, using a word now confined at Harvard College to street ur0hins, describes the same small boy as
a mucker.
Present use is best described, I think, in the familiar lines of Pope : " In words as fashions, the same rule will hold :
Alike fantastic if too new or old.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

These lines mention a very suggestive analogy.
Fashions constantly change, nobody knows exactly
why. But ev~rybody knows that a series of annual
fashion-plates extending over a century would show a
very marked series of changes in the outward aspect
of the human form divine. Every theatre-goer knows
too that these changes are so marked that a play
written a generation ago - Bulwer's "Money," for
example, or even Robertson's " School" - cannot
without a grotesqueness that would nullify its dramatic effect be produced with such costumes as were

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

worn by the original actors. Though the more subtile
fashion to which we have given the name "good use"
changes more slowly, it changes just as surely ;
and to a certain degree it follows fashion itself. The
most curious example of this I have lately come across
is in a song familiar to most of us : -

it appears specifically different from the rest, a new
and transient name arises : macaroni, for example,
buck, dandy, swell, dude.
Perhaps, however, the most suggestive example of
· good use - reputable, national, and present-is a fact
within the personal experience of every" one of us.
When we write letters, we begin them with the adjective dear. Now, the occasions when we mean by this
word to express even the smallest degree of personal
affection are so rare that at such moments we often
feel called upon to change the word to dearest, or very
dear, or darling. There is another form of address in
all respects but one decidedly more expressive of what
we really mean,- Friend. Yet none of us begins a
letter " Friend Tompkins." And the only reason why
none of us commits this unpardonable sin is that cmr
tom, fashion, good use, forbids. So nowadays w~
are no longer "Obedient, Humble Servants," but
"Truly'' or " Sincerely '' or " Faithfully Yours," not because either phrase was ever literally true,
but simply and solely because, nobody knows why,
good use once sanctioned one form, and now sanctions the others.
I have dwelt thus long on good use because, as I
have said more than once already, good use is inevitably the basis of all good style. Whoever strays
from it is first "original," then eccentric, then obscure, then unintelligible. Whoever writes a totally
foreign language is of course unintelligible, but unintelligible only because in every word he formulates,

'' Yankee Doodle came to town
A-riding on a pony,
He stuck a feather in his hat,
And called him macaroni."

Now, why he should. have described himself as a nutritious article of diet popular in Southern Europe I
could never imagine until I happened to notice Sir_
Benjamin Backbite's impromptu verses in the" School
for Scandal," - a play produced just before the .American Revolution : " Sure, never were seen two such beautiful ponies;
Other horses are clowns, but these macaronies.
To give them this title I 'm sure is not wrong,
Their legs are so slim and their tails are so long."

Apparently the macaroni was a dandy in tights
and very long coat-tails. The embattled farmers
with feathers in their hats were derisively likened to
him, just as a country fellow on a cart-horse is some.
times hailed to-day as a" dude on horseback." And a
panorama of men's fashion-plates from Sheridan's
time to ours would show a series of figures, each · of
which might have been described all along as an exquisite or a man offashion ; but for each of which, as

26

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

and sometimes in every mark he puts down, he
serenely violates every rule of the reputable, national,
and present use that makes modern English the thing
it is. But unless I have sadly missed my purpose,
I have shown you reason to see that in the last ·
sentence l used a word by no means felicitous.
"Every rule," I wrote, "of good use;" but the very ,
essence of good use is that it is not a system of rules,
but a constantly shifting state of fact. Rules, die·
tionaries, grammars, can help us to discover it, just as
fashion-plates and manuals of etiquette may help us
to dress oursehes and to behave properly at table.
But in the one case, as in the others, there is no more
absolute rule than the one which prudent people
habitually exemplify; namely, that a wise man should
keep good company, and use good sense.
So far, in order to emphasize at once ·the laxity
and the tyranny of good use, I have been asking you
to consider sty le as a series of letters so joined together as to make words. And I hope that our con·
sideration of the subject has been close enough to
fix in our minds the fact that the chief reason why
style impresses us as a thing possessed of very subtile
qualities is that human consent has agreed to associate with those palpably material facts, arbitrary
sounds and the arbitrary marks that stand for them,
certain more or less definite phases of that eternally im·
material reality to which we give the name" thought.','
t shall ask you now, in imagination, to turn once
more to a printed page, - or better still, to a printed

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

27

book, - and ask yourselves whether we have as yet
seen all that is therein visible.
A number of black marks we found these words to
pe, grouped together and occasionally repeated. A
little closer inspection will show us that, in any mod·
em piece of printing or writing, these groups of black
marks to which we give the name " words" are themselves grouper~_, by means of spaces and of other
black marks, which we call punctuation, in masses
which even to the most untrained eye are more or less
independent. In other words, anybody, whether he
understand English or not, can see that any pie_ce of
style consists not of an indefinite series of independent words, but of a series of words intelligently com.:
posed, - a word which means neither more nor less
than put together. The Latin term, as a single word,
is the more convenient. We need a name for the
visible groups in which the words that make up style
are arranged. The best and simplest word I know
is compositions.
In a printed book or a properly written manu·
script, we shall soon observe that more than one
kind of composition is visible. The book or the
manuscript itself is a complete composition ; it is
generally made up of a considerable number of visibly distinct parts to which we give the name "cha~
ters ; " these in turn are made up of a number of
somewhat less distinct parts which we call "para·
graphs ; ,. these tn turn of parts still less, but still
visibly, distinct, which we call "sentences." Or, to
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state the matter conversely, all style consists of words,
composed in sentences, composed in paragraphs, composed in larger groups to which we may for our purposes give the name "whole compositions."
The question which now presents itself to whoever
has grasped the fact that good use, and good use
alone, is what gives significance to the words of
which all style primarily consists, takes a very definite form. Are compositions, like words, go\ler·ned
by good use ? Or may we, in composing words, act
with more independence than in choosing them ? In
that case, are there any general principles of com·
position by which we may to advantage govern our
conduct?
The simplest way of answering this question, I
think, is to answer it backward : in the first place, to
inquire what general principles of composition might
rationally be laid down if there were no such troublesome thing as good use to interfere with us ; and then
to inquire how far the action of these principles is
balked in practice by good use.
And here we come to what has appeared to me
the fault of almost every textbook of Rhetoric I
have examined. These books consist chiefly of directions as to how one who would write should set about
composing. Many of these directions are extremely
sensible, many very suggestive. But in every case
these directions are appallingly numerous. It took
me some years to discern that all which have so far
come to my notice could be grouped under one of

29

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three very simple heads, each of which might be
phrased as a simple proposition. Various as they
are, all these directions concern either what may be
included in a given composition (a sentence, a paragraph, or a whole) ; or what I may call the outline, or
perhaps better, the mass of the composition,- in other
words, where the chief parts may most conveniently
be placed ; or finally, the internal arrangement of
the composition in detail. In brief, I may phrase
' these three principles of composition as follows : (1)
Every composition should group itself about one
central idea; (2) The chief parts of every composition should be so placed as readily to catch the ·eye ;
(3) Finally, the relation of each part of · a composition to its neighbors should be unmistakable. The
first of these principles may conveniently be named
the principle of Unity; the second, the principle of
Mass; the third, the principle of Coherence. They are
important enough to deserve examination in detail.
I have said that all compositions should have unity,
- in other words, that -every composition should
group itself about one central idea. The very terms
in which I have phrased this principle suggest at once
the chief fact that I have tried to keep before you iP
the earlier part of this chapter, - that words are afte1
all nothing but arbitrary symbols standing for ideas.
So really, when we come to consider the substance
of any composition, we may better concern ourselves
rather with what the words stand for than with the
visible symbols themselves. If we once know what

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

ideas we wish to group together, the task of finding
words for them is immensely simplified; on the other
hand, if in the act of composition - an act which is
generally rather hasty - we have grouped together
a number of words, the question of whether we shall
leave them together, or strike out some, or add some,
is generally to be settled by considering not what visi·
ble forms our composition has associated, but what
ideas. Now, the principles on which we may properly
group ideas together are as various as anything well
can be. In the fir&t place, as we have just seen, there
are various kinds of compositions, - sentences, paragraphs, and those larger kinds which for convenience
I have grouped under the single head of wholes. Obviously there is in good style some reason why the
unity of the sentence should be more limited . than
that of the paragraph, and the unity of the paragraph
than that of the whole. Yet, as our purposes in composing vary, we may perfectly well devote to a single
subject - George Eliot, for example - a book, a chapter, a paragraph, or a sentence. Any decently written
life of George Eliot-Mr. Cross's, let us say-has
unity, in that it groups itself about one central idea;
namely, the notable writer in question. Any history
of English fiction in the nineteenth century - to be
sure, I do not at this moment recall one worth mentioning - would probably contain a chapter about
George Eliot which would possess unity for precisely
the same reason. So, in a general account of contemporary English literature, we should be rather

surprised not to find at least a paragraph devoted
to George Eliot, and this paragraph would have unity
for precisely the same reason that caused us to recognize it in the imaginary chapter, or in Mr. Cross's
book. And a very short article - a leader in a newspaper, for example -which should deal with modern
novels in general would be more than apt to contain
at least a sentence about George Eliot, of which the
unity would be demonstrable in exactly the same
,. way. In other words, the question of scale - in
many aspects important - has very little to do with
the question of unity. The question of unity is
whether for our purposes the ideas we have grouped
together may rationally be so grouped; if we can
show that they may, we are safe. Analogies are
often helpful : we may liken the grouping of ideas
in compositions to the grouping of facts in statistics.
A group of statistics, such as the director of the
Harvard gymnasium calls anthropometic, may concern a single individual; again, a genealogy concerns, as the case may be, a family, or a group of
families related by blood or marriage ; a local history,
such as we have hundreds of in New England, properly concerns a considerable number of families who
have lived at different times under the same political
conditions ; a State or a national census concerns the
entire population of State or nation, and groups it
. too in any number of different ways. But each of
these things has a unity of its own; and to a certain
degree each larger group contains each smaller one.

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ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

Here, I think, is the chief thing to keep in mind: just
as the sentence is a group of words, the paragraph is
a group of sentences, and the whole a group of paragraphs. We should take care that each group has,
for our purpose, a unity of its own; and that the
unity of each larger group is of a kind that may
properly be resolved into the smaller unities of which
it is composed.
In considering the question of unity, then, we consider rather what the words stand for than the visible
words themselves. In considering the second principle
of composition, - the principle of Mass, - I conceive
the case to be different. Style, you will remember, I
defined as the expression of thought and emotion in
written words. Written words we saw to be visible material symbols of that immaterial reality, thought and
emotion, which makes up our conscious lives. What
distinguishes written words from spoken, literature
from the colloquial language that precedes it, is that
written words address themselves to the eye and
spoken words to the ear. Though this fundamental
physical fact has been neglected by the makers of
textbooks, I know few more important. The principle of Mass, you will remember,-the principle which
governs the outward form of every composition, - is
that the chief parts of every composition should be so
placed as readily to catch the eye. Now, what catches
the eye is obviously not the immaterial idea a word
stands for, but the material symbol of the idea, - the
actual black marks to which g:ood use has in course

33

of time come to attach such aubtile and varied significance. In these groups of visible marks that compose
style certain parts are more conspicuous than others.
Broadly speaking, the most readily visible parts of a
giten composition are the beginning and the end.
Run your eye over a printed page ; you will find it
arrested by every period, more still by every one of
those breaks which mark the division of paragraphs.
Compare a book not broken into chapters - Defoe's
"Plague" for example-with a book in which the
chapters are carefuJly distinguished ; and you will
feel, on a conveniently large scale, the extreme me, chanical inconvenience of the former arrangement.
On the other hand, compare the ordinary version of
. the Bible -broken into verses whose separation is
based chiefly on the fact that each by itself will make
. a tolerable text- with the Revised Version, in most
. respects so deplorably inferior as literature: in the
fo1·mer case, it is mechanically hard, unless somebody
is reading aloud to you, to make out which break
is important, which not; in the latter case, the task is
mechanically easy. Or again, remark a fact that is
. becoming in my literary studies comically general :
-

""4!!ii-... familiar

quotation8 from celebrate•l hooks are almost

· always to be found at the beginning or the end.
~· "Music hath charms " are the opening words of
Congreve's "Mourning Bride." Don Quixote fights
- With the windmill very early in the first volume; he
dies with the remark that there are no birds in last
nests near the end of the last. Until I read
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" Don Quixote" through, a few years ago, these two in·
cidents were the chief ones concerning him which general reading and talking had fixed in my mind. Now,
the fact that, for better or worse, human readers notice the beginning and the end of compositions a good
deal more readily than the parts that come between
is the fact on which the principle of Mass is based.
A writer who is careful so to mass his compositions
as to put in places that catch the eye words which
stand for ideas that he wants us to keep in mind, will
find his work sur.prisingly more effective than that of
a perhaps cleverer man who puts down his words in
the order in which they occur to him.
The principle of Unity, we have seen, concerns
itself chiefly with the immaterial ideas for ·which the
material written words stand; the principle of Mass
chiefly with the written words themselves; the third
principle of composition - the principle of Coherence
- concerns itself, I think, about equally with both.
I phrased it, you will remember, in the words that
the relation of every part of a composition to its
neighbors should be unmistakable. In a given composition, for example, no word should appear without apparent reason for being there, - in other
words, no incongruous idea should destroy the
impression of unity. Again, to put the matter differently, no written word should be so placed that
we cannot see at a glance how its presence affects
the words about it. Sometimes coherence is a question of the actual order of words ; sometimes, as in

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

35

the clause I am at this moment writing, of constructions ; sometimes, as in the clause I write now,
it demands a pretty careful use of those convenient
parts of speech to which we give the name "connectives." In that last clause, for example, the pronoun
it, referring to the word coherence, which was the subject of the first clause in the sentence, made pos~ible
the change of construction from "it is a question of"
this or that to " it demands" this or that. But per.. haps the most important thing to remember about this
last principle of composition is its name. Coherence
is a much more felicitous name than Unity or Mass.
To " cohere " means to " stick together." _A sty le
that sticks together is coherent; a style whose parts
hang loose is not.
We find, then, an answer to the first question we
proposed a little while ago: if there were no such
troublesome thing as good use to interfere with the
free exercise of our ingenuity, we might clearly put
together our compositions in contented obedience to
the principles of Unity, Mass, and Coherence. It
remains for us to inquire how far the action of these
principles is hampered in practice by good use.
Perhaps the simplest way of answering this inquiry is to study an example of style frequently
cited in the textbooks. Among the various facts
which have conspired to give unfavorable fame to the
Emperor Nero is the general belief that he killed his
mother. In English we state this belief in these
words: Nero killed Agrippina. If asked to parse

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

37

this sentence, we say that Nero is in the nomina..
normal order of a sentence - in brief, subject, verb,
object-is apt to alter or to destroy the meaning.
tive case because it is the subject of the verb killed;
and that Agrippina is in the objective case - or the
"Nero interfecit Agrippinam," "Agrippinam interaccusative- because it is the object of the verb. But
fecit Nero," "Nero Agrippinam interfecit," all mean
if Agrippina had been the slayer and Nero the slain,
exactly the same thing; the difference in mass alters
Agrippina nominative and Nero objective, the word
the emphasis, that is all. "Nero killed Agrippina,"
Agrippina would still remain Agrippina; the word
on the other hand, means one thing; "Agrippina
Nero still Nero. In English the only way to change
, killed Nero," means another; and what" Nero Agripthe meaning would be to change the order of words,
pina killed" may mean, nobody without a knowledge
and to say, "Agrippina killed Nero." In Latin, on
' of the facts can possibly decide.
the other hand, the accusative case is different in form
, What is true of this simplest of sentences is true
from the nominative; the original sentence would
in a general way of any sentence in the English lanbe, "Nero interfecit .Agrippinam." That convenient
guage. Good use has settled that the meaning of one
great class of compositions in English - namely, of
final m does .Agrippina's business; the three words
may be arranged in any order we please. But if we
sentences - shall be indicated in general, not by the
forms of the words which compose them, but by the
wished to say that .Agrippina. killed Nero, we should
have to alter the form of both names, n.nd saJ' ~lj~ order. Except ·within firmly defined limits, we can- not alter the order of words in English without vio" Neronem interfecit .Agrippina." In this single example we can see as plainly as we need, I think, the
Iating good use ; and in no language can we violate
good use without grave and often fatal injury to our
chief way in which good use interferes with the free
· , meaning. "Nero Agrippina killed," to revert to our
operation of the principles of composition. The Engexample, is as completely ambiguous as any three
lish language has fewer inflections than almost any
other known to the civilized world ; that is, each
words can be. While, on the one hnnd, then, we who
word has fewer distinct forms to indicate its relations
use uninftected English are frco from tho distnrbin<,,.
0
to the words about it. .All nouns have possessives ~-~ array of grammatical rules and exceptions which so
and plurals ; all verbs have slightly different forms
-~ bothers us in Latin or in German, we are far less
free than Romans or Germans to apply the principles
for the present and the past tense; but this is about
all. In English, then, the relation of word to word is .~IE~ of composition to the compos ing of sentences. 'rl10
expressed not by the forms of the words, but gener~-- principle of Unity, to be sure, we may generally obally by their order; and any wide departure from the
serve pretty carefully; but the principle of 'Masi is

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEMENTS AND QUALITIES OF STYLE.

immensely interfered with by the fact that it is the
order of words in a sentence that in general gives the
sentence meaning ; and so to a less degree is the
principle of Coherence.
When we turn to the larger kinds of composition,
however, we find the case different. As a matter of
fact, the sentence is the only kind of composition that
inevitably appears i11 spoken discourse. Until words
are joined together, composed in sentences, there is,
of course, no such thing as intelligible communication. The moment they are so joined, the organism
of spoken language is complete. Paragraphs, on the
other hand, do not appear in spoken discourse at a11.
And though, of course, in serious compositions the
organic structure of the whole ought to be almost as
palpable to hearers ns to readers, the fact remains
that in by far the greater part of oral discourse the conversation, the chat, the bustle of daily life-.
there are no wholes at all. In other words, then,
while oral usage - actual speech - is what the
sentence is based on, the paragraph and the whole
composition are based on written usage, which is
commonly a great deal more thoughtful.
What is more, while the sentence is as old as language itself, the whole composition is hardly older
than literature, and the modern paragraph is consid- ·
erably younger than the art of printing. It follows, 1
then, and a very slight study of the facts will prove
the conclusion, that while in sentences good use very 1
seriously interferes with tlw operation of the prin- ~

ciples of composition, it interferes very little with
their operation in paragraphs and in compositions
of a larger kind. In other words, we are free to
arrange sentences in paragraphs, and paragraphs in
chapters, and chapters in books, pretty much as we
think fit.
We are now, I think, in a position to sum up
in a very few words the theory of style which I
shall try to present to you. Sty le, you will remem,ber, I defined as . the expression of thought and
feeling in written words. Modern sty le - the sty le
we read and write to-day - I believe to be the result
of a constant though generally unconscious struggle
between good use and the principles of . composition.
In words, of course good use is absolute; i:ri sentences,
though it relaxes its authority, it remains very powerful ; in paragraphs its authority becomes very feeble;
in whole compositions, it may roughly be said to
coincide with the principles.
In the chapters that follow, I purpose first to
examine as carefully as may be the outward and
visible body of style. It is made up of what I may
call four elements, - the prime element Words, composed in Sentences, composed in Paragraphs, composed in Whole Compositions. Each of these elements
I shall examine in detail, inquiring first how far it
is affected by the paramount authority of good use,
and then how within the limits of good use it may be
;- made, by means of the principles of composition or
otherwise, to assume various forms and to perform

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

various offices. Then, when we have studied the
visible body of style, its material elements, as carefully as we can, I shall turn to the three qualities,
Clearness, Force, and Elegance, and try to determine
what it is in the elements by which each of them may
be secured or lost.
A dull business this seems to many, yet after ten
years' study I do not find it dull at all. I find it,
rather, constantly more stimulating; ~nd this because
I grow more and more aware how in its essence this
matter of composition is as far from a dull and lifeless business as earthly matters can be; how he who
scribbles a dozen words, just as truly as he who writes
an epic, performs - all unknowing - one of those
feats that tell us why men have believed that God
made man in His image. For he who scrawls ribaldry, just as truly as he who writes for all time,
does that most wonderful of things,- gives a material body to some reality which till that moment was
immaterial, executes, all unconscious of the power
for which divine is none too grand a word, a lasting
act of creative imagination.

II.
WORDS.

WoRns, considered by themselves, are nothing more
or less than names, - the nafnes we give people just
as much as the names we give ideas. John is clearly
at once a word and a name; so is the compound word
John Jones; so is the word spade, which proY-erbial
wisdom declares to be so often used with reluctance;
so perhaps less obviously is the compound, - not
necessarily preferable, - the iron utensil frequently
employed for purposes of excavation. The office of
the words or groups of words which we shall consider
in this chapter is precisely the office of proper names,
- to identify separate ideas. John Jones, American
citizen, tax-payer ; kill, put to death, execute ; admirable, not to be endured, - all these are names of
ideas. So is every word I utter in this, or in any
other sentence. The main thing to keep in mind is
that here we are to consider words by themselves, and
not in composition; as names of separate ideas, and
not as groups which indicate the mutual relations of
separate ideas.
It is hardly worth while to repeat that the only
thing which makes a given word signify a given idea

42

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

is that good use - use which is reputable, national,
and present, - has consented that it shall do so. It
is more than worth while, however, it is absolutely
necessary, to keep this fact in mind. For since, generally speaking, there is no other relation between the
sound we utter and the idea we wish to convey than
that a great many other people have previously used
the same sound for the same purpose, it follows that
if for any reason we depart from the general practice
?f the people we address, we run into danger, if not
rnto the certainty o.f exerting ourselves to no purpose
whatever. I remember having once waked up in a
Spanish railway-carriage to find myself alone on a
side track near the foot of the Sierra Morena over
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'
which the rest of the train had proceeded an hour or
two before. I am unfortunate enough to know nothing whatever of the Spanish language. The twelve
hours of misadventure which followed my waking
were immensely complicated by the fact that I had
no idea of what notions the kindly disposed inhabitan.ts of Estremadura attached to the vocal sounds they
amiably uttered; nor had they any of the usage prevalent in the more civilized parts of North America.
And a very curious fact was that the interpreter on
whom we ultimately fell back was a native of the
place who had the misfortune to be deaf and dumb.
The language of sign has no nationality.
Of course a dangerous practice is not necessarily
fatal. You may go into action without getting shot;
you may ride a bucking horse without breaking your

WORDS.

43

neck ; you may write or utter a word sanctioned by
no respectable usage whatever without being incomprehensible, - vamose, for example, absquatulate,
enthuse, walkist. But to go no farther than a play
that all of us have read, what does Hamlet mean by
two phrases to be found in every text? When Ophelia
asks him what his play means, he answers, " This is
miching mallecho; it means mischief;" and when,
somewhat earlier, his friends are trying to prevent his
follqwing the ghost, he says, "By Heaven, I '11 make a
ghost of him that lets me." Now, I am informed that
in certain parts of New England the word meaching is
still in use, to express some sly line of conduct or
other observable in dogs. I never heard it; I do not
know exactly what line of conduct it describes. What
mallecho may mean, except that it looks Spanish, and
that the Latin root rnal means bad, aud has given rise
to a great many names for bad things in modern languages, I have no idea at all. English it certainly
is not, any more than rniching mallecho is comprehensible without considerable commentary, much of
which is concerned with the question of whether
the whole trouble may not be a printer's error. To
turn to the second phrase, we all use the word let;
roughly speaking, it means to allow, to permit: you
let a child sit up past bedtime. But what sense is
there in Hamlet's threatening to make a ghost of whoever lets him follow the ghost - which is exactly what
he is trying to do ? As a matter of fact, the good use
of Shakspere's time atbached to the word let the

44

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

meaning that we express by the words check or prevent, - a meaning preserved nowadays only in the
somewhat rare idiom "without let or hindrance."
Obviously, neither of Hamlet's words is of any particular use to a man who wishes to convey an idea to
another in the year of grace 1891.
I chose these simple and very palpable examples of
words that answer no purpose nowadays because they
show very clearly the two grounds, and the only two,
on which we are safe in declaring a word unfit for use.
To English-speaking people miching may once have
meant something; at present, to most English-speaking people it certainly means nothing whatever ; to
most English-speaking people, I incline to think,
mallecho has never meant anything at all. In other
words, neither miching nor mallecho is at this moment
in the English language. Let, on the other hand, is
undoubtedly in the language ; but at this moment it
means not what Hamlet meant by it, but precisely the
reverse. To use the technical terms of Rhetoric,
miching and mallecho, words not in the language, are
now Barbarisms ; let, a word in the language, but a
word to which good use gives a different meaning
from that for which it is employed, is now an Impropriety. All offences against good use in our choice of
words are either Barbarisms or Improprieties. It is
worth while, then, to devote a few minutes to each
class.
For just here come a great part of the questions
about style which puzzle unpractised writers and add

discomfort to a chair of Rhetoric. Is thi3 word or
that admissible? they ask us, day after day. Is it a
Barbarism, we ask ourselves, or an Impropriety? If
neither, then it is admissible.
Comparatively speaking, Barbarisms are not very
common. Obsolete words, such as Hamlet's miching
mallecho, are obsolete just because, for one reason o_r
another, people have stopped using them. For this
verj reason, people who write nowadays do not know
them by sight and sound; and there is little danger
of falling into any sin from temptation to which circumstances free you. Foreign words, on the other
hand, are more insidious. To many minds liaut-ton
says something far more significant than fashion, something which I found expressed in Portugal, some
years ago, by a mysterious phrase which the Portuguese pronounced ig-leaf, a perfect rhyme withfig-leaf;
they spelled it, I discovered later, high-life, and believed
it very choice English. The truth is that novelty of
expression frequently masks commonplace. A little
learning is very dangerous to vocabulary ; but a very
little good sense will minimize the danger.

45

"And when that he wel drunken had the win,
Then would he speken no word but Latin; "

but when the ecclesiastic was sober, he could discourse
in very rational English .
. Brand-new words, like foreign ones, are insidious
for much the same reason : they conceal for n. mo~
ment the triteness of the idea they stand for. Slang

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47

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

changes a good deal faster than the mannerei and cu&
toms of mankind. Stale stories existed long before
chestnuts, and have already survived them a year or
two. Now, there is, I conceive, just one excuse for a
brand-new word; namely, a brand-new idea. When
telephones were invented we needed a vocabulary to
fit the facts, and straightway introduced one. When
Ericsson gave us a new kind of war-ship, the accident
of its name gave us the new term monitor, which has
lasted. Copper~ead was a good word five and twenty
years ago ; so was Mugwump when certain of our
fellow-citizens refused to vote for Mr. Blaine; but as
politics have changed, Copperheads and Mugwumps
are becoming, save to historical scholars, terms as
mysterious as to young people nowadays is the term
waterfall, which was applied to those bunches of hair
that dangled at the necks of pretty girls in President
Lincoln's time. But Whig and Tory lived for a century and more ; so perhaps will Republican and
])emocrat. And curls and skirts and wigs are perennial ; but periwigs are no more. Perhaps no phase of
barbarism is more palpable and more provoking than
the pedantic trick of spelling old names in new ways:
why we say Alsace and Bavaria and Mark Antony,
why we do not say H omeros and Roma and Brute, I
do not know ; but I know that we do not. And I
know that there are few more unidiomatic absurdities
than those of the gentlemen who insist on spelling
Alfred Aelfred, and Virgil with an e, and otherwise
on impairing that irrational, spontaneous variety which

people who love English know to be one of its most
subtile charms. Th~ worst of the mischief is that
they cannot do it without knowing it. Neither, as a
general rule, can any prudent person, who knows a
language well enough to talk it fluently, be guilty of
a serious Barbarism.
A curious proof of this was an experience I had a
iittle while ago. '!,ouching this subject in some lectm;es at college, I took up a package of undergraduate
themes, some sixty in number,and looked through them
for examples of Barbarism. In half an hour or so I
found only three; and none of them was flagrant. I
then looked through the same package for examples
of Impropriety ; in less time I had found something
near a hundred. "Harvard," for example, wrote one
youth, who wished to be superlatively loyal, " is the
peer of all American colleges," which means of
course only that Harvard is as good a college as any
other.
Improprieties, then, - the misuse of words which
are actually in the language, - are by far the com·
monest and most insidious offences against good
use in words. It is convenient to study anything in
a somewhat exaggerated form. Crnde Impropriety is
a perennial form of humor; it is what makes us laucrh
b
at the speeches of Mrs. Quickly, of Dogberry, of Mrs.
Malaprop; at the spelling of Hosea Biglow or of Josh
Billings. And two speeches of Dogberry's will perhaps afford as good examples as we need. When
one of his prisoners calls him an ass, he exclaims.

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49

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

" Dost thou not suspect my place ? " and a little later,
in regret that the contempt of court is unrecorded,
" 0 that he were here to write me down an ass!" By
asking why Dogberry falls into these two errors, we
may discover the chief reasons why anybody ever falls
into Impropriety. The reasons for the two are distinct:
when he says," Dost thou. not suspect my place?" meaning respect - he deliberately uses a bigger word
than he can understand; when he says, "0 that I had
been writ down an ass!" he has lost his head, and so
in excitement utters a phrase which in cooler mo.
ments he would understand to mean something very
different from what he intends. One or the other of
these reasons I have found to underlie nearly all the
Improprieties I have come across.
In point of fact, the charm of novelty and mystery
which surrounds any unfamiliar phrase is profoundly
fascinating. I have always sympathized with the man
in one of George Eliot's novels who finds much comfort in repeating to himself the words," Sihon, King of
the Amorites, for His mercy endureth forever. And
Og, King of Bashan, for His mercy endureth forever."
So too with the converted African, in some less
notable fiction, who found in an old Book of Common
Prayer no words quite so pregnant with spiritual
meaning as " Augusta, Princess-Dowager of Wales."
Even reasonably educated people, I am afraid, are
not proof against the charms of the unfamiliar. Not
long ago I found in the work of an admirably but
modernly trained American an elaborate figure about

the fate of Phaeton, whom a classical dictionary confirmed my fear that he had confused with Icarus.
But a glance at a classical dictionary would have
saved him; so would a single question as to whether
he really knew whom he was talking about. In
brief, this kind of Impropriety is very closely akin
to the barbarous use of foreign or of new words,
which we found to be easily avoidable. And most
of · the Improprieties I found in the package of
them~s I mentioned a moment ago fall under the
other head.
For one reason or another, most of us generally
speak or write hastily, without leisure to consider
details of style. We use the first phrase that occurs
to us. This is particularly true of journalists, far
and away the most prolific and the most widely
read of modern men of letters. An Impropriety
of frequent occurrence is a typical example of the
trouble that follows. In hasty manuscript the words
house and home look almost exactly alike. What
is more, they really mean things that have points
in common ; most homes are in houses, and many
houses contain homes. I venture to guess that the
first blunder was a printer's ; it was not enough of a
blunder to be seriously corrected. And nowadays, in
newspapers, in college themes, and even in books, you
will find the words house and home hereabout used
synonymously, usually to signify a square wooden
structure, in excellent order, with a little grass about
it, and all the modern imprO\'ements. One who falls
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51

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

jnto this error, as inost of us manage to fall; one who
constantly uses words with inaccuracy enough to
confuse them, though not enough to amount to obscurity or even to palpable grotesqueness,- gets at
last into very serious trouble. Instead of having at
his serdce a definite vocabulary, he finds himself in
possession only of a jumbled collection of ill-defined
synonyms.
I have said enough, I think, to show clearly what
Barbarisms and Improprieties are. Under ·one head
or the other must ~all all offences against good use in
the choice of words. Our next business must be to
consider various effects which may be secured by the
choice of various kinds of words, all in themselves '
admissible; and finally to draw from these consid-'
erations certain conclusions, worth keeping well in
mind, concerning the ultimate relation of words and
ideas.
Before proceeding to discuss specific kinds of words,
however, I may perhaps say a word about vocabularies in general. By a vocabulary I mean the total
number of words at the disposal of a given individual.
No experience in travel is more surprising than the
speed with which a man of ordinary intelligence can
pick up words enough to get along in a country which •
he enters ignorant of its language. The linguistic r
aecomplishment of couriers and Swiss waiters ceases '
to be marvellous as soon as you try to imitate them.:
In point of fact, the number of words absolutely ·'
required for the necessary purposes of human inter-·· .

course is astonishingly small. In the region of Puget
Sound there has grown up a curious jargon called
Chinook, by means of which the native Indians and
the European or American traders conduct their negotiations. The jargon is said to be equally unlike
the native dialects and any tongue known to the
civilized world, - a pure hybrid; and I am informed
that less than a thousand words abundantly suffice
for all purposes of trade. For travel, for every-d-ay
life, a hundred or two prove more than enough.
Italian opera, it is said, expresses all the notions
that verbally underlie its extremely pretty music
by seven or eight hundred. In short, the vocabulary which anybody absolutely needs is . very small
indeed. The vocabulary at the disposal of a master
of such a language as English, on the other hand,
is comparatively enormous. A modern dictionary
contains something like a hundred thousand separate titles, - all sanctioned by more or less usage.
Nobody would ever think of using all these words.
The total number used by Shakspere, an extremely
copious writer, is, I believe, not above fifteen thousand.
But anybody who is anxious for the power of easily
expressing many and various shades of thought and
feeling will do well to keep at his disposal as large a
vocabulary as he can manage. The way to increase a
Tocabulary is very like the way to increase your per·
sonal acquaintance. Put yourself in the way of meeting as many different phases of expression as you can,
·-read widely, talk with clever people,-and whenever

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53

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

you come across a new word or expression train your·
self, so far as possible, to understand it, just as you
would train yourself to classify and remember people
you meet, gentle and vulgar, good, bad, or indifferent.
Each one has its place in that great composite fact,
- human nature and human life.
Some such process as this is consciously or unconsciously followed by pretty much everybody who has
had any experience in the art of verbal expression.
The result of this accumulated experience has phrased
itself in certain rpore or less accepted commonplaces,
which may roughly be called directions to those in
search of a vocabulary. Like most commonplaces,
these directions contain a good deal of truth and are
apt to result in a good deal of rather mischievous
error. There is no better way, perhaps, to reach the
conclusions about vocabulary to which I am trying to
guide you than to examine a few of these commonplaces in a little detail.
Among these commonplaces I select four which one
certainly hears as frequently as any. What is called
" strong Saxon English" is constantly maintained to
be better than words derived from the Latin; big
words are decried, as by no means so good as little
ones; general words, even though they cluster in
glittering generality, are held much inferior to specific ; and the sins of florid rhetoriciansr even though
skilled, have led many good and wise teachers to deplore the use of figurative language. I propose to
examine each of these commonplaces in turn, and

to see what result our examination leads to. In so
doing, I need hardly remind you, I put the question
of good use aside. No words we shall consider now
are either barbarous or improper; all are sanctioned
by good use. The question is not grammatical, but
rhetorical ; not of right or wrong, but of better or
worse.
The simplest way to proceed is by direct example.
I shall ask your attention, then, to a few fragments of
English l~terature in some of which a Saxon vocabulary is predominant, in others a Latin. Then we will
ask ourselves which is the better.
The first is a passage from the " Pilgrim's Progress": " Then Apollyon, espying his opportunity, began to
gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave
him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword
flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of
thee now; and with that, he had almost prest him to
death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as
God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his
last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man,
Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword,
saying, R ejoyce not against me, 0 mine Enemy I when I
fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust,
which made him give back, as one that had received his
mortal wound: Christian, perceiving that, made at him
again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than
Oonquerours. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his
Dragons wings, and sped him away, that Christian for a
season saw him no more."

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WORDS.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

In this passage the proportion 0£ Latin words to
Saxon is about one in thirteen.
In the next passage, from Dr. Johnson's "Rambler,"
the proportion 0£ Latin words to Saxon is almost one
in three: -

,.

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''

" Words become law by the occasions to which they
are applied, or the general character of them who use
them ; and the disgust which they produce arises from
the re vi val of those images with wliich they are commonly united. Thus if, in the most solemn discourse, ~
phrase happens to occur which has been successfully employed in some lddicrous narrative, the gravest auditor
finds it difficult to refrain from laughter, when they who
are not prepossessed by the same accidental association.
are utterly unable to guess the reason of bis merriment.
Words which convey ideas of dignity in one age are banished from elegant writing or conversation in another,
because they are in time debased by vulgar mouths, and
can be no longer heard without the involuntary recolleotion of unpleasing images."
· ',

Compare these two passages; then compare this
other group, -the first stanza of Wordsworth's " Sky.. ·
lark," and that of Shelley's. Here is Wordsworth's:
'' Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky I
Dost thou despise the earth, where cares abound 1
Or while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground 1Thy ne1>t, wliich thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music stilL"

And here is Shelley's: -

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155

"Hail to thee, blithe spirit I
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

In each 0£ these groups you can hardly fail to
notice a marked contrast in effect. You can hardly
fail to notice too that the difference in effect is in
each case produced chiefly by the notable difference
in the kinds of words deliberately or instinctively
chosen by the writers; in a word, its cause is etymologic. Yet in no one 0£ these extracts is there a word
not sanctioned by good use; and I vent~re to assert
that in no one of them is there an effect of which the
loss would not make the English language poorer.
In the passage from Bunyan, - describing a handto-hand fight, - the Saxon words have a simple
vigor which no other vocabulary at our disposal could
secure ; in that from Johnson, - a formal, old-fashioned literary criticism,-the Latin words have a sonorous and authoritative weight which, for all their
. pomposity, gives the passage a character unattainable by any simpler kind of diction. In the Latin
, words of Wordsworth's opening line, the sentiment
·i. of the meditative poet is bound to earth, the atten·• . tion held downward; in the Saxon words 0£ Shelley's,
-_ .the aspiring spirit of the poet leaps heavenward with
a lightness that no other kind of words could give it.
.' The difference we find here, then, is not a differ..
between good and bad, or even between better

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

and worse ; it is simply and solely a difference in
effect. Sometimes we wish to do one thing, sometimes another; according as we wish to do one or
another thing we choose our words from one or the
other of the chief sources of our language. For this
English language of ours is a curious hybrid. I never
heard it better described in a phrase than by a Dutch
divine a good many years ago. I happened to be
dining, on the continent of Europe, with a company
of Protestant clergymen of various nationalities.
They had passed the day rather seriously, and were
amusing themselves at table by pleasantly disputing
as to what language we might expect to use in
heaven, whither it was civilly assumed we all were
bound. English, French, and German each had its
native advocates. Suddenly this Dutchman, who had
sat silent, broke in, with ponderous authority: "My
friends," said he, " it must be English. English is
the only pot-pourri."
Etymology, in short, is a most interesting study or
pastime; and the history of this pot-pourri of an
English of ours makes the fit words for simple ideas
- ideas of fighting, for example, or of spontaneous
aspiration - chiefly Saxon in their origin ; but .the
same history makes the fit words for more contem·
plative ideas - ideas of literary criticism, for example, or of deliberate meditation - chiefly Latin. The
question is not which kind of word is abstractly best,
but generally which kind of idea we have in mi~d.
And fascinating though etymology may be, allurmg

WORDS.

57

as simple ideas, the charms of etymology and simplicity should never blind an earnest student to the
fact that English usage is not Saxon and not Latin,
but both, - each in its place.
Two examples of single phrases may perhaps lead
us as directly as anything to the next classification
of kinds of words I have proposed to you, - big and
little. The first phrase is Coleridge's name for his
most popular poem, - the '' Ancient Mariner." Now,
thi; means in Latinized diction precisely what " old
do· t. sailor " means in Saxon ; but the big Latin words
express something which the little Saxon words
quite lose. The second example is from a bit of my
personal observation. In a country graveyard in
Middlesex County, I once came across two stones
side by side. On the older by a few years were cut
for an epitaph the familiar lines from Hamlet : "All that live must die,
Passing through Nature to eternity."

newer was an epitaph expressing exactly the
idea in pure Saxon : " The path of death it must be trod
By those that wish to walk with God."

. Simpler words, and littler those last; uncontaminated
by the slightest suspicion of Latinism too ; but not for
that eternally better.
With big words and little, in fact, we shall find the
case to be just what it was with Latin and Saxon, -

-~

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58

WORDS.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

The first is from a song by Thomas Nash : -

a question not of inflexible rule guiding us between
good and bad, or even between better and worse,
but of what. effect we have in mind. Big words are
apt to be Latin, and little to be Saxon : acknowledge
and damn to the contrary notwithstanding. But dropping all thought of etymology, let us compare the two
love-letters in the fifth chapter of " Middlemarch."
Here are passages from each : -

'·'

" I have discerned in you," writes Casaubon, " an
elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness,
which I had hither~ not conceived to be compatible either
with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex· .
that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction·
when combined, as they notably are in you, with the men-.
tal qualities above indicated."
.1
"I am very grateful to you for loving me," writes ·
Dorothea, " and thinking me worthy to be your wife. I •
can look forward to no better happiness than that which
would be one with yours."

Casaubon's conventional, formal nature expresses ,
itself grandiloquently; Dorothea's simple, earnestl "
nature expresses itself simply. Each expresses itself
properly. The difference between big words and
little, in short, is a question of effect.
To pass now to the third classification of words to
which I called your attention, - specific and general,
-let me ask you to glance at two bits of verse, taken
almost at random from the literature I happened to be ·
reading when I last discussed this subject in my col·
lege lectures.

59

4
'

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year's pleasant king ;
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo I

"The palm and may make country houses gay;
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay,Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, to-witta-woo I''

•

The second is from a familiar song by Shakspere:
"When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail ;
When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
'fuwhoo !
Tuwhit ! Tuwhoo ! A merry note t
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot."

In both of these the usage is notably good ; but
compare for a moment the difference between the
word shepherds in the first verses and the words Dick
the shepherd in the second. The difference in effect
is very notable ; it lies almost wholly in the specific
character of the proper name Dick : we do not know
who Dick was, but the very mention of him makes
the picture that arises in our minds a great deal more
distinct than can possibly be summoned up by the
word shepherd alone. Again, to turn to mere
phrases, what do the words a great church mean, -

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

61

a powerful hierarchy like the Church of Rome, or a
Here is a somewhat curious complication of metaphor.
tall cathedral, like Salisbury? The general phrase, ~-~ In likening his temper to winter, Shakspere of course
to a certain degree, suggests both of the ideas it in- _;
is absolutely metiarhoric; but in carrying out the
eludes: each specific phrase excludes the other. All
ngure he is first literal in the second line aud the
three phrases are beyond reproach. Still again, to
third, and then in the fourth line he adus a second
consider the form in which I believe the uninten_figure to the first. Dropping for the sake of conven~
tional use of generalization to be most insidious,
ience the main metaphor, - allowing the poet the
license of general expression in figurative rather than
compare the phrase we have already considered," Nero ~ ,
killed Agrippina," with the passive form of the sam~ ·
in Uteral terms, -let us compare the literal phrase in
statement, "Agrippina was killed." The first phrase
~ the third line, " the boughs that shake against the
is specific. The fu.nction of the passive voice is to
cold" with the figurative phrase, "bare, ruined
'
.
effect a separation between an action and the agent;
choirs," in the fourth line. Both are admirably spethe second phrase throws tlie possible suspicion of_
cific, particularly the last. The word bare excludes
murder on all mankind, and yet leaves open the ques-·
at the beginning all possibility of that luxuriant ver· dure which comes to our minds with the memory of
tion whether Agrippina may not have been killed by a~'
almost every English ruin ; the word ruined does
cident. Now, obviously we may with perfect propriety
wish to express either of these ideas, just as we may
away with every suggestion of roof, of painted glass
wish to express the ideas phrased in the words great
and dim, religious light; and when the word choirs
church, or powerful hie?·archy, or tall cathedral. As
comes, we are ready to complete in fancy the picture
of Gothic tracery with clear eastern sky gleaming
with Latin words and Saxon, with big words and .
little, the question of specific words or general reduces
through the empty apertures. But what is more to
itself to a question of effect.
our purpose now, I for one, since I knew th ese lines,
have never looked through the boughs of a tree in late
The last question to which I proposed to ask your
attention we shall find reducing itself to the same
December without at least some faint fancy of what
-the English abbeys were in the times when the monks
form, now perhaps tediously familiar. Take, for ex.·
· .might still be alive to remember the comfortable
ample, the opening quatrain of the familiar sonnet of
Shakspere: _·_glories which Henry VIII. took from them when he
"That time of year thou mayest in me behold,
deprived England of the mystic pageantry of Rome.
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
The figure says more, in short, than any literal
Upon the boughs that shake against the cold,phrase could say. Is what it says what we wish to
Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.''

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62

WORDS.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

say? Is the effect it produces the effect we have in
mind ? If so, then we should use the figure. If not,
then we should discard it, not because it is an evil
thing, but because it does not serve our purpose.
The conclusion we have reached- that what kind
of words we should choose, within the limits of good
use, depends wholly on what effect we wish to convey
- seems at first wholly to discredit the commonplace
directions to those in search of a vocabulary which
we have examine!f. Neither Latin words nor Saxon
are absolutely better, - neither big nor little, general
nor specific, literal nor figurative. Yet I know few
more marked follies than that which leads people and sometimes very clever ones - wholly to discredit
commonplace. Spontaneous generalization is often
misleading; but it generally has at bottom comfortably hard facts. A.nd the facts at the bottom of the
four commonplaces that we have been thinking about
are not hard to find. In human intercourse we are
more apt to have simple thoughts to express than
abstruse. Now, we have seen that little Saxon
words fit simple ideas better than big Latin words.
Again, there is no more insidious habit of mind than
the laziness which prevents us so often from taking
the trouble to think out exactly what we mean. Now,
broadly speaking, the more specific our words, the
more exact must be the thought behind them. So
too for general purposes we are far more apt to need
to tell people what we really mean than to suggest to
them what the thing we mean resembles. Now, this

63

suggestion of resemblance is precisely what we
secure by using figurative words; when we wish to say
exactly what we mean, our words, in the nature of
things, ought to be as literal as we can make them.
.ln point of fact, then, our commonplaces turn out to
be in the main true, but to state truth in a somewhat disguised form. They purport to be statements
about the relative value of different kinds of words·
'
m truth, they are statements about the relative wisdom
of different habits of thought.
It ;might now seem well to proceed at once to the
consideration of the relation of words to ideas, with
which, I have said, I purpose to conclude this chapter.
But, as you will perhaps remember, I have said that
we must consider as virtually independent words those
compound names of ideas which consist of a considerable number of separate words. Spade, for example,
is obviously a word ; less obviously, but for our present purpose just as truly, so is the phrase, iron uten~il frequently employed f ~r purposes of excavation, Just as the present sovereign of Italy may be said to
be named either Humbert or by the line or two of
names given him in baptism and duly registered in
the Almanac de Gotha.
And there are certain
commonplaces which I think we should not pass over,
about the number of words by which we should name
our ideas.
· Be brief, I suppose, is the commonest, - more politely phrased in the proverb, '' Bre\·ity is the soul of
. wit; n and here, certainly, there is more positi rn truth

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64

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

than in any of the commonplaces concerning single
words to which I called your attention. No truth is more
constantly impressed by experience on a teacher of com·
position. At various times I have taken up a great many
college themes, and criticised them with this point in
view. On an average, I venture to assert, one half
of the words in any such composition can be stricken
out without the loss of a shade of meaning. What is
more, the process of excision is apt to result in a surprisingly idiomatic precision of style. A great many
people whom few would suspect of writing well use
very good words indeed, and conceal the fact only by
persistent dilution of style with unnecessary words.
For various reasons, not the least of which is the
obvious economy of time and attention, - at least for
readers, - a compact style is undoubtedly worth taking
trouble for ; but compactness is not al ways a positive
merit, any more than is the use of strong Saxon
English. In the one case as in the other, the real
question is what effect we wish to produce. The .
effect secured by compactness is extremely useful.;
but the effects secured by diffuseness are not for that
reason, or for any other, to be disregarded.
An example of deliberate contrast between diffuseness and compactness may be worth our attentio.q.. ,
It is from De Quincey.
. ·s
" In saying this, we do but vary the form of what we
once heard delivered on this subject by Mr. Wordsworth.
His remark was by far the weightiest thing we ever heard
on the subject of style ; and it was this: That it is iD

WORDS.

65

the highest degree unphilosophic tO call language, or diction, ' the dress of thoughts ; ' and what was it, then, that he
would substitute? Why, this : he would call it the ' incarnation of thoughts.'"

In this the diffuseness of the context emphasizes as
nothing else could emphasize the admirable compact..
ness 9f the phrases on which the attention centres.
But there are a great many writers whose peculiar
effects are produced by a frequently unrelieved diffuseness: De Quincey is one of them, - a writer whose
style has al ways had for me a very subtile charm. In
his work you rarely find a sentence that cannot be
- much compressed without the slightest violation of
English usage: I am tempted to say that you rarely
find an idea named by as few words as it might with
full propriety be named by. And yet I have proved
by experiment more than once that you cannot often
strike out a single one of De Quincey's single words
without the loss of a perceptible part of what makes
De Quincey's style peculiarly De Quincey's. The
same is true of very many of our earlier writers ;
Izaak Walton, for example. I mention him because
Professor Bain, whose very suggestive books on Rhet'oric suffer from the fact that he is apparently unable
.to understand how a rational general principle can be
open to any exception, has tried to improve a sentence
of Walton's in a way that seems to me quite in point.
"I have been told," writes Walton, "that, if a man
· that was born blind could obtain to have his sight but for

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66

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67

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

only one hour, during his whole life, and should, at the
first opening of his eyes, fix his sight upon the sun when
it was in its full glory, either at the rising or setting of it,
he would be so transported and amazed, and so admire
the glory of it, that he would not willingly turn his eyes
from that first ravishing object, to behold all the other
various beauties this world could present to him."
" H ere," wn'tes P ro f essor Barn,
. " we have both t;he
diffuse expression of appropriate ideas and the accumulation of particulars that are really unnecessary. Such a
sentence as the following contains all the relevant matter,
and gives the idea more directness and force: ' It is said
that if a man born blind could obtain his sight but for one
hour, the glory of the sunset or sunrise, should he happen
to behold it, would entrance him beyond all the other
beauties of the world.' "

expressed by nothing short of diffuseness. As a
positive rule, we cannot phrase the warning more
rigidly than by charging people to use no more }\1ords
than they need. The real question befoi'e any writer
is what effect he wishes to produce.
This question is by no means so simple as it ape
pears. To answer it with certainty, a writer must
hav~, I think, a far more definite understanding of the
ultimate relation of words and ideas than most of us
-habitually enjoy. I shall turn, then, to a consideration
of this question, which I think we should carefully
consider before dismissing this part of qur subject.
Not very long ago I reminded you that the total
number of words observed in good use and registered
in the larger English dictionaries of contemporary
style may be roughly estimated at a hundred thousand. Of these, the most copious and varied writer
rarely uses above ten or fifteen thousand ; and for
every-day purposes a thousand or so prove amply
sufficient. We are safe, I think, in assuming that
whoever has four or five thousand words at his ready
disposal has a better vocabulary than most of us.
With this number of outward and visible signs he
must express, as best he can, the eternally immaterial
reality of thought o.nd feeling which makes up his
conscious life.
A moment's thought will show us the amazing, the
insurmountable discrepancy between our vehicle of
expression and the fact we have to express. The
thoughts and the feelings of no two human beings are

Professor Bain, yon see, prefers his own version.
It is certain that Wal ton's expresses nothing which
the most vivid imagination would attribute to Professor Bain; but does Professor Bain, after all, succeed
in expressing anything which any imagination would
attribute to Izaak Wal ton ? Does not Wal ton ' to be. ,
himself, need every word he used to begin with ?
,
Be brief, we can see by this time is an excellent commonplace, provided that our purpose is one which can
properly be expressed by brevity. It is an admirable ·.
rule of conduct; it suggests a habit of thought which
under another guise - Be specific -we have already'
seen to be highly worth cultivating. At the same
time, for very many reasons, a writer may very
properly wish to express something which can be r

68

69

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

identical; and the shades of thought and feeling which
every single human being must know are virtually infinite, far beyond any power of human computation.
Nothing is commoner, then, than to find different
people habitually using the same word to express perfectly familiar but radically dissimilar ideas. In one
of Sardou's plays, I remember, an ardent free-thinker
is astonished and delighted to find himself in complete accord with an American lady on the subject of
the general villainy of the priesthood ; and a little
later appalled to discover that by priests the lady has
understood ecclesiastics of the Roman Catholic communion, and that she is an ardent devotee of the
more evangelical branch of the Church of England.
How true, how inevitable spontaneous disagree·
ment as to what words mean must be, how wholly
inadequate the vocabularies at our disposal to the
infinite shades of thought and feeling we must use
them to express, nothing can show more clearly than
the disputes, in talk and even in volumes, which are
constantly going on about us. More of these than
any one would guess who has not carefully examined
them turn upon what seems like perverse misunderstanding of words.
What does a man mean, for
example, who asserts that another is or is not a gen•
tleman ? To one the question turns on clothes ; to
another on social position gauged by the subtile stand·
ards of fashion ; to another on birth ; to another on
manners ; to another on those still more subtile things,
the feelings which go to make up character: to another

still on a combination of some or all of these. Last
winter a superannuated fisherman died in a little
Yankee village. He was rough enough in aspect to
delight a painter; if he could read and write it w~
all he could do. But there was about the man a certam
dignity of self-respect which made him at ease with
whoever spoke to him, which made whoever spoke to
him at ease with him. I have heard few more fitting
e,pitaphs than a phrase used by a college friend of
mine who knew the old fellow as well as I : " What a
gentleman he was!" But one who heard this alone
would · never have guessed that it applied to an uncouth old figure, not over clean, that until a few
months ago was visibly trudging about the paths of
our New England coast. Just such misunderstanding as any of us can see would arise here, underlies
by far the greater part of what disputes come to my
knowledge.
I have said enough, I take it, to emphasize the enormous, inevitable discrepancy between our ideas and
the few outward and visible signs by which common
consent- good use - agrees that style must express
them. It follows from this, I think, that the agreement of good use, the consent which makes any word
mean anything, must be far from exact; at best it is
approximate. For every-day purposes it answers fairly
well ; for the finer purposes of the higher literature
it often proves almost hopelessly inadequate.
In this matter I have found very suggestive the
line of thought started in my head a few years ago by

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70

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

some questions circulated by certain English psychologis.ts. What ideas, they asked, do we attach to
certain extremely familiar words and signs, - to the
letters of the alphabet, for example, or such a word
as man? The answers to their questions revealed
certain facts that I should never have thought of. A
considerable number of sane human beings, it appears,
attach to each letter of the alphabet a distinct color,
probably an unconscious reminiscence of the illuminated alphabets of infancy. For my own part, I found
that the word man suggested pretty distinctly a figure
with a clumsy hat and a chin-beard, poising himself
rather unsteadily on his left leg. I subsequently discovered the original of the image in a copy of Mother
Goose, familiar to me at the age of two or three.
To take another word, which we considered a little
while ag·o, what does choir mean? Usage, to be sure,
gives it two distinct significations: in architecture it
means the part of a church where the singers stand ;
hereabouts it generally means the singers themselves.
In the phrase from Shakspere that we considered, "Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang,"
- the second meaning is excluded ; but the very comment I made on the line -that the eastern sky gleamed
through the empty tracery - showed that to me the
word suggested a Gothic structure viewed from the
interior. To another it might with equal propriety
suggest the exterior of the same structure ; to still
another the whole structure, visible from no particular
point of view. And turning to the other meaning of

WORDS.

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71

the word, does choir when applied to singers suggest
a company of surpliced boys such as make so impressive some of the services of the Episcopal Church,
or one of those more social bodies from which, the
newspapers tell us, sopranos occasionally elope with
tenors?
We have come, in fact, to a point where we can
begin to appreciate pretty distinctly the actual rela
... ti on that exists between words and ideas. Our words
are at most so few, our ideas at the very least so
many, that almost every word we possess must be
pressed into service for very various ideas ; and what
is more, that no idea can ever be · called up in our
minds by a word, without the suggestion of a con
Riderable number of others along with it. Every
word we use in defining our ideas for ourselves must
not only name an idea, but along with it must suggest, consciously or unconsciously, a very curiom~ly
complex set of others. Every word we use in impar~
ing our ideas to other people must likewise arouse in
their ·minds a similar curious complexity of conscious
or sub-conscious associations. Here is a fact that we
can no more escape than we can escape the absolute
authority of good use itself.
We are now, I think, in a position to appreciate
more fully than before the precise problem before one
who, within the limits of good use, would choose for
his compositions the kinds and the number of words
which shall best produce the effect he has in mind.
It is not what it seemed at first,- simply to pitch
4

4

73

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

upon a word by which good use has agreed with
:reasonable approximation to name the idea he wishes
to arouse. It is equally, if not more, to make sure
that the word he chooses shall not only name the
idea distinctly enough to identify it, but also name
it by a name - if such a name is to be found which shall arouse in the minds of whoever read or
hear it a set of suggestions as nearly as possible
akin to those which it arouses in his own. Otherwise it must, in all probability, fail to produce the
effect he has in mind.
How hard this is we can see by thinking for a
moment of the various associations which in various
companies cluster about those most definitely specific
of words, - proper names. Every school-boy, I will
assume, has known who Brutus was, any time these
fifteen hundred years. He was the Roman gentleman
who had been a close personal friend of Julius Cresar,
but whose devotion to the old constitution of the
Roman republic led him to join in the conspiracy
which put Cresar to death. Shakspere's tragedy
mak es Brutus, to English-speaking people, something
of a hero, - a man not to be imitated, perhaps, but
surely to be admired for whole-hearted devotion to the
hi ghest ideals he knows. In the "Divine Comedy"
of Dante, on the other hand, Brutus appears in a very
different light. If I am not in error, Dante believed
passionately in the divine right of the Roman empire ; to him Brutus was the first and chiefest of the
sinners who had raised their hands against it. In

the very lowest depth of hell he found him suffering
the penalty of the gravest but one of human crimes ;
the worst torture of all - only a shade worse than
his - was reserved for Judas Iscariot. Now, if there
be school-boys trained in the " Divine Comedy " as
most of us have been trained in Shakspere, the name
" Brutus " would suggest to them anything but our
heroic ideal. Each set would know who Brutus
was; but the one set would think of him as a hero,
the other as one who deserved worse execration
than ever Yankee vented on Benedict Arnold.
After all, the analogy of such proper names as I
have just mentioned is perhaps the most instructive
to which I can now call your attention. If we understand a proper name at all, we know to what human
being it applies. In general, his outward and visible
form, lovely or unlovely, rises before our eyes when
we hear the arbitrary syllables by which men have
agreed to name him. But what set of emotions rises
in our minds along with this imaginary figure varies
almost as much as we ourselves vary from one another. In private life it is often hard to guess what
these emotions will be. With public figures the case
is a little different : it is safe to assume, I think, that
the name of Mr. Jefferson Davis, calling up a slim
figure with a slight beard under the chin, would arouse
one set of emotions in a citizen of Massachusetts,
and quite another in a citizen of Mississippi. Sensible
people, wishing to produce distinct rhetorical effects,
should govern their use of the name J ejferson Davis

72

74

75

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WORDS.

accordingly. And here we may see, as distinctly as
anywhere, the two functions that every word, every
name of an idea, must perform: in the first place,
it names something in such a way as to identify it;
in the second, it suggests along with it a very subtile
and variable set of associated ideas and emotions.
These two functions, hardly ever quite distinct in
style, must both be kept in mind by whoever would
use words - and, as we shall see later, by whoever
would compose words - with any approach to certainty. It is worth while, then, to name them now
distinctly. The names I give them are, I belieYc,
sanctioned by no small amount of usage ; but even
were there no usage behind them at all, I should feel
at liberty, with such definition as I hope I have given
them, to use them in this book. A word may bo
said, then, to denote the idea it identifies ; Jejferson
Davis denotes the slim gentleman with a slight chinbeard. A word may be said to connote the thoughts
and emotions that it arouses in the hearer or reader,
in whose mind these thoughts and emotions habitually
cluster about the precise idea it denotes: in the North,
for example, the name Jefferson Davis connotes the
idea of treason; in the South, the idea of patriotism.
What we have seen true of this proper name I shall
ask you to believe true, in greater or less degree, of
every word we use.
Now, the effect which we may wish at any moment
to produce is a matter not of denotation alone, nor of
connotation, but of both together. Nor is it a matter

of what a given word may denote or may connote
to us alone ; it is a matter of what that fine perception of fact which marks the distinction between what we call sanity and what we call folly,
leads us to believe that the word will at once denote
and connote in the minds of those whom we address.
And this is the consideration that must gove_rn us in
our choice of words, Latin or Saxon, big or little,
•general or specific, figurative or literal; and in our
choice of number of words, many or few. A very
fine question this proves to be, - depressing, perhaps,
at first sight, for it is clear that ideal perfection is as
unattainable in the use of words as in other phases
of our conduct of life. But what is unattainable is
not for that unapproachable; and I believe that there
are few things in this world more constantly, more
increasingly stimulating than unceasing, earnest effort
to approach more and more nearly an ideal which is
all the more worth striving for when we are sure that
it will never repay us with the fatal satiety of full
possess10n.

SENTENCES.

Ill.
SENTENCES.

A SENTENCE I may define as a series of words so
composed as to make complete sense. ln its simplest form it consists of a subject - the thing concerning which a completely sensible assertion is made
- and a predicate, the assertion made. There may or
may not be objects and modifiers. I study, is a sentence; so is, I study Rhetoric; so is, I study Rhetoric
with pleasure in spite of its apparent dulness; and
so on. But a true sentence may always, I think, be
analyzed into subject, or sometimes subjects, and
predicate, or sometimes predicates, with occasional
modifiers, - objects, adjectives, adverbs, what not.
For various purposes, it may take various forms, positive, negative, interrogative, exclamatory, - but
so long as it remains a composition of words, and of
nothing but words, which makes complete sense, it is
a sentence.
I need hardly remind you that sentences are as old
as language itself. Until a child is able to put words
together we do not, unless blinded by affection, pretend that the child can really talk. The moment be
can put words together, the moment he begins to ex·

77

press ideas, not independently, but with a growing sense
of their mutual relations, he begins to make sentences.
In the composition of sentences, then, we are controlled by a system of good use as old as the language
we employ ; and this system of good use which tells
us how we may compose words in sentences is what
has been codified so often under the depressing name
of" grammar." In some languages, certainly as they
.were taught in my day, grammar is appalling. The
Latin grammars that we used to learn l>y heart in the
good old times were dreadful things,- not only because
we were generally made to learn them by heart before
we had any real knowledge of what the phrases they
codified meant, but because the number and variety
of the forms assumed by almost every word in the
Latin language is in itself bewildering. In English,
on the other hand, we are grammatically so fortunate
that people fond of epigram have said with a shade
of truth that English has no grammar at all. This
means that English has fewer infiections than almost
any other language. What is more, its other grammatical forms are surprisingly simple : gender, for
example, instead of being arbitrary, corresponds with
physical fact; double negatives are really equivalent
to affirmatives. The forms assumed by English words,
in short, are so few and so simple that anybody who
knows the language at all knows them at sight, what singulars are, for example, and plurals, and possessives, and past tenses. Now when a composition
involves incongruity- a violation of common-sense-

78

79

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

SENTENCES.

almost anybody can see it. We was there, for example, does not make sense ; the word we means that
there were more than one of us, the word was confines
the number present to one. So " that girl is putting
on its gloves " does not make sense ; all girls are feminine, at least in English grammar, and the function
of the neuter in English is to strike out all notion of
sex. What is true in these very simple cases seems
to me true in all. In English, good use in composition is a question chiefly of good sense ; I have yet to
find a sentence that makes good sense - and anybody
who knows what words mean can tell, with a little
thought, whether a sentence makes good sense or not
- that is not good English.
In considering, then, what forms of composition are
sanctioned by English grammar, - by the good use
that must govern us in composing words, - I have
found the most convenient plan to be this : putting
aside formal grammar, I ask myself of a given construction whether it makes good sense ; if so, I find
it good English. The only serious question that
arises concerns constructions that in analysis do not
make good sense. Most of them are what we call
Solecisms, - a convenient single word for grammatical
blunders; but some fall under another head. Like
every other language, English possesses very irregular
forms or phrases which good use has abundantly sane·
tioned. These, which give a very subtilely effective
turn to sty le, we call Idioms. Before asserting that a
construction which does not make good sense is a.

blunder we must make sure that it is not an Idiom.
If a giv~n construction does not make good"'sens~, an.d
is not an Idiom, it is a Solecism; and a ;::;olec1sm is
a violation of good use. That seems to me the whole
story.
. .
.
One or two very simple examples w11l 11lustrate tlus
matter as well as more elaborate ones. Take a phrase
that any of us who are much in the country often
hear: " Was you there?" Now, was is singu~ar, and
you is plural; obviously there is an incong~mty here
not consistent with aood sense. But English usage
has agreed with thai°o£ most other languages in discardina0 the second person singular. The plural form
you is the one which the accumulated cou~~esies of
several centuries compel us to use in addressmg even
sweethearts and servants. Does English usage, then,
sanction the incongruity you was? At present it certainly does not. Yet a slight examination of some of
the best writers of the last century will show that
certainly as late as the time of Fielding, there was a
great deal of good authority for you was, when the
second person singular was intended ; that you were
was reserved for a distinct plural. You was, then,
may be said once to have been idiomatic; pres~nt
use makes it a Solecism. Take another phrase, which
few of us fail to utter every week: it is me. Now,
clearly the word after the verb is should be grammatically in agreement with the subject of t~\C verb.
Clearly, too, the subject of the verb is nomin~tive ; _and
apparently the form me, one of the very few mflections

BO

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

~hich remain i~1 English, is not nominative, but objective. No quest10n could occur wi th a noun: it is John,
it is the man, for example, would be unchancrcd in
form if English usage should choose to derna~d an
objective instead of a nominative case after the verb.
Clearly, too, it is him is wrong; and it is her. But
how about it is me and it is I? Everybody knows
that the latter form is logically the true one; most of
us have been reproved over and over again for our
depraved persistency in the use of the former. But,
as a matter of fact, has not good use gone a long way
to make it is me idiomatic, and it is I a bit pedantic?
I do not feel at all sure that we can answer No.
OH the other hand, the English usage which generally seems most arbitrary, seems to me really reducible to a matter of the simplest common-sense. I
refer to the use of shall and will. Shall is the normal
form of. the future: its literal meaning is absolutely
p_rophet1c; I shall come, for example, settles the questi_on_ of my ?oming. Will, on the other hand, implies
d1st111ct volition. I will come, means, clearly enough,
that I should like to come very much. In the first
person, in predicting our own conduct, we use the
auxiliaries with their literal meaning. In the second
person and the third, we find the case apparently
changed: we say not you shall come, but you will
come; not it shall rain, but it will rain. Why? Simply and solely, I believe, because as a matter of good
sense, or at least of good manners, we cannot rationally or decently assume such control of persons or

SENTENCES.

81

things other than ourselves as to risk a distinct
prophecy about them. To 1rny you sliall come would
be to assume complete control of your conduct; to
say it shall rain , to assume complete control of th e
weather. As a matter of courtesy, then, we use will
when we utter predictions about persons other than
ourselves, - implying their consent to the line of
conduct we assert them about to follow; and pure
idiom, personifying such impersonal things as the
weather, makes will the word by which, in such questions as that about rain, we rid ourselves of the
assumption of jmpossible authority or rcsponsibilits.
In a word, I have found this rule invariable: Shall is
the normal form of the future tense. Unless g?od
sense or good manners forbid, it should be used ; but
when good sense or good manners forbid us to assume control of the subject of the verb, we should use
will.
To put the whole matter in a slightly different way,
a Solecism - a construction not sanctioned by English
usage -is reducible to a mode of Impropriety: it
really amounts to using an English word, or English
words, in a sense not sanctioned by English usage.
It differs from a simple Impropriety only in the fact
that the misuse is not obvious until we consider the
word misused, not alone, but in its relation to the context; and under the head of Solecism must fall all
violations of good use in compositions.
This is certainly true at least of style in its broader
sense, which includes spoken discourse as well as
~

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82

83

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

SENTENCES.

written. In written discourse, however, there is one
peculiar feature of rather late growth, which deserves
independent consideration. This featul'C', wholly absent from spoken discourse, addressed solely to the
eye, and very bewildering to most people, is punctuation. Certain marks of punctuation - interrogation·
marks, exclamation-points, signs of quotation - are
easy enough to manage. Periods rarely give much
trouble to anybody who stnps to think. But commas,
and above all semi-colons and colons, are dreadfully
puzzling; and I have never yet come across a book on
the subject which did not leave me more puzzled than
it found me. I have tried to discover some 0aeneral
principle beneath the practice - the manifold forms
of good use - now in vogue. I do not feel completely
satisfied with the form which th0 principle I find
there takes in my mind; but at all events, it has
proved suggestive. In spoken discourse, vocal emphasis and pauses indicate where we wish the hearers'
attention to centre. In written discourse, addressed
solely to the eye, such emphasis is impossible . Some
substitute is necessary; otherwise no one word, no
one part of a composition, appears any more significant than another. The crude substitutes - italics,
capitals, and the like -prove in practice too crude.
Good use, the.n, has fallen back on punctuation, whose
function, very generally stated, is to do for the eye
what emphasis docs for the ear, - to group sepa·
rately those words and thoughts which for tho
purpose in hand should be separately grouped; and

so far as the good use which governs the order of
words will permit, to arrest the eye for an instant
on those words on which it is desirable to arrest
the attention.
Putting aside interrogations and exclamations, the
period is the strongest mark of punctuation ; it marks
the limits of sentences. The next strongest mark
is the colon ; weaker, but still stronger than the
comma, is the semicolon; weakest and most frequent
qf all is the comma. In a given place, as we shall
see later, we may often with perfect propriety use any
of these four marks; the question in such cases, the
question in general, is what we wish to group together, what to emphasize, and how strong to make
our emphasis.
Now, usage clearly does not permit us to put marks
of punctuation wherever we please. In putting into
practice this very general principle that punctuation
does for the eye what vocal stress does for the ear, we
must constantly keep in mind a rational sense of how
far we may go. But within the limits of good use, I
have found this principle, I have said, extremely suggestive. So much for good use in the composition of
sentences. Our next business is to inquire whether
within the limits of good use there are any specific
kinds of sentences which deserve special attention,
any types of sentence which on general principles we
should prefer to others.
In discussing a similar question about words, you
will remember, I began by mentioning certain com·

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CO~IPOSITION.

ally periodic composition. 'l'he sustained, somewhat
pompous, but, to my thinking, dignified character of
De Quincey's prose is largely an affair of periods;
the slashing vigor of Carlyle's prose, the startling
strength of many of his unexpected strokes, is largely
an affair of deliberately loose sentences.
With an appreciation of the marked difference in
effect produced by loose style and uy periodic, we may
now inquire whether there is any reason for preferring either in general. Theoretically, 1 believe there
is a good case for the periodic. It is best stated, I
think, by Mr. Herbert Spencer, in a paper called!
"The Philosophy of Style," which is remarkable, like
a good deal of his work, for being very ill written.
In brief, I understand his position to he this: In a
loose style, the mind of the reader tends constantly
to pause, to grasp the complete idea, at each point
where the sense is grammatically complete ; and each
added clause involves not only the addition of some
new features to an idea that one is tempted to con.
sider complete without them, but often also the unmaking of an idea into which the logically incomplete
if grammatically complete statements of the earlier
portions of the sentence have led us. In a periodic
style, though the attention is sometimes strained,
there is far less liability to error. 'l'he whole principle
may be very simply illustrated by considering three
words, first as the English arrange them, and then as
the French. " A black horse," we say ; the French
say, "un cheval noir." Off-hand, anybody would

SENTENCES.

87

declare one order exactly as good as the other. But
repeat to yourself the words, " a black horse," and
see what image arises in your miud : once for all, it
will be a black horse, mane, tail, a ud hide. Then say
to yourself, "a horse,'' - the English equivalent of
the French "un cheval: " unless your experience and
habit of mind be different from that of every body I
have carefully examined on this point, t he image that
will form itself in your mind will have a bay hide.
' Hereabouts, at any rate, the typical horse is a bay.
Now add to the words, " a horse," or" un cheval," the
adjective "black,'' or "noir," and see what happens:
you have to destroy your bay image before you finally
possess yourself of the proper black qne. The Eng·
lish form," a black horse," is periodic, - it conveys the
whole idea at once; the F1'ench form," un cheval noir,"
is loose, - it conveys the idea in two distinct parts,
the first complete in itself, and subtilely misleading.
What is true of these three words I have found to be
true of periodic and loose style in general. And
broadly speaking, the looser style gets, the worse
the trouble grows. Theoretically, the best style is
periodic.
When we come to practice, however, we find our
theory decidedly limited. As I said a little while
aao no writer can be found whose sentences fall ino '
variably into one class or the other. This means, of
course, that to write wholly in either periodic or loose
sentences would be to violate the unanimous usage
of Er.glish literature ; and unanimous usage of this

;·:·r · ~:, _

88

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

SENTENCES.

kind is apt, like commonplace, to rest upon some permanent fact. In this case the permanent fact is not
far to seek. In uninflected English, the relation of
word to word is generally indicated by their order .
Much to alter this order is to alter or destroy their
meaning. The English language, then, is normally
loose. A single example will illustrate what I mean:
The sty le of Cresar's Commentaries is approved by
Latin scholars. Here is a literal translation of one
of Cresar's elaborately inflected periods, taken from
the first page at which I opened the book: "At the
same about time, Publius Crassus, when into Aqui ·
tania he was come (which region, as before said has
been, both of territory in extent, and in number of
inhabitants, for a third part of Gaul is counted) when
he had und erstood, in this region by him war to
be carried on, where a few before years Lucius Valerius, the legate, army defeated, killed had been, and
whence Lucius Manlius, the proconsul, baggage lost,
had retreated, not small by him care to be taken
understood." Absolutely periodic this arrangement,
logically admirable from beginning to the end, but
no more like English than I to Hercules. To mak e
English at all, we must ruthlessly loosen it, for example, thus : "About the same time Publius Crassus
arrived in Aqnitania, a region, which, as I have said before, is accounted in both territory and population a
third part of Gaul. Here he was to carry on the war;
here, he remembered, Lucius Valerius, the legate,
had a few years before been routed and killed;

from hence Lucius Manlius, the proconsul, had re·
treated, with the loss of his baggage.
Clearly,
Crassus understood, he must keep his wits about
him."
I have said enough, I hope, to show that the fundamental difference between periodic sentences and
loose is about the same as the fundamental differences we discussed between different kinds of words,
- Latin and Saxon, big and little, and so on: it is a
• difference of effect. And I hope I have said enough
to show why, on the whole, I think the effect secured
by an approach to the periodic form the better. But
I ham shown too how remote the usage of uninflected
English compels such an approach to be. In short, I
have explained as fully as I can here why it is my
custom to advise pupils to make their style as periodic
as they can without palpable artifice.
In a very few words, I can now answer the question with which we started this part of our inquiry: Are not short sentences preferable to long?
What long sentences are, and short, I leave to your
common-sense; what anybody can perceive needs no
definition. I refer to your common-sense, too, the
obvious fact that monotonous adherence to any one
form of sentence - or to any given line of conduct
at all - is apt to be exquisitely annoying. But from
what I have said, it should be clear that the longer a
sentence is, the harder it is to make the sentence
periodic, the more breaks there are apt to be in the
sense. Very broadly speaking, the effect produced

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by a style in which short periodic sentences predominate is more satisfactory than that produced by a
style full of long and loose ones, or of long ones whose
periodicity is secured only by palpable artifice; and
this position I Lelieve in a general way to be maintained by the historic development of English style
during the last three centuries.
0£ course such a fact as this - that the historic
Jevelopment of style has followed a certain course
- can be proved only by prolonged study, by great
accumulation of evidence. Even if I had collecteu
enough to make my conclusiolls incontestable, I
could not lay much of it Lefore you h ere; and, in
fact, I do not pretend that my opinion is more than
an op11110n. At the same time, I believe that I may
well offer you a few examples of the evidence which
has led me to it; for while they indicate something
concerning the general development of English style,
they also illustrate, pretty distinctly, some of the
principles to which I have still to call your attention.
Jn choos ing them, I have followed this plan : vVith
all its almost infinite variations, each period of any
national history has a character peculiarly its own.
This character is very hard to define, but by no
means hard to recognize. We all know, in a certain
way, what connotation clusters about the words Elizabethan, Cavalier, Puritan, Restoration, Queen Anne,
Eighteenth Century. Certain types of face, types of
fashion still more marked, contribute to the subtilely
different impressions that each succeeding epoch in

SE~TENCES.

.•

91

national life makes even on a superficial student.
Now, one who begins to know even a little of literature begins to feel instinctively that at each period
of national history there arises a style ·which, very
subtilely, expresses that period and no other. With
all his genius, that bids fair to make his writings
permanently contemporary, Shakspere remains - and
the better we know him the more we feel it - Elizabethan. Milton is not only Milton, but a man and a
poet of the seventeenth century. In Gray ·we have
something that belongs as much to the palmy days
of tl ie Georges as powdered wigs do and furbelows ;
in Wordsworth, something that is full of the spirit
which marked the first part of our own_ century;
in Browning, something peculiarly of our own time.
Guided at first only by this instinctive sense of what
makes a given piece of style. like a given costume
- characteris tic of a given epoch, I select a few
characteristic examples of English style at different
periods of national Jife, between the time of Queen
Elizabeth and our own. Then, al ways remembering
that the effects of sty le are produced only by means
of the choice and composition of the elements, I
proceed to analyze them - as far as may be- and
to discover what gives each its peculiar character.
For the moment, of course, I confine my analysis to
the composition of sentences.
Unable to choose many examples, I take half at
random passages from four writers, each of whom,
despite his individuality, is typical of his own cen·

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

SENTENCES.

tury : Sir Walter Ralegh of the sixteenth, - the age
of Elizabeth; Sir Thomas Browne of the seventeenth
- the age of the Stuarts ; Henry Fielding of the'
eighteenth, - the age of the Georges; Lord Macaulay
of the nineteenth, - the age of Victoria.
From Ralegh I take his famous apostrophe to
Death, which closes the great" History of the World,"
- the book which busied his thirteen years of imprisonment in the Tower of London : -

Still long, but no longer loose, this sentence. Elaborately, carefully, artificially periodic ; modelled, indeed,
on inflected Latin.
From Fielding I take, eYen more at random, a bit
of "Tom Jones": -

"0 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 of the world and despised : thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched
greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man,
and covered it all over with these two narrow words,
Hie jacet."

Long we find it, and very loose, in spite of its surging cadences.
From Sir Thomas Browne I take the famous sentence from his " Urn-Burial " which was so dear to
De Quincey : " Now, since these dead bones have already outlasted
the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong
and spacious buildings above it, and quietly rested under
the drums and tramplings of three conquests, what prince
can promise such diuturnity unto his relics, or might not
gladly say, Sic ego c:mnponi versus in ossa velim?"

93

" Now, there is no one circumstance in which the dis·
tempers of the mind bear a more exact analogy to those
which are called bodily, than in the aptness which both
qave to a relapse. This is plain in the violent diseases
of ambition and avarice. 1 have known ambition, when
cured at court by frequent disappointments (which are
the only physic for it), to break out again in a contest
for for eman of the grand jury at an assizes,- and have
heard of a man who had so far conquered avarice as to
give away many a sixpence, that comforted himself at
last on his deathbed, by making a crafty and advantageous bargain concerning his ensu ing funeral with an
undertaker who had married his only child."

The first two sentences here are much shorter.
Written English has come a great deal nearer spoken.
Considering the idiomatic freedom of the style, it
proves on examination surprisingly periodic ; but
Fielding's periodicity is nothing like so palpably artificial as Sir Thomas Browne's.
From Macaulay I take, much at random too, a few
sentences from his essay on Warren Hastings: " ·with all his faults - and they were neither few nor
small - only one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of silence and reconciliation where
the enmities of twenty generatiom; lie buried, in the Great

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Short sentences and long we find here, deliberately
intermixed. Periodic, every one of them. Artificial, if you please : the nineteenth century is nothincr
'f not self-conscious.
1
But the free periodicity ofb
Macaulay, frankly recognizing the limits of a language where the order of words chiefly determines
the relation of thoughts, is a wonderfully different
thing from the half-Latin periodicity of two centuries before.
Of course, these few examples indicate the development of style in a very rough way. They prove nothing, unless very careful and detailed study prove them
typical. Personally, I incline to believe that it would.
But putting that question aside, these examples certainly show how varied the effects are which can be
produced within the limits of periodic sentences alone,
and how far from modern a style must be whose periodicity is laboriously artificial. They show too, with
much distinctness, another trait i11 the composition of
sentences which is worth keeping in mind. In each

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

Abbey which has during many ages a fforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and bodies have been
shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall, the dust
of the illustrious accused should have min gled with the
dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to be. Yet
the place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind the
chancel of the parish church of Daylesford, in earth which
already held the bones of many chiefs of the house of
Hastings, was laid the coffin of the greatest man who bas
ever borne that ancient and widely extended name ."

-- - - -

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of the four extracts the sentences are balanced. The
balance of Ralegh's clauses is very obvious and sim·
ple,-as obvious as that of the Psalms. In the passage
from Sir Thomas Browne is a clause whose balance is
to me the most exquisite I have found in the language : to see just what is meant by !Jalance, then,
we cannot do better than study it for a moment
in detail:"Quietly rested under the drums and tram.plings of three conqitests."
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Not only every significant word in this clause has
one to balance it; but the main consonantal sounds of
each balancing pair are identical, and yet so subtilely
varied that though the exquisite art of the phrase
is not exquisite enough to seem q~ite artless, few
would perceive exactly in what the artifice consists.
Quietly balances conquests; rested balances three,·
drums balances tramplings. An obviously balanced
style - Dr. Johnson's is notoriously the most so in our
classical literature - has the fatal fault of aggressive
artificiahty. A sty le which neglects balance is often,
in effect, still worse. Take this sentence, for example,
from some newspaper: "As distinctly as vV. Renshaw
is at the head of the men, so is Miss Maud Watson
the premier lady player." What makes this so vile
is not so much, I think, the barbarous impropriety of
the last clause, as its utter and needless dissimilarity
to the first. In brief, I am accustomed to urge pupils
to make style as balanced as idiomatic freedom will
allow.

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I have now discussed, as far as time will permit, the
first two phases of the sentence which I proposed at
the beginning of this chapter: the danger of offending in composition against the paramount authority of
good use, and some of the different effects which within
the limits of good use may be produced by sentences
of different kinds. Our business now is to tum to
the principles of composition, and to inquire how far
good use will allow us to apply them to the composi·
tion of sentences.
These principles of composition, you will remember,
are three: The first, the principle of Unity, concerns
the substance of a composition ; every composition
should group itself about one central idea. The second, the principle of .Mass, concerns the external form
of a composition: the chief parts of every composition should be so placed as readily to catch the eye.
The third, the principle of Coherence, concerns the
internal arrangement of a composition: the relation
of each part of a composition to its neighbors should
be unmistakable. The question before us now is how
far we may apply these principles to the composition
of sentences.
To turn, then, to the principle of Unity, -that every
composition should group itself about one central idea.
In the first chapter I pointed out sufficiently how very
elastic this principle is : as our purpose varies, the
same idea may legitimately be made the central idea
of a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter or a book.
'fhe question of scale, in short, is a perfectly indepen·

dent one; but the question of unity is a perfectly distinct one. A style in which each composition has a
demonstrable central idea is a sty le very different in
effect from one in which each composition is heterogeneous, and for general purposes is by no means ~s
serviceable. An example you can all turn to will
show what I mean: the paper in the" Spectator" which
tells of the death of Sir Roger de Coverley. It is too
long for insertion here ; but a short extract will perhaps serve our purpose : "I have likewise a letter from the butler, who took so
much cate of me last summer when I was ~t the knight's
house. As my friend the butler mentions, in the simplicity of his heart, several circumstances the others have
passed over in silence, I shall give my reader a copy of
his letter, without any alteration or diminution: -

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

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" 'HONOURED Sm, - Knowing that you was my old master's
aood friend I could not forbear sending you the melancholy news
~f his death which has afflicted the whole county as well as his
poor servant~, who loved him, I may say, better than we did_ our
Ii ves. I am afraid he caught his death the last county-sess10ns,
where he would go to see justice done to a poor widow woman
and her fatherless children, that had been wronged by a n eighbouring gentleman; for you know, Sir, my good master was always
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the poor man ' s f nen

The contrast between the polite style of the Spectator
himself and the vulgar style of the butler, proves on
analysis to be chiefly a matter of unity of sentence.
And this example emphasizes one important fact:
neglect of the principle of Unity in the composition

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of sentences is very apt to produce a subtile effect of
vulgarity. It connotes, in short, a confusion of mind
which, in educated people, nothing short of extreme
emotion will justify.
The question which naturally presents itself now is
whether there is any test by which unity of sentence
may be proved. At the risk of seeming too dogmatic,
I ham come to the practice of laying down a rule as
definite as this: ·when a sentence may be resolved
into a single subject with legitimate modifiers, and a
single predicate with legitimate modifiers, it has
unity. Sentences not thus reducible often lack it.
From this, two or three conclusions follow sometimes laid down as distinct rules. Ouviously, a' short
sentence is less apt to stray out of unity than a long;
a periodic than a loose. Short and periodic then
' pre-'
should, on the principle of Unity, commonly be
ferred. Again, a shift of subject in a sentence, or of
predicate, or an accumulation of either subjects or
predicates, is apt to lead to violation of unity ; and
violation of unity is apt to mean a missing of the effect
which, as educated people, most writers generally
wish to produce.
A glance back at the four examples of different,
stages of English style which I cited a little while
hgo will show an interesting fact about this matter of
unity. Three hundred years ago, and two hundred,
for that matter, few writers seem to have paid much
attention to unity of sentence; like modern Germam,; and Harvard undergraduates, Englishmen of

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the most accomplished kind put into a sentence pretty
much what they felt like putting there. A century
ago, we find this changed. From a style that resembles the heterogeneity of modern German, English
has passed to a style that, more remotely, suggestsat least in its observance of the principle of Unitythe precision which makes so fascinating the style of
the last two centuries in France. In other words, if
we consider modern style - as I am disposed to - as
' the result of a constant conflict between good use and
the principles of composition, we may say that in
EnO'lish
sentences the principle of Unity has carried
e
the day. So far as good use can be said at all to
sanction a matter so remote from mere grammar,
good use may be said at present abundantly to sanction unity of sentence - not dogmatically, as it governs words and grammatical forms, but in the form
of a constantly strengthening tendency.
So we come to the principle of Mass: that the chief
parts of each composition should be so placed as
readily to catch the eye. In my first chapter I dwelt
on this matter more than on that which we have just
considered. I showed how, in writing, technicai devices must do for the eye what in speech emphasis
does for the ear; how the physical fact that written
style is addressed chiefly to the eye has, in my opinion,
more than a little to do with the principles which must
govern our written composition. I showed, you will
remember, how in any composition the points which
most readily catch the eye are evidently the beginning

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and the end. From which, of course it follows that,
broadly speaking, every composition -sentence, paragraph, chapter, book - may conveniently begin and
end with words which stand for ideas that we wish to
impress on our readers. And very lately I have called
your attention to another fact which we should remem"
ber here: broadly speaking, the office of punctuation
is to emphasize, - to do for the eye what vocal pauses
and stress do for the ear, - to show what parts of a
composition belong together, and among those parts to
indicate the most significant. It is clear that periods
emphasize more strongly than semi-colons; and semicolons than commas. From this, of course, it follows
that in an ideally massed sentence the most significant words come close to the periods, the less significant close to the lesser marks of punctuation, the
least significant in those unbroken stretches of discourse where there are nothing but words to arrest
the eye. The test of a well-massed sentence, then, is
very simple : Are the words that arrest the eye the
words on which the writer would arrest our attention?
With these principles in mind, let us glance at the
four examples of English style to which I have already
called your attention.
The passage from Ralegh, whatever its faults, is
ideally massed. The words that catch the eye are in
every case the chief ones ; and at the same time the
careful balance and antithesis of each separate clause
indicate with great precision the comparative value
of the ideas expressed.

The passage from Sir Thomas Browne is by no
means so well massed : as a consequence, we find that
we cannot read it by any means as fast. Before we
can tell which words are significant we must in imagination r ead the whole sentence aloud, and decide on
what words to throw vocal stress. But in this decision
we are greatly aided by the careful balance and antithesis that pervades the sentence.
In the passage from Fielding the artificiality of
style is far less palpable than in the others; but the
mass, though perhaps less Ratisfactory than Ralegh's,
is distinctly better than Sir 'rhomas Browne's.
In the passage from Macaulay, the massing, though
not so good as Ralegh's, is better than Browne's or
Fielding's. And here, again, balance and antithesis
come to the aid of punctuation.
In a general way, I think, these examples indicate
two facts which I believe true. In the first place, it is
very hard to mass a sentence well without making the
artifice very palpable. To put a word in a conspicuous
place, unless it chance to put itself there, is deliberate! v to alter the natural order of our words ; and to
alte~· the natural order of our words in an uninflected
language is to strain, and often to violate, the authority of good use. From this would naturally follow
the second fact I have in mind: that in the historical
development of English style the conflict between
good use and the principle of Mass has followed a
course very different from that of the conflict of good
use with the principle of Unity. In the case of the

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principle of Unity there was in the nature of things
no reason why the principle should not more and
more prevail. In the case of the principle of Mass,
which co11flicts directly with the naturally inflexible
order of words in an uninflected language, every effort
to apply the principle involves an artificial distortion
of style. rrhe result is just what we should expect.
The conflict of principle and use is still at its height,
and here is where modern students of style must
exercise the greatest care not to stray farther than
need be from principle.
An example from my own experience may serve
to make this matter clearer.
It occurred while I was last discussing this very
matter at Harvard College. I bad come to this point,
when I proposed a question that I have not yet
mentioned. Granting, as we have seen, that the
most conspicuous points in a sentence - or in any
composition -- are the beginning and the end, is either
of these more important than the other? It is a
natural fact that to most people - other things being
equal- what is freshest in mind is most conspicuous.
Perhaps chiefly for this reason, I asserted the end of
a composition to be on the whole a more emphatic
place than the beginning. And here, I pointed out,
is the secret of anti-climax: intentionally or unintentionally as the case may be -with fatal loss of effect
or with great ironical power - it emphasizes what, in
the nature of things, should not be emphatic. And to
close the whole subject, I wrote this sentence: "Be

sure that your sentences end with words that deserve
the distinction you give them." Revising the passage, I was impressed by the fact that this sentence
was perhaps as complete a violation as I could devise
of the very principle it laid down. " Give them" were
the most emphatic words; the next most emphatic the opening ones - were, "Be sure." Evidently that
would not do. Applying the principle . of Mass deliberat.,ely, I inquired what the chief words really were.
Obviously, I saw, they were end and distinction. Striking out needless words, placing needful ones where,
according to principle, they belonged, I found my
sentence in a form in all respects superior to the first,
- shorter, more compact, quite as freely idiomatic and
perfectly massed. In that form it stands now, a
counsel which I trust you will not find useless: "End
with words that deserve distinction."
So we come to the principle of Coherence: that the
relation of each part of a composition to its neighbor&
should be unmistakable. Applying this to sentences,
it obviously means that the relation of each word and
each clause to the context should be unmistakable.
In a very general form, this statement coYers by far
the greater part of the rules which fill conventional
textbooks of rhetoric. In a very general form, but I
think an adequately suggestive one, it answers by far
the greater part of the questions concerning composition which novices in the art address to teachers.
As I have said, such questions almost always concern
matters of detail; and in its very essence, the princi·

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pie of Coherence is that which applies chiefly to matters of detail. To distinguish it from the principle of
Mass, indeed, detail might have been a better name
for it.
For this very reason, the principle of Coherence is
far more difficult to discuss in a few minutes than
either of the others. Examples of the observance and
the violation of it take so many and such varied forms
that aj; first sight the whole matter seems almost hopeless. I believe, however, that coherence of sentence
is dependent on one of three pretty simple general
devices ; that all the rules I have found to guide us
toward it will fall under one of three broadly general
ones. By stating these and briefly discussing each in
turn, I can certainly treat the subject with more decision than otherwise.
The general principle, we may remember, is this:
in a sentence the relation of each word and each
clause to the context should be unmistakable. Now,
the mutual relations of words and clauses, indicated
primarily in our uninflected language by order of
words, may be made evident in three ways ~ by the
actual order of words in detail, by the grammatical
forms into which we throw our clauses, and by the
use of connectives. Three subordinate rules or principles have therefore phrased themselves in my mind :
The first, which concerns coherence in the order of
words, is this, - words closely related in thought
should be placed together, words distinct in thought
kept apart. The second, which concerns coherence

t;ENTENCES.

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105

in constructions, is this,- phrases that are similar in
significance should be similar in form. 'rlie third,
which concerns coherence in the use of connectives,
is this, - when the order of worus and the form of
constructions prove insufiiL:ient to define the relation
of a word or a clause to the context, connectives
should denote that relation with precision. These
three subordinate rules of coherence I propose to discuss in turn. They may be discussed most conveniently by means of broadly typical exarnples.
The example which first occurs to me of coherence
in the order of wor<ls is one from my own experience.
Writing a lecture on a part of our subject, - paragraphs, - which will be before us later, I put down the
following sentence : " A glance at any printed page
will show that the points in paragraphs which most
readily catch the eye are - even more notably than in
sentences -the beginning and the end." On revision
I found this sentence unsatisfactory. It had unity;
it was tolerably massed; so far as the principles of
composition went, then, the trouble must fall under
the head of coherence. Under this head my first
question was whether the trouble lay in the actual
order of the words. So far as good use permits, I
reminded myself, words connected in thought should
be kept together, words distinct in thought kept
apart. In this troublesome sentence what words belonged together in thought, which were not together
in fact? At a glance I saw that " in paragraphs"
kept apart two words - "points" and "which" -

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SE:N'TENCES.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

that in thought belonged together; at another glance
I saw that the clause, "even more notably than in
sentences," not only separated words - " are" and
" the beginning" - that in thought belonged together,
but that in thought this clause belonged with the
other wonls, - "in paragraphs," - which had liken
wise proved out of µlace. "In paragraphs even more
notably than in sentences," then, formulated itself as
a distinct clause which demanded insertion in a sentence that without it ran thus: "A glance at any
printed page will show that the points which most
readily catch the eye arc the beginning and the end."
Where did the qualifying clause, without which the
meaning was obviously incomplete, belong? Obviously between the main verb - "show" - and its
object; for in some degree it qualified both verb and
object. So the sentence fell into this far more cohe~
rent form : " A glance at any printed page will show
that in paragraphs, even more notably than in sentences, the points which most readily catch the eye
are the beginning and the end."
In this single example, then, we may see how to
apply a general principle of coherence commonly
stated in a number of apparently indeµendent rules:
Qnalifying words should be close to words they qualify and carefully separated from words they might
qualify, but do not; Parenthesis is undesirable ; and
so on. Words closely related in thought should be
kept together, words distinct in thought kept apart, that sums up the whole stonr.

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107

To turn to coherence in constructions, I think of no
better example of it than the passage from Ralegh
already before us. What preserves its looseness from
incoherence is simply and solely the admirable uniformity of its constructions. First comes the apostrophe ; then three perfectly independent clauses all
constructed exactly alike, each admirably balanced
and notably antithetical : this identity of construction
instantly groups them-where they belong- together
in the mind of any reader. Finally comes the long
clause explanatory of the three preceding: slightly dif- _
ferent in significance, it demands a slight alteration of
construction, that it may stand sufficiently apart; but
not varying from the others in mood or in general
character, it preserves, like them, careful balance and
antithesis. This example, of course, is old-fashioned;
it applies the principle in a form rather exaggerated for modern style. But it shows more distinctly
than less exaggerated examples the value, in coherence, of balance and antithesis, and of parallel constructions. A very modern example of incoherence
- a sentence from a college theme - may serve to
show, in very few words, how the principle that
Ralcgh so carefully observed is nowadays commonly
violated. An undergraduate dabbler in fiction was
engaged in telling a story where he assumed the character of a young and beautiful woman assaulted by a
spider : " I started up,'' he wrote, " and a scream was
heard." Now, in the context there was no considerable company within hearing, to be startled by the

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scream ; and except for the purpose of calling attention to the bearers of the scream there could have
been no possible reason for changing the construction
to the passive voice, and for shifting the subject.
What he meant was not what he wrote: it was one of
two other things, - "I started up and screamed," or
"I started up with a scream." In short, he managed,
in eight words, to commit the two most common and
needl ess offences against coherence in constructions.
He shifted his subject, and altered the voice of his verb
from active to passive.
In consi<lering how to improve this incoherent little
sentence , we are brought face to face with the third
subordinate principle of coherence. When the order
of words and the form of constructions prove insufficient to define the relation of a word or a clause to
the context, connectives should denote that relation
with precision. At first, I dare say, you were surprised to have me say that he meant one of two different things: either, " I started up and screamed,"
or, " I started up with a scream." Off-hand there
appears here little if any difference in meaning; but
really there is a difference which I believe to be very
profound. In the first sentence - " I started up and
screamed" - the two actions, starting and screaming,
are co-o rdinate : the £unction of and is to assert that
the facts or the words it connects are of precisely
equal value. Take the name of a firm, for example,
Brown and Jones: the and signifies that Brown's
signature or Joncs's is equally binding on both partic3.

Now, did the writer of our incoherent sentence mean
that the start and the scream were co-ordinate, - were
independent actions, for the purpose in hand of exactly equal value? Or did he mean that, as a matter
of fact, one of these actions was a part of the other,
was subordinate? If so, he should have employed a
subordinating connective, - such as with. " I started
up and screamed," means that there were two independent actions, one as significant as the other ; " I
started up with a scream," means that the two actions
really formed one, - the former addressing itself to
the eye, and in case of physical contact to the sense of
touch as well ; the latter, a slightly secondary one,
addressing itself solely to the ear. This nicety of
distinction, in so simple a case apparently unimportant, is among the most subtile secrets of effective
style; no confusion of thought is commoner than that
which confuses subordinate matters and co-ordinate.
Nor is there any more direct path to precision of
thought than that which leaves subordinate matter
on one side and co-ordinate on the other.
To appreciate the full value of skilfully used connectives, we cannot do better than glance back at the passage from Sir Thomas Browne already before us. Its
notable coherence, which in total effect quite atones
for the weakness of its massing, is due wholly to the
connectives. The second word - since - subordinates
the opening clauses; the five ands are strictly coordinate in meaning; the such binds the main clause
firmly to the subordinate ones that precede; and th0

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slightly loosening the alternative clause with which
the sentence ends, goes far to relieve the impression
of tension sure to be produced by too sustained a
period. Of these connectives the most subtile is such,
whose connective meaning docs not instantly appear.
It is the most subtile because it is placed, not at
the beginning of the clause which it binds to the
preceding. but in the body of it. To use a figure of
speech, it dove-tails style instead of merely gluing
it; and this dove-tailing of style is a thing worth
attending to. In producing a firmly coherent effect,
connectives in the body of a clause or sentence are surprisingly more efficient than initial connectives. Also
and too, for example, are decidedly firmer than and;
so, in that preceding clause, the connective for exam,.
ple more firmly knits this sentence to the preceding
than this clause, with an initial so, is knit to the
clause before it. And so I have touched on the two
chief guides to precision in the use of connectives:
distinguish between subordinate and co-ordinate matter ; and prefer connectives in the body of a clause to
initial ones.
So much for the principle of Coherence in detail. Tho
test of coherence appears in my very statement of tho
principle: Is there any chance of mistaking the relation of a word to its neighbors ? So far as this
chance exists, - and it cannot always be avoided, a sentence is incoherent.
The historical growth of coherence in English style
is too large a subject to discuss here. I shall venture,

SENTENCES.

111

then, in very few words, to state what I now think
about it. In brief, I think - and perhaps a study of
my four typical examples will bear me out - that
coherence in the order of words has tended on the
whole to strengthen ; that coherence in construction
is far more rare than it us ed to Le ; and that coherence in the use of connectives has on the whole
tended to grow finner and more subtile as thought
has"ga ined in freedom and precision. In the conflict
between good use and the principle of Coherence, then,
we find the principle farther advanced than the principle of Mass, but by no means as far as the principle
of Unity. And the point where it is now weakest is
constructions ; few writers nowadays practically remember that phrases similar in thought may to advantage be similar in form.
Toward the end of the last chapter I called your
attention to a matter to which we must now revert.
Having considered the dangers of offence against
O"OOd
use in our choice of words, you will remember,
0
and having pointed out what notable differences of
effect we micrht
secure within the limits of good use
0
by judiciously varying our cl10ice of words, I proceeded to inquire how a careful writer should proceed
in his search for the kinds of words that should produce the effects he has in mind. Jn our discuss ion
of sentences we haYe now reached this same point:
we have discussed the dangers of offence against
good use in compor.;itinn; we have seen how within the
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produce very varied effects; and we have seen how
judicious application of the principles of composition
to sentences of any kind - long or short, periodic or
loose, balanced or unbalanced- may help us to vary
and to define the effects we have in mind. It is our
business now to inquire concerning sentences, just as
we inquired concerning words, in what these effects
consist.

would be more than enough completely to alter the
connotation of the verb. Or take a somewhat longer
example, but just as simple, where there is no change
in denotation at all. Some years ago a gentleman
died hereabouts, whose literary style was much admired by the fri end who wrote an obituary notice
of him: "His English," ran the sentence, which I
have remembered for years, " was purified by const~nt study of the best models: the English Bible,
Shakspere, Addison, and Fisher Ames.'' I confess
that this sentence, which has often made me laugh,
is what h as chiefly kept alive in my mind the memory
of our deceased fellow-citizen. But if his admirer
had turned the phrase the other way, without altering
his denotation a bit, he would have secured a connotation if not more favorable to the immortality of his
subject, at least more consonant with its dignity :
"His English was purified by constant study of the
best models: Fisher Ames, Addison, Shakspere, and
the English Bible." Of compositions, then, we may
say just what we said of words: in the first place,
they so name ideas that we may identify them; in the
second place, they inevitably suggest at the same time
a very subtile and complicated set of associated ideas
and emotions. In short, compositions, like words,
inevitably possess both denotation and connotation;
and whoever would intelligently compose sentences
must know, in deciding what effect he would produce, both what he would denote and what he would
connote.

There is no need of repeating in detail what I said
then. I pointed out, you will remember, the inevitable discrepancy between the limited number of
words in our possession and the virtually infinite
number of thoughts in the mind of every living man;
and I showed how in fact every word we use or heal"
not only names an idea, but suggests along with it a
considerable number of others: the idea it names it
denotes; the ideas it suggests it connotes.
What we then found true of words by themselves
must obviously be true, in a vastly greater and more
complicated degree, of words in composition. Composition combines every,phase of the words it brincrs
together; in the organism of the sentence denotati~n
and connotation fuse. Take the simplest of examples,
- two words : I speak. As I utter these words in
combination, the pronoun calls up certain individualities of face and form and manner and dress, arnl
what not. If any one else should utter the same
words, the whole connotation would alter. The
changed denotation of the pronoun, of course, would
be the chief feature of the alteration; Lut this change

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PARAGRAPHS.
IN discussing both words and sentences, I have reminded you more than once that both of these elernenls of style are inevitable in all di scourse, written
or spoken. To exist at all, a language must have not
only words, but settled forms in which those words
compose intelJigible sentences. The good use which
ultimately governs both words and sentences is a fact
which has arisen from the generally spontaneous consent, first of talkers, and then of writers. In its broader
form it is a fact to which in every word he speaks, in
eve ry thought he articulately formulates, every man
of us must constantly confm:m. In writing words
nnd sentences, then, we simply put on paper i~1ings
that we are incessantly making. We record our habits
of thought. Now, there is no fact in human experi·
ence much more settled than this : to do anything
thoroughly well we must not stop in the act to consider how we are doing it. Action of any kind may
be carefully planned ; things once done may be rigorously scrutinized and criticised. But the time to plan
is before work begins; the time to criticise is after
work is done. To pause in the course of work, won-

115

dering whether we are on the right course, is almost
certainly to blunder. This is nowhere truer than in
composition. 'rhe task of the writer, as I can hardly
repeat too often, is a very wonderful one. It is nothing less than an act of creative imagination, than the
giving- of a visible material body to au eternally immaterial reality, which until embodied must remain
unknown to all but the one human being who knows
it. In the act of creation there is but one possible
courS'e : it is to concentrate attention as closely as we
possibly can on the reality which we would make real
to others than ourselves. Only thus, I believe, can
the words we create possess even a shadow of the
vitality which makes the thought they symbolize a
thing so inexpressibly real.
And yet, if the work of the writer ended here,
there were no use in all this pother about the elements
of sty le. It is true, I believe, that our best work
of any kind is done in those moments of splendid
adjustment when the forces without ourselves for a
little while relax their crushing hostility ; but such
moments of inspiration are not common. The most
we can generally do is to mimic them as best we may,
seeking in ourselves the motive force that is denied
us from without; and even though our mimicry
sometimes come so near the truth that for the while
we forget ourselves, we can never be sure that the
work we have done is the work that we meant to do.
We must plan it, then, as carefully as we can ; and
once done, we must scrutinize it with all our care.

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116

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

In th~s pfa.nning and this scrutiny we need principles
to gmde us; these principles are what I am trying to
set and to keep before you.
To put these high-sounding generalities in concrete
terms, the experience of pretty much every writer is
something like this: An idea presents itself to him in
a general form; he is impressed with some fact in
experience,
perhaps, which nothi1wb but the most ex• •
q msite .verse can adequately formulate ; or perhaps
he receives an invitation to dinner which he wants to
accept. ~is first task - and often his longest- is
to plan his work : he decides how to begin, what
course to follow, where to end. His next task is to
fill out his plan; in other words, to compose, in accordance with the general outline in his mind, a series
of words and sentences which shall so symbolize this
ot~tline that other minds than his can perceive it.
His final task is to revise the work he has executed,
and to see whether he has succeeded in producin(J'
the effects- denotative and connotative - which h~
had in view.
. It is in. this revision that the principles we have
~utherto. discussed become valuable. In actual writing,
JURt as in actual thinking and talking, no sane man
stops to consider words or syntnx:. But in revision
of writing few men arc fortunate enough to find themselves. so. completely made in the divine image as
~mhes1tatmg~y to pronounce their work good. If it
Is not good, it fails of excellence because in one way
or another the writer has neglected the principles of

PARAGRAPHS.

117

his art. And nothing can so surely help him to
remedy the trouble as a deliberate knowledge of just
what those principles are.
Now, as I have said already, the principles which
govern the composition of sentences are the same
which govern the composition of paragraphs and
chapters and books ; but in composing the larger
elements of style, we use these principles in a distinctly
different way. Except in rare cases, we do not deliberately plan our sentences; we write them, and
then 'revise them. Except in rare cases we do deliberately plan our paragraphs, our chapters, our books;
and if we plan them properly, we do not need to revise
them much, if dt all. Words and sentences are
subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.
That this distinction is not fanciful must be shown,
I believe, by the experience of any teacher of composition. Dogmatize, lecture as he will about how things
ought to be done, he finds his task, when he comes to
criticise the work of his pupils, resolving itself into
a form unpleasantly free from exhilaration. The
greater part of his work consists in pointing out how
in the choice of words and the composition of sentences his pupils have failed to pro<luce the effects
they had in mind. In other words, so far as teaching
concerns words and sentences, it must confine itself
chiefiy to the co1Tection of rooted and vicious habits,
constantly strengthened by the inevitable careles~mcss
of daily speech. But when we come to paragraphs

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and whole compositions, the experience of the teacher
undergoes a refreshing change. In eYery-day life
pupils do not make paragraphs or wholes at all.
There are no Y icious habits, then, for teachers to
unmake. A single lecture on principles will prove
more fruitful than a course of instruction in the
earlier stages of the art; and what is more, if the
teacher keep in his own mind and his pupils' the truth
that the principles which so plainly bring paragraphs
and order out of chaos are the very same which, applied habitually anu under different conditions, make
the difference between good sentences and bad, a
very long step will have been taken on the road
somewhere.
Firmly remembering, then, that what we have considered hitherto is of use to us chiefly in revision, and
that what we are to consider now is of use chiefly in
prerision, let us turn our attention to paragraphs.
First of all, we may best ask ourselves what a paragraph is. We all know paragraphs by sight. They
are those large masses of written or printed words that
appear on almost any properly composed page, distinguishing themselves from the context by a marked
indentation of the first line. But obviously this is
not a defmition. And no fact is more indicative of
the general neglect of the subject of paragraphs
than that no textbook of rhetoric I have come across
contains any satisfactory definition of them. A paragraph, says one, is" a collection, or series, of sentences,
with unity of purpose." A paragraph, says another,

is " a connected series of sentences constituting the
development of a single topic." A paragraph, says
a third, is " a whole composition in miniature." And
l:'!o on. In these straits, trying to make a definition
for myself, I have been able to frame no better one
than this, whose comparative form makes it at least
iluggestive: A paragraph is to a_ sentence what a
sentence is to a word.
While this, of course, is nothing but another way
of sp,ying what I have said already, - that the principles which apply to the composition of paragraphs
are the same that apply to the composition of sentences, - it states the fact in a more compact form;
and it fixes more firmly in one's mind the fact
which most writers never keep in mind at all, - that
paragraphs ought to be as definitely organized as
sentences themselves.
This fact, I have just said, few writers keep in mind.
Recallmg for an instant what everybody knows,- that
paragraphs, like punctuation, exist only in written discourse, and are not recognizable in spoken, - we can
see that this statement amounts to saying that in the
composition of paragraphs there is no such thing as
good use. Some good writers are pretty careful about
µaragraphs; but quite as many seem to regard paragraphs as purely ornamental devices, serving in literature some such purpose as that filled by illuminated
initials. A page or two of unbroken text is ugly;
let us break it somewhere. Without exaggeration a
very large number of the paragraphs I have exam·

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121

ENGLISH C01\1POSITION.

PARAGRAPHS.

incd appear to be made on no more vital principle
than this. The first line of every paragraph, to be
sure, is sharply indented ; and in parag raphs, as in
sentences, monotony of construction is palpably artificial, and palpable artificiality is never idiomatically
free. Now, what is not apparently idiomatic may be
said to offend against good use. V cry generally, then,
I may say that gooll use appears not to sanction rigid
monotony of paragraph. Further than that, nothing.
To a serious student of the art of composition this
state of things is very refreshing. It means that we
have reached a point where we are emancipated from
the troublesome control of external fashion, where we
are free to guide ourselves by intelligence. We a re
past the gambit; the game is open. The only question is how we may most effectively exercise our goou
sense.
Our good sense, I say. For if my definition of a
paragraph be true, if a paragraph really be to a sentence what a sentence is to a word, then pretty much
every principle which, constantly hampered by good
use, we tried to apply to sentences, we can now apply untrammelled; and almost the first thing ·we
found true of sentences was that, happily for us,
En glish grammar is little else th an a clumsy codification of British good sense. A sentence which on
analysis proves sensible is generally good English.
By the same token, a paragraph sensibly composed
is beyond cavil a good paragraph.
The next thing for us to inquire is whether there

are any distinct kinds of paragraphs, by means of
which distinctly different effects may be protluced.
The only kinds of paragraphs which seem practically
important are the long and the short. ·w hat a long
paragraph is, or a short, it is not very easy to say;
but perhaps it is eas ier than to answer a similar question about se ntences. ln an ord inary page of printin a page of this book, for example, - there are between two and three hundred words. Taking this as
a standard of measurement, I may roughly say that a
par~graph of less than one hundred words - of a third
of a page or less - is distinctly short; and that a
paragraph of more than throe hundred words - of
more than a page -is distinctly long. And there is
no doubt that lon g paragraphs produce an effect distinctly different from that produced by short. 'The
effect secured by long· paragraphs I may roughly call
solid or heavy or serious ; the effect secured by short
paragraphs I may roughly call light. Each effect
is perfectly legitimate; each has its function; in a
given piece of writing one kind or the other may with
perfect propriety predominate or prevail.
The general fact that long paragraphs are distinctly heavy in effect is tacitly recognized in a
familiar commonplace. With all their manifold unwisdom, children and young people have good eyes:
literally and metaphorically they have a way, mortifying to conscientious old folks, of seeing things pretty
much as they are. Now, wh en we ask children, or
people whose minus still retain the guilelesa veracity

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122

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

of infancy, to read a book, their first question is apt
to be whether there is much conversation in it. If
so, they are willing to read without coaxing; if not,
we often have to coax. In modern books speeches
are apt to be short; in modern books each speech
makes a distinct paragraph. Technically speaking,
then, this marked preference for books with conversation in them amounts to au instinctive preference
for short paragraphs ; nor is this preference exclusively iufantine. It is short speeches that give such
swift vitality to some of the most perennially delightful scenes of Moliere; it is the prevalence of
conversation and short paragraphs that makes so
perennially amusing the novels of the elder Dumas.
Tired people of my acquaintance generally prefer
Dumas to Walter Scott; when I am tired, I greatly
prefer him myself, - and so far as I can analyze
the preference, it is largely a matter of length of
paragraph.
In this fact we have the simplest guide in our consideration of the principles of composition as they
apply to paragraphs. We shall discuss them, of
course, in their regular order, - first the principle of
Unity, then the principle of Mass, and last the principle of Coherence. The general principle of Unity,
which concerns the substance of a composition vou
'.
will remember to be this : Every composition should
group itself about one central idea. In applying th is
principle to paragraphs, the textbooks grow pedantically lifeless. "Unity in a paragraph," says one

PARAGRAPHS.

123

•'implies a sustained purpose, and forbids digression
and irrelevant matter." " Unity in a paragraph,"
says another, "requires that eve? ~tatement i~ th~
pa'ragraph be subservient to one prm.mpal ~ffirmat1on.
" Unity in a paragraph," says a third, " is subse~ved
by choosing for each paragraph a determinate sub]ect,
to which all parts of the structure are related as constituting elements in its development." For my part,
I find it far more easy to understand the matter when
I simpll say that the type of a paragraph that possesses unity is a single speech in a dialogue.
A few examples within anybody's experience will
define this matter very simply. In the novels of the
last century it was generally the fashion to write
dialogue in great masses, - running into a single
paragraph a number of distinct speeches. You can
find such paraaraphs anywhere in Fielding. In any
modern novel,b on the other hand, each speech is
kept rigidly distinct ; and yet there is one case
where the most severe modern usage would place
in a single paragraph a number of independent
speeches: this is when you wish to produce the effect
of confused cries. In the "Arabian Nights," you will
remember, is a tale of how a prince of Persia sets
out to climlJ an enchanted mountain in search of a
speaking bird. If he turn around, he is sure to meet
a fate akin to that of Lot's wife, and to become a
black stone. The moment he begins to climb he is
accosted by all manner of taunting voices apparent~y
just behind him, which try to make him turn hlS

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head, and so meet his fate. A confused vituperative
clamor this, - each speech independent of every other,
but all combining in a single exasperating effect. To
separate these speeches into independent paragraphs
would be wholly to destroy the effect. They should
be written in a single paragraph.
So much for what unity of paragraph means. We
may unucn:;taud it still better by inquiring how to
test it. . While not scientifically exact, I have found
the test I shall propose to you very instructive. A
paragraph has unity when you can state its substance
in a singie sentence; otherwise it is very apt to
lack it.
This subject is physically too large to be conveniently illustrated here. I must ask such of you
as wish to prove it by Qbservation, then, to make
observations for yourselves. One or two examples
from my own experience, however, may be suggestive
aids. At Harvard College, some years ago, I had
occasion to consider in detail Burke's speech on Conciliation with America. I have never read a more
astonishingly lucid presentation of a very complicated subject. How is this lucidity secured? was
one of my first questions. Pencil in hand, I analyzed the whole speech; and from beginning to end
I found not a sin gle paragraph whose substance could
not be summed up in a single sentence. Again, there
is in thiR country a newspaper whose style is always
notable for certainty of effect: I mean "The Nation."
I often dislike what it says, but I have rarely found

PARAGRAPHS.

125

in it a leading article that at least rhetorically I ha~e
not admired. On analysis I have shown myself agam
and arrain that whoever write these leading articles
; in " The Na ti on '' - I refer to the political articles, not
to the scholarly letters, and so on, which are often
disfigured with all the most lifeless pedantries of
modern Germany - rarely write a paragraph \yhose
sul>stance cannot be summed up in a single sentence.
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Of this masterly making of paragrap1JS m
Natio11,'' I shall have more to say when I come to
speak of their mass.
Perhaps it may be worth our wl~ile here to ~lance
at this whole matter of unity from another pomt of
view. 'l'he mere physical bulk of paragraphs makes
this method far simpler here than in the case of sen·
tences. '-''hat, we may now ask ourselves with some
hope of a simple answer, are the chief dangers of offence against unity of composition? Obviously they are
two: first, we may break up discourse into needlessly
small frarrments thereby, in this case, confusing the
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in the second place, we may crowd into a single unit
of composition incongruous matters, thereby, in this
case, confusing the function of the paragraph with
that of the whole composition.
From this consideration fo llows directly a practical
suggestion. Excessive length of paragraph, resulting
in heterogeneity, and excessive brevity of paragraph,
resulting in isolated fragments of style, are alike unfavorable to unity. Provei:bial wisdom is wisest after

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PARAGRAPHS.

all : here we are face to face with a special c:-ise <Yf
what we all know, - in meclio tutissimus ·ibis. I may
~dd that a study of the historical development of English te1~ds on the whole tc show that unity of para~raph JS constantly, though slowly, improving. As
m the case of unity of sentence, then, principle and
usage tend to agree.

placed as readily to catch the eve. More than the
other principles of composition this applies to written
discourse, for only written discourse appeals directly
, to the eye. To be sure, written discourse is closely
related to spoken. The principle of Mass will be
found by no means useless to a mere talker. Ent,
at least for our purposes, it is primarily a matter not
of spoken style, but of written. Now, paragraphs are
essentially elements of written discourse. It follows
directly that the principle of Mass - that the chief
parts •of a c01npos1tion should be so placed as readily
to catch the eye - is above all applicable to the composition of paragraphs.
In paragraphs, too, the oral usage which we saw in
terfere with the principl e in the composition of sentences has no existence at all. The principle, then,
is not only theoretically applicable to paragraphs, but
to a great degree actually so applicable in practice.
How conspicuous the chief places in any paragraph
are, a glance at any printed page will show. Trained
or untrained, the human eye cannot help dwelling
instinctively a little longer on the beginnings and the
ends of paragraphs than on any other points in the
discourse. Let any one of you take up a book or an
article, hitherto strange, and try in a few minutes to
get some notion of what it is about. Whoever has
tried to do even very little reviewing for the newspapers; whoever has tried to collect authorities fot· a
legal brief, -knows the exper ience disagreeably well.
First, you instinctively look at the beginning of the

To revert for a moment to the matter with which
I began this chapter, yon will remember that the
way to .use w~at we get into our heads about paragraphs is precisely opposite to the way to use what we
know abou~ sent~n.ces. In that case, we apply our
kno';l~dge 1~1 rev1s10n; in this case, we apply it in
prev1s1on,-m the deliberate planning of our ''rn rk. It
follows, then, that whoever wishes his work to produce
t~e effect secured by intelligent unity of paragraph may
w1_sely set about the task of writing as deliberately as
tins: on a sheet of paper he may prudently write
down a scheme of the work ho wishes to execnte
phrased in as many independent sentences as h;
woul_d ulti.m ately have paragraphs in his composition;
and m fil11.ng out this scheme he may wisely confine
eac~ of h1_s paragraphs to one of the aspects of hif'I
subJect which he has provisionally phrased in a single
sentence. U nlcss inspiration override all canons of
art, - it_ sometimes does with all of us, -- I know of no
rule of literary conduct more fruitful of good than this.
So we come to the principle which gove rns the ex·
ternal for~ of paragraphs, - the principle of Mass:
that the chief parts of each composition should be S<J

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PARA GRAPHS.

article or book, then at the end ; then, turning over the
pages, you skim them, - in other words, you glance
at the beginning and at the end of each paragraph, to
see whether it is a thing you wish to read more care·
fully. And if the paragraphs in question be well
massed, you are made aware of it by the fact t hat the
process of intelligent skimming is mechanically easy :
that you cn.n, apparently by instinct, arrest your attention on those parts which serve your purpose. If, on
the other hand, as is more frequently the case, the
paragraphs in question be ill massed, you find diffi·
culty in discoYering what you want. All this is quite
independent of sentence-structure, and of unity, and
of coherence. It is a simple question of visible, external outline ; and it means, in other words, that
the beginning and tho end of a paragraph are beyond
doubt the fittest places for its chief ideas, and ao for
its chief words.
A definite question now presents itself to us: Is
there any test by which we may decide what the chief
ideas and the chief words in any paragraph ought to
be? We have already seen that a paragraph should
possess unity; we have already seen that the test of
unity in a paragraph is whether ·we can sum up its
substance in a single sentence. Now, clearly tho chief
words in a typical sentence are the subject and the
predicate. Clearly, then, in general, the chief ideas
in a paragraph are those which are summarized in
the subject and the predicate of the sentence which
summarizes the whole. Our question, then, proves

one which, by implication, we have already answered.
A paragraph whose unity can be demonstrated by
summarizing its substance in a sentence whose subject shall be a summary of its opening sentence, and
whose predicate shall be a summary of its closing
sentence, is theoretically well massed.
A matter so technical as this demands illustration.
In my lectures at Harvard College I have found myself ge nerally aLle to illustrate it by simply turning to
whatev"er has happened to be the las t number of " The
Nation." I do not mean that it is observed in every
single leading article. " The Nation" is too well paragraphed to be so palpably monotonous. I do mean that
I have rarely turned to "The Nation" for illustration
of this principle without finding, in the first number I
opened, some article which would illustrate it admirably. As I write these lines I happen to haYe no fresh
copy of " The Nation" at hand : at random, then, I
take one of the illustrations which I have used at
college. In" The Nation" for Nov. 28, 1889, was a
leading article entitled, "The Universities and the
Professions." It contained four paragraphs : these I
have summarized by the simple plan of reducing each
to a single sentence whose subject is a summary of
the opening sentence of the paragraph, and whose
predicate is a summary of its closing.
Here is the summary : ~ 1:

The decline in the proportion of students to population . . • is noticeable in the United States and in
England.

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

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, 2 : Prominent reasons for this are that college delays
the beginning of professional life, . .. and that collegebred men prove to dislike trade.
~ 3: Co ll eges, after much deliberation, . .. have begun
formally to consider the " reduction of the college
course."
~ 4 : The increasing gravity of the situation ... makes
" Study or clear out" the proper motto for any college.
General Summary : The decline in the proportion of
students to popt1lation ... makes " Study or clear out"
the proper motto for any college.

is anywhere absolute. Good use, wherever trnch a
thing exists, is supreme; and we have already
seen that even in paragraphs good use has pretty
nearly established one rule. This is phrased, like the
better part of human wisdom, in a very old saw:
Ars celare artem, - the finest art is imperceptible.
N uw, nothing is more aggressiv~ly percepLiLle than
monotonous uniformity of manner. To follow any
principle of composition so far as to neglect the necessity of subtile variety of style, is to be monotonously
uniform, 'to violate good use,-· in brief, to be (what
no real artist ever was) unintelligent. Principle is
not rule; it is a guide, not a master. To neglect
it is to go astray ; to follow it blindly is to know
not where you are. Above all principle, aborn all
else, the deepest secret of all fine art is fine good
sense.
So far in my discussion of the mass of paragraphs
I have called your attention to nothing wholly new to
us. I have merely shown how to the planning - the
prevision - of paragraphs a careful writer may apply
just the same principles that he should apply to the
revision of sentences. We have now reached a point
in our discussion of the principle of Mass where I believe
we may well glance at another phase of it. 'l'he bulk
of sentences is too small to permit this phase to be considered in connection with them. The bulk of pnragraphs is large enough to make it now worth attention.
In whole compositions we shall find it more important
still. Briefly phrased, it is simply this : Due propor·

Each paragraph, you see, is theoretically perfect in
mass. What is more, the excellence of the mass goes
a step farther. If we try to summarize the whole
article, we shall see in a moment that we can do so
by the simple process of writing a sentence whose
subject is a summary of the opening sentence of the
first paragraph, and whose predicate is a summary of
the closing sentence of the last paragraph. The mass
of the whole composition, then, is theoretically just as
good as the mass of each separate paragraph. The
satisfaction which this particular article gave me may
h ave been partly due to the fact that I happen to agree
with every word of it; but I think, after all, that it
came more from the fact that its mass is theoretically
perfect.
Theoretically perfect, though, I should repeat with
emphasis. For I am aware that in my discussion of
this phase of our subject I have laid down the law with
dangerous dogmatism. No principle of composition

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tion should subsist between principal and subordinate
matters.
Like everything else we are considering, this is at
bottom a matter of simple good sense. Indeed, it is
after all a matter on which ·we have touched before:
it is a mode of the general principle that our number of
words should be carefully governed by what effect we
wish to produce. But in its application to paragraphs
it really means something almost as definite as this:
that, for the pmpose of not misleading the reader's
eye, we should generally give more space to important
parts of our subject than to unimportant.
Take the last paragraph of the leading article from
"The Nation" to which I have already called your attention. Its substance may be summarized in this sentence ~ " 'l'he increasing gravity of the situation •.•
makes . . . ' Study or clear out' the proper motto for
any college." Now, as a matter of fact a writer, in
his developmeut of the paragraph, might wish to emphasize either the subject or the predicate of this sentence;
he might wish us to feel the gravity of the situation,
or he might wish us rather to feel how the gravity
might be lightened. According as one or the other
of these views predominated in his mind, he might to
advantage vary the number of his words. By giving
more space to the graYity of the situation, he would
probably leave the gravity of the situation more deeply
imbedded in a reader's mind; by giving more space to
the proper motto for any college, he would probably
give similar weight to the proper motto for any col-

PARAGRAPHS.

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lege. In bri ef, according to the principle of Mass, a
student of the mass of paragraphs must consider not
only the actual placing of words, but their actual
1111mber.
In our discussion of sentences we decided that
in a given composition the end is a more emphatic
place than the beginning: h ere we found lay the
secret of anti-climax, - esse ntially a false emphasis.
In paragraphs I believe this truth more important
still. A glance at any printed page will show that
the beginning and the end of a paragraph are distinct y more conspicuous things than the beginning
and the end of a sentence. "'V" e may repeat, th en,
more emphatically than ever, the rule with which
we brought to a close our discussion of the mass of
sentences: End with words that deserve di stinction.
All that remains before we proceed to the principle
of Coherence is to ask how far the historical ctevelopment of the English language warrants the
conclusions we have reached.
So far as I have analyzed English paragraphs, they
follow no particular law. In old English and in new
I have found well-massed paragraphs; l have alHo
found many more paragraphs which may be roughly
said to have no mass at all. But at the same time
I have found that the effect of a piece of writiug
whose paragraphs are well massed is almost always
a great deal more definite than the effect of any
other kind; and over and over again I have found,
just as I find in " The Nation." that the secret of a.

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PARAGRAPHS.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

satisfactory sty le may often_ be discovered in the skilful mass in g of its paragraphs. While there is no
couscnt of good use to govern us, then, there is no
consent of good use to thwart us; and I believe
th at to-day no writer can intelligently follow any one
principle with more certainty than that which shall
encourage him carefully to mass his paragraphs.
So we come to the principle of Coherence, which
governs the internal structure of paragraphs: that
th e relation of each part of a composition to its
neighbors should be unmistakable. Applying this
principle to paragraphs, - remembering that a paragraph is a composition of sentences, and is to a sentence what a sentence is to a word, - we can see at
once exactly what it means. A paragraph is coherent
when the relation of each sentence to the context is
unmistakable.
In discussing the coherence of sentences, you will
remember we found the subject so full of detail that
we were compelled for convenience to divide it into
three parts. All general rules which concern coherence, so frequ ent in the textbooks, we found might
be grouped under one of three heads: order of words,
constructions, or connectives. In discussing the coherence of paragraphs we may hcst follow exactly the
same method : it will bring us, I dare say, to nothing
new; but I think it will serve to fix the principle
more firmly in our minds. Coherence in the order
of the sentences which make a paragraph, then, coherence in the construction of these sentences, and

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finally, the use of connectiYes in paragraphs, we shall
consider in turn.
First, then, for coherence in the order of sentences.
The general principle that underlies it is this : Matters
closely connected in t11ought should be kept together,
matters distinct in thou ght kept apart. In sentences,
-X_OU will remember, this princ~ple. is. much thwarted
by good use. Uninfl ected English md1cates the grammatical relation of word to word chiefly by their actua~
order; the limits within which we are at liberty to
vary the order of our words in sentences, then, arc
very narrow. In paragraphs, on the other hand,
there fs no such trouble. So far as I know, there
is absolutely no reason why we should not arrange
our sentences in any order we please. We may
apply this principle with unfettered freedom.
rrhis perfect freedom and the axiomatic good sense
of the principle would lead us to expect careful
writers in general to observe it. Oddly enough,
they do nothing of the kind ; in careful writers, as
in other human beings, actual manifestations of
practical good sense are not so frequent as to grow
tedious. The truth is that the human head is normally muddled ; to bring order out of the chaos
that dismays each one of us within himself is no
small feat. It has taken me the better part of ten
years to think out, from a snarl of books and of
practical experiments, the very obvious principles
that I am trying to lay before you now ; and even
now I am fully aware that they might well be thought

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l'ARAGRAPHS.

out and composed more definitely and firmly. So
our difficulties are not solved when we quite understand that according to the principle of Coherence
matters connected in thought shoulU be kept torrether
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and that rn paragraphs there is no reason why we
should not so keep them. Afte~ all, what matters
really are most closely connected in thought? Every
in any man's experience brinas
up this
new case
•
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quest10n afresh; e-rery new case demands a new answer. Before we can tell anything about form we
must understand much about substance; and this,
with our poor muddled human heads is no easv
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In truth, we are now face to face with a fact that
makes this art of composition utterly discouraging
to some t emperaments, and profoundly fascinating
to others. Every problem that presents itself to a
literary artist is really a new one. In human life
there cannot be any two instants whose conditions arc
precisely the same. The moment when it is perfectly
easy to disentangle from the riotous thicket of thought
and emotion we all know within ourselves the exact
thoughts and emotions whose mutual relations as well
as whose ind ependent selves shall serve our purpose
of imparting to readers what we have in mind,
is a moment that to most of us never comes. We
are face to face with a problem that is ever remaking itself. Nothing but constantly fresh intelligence
can at any moment solve it. Lazy minds give up in
' write anyhow," say students to mo
. "I cant
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137

year after year·; they mean that they won't think.
But an active mind is constantly more stimulated, by
each difficulty it surmounts, courageously to attack
the next. The contes t is one where wit may always
win much : if no absolute victory be possible, a bard
firrht
is sure to brina
some measure of success.
b
0
But I am straying again from the t echnical matter
properly before us. The general principle underlying
coherence in the order of sentences we have seen to
be this: Matters closely connected in thought should
be kept together, matters distinct in thought kept
apart. We must turn now to the second phase of
coherence, - coherence in constructions.
Hei;e, too, there is a simple general statement of
the principle we should keep in mind: Phrases that
are similar in sirrniflcance
should be similar in form.
0
Outward form is, after all, what we see in style, just
as truly as it is what we see in human beings ; and
the same general law of thought which makes all who
have eyes know that men are not in all respects as
trees walking, impels us instinctively to class together
phrases and sentences that look and sound alike.
This fact is very little appreciated by writers in general: in general, as I have said, hardly anybody seems
quite to have understood the merely physical conditions involved in the fact that written style is addressed primarily to the E:y0. But though the books
of Rhetoric say nothing of this phase of the matter,
recent books have a good deal to say about the
general principle that phrases similar in thought

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should be similar in form. The rule of parallel con·
struction, some of them call it, - a rule which any
one can see has a good deal to do with such devices
as antithesis and ualance.
Perhaps the easiest way of discussing it and of
beginning to appreciate its scope and its li1~its is to
consider one or two simple examples. For om: purposes we may consider as a paragraph the most familiar piece of English in the language, - the Lord's
Prayer. Every one of us knows and feels its marvellous effect, merely as a piece of style. Few of us I
take it, have ever thought of analyzing the means by
which this effect is produced. It begins with an
invocation: "Our Father who art in heaven." Then
come three clauses of praise : " Hallo·wed be Thy
name; Thy kingdom come ; Thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven." Then come four distinct
peti~ions: "Give us this day our daily bread; and
forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that tres~ass against us; lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil." Finally comes a final clause of
praise: "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory, for ever and ever." Examining these
clauses, we find that the first words of the in vocation
call our attention directly to the infinite fath erhood of
God. The~~ are eight other clauses,- three of praise,
four of petit10n, and a final one of praise. Each of
these is a separate address direct to God . And of
these eight, all but the first, which immediately
follows the invocation, are composed on the same

PAHAGRAPHS.

139

plan : the first word addresses itself straight to
God, - " Tliy kingdom come; Tliy will be done;"
and so on. First God's self, then God's attributes
and acts, in every one of them. Alter a single word
here, sh ake the parallel const ruction in the slightest
degree, and some of the marvellous effect is lost. And
yet if we alter the first of the eight clauses that follow
the inYocati on, if we make the construction of the
prayer absolutely parallel, if instead of" Hallowed be
Thy name," we say," Thy name be hallowed," we find
the marvellous effect impaired still more. In truth, I
believe the reason lies- here: the invocation calling
up the infinitude of God must stand for an instant
alone,; to put just beside it the idea of one of the
attributes of God would be never so subtilely to suggest
a limitation of what in its very essence knows no
limit. But the word hallowed applies to all the infinitudes. Again, by the inversion of this single clause,
the first two of God's attributes to which our attention is called - " Thy name" and "Thy kingdom" are brought together : it is only after this that the
construction permits us to contemplate God's attributes and actions one by one. And here, I believe,
lies much of the secret of the marvellous effect of the
prayer. Of course, no one would for a moment think
that such deliberate technical reasons governed the
translators who gave the Lord's Prayer its English
form ; but I have chosen this gyeatest of examples
just because it can tell you better than any lesser one
how even the most divine effects of literature can be

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and must be produced only by such technical means
as everybody recognizes in the petty parts of human
style.
The amazing value of parallel construction of
. constructions, I cannot more specifically
'
co1ierence m
show you; nor yet the way in which the other princi~Ie of coherence - that matters which belong together
m thought should be kept together- can never' be
neglected. 'Vhoever is curious to study the effect of
parallel c.onstruction in secular literature cannot spend
a few mmutes more profitably than in examining the
celebrated description of Westminster Hall in l\faca 11 •
~ay's essay on Warren Hastings. By simply repcatmg the word here at fr1tervals, Macaulay girns that
passage the notable coherence that the most Iwsty
reader must feel. For our part, we may now best turn
an example where neglect of the principle in quest10n produces a notably g rotesque result.
In our consideration of the coherence of sentences,
we saw how serious and common a fault lay in needles~ shift .of subject or of voice. The sentence by
which . I illustrated this, you will remember, was a
very s~mple one, where in eight words both subject
and vo1ce were shifted. " I started up, and a scream
was heard," wrote a student whom we decided to Jin ye
meant one of two other distinct things : either,"]
started up and screanwd
' ' " or ' " I staI'ted
, np w1'tl· l a
s:ream." Now, although it would be foolishly pedantic to lay down a rule so absolute as that .in a paragraph every sentence should have the same subject,

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PARAGRAPHS.

ENGLISH co:MPOSITION.

141

and every principal verb be in the same voice, it is not

at all foolish to say that, even in the separate sentences of a paragraph, a needless, unmeaning shift of
subject, or voice, or both, is according to the principle
of parallel construction very damaging to coherence.
A single example will show exactly what I mean.
Some -months ago Mr. Henry Grady, an eminent
citizen of Georgia, died. Here is what appeared next
morning in one of the Boston newspapers: -

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"Atlanta, Ga ., Dec. 23, 1889. Henry W. Grady died
this morniug. He was born in Athens, Ga., in 1851.
His father was a wealthy business man of Athens, and
alth~ugh a Union man, went with his State when she
seceded. He was killed while fighting before Petersburg,
where he commanded a North Carolina regiment. The
funeral lrns not yet been definitely arranged, but be will
be buried in Atlanta, probably on Thursday."

The battles before Petersburg, you remember, occurred
in 1864. It is simply a stupid shift of subject, a stupid neglect of parallel construction, that calls up the
distressing picture of gallant Colonel Grady lying unburied for a quarter of a century.
Before finally leaving this principle of parallel construction, of coherence in constructions, however, I
must recall to you the fact that the only form in
which good use interferes with our composition of
paragraphs is this: Monotony of construction is palpably artificial; and palpable artifice is never good
art. While a careful writer, then, should never ne·

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PARAGRAPHS.

a moment to the newspaper account of poor Mr.
Grady. We saw clearly how a need~e~s shift of
subject there made a serious matter nd1culous. I
would call your attention now to the fact that what
contributes to the general incoherence of the paragraph in question is a very careless use of a com~ec­
tive. This connective is the pronoun he, the subJect
of the fourth sentence. "Henry W. Grady" is the
subject of the first sentence; " He'' (I-I.
G.)
is the subject of the second sentence, and by directly
referrinrr to the subject of the first, indicates clearly
enouo-h ~hat the relation of the second sentence to the
first ~s simply cnmulative. " His father" is the subject of the third sentence; and the possessive pron~un
his serves here just the same connective purpose. wh~ch
in the last sentence was served by the nommative
pronoun he. The subject of the fourth sente1:ce is
aaain the pronoun he; now, this might grammatically
r:fer either to the father or to the son. It is subtilely
ambiguous, - a connective which does not indicate the
relation of its sentence to the context with scrupulous
precis10n. This slight incoherence, really involving
a shift of subject, is what l eads to the grotesque
incoherence that follows; and we have already looked
at this passage long enough to see the meaning of a
general statement about connectives: any word in a
given clause or sentence which specifically ~efers to
a preceding clause or sentence may be described as a

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glect the principle of parallel construction, he should
be constantly on the alert never to follow it blindly.
The secret of all fine art, we must never forget, is fine
good sense.
So we come to the third phase of coherence in the
composition of paragraphs, - coherence in the use of
connectives. What we found true of the compositien
of sentences is true here too. When neither order
nor constructions will serve to make unmistakable the
relati ons between the parts of any composition, we
should use connectives with scrupulous precision. I
need hardly recall to you the minor conclusions that
we reached here : how immensely important it is
scrupulously to distinguish thoughts that are co-ordinate - for our purposes, of equal value - from
thoughts some of which arc subordinate to others.
W c analyzed those little sentences," I started up with
a scream," and, "I started up and screamed," and
saw how, for all their similarity, they really meant
different things. I need not repeat the other minor
conclusion we reached: that connectives in the body
of a clause knit style more firmly than initial connecti vcs possibly can. Nor can I here, any more than
I could there, pause to call your attention to the great
richness of uninflectcd English in purely connective
parts of speech. In Bain's Rhetoric, the curious may
find them collected by the dozen. All I can do is
brief-ly to examine just how these principles, already
familiar, apply to the composition of paragraphs.
In the first place, I ·would recall your attention for

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

sccutive composition, cannot keep this fact too constantly in mind. How important it may be was shown
me by a rather interesting experience some years ago.
I happened to be, in company with a very skilful reporter, an eye-witness of a prolonged and very exciting political convention. I had nothing to do but
look on. l\fy companion ·was less fortunate. Wholly '
unaid ed, and in the miiJ st of such a tumult as I have
11anlly seen elsewhere, he had to wri te column after
column describing just what happened. As fast as a
sheet was fill ed he handed it to a telegraph messenger;
and it was on its way over the wires before the next
was fairly begun. In subsequently reading the reports
thus composed, I was very much impressed by their
firm coherence. On analyzing them, I discovered that
in almost every sentence - and by no means at the
beginnin g of it - there was some word which clirectly
referred to something in the preceding sentence. ln
short, my reporting friend, consciously or not, had
practically mastered the secret of dove-tailing style.
In paragraphs even more than in sentences, l find,
firm coherence depends on connectives which are not
at the beginning or the end of the parts of a composition which they connect, but are firmly imbedded
in the midst of them; and yet there is no commonplace which has gi \·en me as a teacher more needless
bother than one whi ch imperfectly phrases this very
idea. A sentence, some of the books say, should
never begin with and or but. It is true that most sentences cannot properly begin with and or but; and

PARAGRAPHS.

145

the reason for this is obvious: comparatively few sentences stand to the preceding in strictly co-ordinate
or strictly disjunctive relations. Unless sentences so
stand, an initial and or but is an impropriety. But to
say that 110 sentence should begin with and or but is
to say, what is clearly absurd, that the relation of a
sentence to the preceding should never be either strictly
co-ortlinale or strictly di sjunctive. Like most commonplaces , however, this of ours is not meaningless,
.As a matter of fact, people do not think with precision; and thought which lacks precision commonly
presents it.self in experience as either a simple addition to what precedes or an abrupt breaking off. In
the fprmer case, one instinctively writes and; in the
latter, but. And there are few more useful practical
suggestions in composition than this : Use no more
ands or buts than you can help.
So much for the principle of Coherence as it applies
to the composition of paragraphs. The test of coherence in paragraphs is as simple as in sentences: A
paragraph where the mutual relations of sentences
are not unmistakable is incoherent ; a paragraph
where these mutual relations are unmistakable is coherent. As in sentences, perfect coherence is perhaps
unattainable; but certainly it may be indefinitely
approached .
As for the historical development of Coherence in
the English paragraph, I can only say very hastily
that, on the whole, coherence in the order of sentences
tends to grow stronger; that coherence in construe·

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tions, like other devices which come dangerously near
palpable artificiality, seems certainly not to have
developed during the past century or so; and that the
inevitable hastiness of much modern style makes intelligent coherence in the use of connectives far less
common than it might well be. But save for the pal·
pable artificiality which good use condemns in those
who blindly follow the principle of parallel constrnction, there is nothing in mod ern usage which should
stand in the way of any one who intelligently tries to
make paragraphs coherent.
To make as simple as I could the principles which
may govern the planning of paragraphs, - the same
princi_rles, I cannot too often repeat, which govern
any literary composition, - I have laid them down
very dogmatically; and the words in which I have
stated them sound dangerously like absolute rules of
style. There are two ways of doing this thing, they
seem ~o say, - two ways of composing a paragraph :
one n~ht: th e _other wrong. Within certain very
broad lumts, this approaches truth. As a general
rule, parag raphs that have coherent unity and firm
mass perform their office better than paragraphs with
other traits. But this is not because paragraphs with
other traits are essentially vicious; it is simply because as a general rule writers wish to produce an
effect of firm precision; and the principles I hare
so dpgmatically stated are the principles by meaus
of which an effect of firm precision ma\' most
probably be secured. If another effect th~u that

1

of firm precision be the effect which a writer wishes
to produce, he may most probably produce it by
deliberate disregard of nearly everything that in
this discussion of paragraphs I have advised. An
effect of confusion can be produced in no more simple
way than by deliberately disregarding coherent unity
of paragraph ; an effect of indecision in no more sim~
ple way than by deliberate weakening of mass. And
the maker of paragraphs, just as truly as the maker
of sentences or the chooser of words, has before him
at any given moment no more definite question than
this : What is the effect I wish to produce, and how
may I best produce it?
In• answering this question, we find ourseh·es just
where we found ourselves at the close of our consideration of words and of sentences. In deciding just
what effect we wish to produce, the inevitable inadequacy of the means at our disposal to the matters we
would express - the inevitable limit of vocabulary compels us carefully to consider two phases of the
inevitably complicated thing we wish to express. In
the first place, we must ask ourselves what the actual
facts are which we wish to denote ; in the second, we
must ask ourselves what are the associated thoughts
and emotions which we wish to connote.
In the composition of sentences, we saw, denotation
and connotation are things just as real, just as vital,
as in the choice of words. In truth they are things
inevitable to any expression of human thought. No
word can be quite free from suggestions of things it

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leaves unnamed; and if this be true, no combination
of word8 c::rn. be ~uite free from suggestions of things
and of combmatwns of things that do not meet the
eye of a reade r or the ear of a listener. You will
remembe r the example I gave you of how the arraiweo
ment of mere proper names in climax or in anticlimax act.ually alters the whole character of a clause. '
''The English Bible, Shakspere, Addison, and Fisher
Ames," says one th ing, "Fisher Ames, Audison,
Shakspere, and the English Bible," says another. True
of mere words in composition, this is far truer of
sentences in composition. A little while ago I happened to read an admirable translation of the prose
of Heine. The effects Heine produced were remarkably reproduced by the translator. Even in English
they were not short of amazing; and t he secret of
them seemed to lie chiefly in the point to whi ch I am
now calling your attent ion. The connotation of one
sentence was again and again so startlingly different
from the connotation of the last that it made one stop,
l1 alf breath less. Here is a man, one said who sees
jnfiniti es all at once, - great and small, pu1'.e and vile
celestial and dc\·i lish and earthly. And yet almost ali
t his was in what he left un said; and chiefly in what
he left un said in the composition of utterly i~colterent
paragraphs, - paragraphs, too, and sentences, wher€
nothing could liave done his work but utter dis regard
of .unity. And literature without Heine were a poorer
thmg t han the literature we li ave to-day. Effects,
after all, denotation and connotation in their infinitel_y

PARAGRAPHS.

149

delicate combinations, are what the writer must al·
ways keep in mind.
And so, in leaving this subject of paragraphs, we
must keep in mind other things than those I have laid
down so dogmatically. Generally true in human
practice, these by themselves are not enough to guide
us. They are generally true here more than elsewhere, here more than elsewhere we may generally
keep them in mind, because alone of the elements of
style paragraphs belong to written composition, and
not to spoken. But in written composition, just as in
spoken, what the maker really has to do is not to conform to any rules more rigid than those of good use ;
it is to know what effects he wishes to produce, and
then ' by every means in his power to strive to produce them. And in his effort to know what effects
he would produce, the maker of paragraphs must be
just a8 careful as the maker of sentences or the chooser
of words: he must know not only what he would say,
but what he would leave unsaid. And he must learn
by toilsome practice the wonderful subtilty with which,
by varying his kinds of paragraphs, and by applyin g
to hi s paragraphs with elastic intelligence the broadly
simple principles of composition, he may almost infinitely vary his effects, in denotation and in con·
notation alike.

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v.
WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.
WE come now to the last of the elements of style,to compositions larger than paragraphs. Of course
there may be more than one kind of these. A chapter,
a volume, a book in several volumes, even a series of
books in themselves independent, would all come
under this head. So would any single chapter in this
book I am now trying to compose intelligibly, and
the whole book itself. But for our purposes all these
larger forms of composition may be considered together; for both usage and principle affect them all
in about the same way.
In spite of their familiarity, we shall do well briefly
to glance at the conclusions we have already reached.
Style, we remember, consists primarily of words, arbitrary sounds to which the common consent we
call" good use" has given definite significance. Before
these words can convey any organic meaning they
must be compose<.1- put together - in sentences. In
sentences, grammar and idiom - the forms in which
good use controls composition - are extremely powerful; and as nothing can justify a violation of goou
use, our composition of sentences must be far from
aruitrary. But for all this, the moment we begin to

151

compose, even in sentences, we have found that
within the limits of good use we may wisely govern
our work by certain very simple principles of composition. The principle of Unity counsels that each
composition be grouped about one central idea; the
principle of Mass counsels that the chief parts of every
composition be so placed as readily to catch the eye;
the principle of Coherence counsels that the relation of ·
each part of a composition to its neighbors be unmistakable. And arbitrary though these principles seem,
• there is good reason to think that the common-sense
of English-speaking people has in a general way tended
to a growing, though hardly a conscious, observance
of them. At least, I think this may be said: a style
whose sentences do not violate these principles will
generally be felt a superior vehicle of modern thought
and emotion to a style whose sentences neglect them.
In paragraphs we found good use greatly relaxed.
Without fear of violating either grammar or idiom,
we found ourselves at liberty to compose our para·
graphs with pretty strict attention to the principles ;
and some years of practical experience have convinced me that paragraphs are really parts of composition as definitely organic and quite as important
as sentences themselves. What is more, having escaped the authority of good use, they are parts of composition which any one who knows the principles may
easily make conform to them, often with surprising
results.
With whole compositions, particularly of the larger

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WHOLE CO:NIPOSITIONS.

kinds, the case is somewhat different. In the nature
of things they are apparent at a glance ; they are the
most conspicuous things in style. 'l'o all appearances,
too, they are things of the most various kinds: chapters, books, volumes, looked at in one way; looked at
in another, essays, sermons, novels, treatises, poems,
what not that may Lo put in v.·orcls. At different
times many pretty distinct rules have been laicl down
about them in some of their phases. Perhaps the
most distinct and troublesome concern iutrocluctions
and conclusions, or things more awful still, which the
books call exord iums and perorations. It took me a
good while to find out that the principles which may
best govern our planning of whole compositions arc
simply our old friends, - the principles of U ni.ty, of
Mass, and of Coherence ; and that compositions carefully planned with these principles in view will in
the end write themselves in a form incredibly better
than compositions in which the principles have been
neglected.
As in paragraphs, there is no good use to hamper
us. So far as I know, there is no reason whatever
why any writer should not cast his material as a whole
in any form he may choose ; but there is abundant
reason in human experience why he should not cast
his material in any form at all until he has carefully
cons id ered it and pretty carefully constructed the
proper mould. And this is exactly what a11y one who
has observed the normal condition of the human
mind would expect.

Order, though credibly declared the first law of
hea\ren, is by no means the rule on earth. Our ex·
periences come to us pell-mell. Even those things
in life which possess in themselves elements of the
most orderly kind -- our meals, our professional work,
our devotions, our studies - are really, in experience,
as broken
as discontinuous, as confusingly
t hinas
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else as are the separate instalments of a serial story,
- a kind of composition that most of us leave unread
until it is published complete. As a result of this
inevitable fact our ideas present themselves in a state
of confusion. Dozens of trains of thought are runnin ~ in our heads at all times, intcnningling, distorting one another, entan gling themselves a great deal
more than any one who does not sometimes try to
disentanO'le
them would beo·in
to susr)ect. And if we
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try to express ourselves without a pretty definite notion of what we are about, we are fairly sure before
long to find ourselves nowhere.
'l1he easiest way, then, to approach the part of the
subject now before us is, I belieYe, to consider how,
if we have to say something, we may most wisely proceed. A moment ago I used a fi gure which goes far
toward the answer of this question. We wish to cast
our thoughts and emotions in a form which shall
make them intelligible to others than ourselves; and
whoever would cast anything into any form must first
proceed to make a mould.
In literal words this means that a prudent writer

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what is more, that all eight of the chapters that com.
pose this book should themselves contain nothing
that could not ultimately be summarized almost as
compactly.
In carrying out these resolutions, the first thin g to
do was to make the summaries in question. Once
made, these summaries proved guides toward further
composition whose practical value it would be hard
to ove rstate. At any moment there was close at hand
a test by which I could judge whether, in the confusion of thoughts and suggestions that must come to any·
body engaged in prolonged literary work, 1 was in dan
ger of straying from the chief matter actual ly in hand.
Of course 110 one's foresight is perfect. No preconceived plan I have ever happened to examine hns
been so near perfection that after-thou ght may not
possibly mend it. To bind one's Eelf hand and foot by
such summ aries as I have mentioned would be to do
a very silly thing. The intelligent way to use them
is to use them as guides, rather than masters. At
least, they will lead us somewhere, and will prevent
us from going astray ; but if in following them, we
find ourselves by and by in a place where we can see
a way distinctly better than that in which they lead
us, it were folly not to discard them for better ones.
Vagaries, however, are not as a rule perceptions of
better ways; they are generally only spontaneous
ma.nifestations of the inexhaustible power of human
beings to do thin gs as things should not be tlouc.
And when I ha,·e on ce made a summary, I find the

WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

157

wise course to be careful adherence to it until, as
happens more rarely than I cou1d wish, I clearly see
my way to the making of a better.
In expository or argumentative writing, such a process as this is fairly easy. In writing of a more popular and apparently lighter kind, it is sometimes rath er
hard. In narrative, for example, briefl y to summari ze
the whole story is by no means easy. In such serious
and complex narrative as a history, such a process
may become almost imprncticnble. In cases like thi s ~
however, there is another guille, not so sa~i sfac tory,
but not to be disdained. A co mposition whose parts
may all properly fall und er a sin g1e <l eflnite title is
pre ty sure to possess uni ty ; and here is one of the
chief reasons why I am accustom ed to urge my pupils
to give the ir compositions t itles which, as nearly as
may be, shall coincide with their subjects.
The most notable example of unity thus demonstra··
ble that I have lately come across is a book so long
that until last summer I never had the courage to
read it. I mean Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," - a
work which comprises a considerable number of volumes and. tw enty-one distinct hook s, each of which
is subdivided into a number of chapters, of which
most are in turn subdivided into separately named
sections. The edition. I r ead in the spare l1ours of
six or eight weeks was printed rather closely on a
page containi11 g, I shoulJ guess, from three to fo:1r
hundred word s. The number of these pages was m
the reaion
of three thous and; anJ the matters <liso

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cussed therein embraced the whole recorded history of
Brandenburg and of the House of Hohenzollern, and
pretty much everything that happened in Europe during the first three quarters of the eighteenth century.
Sovereigns from Henry the Fowler to Catherine the
Second crowded on us pell-mell ; soldiers, statesmen,
buffoons, peasants; Voltaire, and Maria Theresa, and
Augustus of Saxony, and all four Georges of England, ·and two or three Louises of France ; tobacco
parliaments, Silesian wars, Potsdam millers, scandals,
heroisms, schoolmasters, apothecaries, what not that
whirled about in this world of ours a century or two
ago. Such a mass of living facts - for sQinehow Carly le never lets a fact lack life - I had neYer seen flung
together before ; and yet the one chief impression I
brought away from the book was that to a degree
rare even in very small ones it possessed as a whole
the great trait of unity. In one's memory, each fact
by and by fell into its own place: the chief ones stood
out; the lesser sank back into a confused but not inextricable mass of throbbing vitality. And from it all
emerged more and more clear1y the one central figure
who gave his name to the whole,-Frederick of Prussia. It was as they bore on him from all quarters of
time and space, and as he reacted on them far and
wide, that all these events and all these people were
brought back out of their dusty graves to live again.
Whatever else Carlyle was, the unity of this enormous book proves him, when he chose to be, a Titanic
artist.

I

I

159

All of this seems perhaps too obvious to be worth
the time I have already given it ; but there is
a grave reason for dwelling on it, particularly to
English-speaking people. Although, as I have said,
there is in the matter of whole composition no consent
of good use which should bind us to anything, there
is, naturally enough, more general consciousness of
what the great people have done on a large scale than
of what they have done on a small. Now, i.n English
literature there are few traits more generally notable
than the utter disregard of form permitted themselves
by men of genius. To go straight to the greatest
of all, I know few writers, who, in whole works,
more frequently and serenely disregard unity than
bhakspere. Of course our modern impression of
Shakspere's form is distorted. Few popular playwrights become established classics ; it is both unfair and unintelligent to judge by the rules of the
study compositions that were put together to amuse
an audience of Elizabethan Londoners. And very
few people who talk about Shakspere ever take the
trouble to read the great body of dramatic literature,
with conventions and methods of its own, of which
his plays form in bulk a still inconsiderable part.
But after making all allowances, I am disposed to
assent to the criticism Ben Jonson is said to have
uttered: that Shakspere wanted art. In other words,
this means that like many a popular playwright
since his day, Shakspere frequently did not trouble
himself about how his plays were put together,

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161

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

WHOLE COMPO SITIONS.

so long as they would act. This is particularly
true of his chroni cle-histories, which, like other plays
of the same class, a rc nothing but a casting into
dramatic form of material he found in narrative.
Scenes, situations, even words and phrases, are
simply put into snch slrnpe that they can be acted
instead of read. Now, Shakspe re 'was, above any
other man who has written in our language: a man
of genius. It seems to ham been ont of hi s power to
write a page of words without making more than one
phrase which should ultirnatcly express some phase·
of human thought or passion; and even in the most
formless of his histori es we find so mu ch of . his
power that few of us care to think of anything else.
That same Ben Jonson who criticised bim was a
man of very different mould. A great scholar in his
way, perhaps the sturdiest Englishman of his day, he
had not, so far as I can see, a spark of genius . On
the other hand, his indnstry was indefati gable, and
his art more comlcientio11s than that of auy other
writer of his time. There is not one of his greater
plays which does not command the conviction that
every line of it is writt.en as well as he could \'i'T ite it.
To make the compaxison concrete, both Shakspere
and Ben Jonson wrote, among other things, plays
which presented stories from Roman history. To my
thinking, the greateRt of Slrnkspere 's historical plays
is "Antony and Cleopatra;" each time I read it I am
imprmised more and more with the superhuman
power of the man who from the conventional narra·

tive of Plutarch could wake into eternal vitality the
Romans and the Greeks and the Egyptians, whose
final struggle settled the fate of the world. Yet
nothing that I have read in this play or of it can
make it anything to me but a series of disjointed
scenes, preserved from incoherent confusion only by
the transcendent genius of the man \vho wrote
them. The greater of Ben Jonson's historical plays
is " Sejanus." Now a days " Sejanus '' is very hard
reading. When you come to lines like

160

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you breathe a sigh of relief in the midst of a flood of
verse that is as far from vital as even the lesser lines
of" Antony and Cleopatra" are far from lifeless. But
as one begins to study " Sejanus," one begins to see
that of the two it is the safer model. Prom beginning to end every stroke is part of a precoucei r ed and
complete ·whole. Thoug htful, lalJorious, uninspired,
but never reckless, never for an instant forgetful of
the conscience of an artist, Ben J onsou has, after all,
with what power was in him, done a great work;
and Sliakspere's work could not help being great.
Now, most of us are not great enough to disdain
rule and principle and conscience ; no1· are most of
us intelligent enough to understand that Shakspere is
great in spite of his faults, just as in their own lesser

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ways are Dickens and Thackeray. Because gemus
has in their case atoned for lack of careful art, we
are very prone to call art worthless and narrowing
and what not; and as a result we take comfortably little pains, and let our faults shelter themselves
under the shadow of the faults of masters. If we
have genius, well and good; if not, as is the case
with most of us, we simply come to grief.
Of course, I need hardly repeat, we may legitimately
have in view other effects than unity. If om· object
be to ramble, then not to ramble were to blunder;
but in general our object is to produce a definite
effect and not a nebulous. And in broadly general
considerations of such a matter as this, it is safest
to assume this general object. In planning our compositions, then, there is nothing else quite so important as a constant, conscious determination that they
shall contain what belongs there, and nothing else ;
that, if any work of ours can make them, they shall
group themselves about one central idea, - that they
shall have unity.
So much for the substance of our whole compositions. The next question that presents itself is how,
in a very broad way, we should arrange it. In the
smaller compositions we have considered, in sentences
and paragraphs, this consideration was at first glance
by no means obvious. In large compositions, I think
it becomes very obvious indeed. We have in our
possession certain definite materials. Our object is
so to compose these materials that a reader shall b.e

WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

163

able to possess himself of them too ; and this, as a
matter of course, we mus~ first do in a general way.
We have a story to tell, for example; in what order
shall the incidents be narrated ? If the story be a
long one, there must probably be many shifts of scene.
What scenes shall we choose to dwell on, what shall
we describe directly, what indirectly? How shall
each be treated ? To propose a concrete example,
suppose we are telling a story, historical or fictitious, in which one of the incidents is the first battle
of Bull Run. Shall we describe it in detail, as Carlyle
describes the battles of Frederick, and Tolstoi the
battles of Napoleon's wars in Russia; or shall we
keep it in the background, as Thackeray keeps Waterloo in "Vanity Fair"? At this moment I do 11ot
recall a notable literary account of the battle in
question. The incidents of that field are a matter of
recorded fact, within reach of any historian. Should
the historian take us straight to the battlefield, and
tell what went on there, hour after hour, and so follow as far as he can the exact course of events from
the first engagement to the final defeat? Or should
he take us to Washington, and tell how the troops
marched out and how all manner of rumors began
to come in, now of victory, now of rout, until finally
stragglers in mad retreat brought the confused certainty of defeat to the frightened capital ? Either
method would be perfectly legitimate ; so would a
combination of both. The question really is what
effect we have in mind.

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Again, suppose, as is perhaps more often the case,
that our object be to write an argument, to convince
people that our way of looking at a given state of
things is the sane one. Argument conveniently divides itself into two parts, - premises and conclusion,
or, as the Rhetorics phrase it, proof and proposition.
We have some definite thing to maintain, - our conclusion or proposition; and we show why we maintain
it by dcfmitely stated reasons, which we call premises
or proof. In what order should we present this
matter ? Should we begin by stating our proposition,
and then collect the proof in the strongest order in
which we can marshal it; or should we begin by
collecting our proof, and so lead up to a final statement of our proposition ? Again, either method is
legitimate, and so are combinations of both. In this
case, ind eed, the general question of composition becomes to a great degree a question of tact. Abruptly
to state a proposition with which readers would be
apt to disagree is unwise, for much the reason that
makes unwise any act of deliberately unpopular hchavior. Needlessly to keep back a proposition which
commands general assent is often equally unwise,
partly because it needlessly puts off one of the bonds
of sympathy that may be formed between writer and
reader. As in narrative, the question reduces itself to
a deliberate consideration of what effect we have in
mind.
In my teaching I have found one purely mechanical
device of much value here. Whatever our object,

whatever kind of writing we undertak e, and on whatever scale, our work must inevitably divide itself into
certain separate parts. Our books must fall into
chapters, our chapters or single essays into paragraphs.
·w hat shall those parts be? is the question; in what
order shall they be arranged? The simplest way I
have found of answering these questions is this : On
separate bits of paper- cards, if they be at handI write down the separate h eadin gs that occm to me,
in what seems to me the natural order. Then, when
my little pack of cards is complete, - in other words,
when I have a card for every h eadiug which I think
of, - I study them and sort them almost as dclibcr·
ately as I should sort a hand at whist; and it has
very rarely been my experience to find that a shift of
arrangement will not decidedly improve the or iginal
order. Ideas that really stand in the relation of proof
to proposition frequently present themselves as coordinate. The same idea will sometimes phrase itself
in two or three distinct ways, whose superficial differences for the moment conceal their ident ity ; and
more frequently still, the comparative strength and
importance, and the mutual relations, of really distinct
ideas will in the first act of composition curiously
conceal themselves from the writer. A few minutes'
shuffling of these little cards has often revealed to me
more than I should have learned by hours of unaided
pondering. In brief, they enable one, by simple acts
of rearrangement, to make any number of fresh plans.
If the first plan he drawn out on a single page, every

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new one must be written afresh. Mechanical as the
device is, I find it most serviceable.
In the stage of composition at which we have now
arrived, the general principle which should guide our
conduct is nothiug more nor less than our old friend
the principle of Mass. Generally speaking, the chief'
parts of any composition should be so placed as readilv
to catch the eye. In compositions on a scale so larg~
as that of wholes there are three distinct things that
must inevitably catch the eye: two are what must
catch the eye even in sentences, - the beginning and
the end; the third is what we saw beginning to appear
in paragraphs, - the com para ti ve space devoted to the
different parts of the matter in hand. These I shall
consider in turn.
The beginning of any composition may wisely, I
think, indicate what the composition is about. Compare, for example, the opening sentences of two standard histories of England, Hume's and Macaulay's.
"The curiosity, entertained by all civilized nations,"
begins Hume, ''of inquiry into the exploits and adventures of their ancestors commonly excites a regret that
the history of remote ages should always be so much
involved in obscurity, uncertainty, and contradiction."

And so on for a page, in my edition, before he
begins to tell what he purposes to do.
"I purpose," begins Macaulay, "to write the history of
England from the accession of KingJ ames the Second down·
to a time which is within the memor.Y of men still livin~.

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And so on, for a page or two, distinctly laying
down the plan of the great work he never finished.
No one, I think, can question the superior efficacy
of Macaulay's method. Again, compare with the
opening of almost auy respectable modern novel
the opening pages of those generally much more
notable pieces of fiction, the novels of Sir Walter
Scott. There may be living occasional individuals
who have resisted the impulse to skip the endless
lucubrations of Dryasdust and what not; but I do
not remember having met one. The fact is that there
was once a fo~mal old fashion, pretty . generally observed, of beginning any piece of writing· by a lot of
more or less commonplace generalization; and that
modern writers have begun to find out that such passages are a waste of good ink and paper, inasmuch as
hardly anybody has ever been known to read them.
As a matter of fact, too, most people have a very
strong impulse to preface something in particular by
at least a paragraph of nothing in particular, bearing
to the real matter in hand a relation not more inherently intimate than that of the tuning of violins to a
symphony. It is the mechanical misfortune of musicians that they cannot with certainty tune their instruments out of hearing. It is the mechanical luck
of the writer that he need not show a bit more of his
work than he chooses. As a teacher, my most frequent experience is the striking out of the first page
or so of a student's compositions; as a writer, so far
as my experience has gone, I have almost always forced

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myself ruthlessly to destroy the original beginnings ot
whatever I have written ; and this just because these
spontaneous beginnings involve a needless disregard
of the principle of Mass, so serious as greatly to impair the actual effect a writer has in view.
So much for the principle of Mass as it applies to
the beginni11gs of whole compositions. Its application
to their close is very similar. \Vhoever does not take
deliberate care is very apt to go on writing and talki11g
after he has really said his say. Physical fatigue
sometimes comes to hi s rescue here ; bnt uot so often
as you would expect. Yet a 'rveak ending is in final
effect a more fatal thing th an a weak beginning. It
is, in brief, anti-climax at its worst, - the most false
of false emphasis. \Vl10ever bas listened to afterdinner speaking knows this from bitter experience.
If there is anything more utterly depressing than a
speech which begins flatly, it is one that begi11s well
and ends with dreary commonplace. If the case is not
quite so palpable in print, it is just as true. More
than anywhere else, we should keep in mind concerning onr whole compositions that if they are to have
on the reader the effect we wish to produce, they must
end with words that deserve distinction.
Herc, too, as a teacher I have often found my practical work taking the form of amputation. It is far
more common to find the best end of a composition
imbedded in what at first ba lance looks like the bo<l ,r
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WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

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do well, before trying to alter it, to make sure that there
is not already in it some point where it may actually
end strongly. But the rule tells the whole story. I
have yet to find the composition that may not to
ad vantage end with words that deserve distinction.
So we come to the third phase of the principle of
.Mass in whole compositions. In the textbooks I have
found this somewhat dryly formulated thus: Due proportion should obtain Letween principal and suLordinate matters. In simple English I coucci rn this to
mean that, generally speaking, what is most important
may conveniently be treated at most length. In biography, for example, -a kind of writing that studerits
often have to try, - the first question is why tl1e subject is worth writing about at all. During the past ten
years it has been my misfortune to read, I should
guess, from five hundred to a thousand undergraduate
accounts of the life of Daniel Webster. Now, Webster,
I conceive, is worth writing about for three different
reasons: he was a great orator, and a very notaLle
lawyer, and a great statesman. Any or all of these
phases of his character might properly occupy the
greater part of any account of his life. But ·what in
my opinion should be passed over hastily is what in
a great number of the undergraduate compositions is
treated at the greatest length ; namely, the not Yery
exceptional circumstances of his childhood and youth.
I remember one theme which covered perhaps a dozen
pages of carefully written manuscript, of which all
but two were devoted to an elaborate account - re·

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ferred to no recognized authority - of how the infan~
Daniel, engaged in ploughing with his father, plied
the old gentleman with many edifying questions concerning the rights and duties of , American citizens
and received answers that might have been copied
from '' Sandford and Merton." I remember another
then~e, entitled " John the Baptist," which told of
n?thmg but the extremely picturesque and very
lughly .colored misconduct of Herod. Aud only a
sl~ort tune ago I had occasion to study a life of Sir
Richard Steele, in which a great many pages were
devoted to discussions - illustrated by legal documents quoted at length - as to who were, and who
were not, related to his wives. Yet really what n
reader wanted to know in each of these cases really, I think, what the writer wished to tell-was
why Web~ter, or John the Baptist, or Steele, was worth .
the attentwn we were called upon to give him.
Of cou~·se, even in writing of this kind, our purpose
may be d~fferent from the general one. Last year I
read a Life of Abraham Lincoln, by a Mr. Herndon
who was an intimate friend of his in early life.
vVhether Herndon's book is authentic or not, I do
not pretend to decide. It purports to give au astonishingly complete account of what Lincoln <li<l
and what manner of world he lived in up to the time
when he emerged into the sight of the nation. It
purports, i~deed, to tell the whole story of his life .;
but after Lmcoln was in national politics, H erndon saw
and knew comparatively little of him, and other people

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3aw and knew a great deal. Of Herndon's three volumes, then, almost if not quite two are devoted to the
earlier part of Lincoln's career. Into the third volume is compressed, in very general form, all that makes
Lincoln's name a household word ; but this massing
of Herndon's book, far from being faulty, seems to me
admirable. What Herndon had to tell, what nobody
else knew, was precisely that personal detail of early
life which the other books and other writers, for want
of knowledge, passed over. A truer title would have
been the " Early Life of Lincoln." A better book
might have ended at the moment when Lincoln became a public character. But, given Herndon's purpose, Herndon's book is, in its main masses, very well
composed, for the very reason that it gives most space,
and so attracts most notice, to what most deserves
distinction.
An interesting composition from this point of view
is the chapter in " Vanity Fair" which tells of the battle
of Waterloo. In point of fact, I rather think Thack.
eray had never seen a great battle, and was too prudent
an artist to venture on the description of a very notable kind of thing which he knew only from hearsay.
He lays his scene in Brussels, then, and tells with
great vividness and detail the story of the panic there,
- not essentially a different thing from any other
scene of general excitement and confusion and terror;
a great deal nearer the ordinary experience of human
beings than any form, of battle, murder, or sudden
death. But he never lets you forget that what has

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made this panic is Waterloo: every now and then you
hear the grow ling of the cannon, and feel, hovering
not far off, the dreadful shadow of Bonaparte. So in my little Tauchnitz edition - he writes for twentytwo pages, dwelling at greateRt length on that part of
his subject which he was best able to treat, and lea,·ing in the reader's mind- what every writer really
wishes to leave there - a deep sense of reality and of
power. But this has not told his whole story. In
the last page and a half he tells very briefly what had
been doing in the field all this time ; and in his verv
last paragraph- and the very last words of it - h~
tells the fact which makes the passage an essential
part of his story. Here is the paragraph, and it is
so placed that in the total effect of the chapter it
remains the chief point of the whole: -

173

proportions of our work - becomes more important
and more delicate than before. On our management
of it depends to an amazing degree what effects we
produce with given material. lt cannot be considered
too carefully. And nothing has so assisted my con·
sideration of it as that simple dedce with cards that
show me, as I arrange them in different orders,
what different effects are at any moment within my
power.
So we come to the principle of Coherence: that the
relation of each part of a composition to its neighbors
should be unmistakable. In sentences and in paragraphs, we shall remember, we found that this matter
of coherence depended on one or more of three devices: the actual order in which we arranged the parts
of our compositions; uniformity of constructions; and
the use of connectives. In whole compositions these
three devices remain important; but the first and the
third are more so than the second. The simplest way
of considerillg them, perhaps, is to revert to the little packs of cards that I have said are so useful in
deciding questions of mass. In arranging these it
is not enough that we should give most space to
what we wish most to impress on the reader, or put
at the beginning and the end the matters we wish
chiefly to emphasize. It is almost equally important
that we arrange the separate parts of our compositions - in this case, the separate paragraphs - in an
order that shall as far as possiule imlicate their
mutual relations.

" No more firing was heard at Brussels: the pursuit
roll eel miles away. The darkness came down on the field
and city ; and Amelia was praying for George, who was
lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart."
For skilful massing that chapter has always im·
pressed me as notable. It is the space given to Brussels that emphasizes the part of the story which
Thackeray could tell best; it is the placing of that
single sentence about George Osborne - not even a
sentence, only a relative clause-which leaves it once
for all inevitably in the reader's memory.
In whole compositions, then, the question of mass
- of how we should begin, how end, how arrange the

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In certain kinds of writing, this mere arrangement
will assure all the coherence that is necessary. In a
novel, for example, or a simple historical narrative, it
is often enough to arrange the parts that make up the
whole in such order that each naturally leads from
the last to the next; but whenever one gets into a
kind of composition where one cannot move straight
ahead, - where one must gather together more than
one thread of discourse, - other devices become
necessary.
The device of parallel construction is at once less
useful and more dangerous in whole compositions
than in paragraphs. It is less useful because it is not
nearly so perceptible; more dangernus because, if it
is perceptible, it is apt to be more palpably artificial.
And yet complete disregard of it may be decidedly
confusing in effect. An article in a magazine that I
lately glanced through will show what I mean. On
the page where I happened to open the book I observed two paragraphs : "Thirdly," began one, " we
believe this to be the case because," - and so 011 .
"Fourthly," and so on, began the next. Some ·
thiug in the text caught my attention. I turned
back a page or two, in hopes of finding what the
first and second headings were. But though beyond
doubt there were first and second headings some·
where, they were never so described, nor, if there
were such things in the article in question, were any
headings after the fourth. These two paragraphs .on
which my eye h apµened first to fall chanced to stand

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175

. ·ust the same relation to the main proposition, and
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so were cast in a form superficially snm ar, an so
were coherent in construction. But there were other
paragrapl1s tl1at by the vervJ terms that demonstrated
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the coherence of these - "thirdly" and" fourthly -.
must inevitably stand in just their relation to the m~m
propos1't'ion ., and t1 1e yery change of construction
which made them hard to find when I looked back ~o
them made them hard to recognize in exactly their
true character when I read the article straight forward. In such a series as I suggest here, perhaps
the value of coherence in the constructions of whole
compositions is most apparent. To phr~se. each of
these separate headings in a notably s1m1lar way
might well have been to grow palpably monot~uous.
To introduce each of them by 1ts regular tltle "first" "secondly," and so on-would certainly have
gone ~ long way to obviate any other device for the
securing of coherence.
. .
And yet in the most finished models of ?om_rosit10n
such coherence as I have just suggested lS discarded
as too palpable. One of the most finished bits ~f
composition I know is the pas:age f1:om ~urke s
speech on Conciliation with Ameri_ca, which d_1scus.ses
the temper and character of America. At t_lns pomt,
it is worth analyzing in some detail: ' 1 In this character of the Americans/' it begins, "a love of freedom
is the predominating feature, . . . and this f.rom a
great variety of powerful causes." ': First," begms the
next paragraph, " the people of the colonies arc de

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scendants of Engl ishmen. England, sir, is a nation
which still, I 110pe, respects, and formerly adored her
freedom," a11d so on for more than a page. " Tltl'y
were further confirmed in this pleasing erro r," bcgius
tho next paragTaph, -which might ha Ye begun" secondly," - "by the form of their provincial legislati re
assemblies. Th eir governments are popular in a hi gh
degree." And this, t oo , he develops a little. " lf
anything were wanting to t11is necessary operation
of t he form of government," comes instea d of
"thirdly," "reli gion wou ld have given it a complete
effect. . . . The religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of r esistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the
Protestantism of the Protestant religion." And there
is well on to a page of this. "Sir," beg ins the 11 cxt
paragraph, - which might have begun "fourthly," -,...
"I can perceive that some gentlemen oLject to the latitude of this de8c ription, Lecanse in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, antl
Jrns a regular establishment.... '1'here is, hmvevc r, a
circumstance attendin g these colonies which, in mr
opinion, fully counterbalances this difference. . . .
is that in Virginia and the Carolinas thev have a vast
multitude of slaves . . . . Freedom is to them not onlr
an enjoyment, bnt a kind of rank and pri vilegr,.;,
And so on for half a page more. "Permit me,
sir," -instead of "fifthly," -begins the next para·
graph, "to add another circumstance in our colonies,
which contributes no mean part towards the growth

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and effect; of this intractable spirit. I mean their ed ucation. In no country, perhaps, in the world is the
law so general a study." "They augur misgovernment at a distance," the paragraph closes, " and snuff
the approach of tyranny in eve ry tainted breeze."
"The last cause of this <lisobedient spirit in the colo~
nies," begins the sixth paragraph, " is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid
deep in the natural constitution of things. Three
thousand mil es of ocean lie between you and them."
And so on for a page more. His enumeration of
the causes of American love of freedom is now
complete.
Burke's business now is to proceed further in his
speech, -to discuss what conduct should be pursued
toward a people whose chief characteristic he has th us
defined and explained. But this definition and explanation, which, even as I have mutilated it, is not
precisely brief 1 has filled, in the edition from which
I quote, almost six closely printed pages. And it is
highly desirable that it should be finally presented in
a form so compact that a reasonably attentive listener
may rationally be hoped to keep it completely in
mind. Before proceeding with his discourse, then,
Burke gives a short paragraph to a deliberate summary of these last six. "Then, sir," he says, "from
these six capital sources, - of descent ; of form of government; of religion in the northern provinces ; of
manners in the southern ; of education ; of remoteness of situation from the first source of govern

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WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

COMPOSITION.

ment, - from all these causes a fine spirit of libertv
has grown up."
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Mutilated as my citations from this passage have
inevitably been, they are enough, I hope, to show
pretty clearly two of the devices by which Burke _
one of the most coherent writers in English literatu~·e -gives ~oherence to his style. From point to
pomt of the six heads by which he accounts for the
fine spirit of American liberty that just four weeks
later burst into open rebellion at Lexington and Concord, he marks his transitions with a care which
makes impossible the slightest misapprehension of
their nature. Though we may sometimes forget
whence we have come or whither we are going
there is never a moment when we can doubt wher~
we are. Every transition is as carefully defined as
every point. In the second place, when he has
reached a point where a summary is practicable, he
summarizes what he has said in the order in which
he !ms said it; and his summary, gathering up in
a smgle sentence the matter that he has impreRse<l
on our minds by expanding it into six foll paragraphs, leaves it with us in a form where we can
finally grasp it as a whole, and in full possession
of it proceed to a consideration of the further matter
that he must lay before us.
In coherence of whole compositions these two
dc\'ices - definitely marked transitions and carefully
placed summaries - do precisely what in. the cohe·
rence of shorter compositions is done by simple

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179

connectives. 11hey specify in a way which no man
can mistake the exact relation of part to part.
In some degree - in this speech of Burke's to a
great degree -this careful attention to coherence
involYes, and rightly, a disregard of the strict principle of Mass. At the beginning of almost every
one of his paragraphs we have not a word or phrase
which is in itself significant, but one which indicates
unmistakably the relation of what is to come to what
has gone before. Undue emphasis, this may seem, on
what is essentially unimportant ; and yet from another point of view it is perhaps defensible on the
very ground of emphasis. rro know the bearing of
what we are about to consider on what we have
already grasped is often quite as important as to
understand precisely what the thing we are about
to grasp may be. In those paragraphs of Burke's
which begin with simple connectives, the chief sentences, when we get to them, are generally massed
to perfection. Take, for example, that famous one
about " the dissidence of dissent, the Protestantism
of the Protestant religion." No one ever forgot
what that meant. I know of no passage in English better worth studying as an example of the
comparative value of the principles of Mass and of
Coherence, and of the inevitable necessity of compromise between them; nor any either, which more
instantly demonstrates the great value of a final
summary.
To come down to every-day matters, the precise les·

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son which one learns from such models as this is of
great value when we come to write out the compositions whose unity and mass we have settled by some
such device as the separate headings on separate cards.
Once arranged in its general outline, a composition
mu st of course be finished in detail. If we have
made our plans with minute care, each of our head·
ings may properly be expanded into a paragraph.
How should that paragraph begin, how proceed, how
end ? Oftener than one would think off-hand it may
to advantage begin with a specific connective phrase;
very often it may so expand as to treat a far wider
rauge of subject than at first one would expect. But
as we saw when we were discussing paragraphs by
themselves, it is of the first importance that each
sentence bear to the last a relation as unmistakaule
as each paragraph itself should bear to its neighbors:
and there are few cases where a paragraph may not
wisely end with words which leave last in the
reader's mind - and place where they will most
readily catch the reader's eye - thoughts and emotions combined which shall somehow imply the motiYc of the whole paragraph. Coherence is often the
chief thing at the beginning; at the end the chief
thing is almost always emphasis or mass.
I have said enough, I hope, to show how in the
planning of whole compositions, large and small, the
now familiar principles of Unity, of Mass, and of Coherence are of the greatest value. In this phase of .
their application I think their true nature appears

most clearly. They are not rnles like rules of grammar, the violation of which is positive error, and the
observance of which must be rigid ; they are general
principles of conduct, the disregard of which may
very probably lead us astray. To state them to ourselves too rigidly is to make masters of what should
be our servants, and to produce work whose effect
is fatally frigid. lt is to fall into the error of such
pseudo-classicism as for two centuries made intolerably dull the tragic <lrama of France, an<l for well
on to a century the polite poetry of England. More
than in shorter compositions we should apply them to
whole compositions with elastic intelligence. We
should clearly understand, for example, whether for
our purposes we need an introduction or a conclu• sion, and accordingly write an introd uction or a con. clusion not because on general principles such things
seem desirable, but because the effect we have in mind
Jeman<ls one. And if our space is completely at our
disposal, we should arrange the dimensions and the
proportions of our materials in the way which seems
to us most suitable to the effect we have is mind.
If rigid adherence to formal rules be fatally frigid,
none the less fatal to any certainty of effect is that
relaxation of grasp that must result from disregard
of the principles of U uity, of Mass, and of Coherence,
that underlie all formal rules.
Perhaps the simplest way to show the superiority
of carefully planned work to carelessly, is to compare
exampies of each kind in the work of the same writer.

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WHOLE COl\II'OSITIONS.

As examples undoubtedly familiar to us all, I turn to
three familiar plays of Shakspere : the " Comedy of
Errors ," the " Two Gentlemen of Verona"
' and " A
Midsummer Night's Dream." There is some evidence
to suggest that the first two were written before the
third ; and it is fairly certain that all three belong to
the earlier part of Shakspere's career as a dramatist.
In the " Comedy of Errors," to be sure, the plot is put
together with some care ; but the total effect of the
play is among the least satisfactory in the works of
Shakspere. The confusion of persons on which the
whole plot is based is a palpable absurdity, and there
is nothing in the play to redeem it into plausibility.
In the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," the plot is more
complicated, and for my part I have never been able
to detect much composition in any part. The story is
told in a succession of independent scenes, some effective, some the reverse. Proteus, a young gentleman
of Verona, leaves his mistress, Julia, and goes to
Milan, where his friend Valentine is already at the
feet of Sil via. He proceeds to fall in love with Silvia,
to betray Valentine's confidence, and to get Valentine
banished from Milan. Valentine, turning outlaw,
subsequently captures Proteus and some of the other
principal personages, including Julia, who has followed Proteus in disguise. With no particular reason
Proteus suddenly discovers that he is in love with
Julia after all; and the whole ends merrily, each
gentleman allied to his chosen mistress. In which
plot, very carelessly put together, it is evident that

the conduct of Proteus is at once detestable and inexplicable. Few plays could be more thoroughly
unsatisfactory. Yet there is no doubt that the confusion of persons in the " Comedy of Errors," and
the startlingly sudden vagaries of such a character as
Proteus are dramatically effective. \Vell acted, they
will amuse an audience. In the ":Midsummer Night's
Dream" we have a play which I find it hard to believe other than a deliberate working over of these
two plots. The main incidents of each are preserved.
And the absurdity of such confusion as we find in
the " Comedy of Errors," and the hatefulness of such
meaningless inconstancy as we find in the "Two
Gentlemen of Verona," are made plausible by being
transported into a world of pure fantasy, where they
are caused directly by the intervention of a tricky
fairy. Perhaps the cleverest variation of all is that
by which such treason to a friend as makes Proteus
odious is made, simply by attributing it to Helena~
a woman, a very venial matter. vVhether the sense
of personal honor possessed by women in general
is really weaker than that of men, this is not the
moment to inquire. It is certain, however, that
even to the present day, normal males forgive in a
woman many lines of condnct which in any man they
would most sternly condemn. The aberration of the
heroine of one of Mr. George Meredith's novels, who
in a moment of pique deliberately betrays the political
secret of her lover to the public prints, is a case in point.
Yon regret that she should be so weak, but, after all,

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the weakness seems what you might have expected
even from the cleverest woman. The virtue required
to resist that kind of temptation is the virtue peculiar
to men. There is no doubt in my mind that Helena's
betrayal of Hermia, in the " Midsummer Night's
Dream," which is distinguishable from Proteus's betrayal of Valentine only by the fact that the betrayer
is not a man, impresses one rightly or wrongly, not
as a piece of rascality, but as the natural, if deplorable, vagary of a pretty womau. With the exception
of this incident, I think, the other incidents of the
two earlier plays which are blended in the main comedy of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" are all made
fantastically plausible by the simple device of placing
them, not on earth, but in fairyland.
So far, perhaps, there has been little in this excur- •
sion to show why it belongs in a discussion of the way
to put compositions together; but the mere compo·
sition of the ''Midsummer Night's Dream" has always
impressed me as masterly. The skilful care with
which the scenes are put together- the care which
makes the play to this day an acting comedy much
more amusing than I ever supposed it could be until
l saw it played- is too subtile to be anaiyzed here.
Whoever will read the play with a little care may see
it for himself. But a phase of the composition just
as skilfully subtile, and far more apt to escape attention, may be analyzed here perfectly well. The fairy
world in which the confusions of the "Comedy of
Errors" and the inconstancies of the "Two Gentle-

WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

185

men of Verona" became plausible and delightful is a
fantastic region completely remote from every-day
life. With a cleverness that I can hardly believe
other than deliberate, Shakspere gives us a whole introductory act of romantic comedy before we approach
fairyland at all. The romantic Athens of Theseus
of course is no such place as any actual human being
ever saw; but it is a place near enough human experience to seem plausible, and at the same time remote and fantastic enough to lead the way insensibly
toward the purely fantastic forest where the fairy
comedy plays itself so charmingly. But when the
fairy comedy is done, we are too far from ~aily life
not to feel the unreality very sharply if we are sent
about our daily business at once ; so there is a whole
last act of romantic comedy again, and of rollicking
burlesque, which leaves the fairy fantasy at last in a
sort of dreamy distance, -just where it belongs. A
more exquisitely simple composition of apparently incongruous elements into one finely massed coherent
whole I have never discovered. Read the "Midsummer Night's Dream" for yourselves; compare it with
the earlier comedies, which I think may fairly be considered as preliminary studies. You can have no
better single lesson in composition.
Of course, as I have said, these guesses about
8hakspere's methods of composition are nothing
more than guesses. The more one knows of the
ordinary process of composition, however, the more
plausible these guesses seem. Even the best literary

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artists cannot see their way to the best form in which
their work may be cast without a good deal of preliminary experiment. In the act of composition this
preliminary placing and the preliminary failures it
involves are perhaps the longest and most tedious
part of the work. rrhey are just as inevitable, I believe, in argumentative work, in scientific exposition,
in history, in any kind of writing conceivable, as they
"" are in plays or novels. They are fraught with discouragement that any one who hopes to be a literary
artist must learn constantly to expect and constantly
to face. The satisfaction with which at last one
emerges from this period of experimental failure into
the light of artistic certainty goes far to make up for
all the hours of discouragement. That is the bright
side of the picture.
To illustrate this a little further, I venture to recur
to my own experience in putting together this book,
- originally a course of lectures. Like many people
who undertake the task of composition, I found myself at the outset bound by certain unavoidable conditions. It was necessary to divide the matter in hand
into a given number of equal parts, - in this case into
eight lectures, each of which should occupy one hour.
Four of these settled themselves at once. There must
clearly be an introductory lecture, to place the general
scheme of the course definitely before whoever wished
to follow it throughout; and clearly there must be
a lecture about each of the qualities of style, - Clearness, the intellectual; Force, the emotional; and Elc·

gance, the resthetic. Clearly, too, as I have now said
with perhaps tedious frequency, these qualities can be
conveved to the mind of a reader only by means of the
"
visible elements of style, - words in composition.
Evidently, then, the four remaining lectures must be
devoted to these elements. The precise question,
then, was how the elements might best be treated in
four parts. Two distinct methods presented themselves: one was to speak first of good use, as it
applies to words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole
compositions ; then similarly, of each of the three
principles of composition, the principles of Unity, of
Mass, and of Coherence, - in other words, to consider
all four elements four separate times. The other
method, which I ultimately preferred, was to consider
each element by itself, and to show, as well as I
could, how good use and the principles of composition
apply to each. This I preferred chiefly because it
seemed more distinctly to emphasize a fact that I hope
I have by this time made familiar ; namely, that the
principles which govern composition in all its stages
are essentially the same, but that they apply in different ways to sentences and to paragraphs and to wholes.
Each separate stage of composition is worth special
attention. No better way of emphasizing this occurred to me than giving a separate lecture to each.
Now came a more troublesome matter still. The conditions under which these lectures were composed
compelled each to be given in a stated time: each must
fill one hour, and no m0re. To introduce in any sin~

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gle lecture matter not · closely related to the subject
directly in hand would have been confusingly to vio.
late unity, - to fail to keep the four elements of style
properly distinct. In college, where much more time
is at my disposal, I find that I give four lectures to
words, seven to sentences, three to paragraphs, and
only one to whole compositions. In this course, then,
my problem became definite: it was to reduce my
fq_ur lectures about words to one, and my seven about
sentences, and my four about paragraphs ; and then
to make this lecture about whole compositions as
nearly equivalent to the others as I could. The result of my efforts - a result which I lay before you at
this moment in .no sense as a model, but only as an
example with which I can assume most of you to ham
some acquaintance - is instantly open to one serious
objection. Beyond any question the lecture about
sentences is much more crowded than any of tho
others; and this one about whole compositions much
less so. The scheme has unity and coherence ; but so
far as proportion goes it is irregularly massed ; I
have not given most space to the part of it which on
the whole probably deserves most attention, - to th e
element of sentences, where the conflict between good
use and the principles of composition is at once most
evident and most active. Had I chosen the other
plan, - one lecture about good use, and one about
each of the principles, - this difficulty might very
probably have been avoided. But as I said a m.oment ago, this would have failed to emphasize what I

wished most to emphasize : the independence, and yet
the similarity of each of the three stages of composition, - sentences, paragraphs, and wholes. I chose,
then, deliberately to crowd my lecture about sentences, and perhaps in some degree unduly to expand
this one about whole compositions. What success
has attended my work, you can judge better than I.
If it has served clearly to define what I conceive to be
the chief facts about the elements of style, it has done
all I could venture to hope.
In few words, I have tried to make clear that good
use, and nothing else, is what ultimately makes words,
alone or in composition, significant of ideas, - anything more than arbitrary marks or sounds. Only
within its limits can we possibly apply any principles
at all; but when we have once learned to recognize
its limits, and begin to inquire how within these limits
we may best exert ourselves, we find that in all three
elements of composition there are three traits to which
we may well attend: the substance of the composition, its outward form, and its inner structure. And
we find that our consideration of each of these traits
is much aided by a definite rule. If in considering
the substance of a sentence, or of a paragraph, or of a
whole, we remind ourselves of the principle of Unity,
- that each composition should group itself about one
central idea, - we shall find the question of what a
given composition may best include a great deal easier
to answer than without such help. And so when we
remind ourselves that each composition - sentence,

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paragraph, or whole -- should be so massed that the
parts we wish to make most notable may most readil v
catch the eye; and that in any composition - sei~ ­
tence, paragraph, or whole ·- the relation of part to
p~rt should be.unmistakaule. As we study these principles afresh with each element of style, we get to know
the principles better and better, and to appreciate at
once, I think, their value and their elasticity.
If we have followed all this with reasonable care
we need hardly stop here to remind ourselves again'
t~rnt for convenience' sake we have phrased these principles much more dogmatically than we are warranted
in phrasing them. The single thing about which we
may always risk positive assertion in matters concerning style is good use. Within the limits of th at the
only real question is what effects we have in mind
In by far the greater number of cases that presen~
themselves, we wish to produce an effect of definite
firm mastery of the matter in hand. With such a~
object in view, there is no plan better than so far as
good use will permit deliberately to obey the principles
we have formulated; but if the effect we wish to
produce be other than the ordinary one I have just
mentioned, a deliberate disregard of the principles
may often help us to produce it. Nothing, for example, can better produce an effect of confusion than
deliberate violation of unity; nothing better an effect
of weakness than deliberate anti-climax; and so on.
In. short, with every new literary plan, a new problem
arises; and that problem a writer cannot with cer

WHOLE COMPOSITIONS.

191

tainty settle for himself without a very clear understanding of just the effect he wishes to produce.
In our consideration of words, of sentences , and of
paragraphs, we reached this same point; and here
there is little need to dwell on it. We all remember
that every word not only names an idea, but suggests
along with the idea it names a greater or smaller
number of others. We all remember that as words
are composed, not only their denotations are put
togeth er, but their connotations t oo. And the same is
true when sentences are composed in paragraphs, and
paragraphs in whole compositions. In Thackeray 's
description of Brussels during Waterloo, for example,
the battle is mostly connoted. The effect, in short,
which any composition, large or small, produces, is
just like the effect that any word produces, - a question of denotation and of connotation combined in
ways that as the art of composition g rows finer become almost infinitely subtile.
And now it may be worth while once more to sum
up what I have said about the elements of style, -the
visible features of which every composition must be
made up: All style must consist of words, composed in
sentences, composed in paragraphs, composed in whole
compositions. Our choice of words is absolutely controlled by good use; but within its limits we are able
by varying the kinds and the number of our words, to'
produce a great variety of effects. Our composition of
sentences must be largely controlled by good use, in
the form of grammar and idiom; but within its limits

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we are again able to produce a great variety of effects,
by varying the kinds of our s ~ntences and by applying
to all kinds the principles of Unity, of Mass, and of
Coherence. In our composition of paragraphs and of
wholes, we are little trammelled by good use; so we
may vary our effects by the application of these principles almost as we please. Modern style may be
regarded, then, as the result of a constant and by no
means finished contest between good use and the
principles of composition. And, finally, realizing that
any effect in style must be produced only by means of
our composition of the elements, we should never forget that in our choice and our composition alike there
are two things to keep in mind = their denotation, what they name; and their connotation,-what they
suggest.

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To this point we have been considering the outward
and visible aspect of style. Henceforth we shall approach the subject in another way. Of a given piece
of style we shall ask ourselves, not what it consists of,
but what effect it produces. We shall concern ourselves chiefly, not with its elements, but with its qualities. Widely various as the impressions which style
can make evidently are, they may, we have seen, be
summed up under three and only three headings. In
the first place, any piece of style appeals to the understanding; we understand it, or we do not understand
it or we are doubtful whether we understand it or
' in other words, it has an intellectual quality.
not;
In the second place, it either interests us, or bores us,
or leaves us indifferent ; it appeals to our emotions ;
it has an emotional quality. Finally, it either pleases
us, or displeases us, or leaves us neither pleased nor
offended ; it appeals to our taste ; it has a quality
which I may call resthetic. Under one of these headings, as I have said, fall in a general way all the
qualities of style which I have discovered. We shall
discuss these three headings in turn : the intellectual

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quality under the head of Clearness, the emotional
under the head of Force, the ref!.thetic under the head
of Elegance.
Clearness - the quality before us now - I may best
define as the distinguishing quality of a style that
cannot be misunderstood. To be thoroughly clear, it
is not enough that style express the writer's meaning;
style must so express this meaning that no rational
reader can have any doubt as to what the meaning is.
To come as near clearness as I could, for example, I
deliberately avoided pronouns in that last sentence,
repeating style and meaning with a clumsiness defensible only on the score of lucidity.
The first diffi.culty that meets us in considering this
quality is a matter of every-day experience. One
need know little of life to be familiar with the fact
that plenty of things are daily said and written which
are perfectly clear to some people, and at the same
time wholly incomprehensible to others.
A good
many of my friends at college are deep in one or
another kind of scientific study. I am apt to lunch
with one of them who frequently has in his hand an
elementary treatise on Physics. Once or twice lately
I have looked into this book. The Preface and a
considerable part of the text are indubitably written
in the English language ; but a large part of most
pages that I have happened to look at is covered
with formulre which group themselves in my mind
under the general heading a
b = .y;-. To a phf
sicist, in all probability, that formula would mean

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CLEARNESS.

I

195

nothing whatever ; but it would mean exactly as
much as any of his profoundly significant formulre
mean to me. The only difference would be that
while he and I know that my formula is probably nonsensical, we both know that in aJl probability his formulre are not. To me, then, a reasonably educated
man, an elementary treatise on Physics is wholly
lacking in clearness; to a student of Physics, on the
other hand, it is as clear as A B C. Again, among
my pupils at Harvard there are a number who take a
healthy interest in the game of foot-ball ; and some of
these write detailed reports of the games for the college papers. These reports I have sometimes had the
curiosity to examine. Like the textbook of Physics,
they are indubitably written in something that purports to be English. "Full-back," for example, is
obviously a compound of familiar English words ; so
is "rush-line ; " so is " a foul tackle ; " and so on.
But a column or two about full-backs and half-backs
and rush-lines and such things convey to my ordinarily educated mind no definite meaning whatever;
and this because, perhaps unwisely, I have never made
myself familiar with the technical practices and terms
of the game of foot-ball. To a great many undergraduates, on the other hand, I find these reports of
sport perfectly clear. In matters of foot-ball their
technical learning is as admirable as is my scientific
friend's in the matter of Physics. In each case I am
left in helpless bewilderment. But I discover that I
can have my revenge by addressing physicists and

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sportsmen in the technical terms of rhetoric, which to
all appearances equally bewilder them. 'fhese very
simple examples, such as each of you must constantly
meet in daily life, - if only when you hear people
gossiping about friends of theirs whom you do not
happen to know, - are enough to show what we mean
when we assert that clearness is not a positive quality,
but a relative; that what may be pe.dectly clear to
one man may be hopelessly obscure to another.
In a general discussion, however, we must not rest
satisfied with a fact like this. The question before us
is, very broadly, what kind of style is gen erally clear,
and what not. As clearness is obviously a relative
quality, this question means, in other words, what
kind of human being shall we generally aim to
address? And this question admits of a prett.y definite answer. A generally clear style is a style adapted
to the understanding of the average man. 'fhe more
widely intelligible a given piece of writing is, the
clearer.
I know few points in rhetoric which arouse in clever
people more impatience than this. rro clever people,
no matter how philanthropic their general scheme of
life, there are few more unlovely facts than the average man. He is commonplace; and what is commonplace is precisely what a clever person does not wish
to be. The aristocratic instinct, which makes human
beings in general exert so mnch of their energy to
distinguish themselves from their fellows, makes clever ·
people, who are fond of talking about " aristocracies

CLEARNESS.

I

197

of intellect'' and the like, recoil from the commonplace. Why, an average man can understand the
daily newspapers, and Mr. Roe's novels, and all the
other myriad books of the great gospel of Philistia.
Heaven forfend that men of wit address themselves
to such as he!
At all events, this mood is one which constantly
confronts me as a teacher; and in some degree as a
reader of modern literature too. It is nowhere more
apparent than in the works of two writers 'whom I am
sometimes disposed to rate as the two most notable
literary figures of Victorian England, - Carlyle in
prose, and Browning in verse. It is a mood which
can be justified by nothing but the possession of
genius, - of that wonderful power of insi ght into
things unseen which en abl es rare men, at rare intervals, to leave behind them records which permanently
enrich the wisdom of the race. Very notoriously the
faults of genius are easy to follow : anybody can take
to opium, and it was opium which produced that wonderful Confession of De Quincey's; anybouy can wear
a loose collar and declare himself a very bad man indeed, and were not loose collars and incessant manifestoes of personal villany salient characteristics of
Byron ? Anybody, in short, can imitate the superficial traits that distinguish men of genius from what
is commonplace. And fewer people than one would
believe off-band can understand the wisdom and the
truth of the old myth : it was not only the theft of
fire from heaven that made Prometheus the great

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type of genius; it was that he gave the stolen fire to
all mankind.
The fact is that the average man may be viewed
with equal truth in two different ways. In one aspect
he is commonplace, an d nothing more; aud what is
commonpl ace is not winsome. In another aspect he
is more liroadly and more profoundly than his fellowmen of genius a huma11 being, -the permanent type
of those simplest and broaucst traits, of thought and
of emotion alike, which make the brotherhood of the
human race. And among the men of genius and the
men of wit who emulate them, not many have or
have had the perception to feel beneath his common·
place exterior this great, permanent fact of humanity.
Yet no trait seems to me more surely characteristic of such art as the centuries finally pronounce the
greatest than a frank recognition of this humanity.
In architecture, in sculpture, in painting, in music, as
well as in the art of letters, which we are specially
studying now, the supreme works have first of all a
noble simplicity which makes them mean something
to all men. U nlcarned men, and lirni.ted, never see
in the great works all that is there to see. The greatest works ham a depth of signific::mce that reveals
new meanings to each generation that approaches
them, each with its own new experience of human
life ; but aborn all this lasting significance the great
works rise with a superficial simplicity that makes
them seem to ordinary men things almost as intelligible
as to the learned they seem more and more marvel-

lous. I have hardly met a traveller from Athens who
has not felt the beauty of the Parthenon, nor one
from France who has been inscnsil.Jle to the gra11d;;u1·
of a great Gothic cathedral. There is something in
the Phidian sculpture that makes it a pleasant thing
to the eyes of Bostonian laborers, of a Sunuay afternoon. To almost any eye a great Madonna of Raphael
is a picture still worth the trouble of look ing at.
Many an ear bewildered by the complexity of a modern symphony can take permanent delight in listening to one of the great movements of Beethoven .
And in this art of letters, any one can feel the charm
of Homer's swift narrative, and of Dante's marvellous
descriptions; and as for Shakspe re, his plays - the
body of English literature which has proved perhaps
best of all to reward patient study - still, after three
centuries, hold the stage before popular audiences.
To come down to lesser things, there is in English
no other satire so terrible in its lasting misanthropic
significance as "Gulliver's Travels," nor any nursery
tale more certain to please children.
The perfect simplicity .of Swift's mature style is
what makes him to this day, in certain aspects, among
the safest models we can follow; and a short passage from one of his mature works - " A Letter to a
Young Clergyman" - shows how deliberate this simplicity was: -

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famous Lord Falkland., in some of his writings, would not
be an ill one for young divines." -This Lord Falkland,

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you will remember, was perhaps the most spotless and
accomplished of the loyal gentlemen who fell in the Civil
Wars, fighting for King Charles. - " I was assured by an
old person of quality, who knew him well, that when he
doubted whether a word was perfectly intelligible or not,
be used to consult one of his lady's chambermaids (not
the waiting-woman, because it was possible she might be
conversant in romances), and by her judgment was guided
whether to receive or reject it. And if that great person
thought such a caution necessary in treatises offered to
the learned world, it will be sure at least as proper in sermons, where the meanest hearer is supposed to be concerned, and where very often a lady's chambermaid may
be allowed to equal half the congregation, both as to
quality and understanding. But I know not how it comes
to pass that professors in most arts and sciences are generally the worst qualified to explain their meaning to
those who are not of their tribe: a common farmer shall
make you understand in three words that his foot is out
of joint, or his collar-bone broken; wherein a surgeon,
after a hundred turns of art, if yon are not a scholar,
shall leave you to seek."
In few words, the secret of what is permanent in
literary art is "to think the thoughts of the wise, to
speak the language of the simple."
It is, then, of the first importance t.hat a writer who
wishes to be clear - to use a sty le that cannot be
misunderstood - reconcile himself to the thought of
addressing the average man, and not a little company
of the elect. But even when he has reached thisresolution, his task is only begun. There are few

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201

facts which do more to prevent the free intercourse of
man with man than our habit of assuming that other
people think as we do. Common tricks of speech are
apt to have more significance than we generally attach to them ; and there is one trick of speech: in·
cessant in children and other uneducated folks, - and
by no means confined to them,- which at this point
has often seemed to me suggestive. Whoever thoughtlessly begins to tell a story is very apt to fmd himself
interjecting at intervals the words, "You know." At
bottom, I take it, this really means that one is instinctively disposed to fancy the company he addresses
really in possession of his own experience. And I
ha-re always relished a family story which relates how
a precise old gentleman, some years ago, interrupted
his grandson, who began to utter frequent "You
knows," with these words: "No, sir; we do not know.
And we presume that is why you are affording us the
information."
The first thing a writer wants to r ealize, in short,
is the range and limit of his reader's information. In
literature, as truly as in science, t he only safe method
is to proceed from what is known to what is unknown.
Thus proceeding, we shall al ways be clear; failing
thus to proceed, we shall generally fail to attain
clearness.
But what may we assume to be known? That is the
question. Needlessly to explain familiar matters were
at the very least a waste of time, probably exasperating to whoever is called upon to waste it. To leave

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unexplained matters that a reader does not understand
is often to proceed thenceforth -- so far as the reader
is concerned - to no purpose whatever. The simplest
way, I think, of considering what we may assume
other men to know is to inquire in what ways we
are apt to blunder in this matter of clearness.
There are two fairly distinct ways in which we
constantly fail to make ourselves understood. The
first is by so expressing ourselves that what we say
may mean more than one thing: in which case our
style is sometimes vague, sometimes ambiguous. The
second is by so expressing ourscl ves that, at least
without study on the part of the reader, what we
say does not mean anything at all: in which case
our style is obscure. These two ways of avoiding
clearness are worth consideration in detail.
In daily life, in speech and in writing alike, we find
it convenient to express ourselves with no great
nicety of phrase. I have just been reading a composition by an undergraduate who endeavored to tell
what he saw some months ago during a visit to
Quebec. Among other things he viRited a church.
which he described as having "plain, rough walls,"
adding a little later that it was "ancient." As the
church in question is in Quebec, it evidently cannot
be much aboYe two centuries old; so the suggestion
which " an cient" 1vould arouse abroad - that the
structure was of Roman origin -is happily out of
the question. But what are "plain, rough walls"?
Are they of stone or brick or wood? And of what

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general style of architecture is the building of which
they form a part, - Romanesque, Gothic, or Renaissance? and so on. In point of fact, being unfamiliar
with Quebec, I have not the slightest idea. I am
almost as far from a definite notion · of what the
church in question looks like as if I had not been
informed that its walls were plain and rough. The
only service that these words have done me is to set
me to making in fancy one of the many images that
they would properly describe; and for aught I know,
this image of a rubble structure with small square
windows is no more like the church in question than
Westminster Abbey is like St. Peter's at Rome.
In this case, the vagueness of phrase was due to
carelessness. Doubtless my pupil had some general
idea of the material, the shape, the color, of his
" plain, rough" walls. But his phrases might have
fitted so many other ideas than the ones they were
meant to express, that for an ordinary reader they
had no particular value. This example too - a bit
from a description of something that the writer has
not lately observed - sugges ts one fact about vagueness of phrase that is worth remarking. Vagueness
is far more common in reminiscent descriptions than
in descriptions of things that have been lately observed. All the carelessness of habitual speech and
writing :rarely suffices to mak e a note of something
recent by any means as indistinct as a note of the
same thing after an interval. While sometimes a
mere matter of sty le, vagueness is oftener an actual

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matter ot thought. In a general way, a vague writer
does not know what he wants to say, and so generally
says something that may mean a great many different
things.
I have taken the simplest and most concrete example
of this offence against clearness that I could find.
In this simplest form the trouble is most typically
apparent ; and it does not essentially differ from the
same trouble in the greatest complexity. The platitudes of cheap sermons, of political eloquence, of
unintelligent criticism, all reduce themselves to the ..
same thing. "Love," writes a Harvard student, "is
that abiding principle in the life of man which leads
him to do right because it is the highest pleasure of his
life to be in sympathy and touch with the source of
all good." Conceivably the man who wrote that had
some idea of what he meant: he explained afterward
that by " love" he meant what the older translators
of the Bible called "charity," - the thing which is
declared greater than faith and hope. But I confess
myself unable from his definition to frame any distinct idea of what the quality that has so balled
translators of Scripture may be.
Partly a matter of thought, then, and partly a matter of phrase, Yagueness is fatal to real clearness, because a style vague in any part is a style which,
though it be not meaningless, is always a style that
may be misunderstood.
More subtile than vagueness, because far less a
matter of thought, and so far less conscious, is am-,

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biguity. In a book on rhetoric I lately read is a
long quotation from some respectable man of letters
concerning what the career of a man of letters ought
to be ; and at the end of the quotation, he who
quotes writes thus: "The foregoing considerations
will serve to show how truly the author's career is
made up not only of endeavor and achievement, but
also of travail and self-denial." Now, whom does he
mean by " the author"? Discarding the unreasonable though not unwarrantable notion that he means
himself, - for writers have a stupid trick of referring
to themselves as "the author," - does he mean the
man who wrote the extract he has quoted, or that
abstract being, the author in general ? Probably .the
latter; but not certainly. If he h~d said "an
author," there would have been no doubt. As he
has said ''the author," which may properly mean
either, his style is a style that can be misunderstood.
He knew exactly what he meant: in this case there
was no confusion of thought ; but the poor reader
must be left to take what comfort he can in the
bei:;t guess he can make.
Mere matters of words, these; but ambiguity can
also be a question of sentences. In "Macbeth" is a
speech which has puzzled actors anJ critics alike.
Lady Macbeth has proposed the murder of Duncan.
"And if we fail ? " says Macbeth. " vVe fail," is her
answer. " But screw your courage to the stickingpoint, and we'll not fail." Now, how should her" \Ve
fail" be read? Is it an exclamation, - " We fail ! " -

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disdaining such a possibility ? Or is it a grim acceptance of fate, - "We fail," if so must be? Again, in
"Much Ado about Nothing,'' where Hero is slandered
at the marriage-altar and swoons, Beatrice exclaims,
,. Why, how now, cousin! wherefore sink you clown?"
Miss Ellen Terry gave this line as an exclamation of
terror. To my thinking, it were more in the charac·
ter of Beatrice to give it as an exclamation of disdain, implying that for her part Beatrice would rise
in wrath, and not sink at all. And to go no farther
than every-clay life, whoever has played the game of ..
Twenty Questions knows from experience how iii·
gcniously exasperating intentional ambiguity can be,
especially if the maker thereof happen to be clever.
Vagueness and ambiguity have in common the
trait that they sin against clearness, not by meaning
nothing, but by conceivably meaning more than one
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matter of thought, and ambiguity chi efly a matter of
phrase. Obscurity, the other offence against clear·
ness, differs from them by apparently having no mean·
ing at all. Apparently, I say, because I have found it
convenient generally to class as obscure any passage
which will not reveal its meaning without study. As
a matter of fact, few written documents of any kind
can reasonably claim a right to be studied. Most
things that we read, we read only once. If one hon·
est reading does not reveal their meaning, the mcn.n ·.
ing, so far as one honest reader goes, is as good as
none; so really it way be a matter either of cun·

CLEARNESS.

207

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summate confusion of thought, or merely of inapt
diction.
Take, for example, two well-known writers, whose
works in general are, according to my definition,
obscure, - Browning and Emerson. In Emerson's
essays there are any number of single sentences as
simple as one can wiRh. I open a volume of his at
random. On the first page to · which I turn is this
sentence, which nobody can misunderstand : " Deal
so plainly with man and woman as to constrain the
utmost sincerity and destroy all hope of trifling with
you." But a few lines later comes this sentence, which
I for one fail to understand at all: "The simpiest
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' in his integrity worships God becomes
person
who
God: yet forever and ever the influx of this better
and universal self is new and unsearchable." Such
contrasts as this abound in Emerson. At one moment he is simple enough for any child; at the next,
lost in what seems, except to his worshippers, a hopeless mist of words. No one of his essays that I have
ever read leaves in your mind an impression that you
can definitely phrase. You are impressed with the
subtile personal quality of the man; perhaps you are
stirred, ashamed of the meaner parts of yourself,
eager to do something with those parts of yourself that are not mean. Bnt, asked precisely what
Emerson has told you, in all human probability you
will be compelled to confess that yon do not know.
As he says himself, I believe, his paragraphs seem
made up of sentences which possess inexhaustible

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powers of mutual repellence. Consistency, if I remember aright> he somewhere declares to be the chief
vice of little minds. Of almost any one of Emerson's
essays you can remember some notable phrases, a
general atmosphere of that peculiar purity which we
find only in New England, but no such thing as
organic unity. In fact, I take it, Emerson himself
could often have been found at fault, had he tried
to explain exactly what he meant. Emerson's obscurity comes, I think, from want of coherently systematic thought. Browning's, on the other hand, as
some recent critic has eagerly maintained, is only an
"alleged obscurity." What be meant he always
knew. The trouble is that, like Shakspere now and
then, he generally meant so much and took so few
words to say it in, that the ordinary reader, familiar
with the simple diffuseness of contemporary sty le,
does not pause over each word long enough to appreciate its full significance. What reading I have done
in Browning inclines me to believe this opinion pretty
well based. He had an inexhaustible fancy, too, for
arranging his words in such order as no other human
being would have thought of. Generally, I fancy,
Browning could have told you what he meant by
almost any passage, and what relation that passage
bore to the composition of which it formed a part ;
but it is not often that you can open a volume of
Browning and explain, without a great deal of study,
what the meaning of any whole page is. Emerson's
indubitablf~ obscurity to ordinary readers I take to he

CLEARNESS.

209

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a matter of actual thought; Browning's seems rather
to be a matter of what seems -- even though it really
were not - deliberate perversity of phrase.
I have dwelt perhaps too long on the ways in
which writers avoid clearness. My purpose, you will
remember, was to define as distinctly as I could
the ways in which we may manage at any point in
our writing to put ourselves out of touch with a
reader. To be clear in narrative, or in exposition, or
, in argument, or in any kind of discourse whatever,
we must Bvidently proceed from what is known to
what is unknown; and if at any point in this process
we permit our style to become vague or ambiguous
or obscure, - in other words, so to express ourselves
either that our meaning may rationally be mistaken
or that we may rationally be supposed to have no
meaning at all, - we may resign ourselves to the
probability that from thenceforward our readers will
have comparatively little idea what we are about.
The precise question before us, then, is what the
average man may be expected to find vague or
ambiguous or obscure.
In the first place, as many of the examples I have
cited show, he will certainly find vague or ambiguous
or obscure - as the cas·e may be - whatever is not
clear in the writer's ruind. A commonplace that we
have all heard insists that whoever knows what he
wishes to say can say it. If this were true, life would
be less troublesome than we generally find it. Like
other commonplaces, however, this has in it a large

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element of truth. If an unexpressed thought has
gone so far as to phraRe itself in distinct words, the
chief part of the business is <lone. All that is left is
the mere utterance in speech or in l'lriting, -a purely
mechanical matter. But except in the case of cer tain pnlilic speakers, and other haLitual makers of
phrases, an unex pressed thought does not often cast
itself in any <listinct form of words ; nor indeed does
it generally present itself to the thinker in any distinct form at all. Take, for example, a state of things
I constantly meet at college. In some of my courses
there I require students to read very copiously ; in
a co urse co ncerning the Elizabethan drama, for instance, I ask them to read in a week three or four
pl ays , of about the length of one of Shaksperc's.
Then I ask them, week by week, to tell me in wri ting
what their reading has meant to them, - in short, to
define their impressions as they read. Their weekly
reports arc apt to be very vague ; for the reason, I Lclieve, that as a rule students are not in the habit of
forming definite opinions of what they read, that their
impress ions are really confused to a degree that is
almost bewildering, and that they ha,· e not learned
the beginning of the secret of reducing mental chaos
to order. And befo re they can be clea r in their expression they must have something other than chaos
to exp ress.
W eek by week, when I am going to lecture on this ·
literature which I h aYe asked my pupils to read and to
criticise , I have found myself iu much their position.

I have read these plays myself; they have impressed
me in a good many different ways which combine in
one general impression, that at first seems to defy
analysis. Yet before my lecture can amount to anything, I must analyze this impression. Personally I
have found th e best method to be tentative ex pression.
Pencil in hand, I try to phrase those parts of my im~
pression which seem most nearly to hav~ reached the
form of words. I make such little packs of cards as
I spoke of wh en I was talking of whole compositions.
And as I write these cards, with a separate heading
on each one, and study their mutual relations, I find
my ideas of the subject in hand slowly definin g th emselves. Almost always, however, they defin e th cmseh-es slowly. It is not often that I give a lecture
twice without findin g my ideas of what I wish to say
growing more definite each time ; and sometimes the
process is very long. As I have remarked before,
I think, I have been fully ten years in making up
my mind what I think of the matters I am now
discussing.
My method of clearing my ideas is by no means the
only one. I have known people who could do it best
by talking ; by putting somebody else in a comfortable chair and making him listen to their efforts
to discover what they really think. I have known
others who could really do best by sitting still and
pondering in apparent idleness; others wl10 could do
best by walking alone in the open air; others, hy stating to themselYes th e problems they wish to sol re, and

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then going about all manner of other business, trusting, from experience, to something they call uncon·
scious cerebration. Each man, I take it, must find
his own method; at different times each man may
find different methods the best. But by some method
or other each man must arrive at something as near
as may be to precision of thought before he can hope
with any certainty for clearness of style.
The truth is we are once more face to face with the
real nature of this art we are studying. Whatever
our subject-matter, our task is to translate the evanescent, immaterial reality of thought and emotion into
written words. No matter how humble our task may
seem, - even if we are merely writing the most trivial
of letters, - we are really performing, well or ill, an act
of creati ,.e imagination. We put before ourselves, in
imagination, a certain set of words. Pen in hand, we
put these words on paper ; and there on paper is
something that in just that form was never on paper
before. Now, what makes this creation of ours something more than a collection of meaningless marks,
such as a little child might scrawl, is that common
consent, good use, has agreed that these marks shall
stand for certain sounds, and that these sounds shall
stand as symbols for certain parts of the immaterial
reality of thought that mv,kcs up our conscious lives.
Our first concern is to know as definitely as we can
precisely what that reality is.
As in other h11m a n matters, we shall find our power
limited. Conscious human life is a tremendously

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subtile, complex thing. To phrase - with what accuracy language allows - all the thoughts and emotions,
great and small, high and low, simple and intermingled, that compose the conscious life of a single
day, were to fill vol um es. We must leave out most of
what we know, we mu8t select from this great confused mass of real knowledge those bits which belong
together, and which, symbolized together shall awaken
.
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~n a reader's mind something of what they have been
m ours. At best our symbol of them must be in• complete. At best they themselves must be only a
fragment of what life really means to us; and this
fragment is not easy to disentangle from the great
complexity of which it forms a part. Until it is disentangled, though; until in our own minds what we
wish to express begins to stand out by itself, apart
from the complexities around it, - we cannot hope to
put before our readers any symbol that shall unmistakably stand for it. And until we can do this, we
have not even approached the point where we can
rationally expect our style to be clear.
But even when our thinking is done, when we know
as well as we can know what the reality is that our
written words should stand for, our task is at most
only half done. We can never show .reader! the
reality ; all we can lay before their eyes are those
visible, material symbols, - the written words. And
though if the reality be vague or obscure or anywise
confused, the written words will almost surely reveal
the trouble, it is by no means true that if the reality

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Le a very definite thing to us, our words will so show
it to others.
vVe are inquiring, yon will remember, what the
average man- the human being to whom our style is
audressecl - m ay be ex pected to fincl vague or ambi guous or obscure. Thought, in tho first place, that
is really so, we discover; at moments ·wh en we shoultl
like the average man to fan cy us more intelligent
than we arc, he shows a terrible sanity. Ancl in th e
second place, any kind of style that is open to mi sconception. After all, though ho is aware of vagueness or obscurity or clearness, as an impression in
his own mind, the impression can be prouuced only
b.v what h e h as actually seen, - Ly our choice and
composition of visible, written words. It is the clements of style that have producecl the faulty quality;
to mend the quality, we must mend the elements.
My experience in naming this book - originally a
course of lectures - is a case in point. I knew pretty
clearly what I was go ing to say. I did not know
satisfactorily what name would best inform i.vhoeYcr
thought of coming to the lectures whether the subject
was one he cared about. " Rhetoric" was one name
that occurred to m e. I discard ed it because to a great
many people rhetoric means the art of persuasion, antl
to a groat many more the art of polite embo1lishmcnt
of language, and so OIL " Style" was another name
I thought of. I Lliscartled it for somewhat th e same
reason; as I ha\'e said before, the word fr equently
mean s a certain graceful and formal turn of lan guage.

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''The Philosophy of Style" I discarded as too pretentious: philosophy is a word that means any munber of thin gs, grave and reverend; but what I wa s
auout was a much more practical matter than gene rally comes und er this head. Finally I decided th at
th e " Art of Composition " would cover the ground.
\Vithin a few weeks, it was pointed out to me that the
name in question was open to misconception. Somebody, it appears, who had seen the title, had inquired
• how much of my course was to be devoted to composition in sculpture ; other people mi ght be trusted to
expect something about architecture, painting, music.
In short, the " Art of Composition" would not do. I
suggested" Literary Composition." A friend instantly
pointed out th at anybody might properly expect under
this title a discussion of how various kinds of literature ought to be put together: a lecture on how to
compose plays, for example, novels, biog raphies, sermons, sonnets, what not. I was co mpelled to admit
that he was right. I fell back at last on the not
very enti cill g title, "English Composition," which
is used at H arvard College to describe the subject
with which the lectures dealt. Wl:aternr else it
was, it seemed to me, and still seems, unmistakabl.Y
specific.
In each case her e I had kept well wi thin the limits
of good use. To stray beyond them is, of course,
almost always to run the risk of ouscurity; for as
good use is the only thing that mak es words mean
anything, to violate good use is very post:iibly to use

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CLEARNESS,

words which to the _ordinary man will mean nothing
at all. But in spite of this prudence, and in spite of
the fact that I knew almost exactly what was to be
in this course of lectures, it was no easy matter to
find a name that should properly describe them. The
trouble with each of the earlier names-" Rhetoric,"
" Style," the " Art of Composition," and so on - was
that while they undoubtedly covered the matter in
hand, they covered so much else too that without
explanatory comment they might well lead anybody
to expect more than I had to offer. In other words,
these names were too general. They lacked clearness because they were by no means as specific as
the thought they had to convey.
And yet it is by no means true that the more
minutely specific style is, the clearer. You have all
seen, I suppose, a deed of real estate, or perhaps, in
the country, or in the newspapers, the advertisement
of some executor's sale. The house and land to be
disposed of is very likely one with which you are perfectly familiar. In the legal paper it is aescribed
with a specific minuteness that is intended to exclude
all possibility of doubt as to what a purchaser may
acquire. "The house and land occupied by the late
A. B.," for example, "situated on such a street,
hounded on the north by the land of such an one, on
the northeast by the pasture of somebody else ; " and
so on for a paragraph. Nothing could be more s.pccific in one sense; nothing could specify more par·
ticulars in the same space; nor could anything convey

much less notion to a reader not on the spot. I
remember, not long ago, in a country store seeing a
man puzzling over a description of this kind, who
finally asked if it did not mean the big white house
opposite the Orthodox Church. For legal purposes
that last phrase would not do at all; for literary purposes it is what no legal paper ever was, - clear to the
average man. In fact, the legal description is very
properly more specific than any one's ordinary thought
of the place in question would be. lts purpose is not
to suggest what the place looks like; but if possible,
to settle once for all any dispute concerning dimensions, boundaries, fixtures, what not. The human
description, on the other hand, aims to express what
the place in question would seem to any ordinary
observer; and any ordinary observer, passing down
the main street, would see just a big white house
opposite a church.
This trouble of undue specification is not confined
to legal documents. Almost any novel you choose
to open will give you an example of it such as I
constantly meet in my teaching. At some period
in his career almost every unrl ergraduate is seized
with the idea that he can write fiction, and proceeds
to submit to me a story. In eight or nine cases out
of ten, the plot of this story concerns the flirtation
of a youth of twenty with a girl of eighteen or so at
a summer hotel. Generally they get engaged. Sometimes they quarrel and separate. But in every case
there is a hero whose personal appearance we are

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generally allowed to infer, and a heroine whose personal appearance is described at considerable len gth.
We are told that she is not very tall, for example,
but has a perfect figure; that she has great massrs
of golden hair, or dark, as the case may be; delicately arched eyebrows; a nose perhaps the least bit
retrousse; a sens iti ve mouth ; a Yery fi nc complex ion,
anJ. so on, often for a page or more. This kind of
thing is carefully specific: it often stands for a very
J.e(iuite image in the mind of the writer; but it never
conveys to my mind - or to any o1h er man's whom
I have plied with questions - any unmi stakable idea
of what the young woman in riu es tion looks like.
And the reason is very simple: as a matter of fact,
when ·we look at a pretty girl, we are aware of littl e
else than that she is so pretty that it is a pleasure
to look. 'Ve take in at a glance the combined effect
of her detailed charms; and eYery time we glance ,
we take in, !lot her height alone, or her fi gure, or
her hair, or her eyebrows, or her complexion, lrn l
a fresh impression of what all these combined look
like. To analyze her appearance in deta il is reall y
to do just what lawyers do when they describe a
piece of property ; to be a great deal more specific
than for ordinary human purposes the thought is
which we are trying to ex press. In short, we are
in some degree olmcure because we use too many
words.
In the 'Vaverley Novels there are ::1. good mnny
descriptions of persons that are in effec tive for 1lii~

very reason. The description of Gurth, the swineherd, iu the first chapter of " I van hoe," is a case in
point. Admirably specific in detail, it fails to call
up in one's mind a distinct image of the swineherd,
just because it is far more specific than any actual
observation by an ordinary human being possibly
could be.
But take this description of Oldbuck,
from the first chapter of the "Antiquary" : "Our youth . . . amused himself . . . by speculating upon the occupation and character of the personage who was now come to the coach office," it begins.
And that introductory sentence contains a good part
of the secret that makes wbat follows effective. It
does what is so often neglected in descriptions: it
defines the point of view and the spectator. We know
through whose eyes we are supposed to look, and in
what mood: a youth, for the moment idle, wonders
who an approaching stranger may be ; and this is
what he sees : -

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"He was a good-looking man of the age of sixty, perhaps older, Lut his hale complexion and firm step announced that years had not imp aired his strength or
heallh. His countenance was of the trne Scottish cast,
strongly mark ed, and rather harsh in features, with a
shrewd and penelrating eye, and a countenance in which
habitual gravity was enlivened by a cast of ironical
humour. His dress was uniform, and of a color becoming his age and grav ity; a wig, well dressed and powdered, surmounted by a slouched hat, had something of
a professional air."

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Just such details, you observe, as an ordin:iry eye,
curiously observing a stranger, might rest on. Now
comes the first conclusions that an ordinary observer
might probably draw: "He might be a clergyman, yet his appearance was
more that of a man of the world than usually belongs to
the Kirk of Scotland ; and his first ejaculation put the
matter beyond don bt. He arrived with a hurried pace,
and casting an alarmed glance toward the dial-plate of
the church, then looking at the place where the coach
should have been, exclaimed, 'Deil 's in it! I am too
late after all ! ' "

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Try for yourselves to describe a figure contemporary with the Antiquary that you all know, -the
figure of George Washington. Then you will see
for yourselves how admirably clear that description
of Scott's is. His words are just specific enough to
convey the impression that a casual observer would
receive; and by assuming for the moment the point
of view of this definite cai:mal observer, he has justified
the use of just about as many words as he employs.
But as frequently happens with Scott, who wrote
very fast, there is in that description one slip which
though not serious here, well might be. " His countenance," says Scott, '' was of the true Scottish cast,"
and so on; and a minute later, - in the same sentence, - was of " a countenance in which habitual .
gravity was enlivened by a cast of ironical humour."
In the first place, countenance perfectly properly

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means face; in the second, countenance, with almost
equal propriety, means expression. In a single sentence, Scott has used the same word in two distinct
senses.
Unimportant in this case, such a carelessness might
in another kind of writing lead to hopeless obscurity.
At this moment, for example, a friend of mine is
engaged in a study of the romantic spirit in English
literature. Now, romantic is a word that is very care~
lessly used. Sometimes it means something very like
medireval, or perhaps rather, pseudo-medireval, applying to the sort of temper that likes, in a comfortable
armchair, to contemplate what was picturesque in
the Middle Ages. Sometimes it means sentimental,
applying to the temper that finds most delight in sad
music by moonlight. Sometimes it applies to that
very marked movement in French literature, a generation or two ago, which found its most notable exponent in Victor Hugo. My friend knows perfectly
well what he is in search of ; but before he can with
certainty write an account of his researches, he
must in the first place frame a definition of romantic, and then throughout his hook or essay use the
term romantic in no sense except that in which he
has defined it.
An admirable example of what I mean presented
itself in a book I was lately reading. The title of
the book is, " The Public and Men of Letters in England." Almost the first words of the Preface are
these : " By man of letters I mean a writer who lives

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

by his pen. . . . By public I mean . . . people .••
who read and buy books." And having thus defined
his chief terms, the author uses them in no other
scuse throughout his volume.
\Ve have seen enough , I take it, to understand now
the fundamental meaning of the many different direct.ions concerning clearness in the use of words which
fill the textuooks. Let your words be as specific as
the thoughts they express; for exam.ple, when you
rn ea11, " W c lund1ed," do not say, ''A lunch was
cate11."
Use no more words than you can justify.
'When a word has more than one possible meaning,
so place it that all but the meaning you intend shall
uc excluded; when threatened with lack of clearness,
do not hesitate to define. 1 might go on almost as
long as I chose. In brief, these seem to mean that
we may assume the average man to know what good
11se is ; l>ut that inasmuch as good use has defined a
vastly smaller number of words than we h ave ideas to
exp ress, 'Ne must be eternally watchful in the firs t
place to make each word do all the work that good
use warrants it in doing, and in the second place, to
suppleme nt good use in eve ry needful case with careful tl cfmition of the precise phase of good use which in
a g iven case we have in mind. Otherwise the average
man, whom we arc always addressing, may well mif' s
our meanmg.
vVe may turn now to the larger elements of stylc,t.o wonls in compos iti on, sentences, paragraphs, and
wholes. At one time it was my fortune to road a

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good deal of law; aud even after I had learned what
the teclmical terms meant, I found the greatest
trouble in undcrstan<ling the books. I open one of
them now at random, and find the following passage
in an op ini on delivered by an English court in the
year 1842. "The plea," it uegins, "is a plea of setoff." So far us it goes, that sentence is clear; what
we wish to know now is what a plea of set-off is.
This the next sentence procectls, -very properly, to
<ldinc, uut to dcfi no only as follows : -

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" Such a plea operates as a bar to the plaintiff's right
of action, uoL by excusing or justifying the l.Jreach of
promise comp lained of in the declaration, but, whilst it
admits such breach to have been committed, l>y setting
up, as a matter of compensation, the cross-demand of the
defendant . . . ; and it is unnecessary to observe, that
an ordinary plea of set-off cannot be met by the general
traverse, but ouly by a special traverse, or denial of the
existence of tlie cross-clcm:u1<-l; and, upon another arul
distinct ground, the replicaLion upon tliis record is inapplicable to the present case ; for in those in stances in
which the plea goes only to matter of excuse or justification, and when, consequently, the general traverse is
allowed, there is engraftcd an exception, that, where the
plea justifi es 1111der :iny authority,· or command., or li cense
from the phintiff, the gene rn1 rep1ication is not good
without a special traYerse of snch command, license, or
authority - "
I have quoted l ess than h alf of the sentence in which
the l earned judge defines a plea of set-off. It is enough

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for our purposes: to quote further were needlessly
malicious to the judge and to you alike. Already we
are far beyond the point where any ordinary human
being retains the slightest idea of what all this means.
Bewilderingly long, that learned sentence, and in
spite of the laborious periodicity of its clauses, bewilderingly loose,-each clause being apparently complete
in itself. But its chief fault is a simple question of
principle: it strays far beyond the limits of unity. It
groups itself, to be sure, about the one central idea of
a plea of set-off; but it treats this idea on a scale
which no average human being could possibly think
too small for a paragraph. Omitting only pure red undance, otherwise altering the sentence only by
substituting periods for semicolons, let me show it to
you agam:-

deceived, however, if that second form is not distinctly
clearer than the first. To most human beings, the
first, on a single reading or hearing, would be merely
a collection of impressive words ; the second, I be.
lieve, would suggest something resembling a meaning.
Now, the only difference between the two is that in
the first form the sentence strays far beyond unity ;
and that in the second form unity of sentence is
carefully preserved.
To alter the technical terms would very likely have
been to impair the legal precision of the opinion;
but no such result can follow from merely limiting
the sentences to single statements. And I am much
in error if just such simple treatment as this would
not go far to clear the bewildering obscurity of so
much technical writing in law and in all the other
arts and sciences. If people engaged in serious
writing would only keep in mind the principle of
Unity - that every composition should group itself
about one central idea - serious writing would lose
some of its most potent terrors.
Unity, however, is not the only principle that technical writers serenely violate. Not long ago, a friend
sent me a sentence from a respectable legal periodical.
He described it as "a beautiful specimen of legal
English ; " and here it is: -

" Such a plea operates as a bar to the plaintiff's right
of action, not by excusing or justifying the breach of
promise complained of, but by setting up, as a matter of
compensation, the cross-demand of the defendant. It is
unnecessary to observe that an ordinary plea of set-off
can be met only by a special traverse, or denial of the
existence of the cross-demand. Upon another distinct
ground, the replication upon this record is inapplicable to
the present case. In instances where the plea goes only
to matter of excuse or justification, and consequently the
general traverse is allowed, there is one exception." And
so on.

In that second form I have not altered the words,
some of which are distinctly technical. I am much

" The comparatively recent introduction of sleepingcars upon the great highways of travel, as a means of
public conveyance, while it marks a n~w era in the history
of common carriers of passengers, and signalizes the

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226

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

advancement of the age in t he attainmen t of the luxuries
of refin ement aml wealth, yet on account of the unique
and peculiar features of the system as it exists, both with
reference to the railroads that employ them, and to t11e
travelling public that enjoy their s np erior co mforts alH1
fa cilities, there have ariseu iuterestiu g qu estio ns of law '.
touching the respo nsibility of such compani es, for t he loss
or theft of the goods , luggage, and valualJles o f passen ·
gers, upon which t here exist, among the bench and bar,
an undesirable, a nd, it would seem, needless amo unt of
uncertainty, not to say, diversity of legal sentiment.''

It would be hard to find, in equal space, a less simpl e
example of obscurity. The thought, in the first pl ace,
is so far from disentangled from its s urroundin gs that
in the midst of what purports to be a discussion of the
legal rights of travellers in sleeping-cars, we h ave
already been twice r eminded that sleepillg-cars are
luxurious and comfortable, - at least in the opinion
of the writer. In the second place, hi s words are at
once vague and too m any, - "unique and peculiar
features," for example; whate\·er is unique, in th is
sense, must be peculiar. Y ct n either of these tautol\)gous words in the slightes t degr ee specifies what th r
writer probably had in mind namely, that th e sleep·
ing-car is not owned by the corporation over whose
lines it travels, anu that passengers in sleeping-cars
ar e therefore in a different relation to the corporation
which has sold them tickets from that of passengers
in cars which belong to the company. So " goods,
luggage, and valuables" is s imply a prolix phrase for

CLEARNESS.

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"property." In the third place, the confusion of
thought which dragged in those n eedless remarks
about refinement and lu x ury ev idently deprives the
sentence of unity ; and though, when these are once
left out, something resembling unity remains, it seems
probabl e that two or three more limited sentences
would have clearer unity. In th e fourth place, incoherence of construction has go ne so far that the sentences cannot possibly be parsed. "The co mpa ratively
recent introduction of sleep ing-cars," it begins ; and
for about h alf its length this t erm is treated as a
grammatical subj ect. But by and by the writer, like
the rest of us, has quite forgotten how he began, and
serenely beg ins again, "yet on account of" - something that fills two lines - "there lrnYe arisen interesting questions of law," and so on.
The only
principle that he h as not utterly Yiolated is that of
Mass; hi s last few words are really words that deserve
dis t in cti on.
Nothing but complete recasting can cure all these
troubles ; but complete recasting will not only cure
them, but also reveal that what t he ·write r had to say
was nothiug more n >r less than this perfectly intelligibl e thing: -

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" Sleep ing-cars, comparative novelties on railways, have
given rise to interesting quest;ious of law. Not the property of the railways that employ them, they are yet the
only vehicles in which many passe ngers on these tailways
travel. If property of th ese passengers be lost or stolen,
who is r espo nsibl e ? On this point there is undesirable
and perhaps needl ess divers ity o f legal sentiment."

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

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In the original form there was one sentence - or
at least one collection of words which the writer
apparently supposed to be a sentence - containing
one hundred and thirty-eight words; yet there was no
distinct intimation of what the" unique and peculiar"
features of sleeping-cars were. Tn the second form
there are four grammatical sentences, but only sixty.
two words. Yet in less than half the space, we have
managed to state the writer's meaning with something like clearness, and this chiefly by applying
to the matter in hand the principles of Unity and
of Coherence.
I have purposely taken these examples from writing of a practical rather than of a literary kind, because I believe the matters we are discussing, though
fundamentally important in literature itself, to be of
far higher practical importance than practical men
are commonly willing to believe. If the learned
judge who laid down the law about pleas of set-off
had given a little attention to the principle of Unity,
he would have bettered his opinion without hurting
his law; at all events, he would have said exactly
what he did say, but in such a manner that an or<linary human being could understand that he was uttering something other than a string of technical wordR.
If the gentleman who wrote about sleeping-cars bad
giYen the principles of composition a tenth part of
the consideration he gave the legal questions in hand, .
he might, by the simple exercise of good sense, have
produced an essay that an ordinary human being could

read. And such an essay, and such an opinion, would
seem to me incalculably more efficacious than the bewildering slovenly masses of words in which these
jurists, like many other serious people in all sorts of
discourse, were content to bury their meaning.
In plenty of writing that purports to be literature,
however, you will find examples almost as appalling,
yet just as easily cured. To come back to our aver·
age man, we may conclude from what we have seen
that in sentences as well as in words he may be
assumed to know what good use is, and within the
limits of good use, to appreciate, even though he do
not perceive, the results that follow judicious applications of the principles of composition. The detailed
suggestions about sentences that you will find in the
books reduce themselves to this. We are told that
short sentences are generally better than long; that
it is well to make style as periodic as is consistent
with idiomatic freedom, and so on. In brief, the
clearest style is commonly a sty le in whose sentences
the principles of composition are observed. In a
sty le where they are disregarded, the average man,
whom we are always addressing, may well miss our
meaning.
The larger elements of sty le - paragraphs and
whole compositions - are too bulky for special consideration here; but in our consideration of the separate
elements we saw enough, I hope, to satisfy ourselves
that the principles which apply to them are the same
that apply to those simpler compositions, sentences.

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

CLEARNESS.

We saw, for example, how instinctively people prefer 8
style in which the paragraphs are reas(1llably short,conversation where each speech is gi veu a paragraph
by itself, to conversation such as you find in oldfashioned books, where a dozen speeches are run
into a single paragraph. In brief, this is because
the one is a great J.cal e:lsier to uuJ.crstantl than
the other, - a great deal clearer. And I shall ask
you to believe that a style whose paragraphs commonly conform to the principles of composition- a
style like Burke's, for example, or" The Nation's" is almost inest imably superior as a vehicle o[ thought
to a style in whose paragraphs the principles are disreganletl. Beyond doubt, whoever has had much experience will agree that the sarne jg true of whole
compositions. A composition whose unity has been
assured by a preliminary plan, whose proportions
have been settleu l.Jy a discriminating application to
this plan of the principle of Mass, whose coherence is
preserved by making unmistakable the relation of
each paragraph to its predecessor, is a composition
that will prove jncredibly clearer than one whose
form is left to chance, impulse, or inspiration.
The truth is that this art of composition, like any
other, is one that must be practised with deliberate
coolness. Accidental effects any one may sometimes
secure ; but the certainty of touch which marks the
difference between the artist and the dabbler is ·a
trait that can come only after patient study and maste ry of one's self and one's vehicle of expression. Tho

first thing, I believe, for any writer to do is as calmly
as he can to face the complicated mass of thought
and emotion that he wishes to express, and to ask
himself what effect he wishes to produce . In some
cases this may be an effect of vagueness, of indecision,
of confusion, of mystery ; if so, hi s business is to consider how he may best use the cl ements of style to
arouse in a reader such sentime11 ts as these. But it
is not often that one ser iou sly wishes to do this.
Oftener, by far, one wishes so to ex press one's self
that there is the least poss ibl e chance of misunderstanding. Indeed, by a very slight play on words, we
can say that one always wishes so to express one's
self; for if what one have seriously in mind be vague,
or confused, or mysterious, then the clearest possible
expression of it should express vagueness, conf usion,
mystery. Whatever one's motive, indeed, one sho uld
first look it in the face, and learn, so far as may be,
to know it.
Then comes the actual task of composition . We
turn to the clements of style, - these words, these arbitrary sounds, to which good use has g i,·en so vast
and subti le a significance,- and ask oursehes how with
these we may put before others than ou rsehes these
things that we ourselves know . Our first object is so
to express them that they ca,1111ot be misunderstood, to g ive our style the quality of clearness. vVe find
before us, then, a very definit-,e question: Is there in
the elements of sty le aujr trait that is favorable to
thia quality ?

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

CLEARNESS.

There is no need of repeating in detail what we
have already considered more than once. You will
remember that in our study of the clements_. of
words, of sentences, and of paragraphs and wholes,
too - we saw that the vast complexity of thought
and emotion which clamors for expresRion by these
few thousands of words that are at our disposal
makes every word we use do a double work ; and if
every word by itself do this double work, far more
must words do it in composition. In the first place,
every word we use names an idea; in the second
place, along with the idea it names, it suggests, with
more or less distinctness, a certain number of others.
What it names we say it denotes; what it suggests it
connotes.
In the nature of things, these traits are not separable. The connotation of every word must cling to
it as closely as in our daily life color enlivens and
varies every form our eyes rest on. Take three words,
woman, w{fe, mother, which may well apply to the
same human being. Nothing could make them mean
quite the same thing; nothing could depri ''e each of
the connotation peculiarly its own. So denotation and
connotation, though separate traits of the elements of
sty le, are not separable. And we may not say that
when we attend to the one we may quite disregard
the other ; but we may say, with a certainty that
will grow with experience, that we may attend chiefly"
to the one.
We denote, as somebody has expressed it, what

we say; we connote what we leave unsaid. The two
traits must combine in the effect that we ultimately
produce; but when we write with clearness in view,
when we wish so to express ourselves that first of all
we shall not be misunderstood, it is one of these traits
and not the other on which we should concentrate
our attention. Of our wor<ls we should ask ourselves
fitst of all what they name; of our sentences, what
they mean; and so of our parag raphs and our whole
compositions. I have said enough, I hope, to make
this final sentence clear : the secret of clearness lies
in denotation.

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FORCE.

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235

i.ew years I have seen people still similarly affected
by that death of Clarissa Harlowe that set all England
to crying in George the Second's time. Take, almost
at random, a couplet or two from Pope ; these are about
the poor: "'God cannot l ove' (says Blunt, with tearless eyes)
' The wret1.:h he starves' - a11d piously denies ;
But the good Bishop, with :i. meeker air,
Admits, nncl leaves them, Providence's care."

emotional quality of style, to which we come
now, is far more subtile. In the first place, its aspects
You feel the satirical power here; it is the same
are so various that in many of the textbooks it is
quality that in a far deeper form makes" Gulliver" so
terriuly fascinating. Take any of the papers in the
uescribed not as a si11gle quality, but as a great munbcr of separate ones, Yarying literally from the ridicu"Spectator" that deal with Sir Roge r de Ooverley; you
will find in it a delicately well-bred humor - a symlous to the sublime. In order fully to uwlerstand
what we are considering, then, we shall do well, bepathetic sense of what life is in some of its smaller
fore we attempt a <lefmition, to recall various examaspects - that will pretty surely delight you. In the
ples of the quality; to know, in a general way, what
novels of Walter Scott, in many of the tales of Mr.
the general irnpression is that we wish to define.
Stevenson, there is a very distinct trait that without
In reading anything, or indeed in li stening to a11y
analyzing we call romantic, and that many of us are
prolonged speech, we are all aware of something more
still able to enjoy. In modern novels there is often
than the literal facts or ideas which the words ex·
a profound sense of fact which seems for the moment
press. These general impress ions, indeecl, are the chief
to give these fictions a serious and lasting signifit iiugs o · w 1ic 1 m or l11a1·y rca ing
are consc-im1·R:,, ------=-----... a-n-ee~-n-w.r-i-~ that
f us do not . reteud
111 rcatling "Pickwick," fur example, or one of Mark
to uuderstand - in Carlyle, in Browning, in Shelley
rrwain's better books, we can give no very <listinct
_many of us feel an individuality perhaps more
account of exactly what the book told us; but we arc
stimulating than if we were able to make out prevcry sure that it made us laugh, and we very properly
cisely its components. In the literature that every
call the book humorous. The death of Colonel Newone a<lmits to be great - in the tragedies of Shakcomc brings tears to the eyes of a great many people
spere, in the nobler passages of Milton, to go no
hy no means lachrymose in habit; and within a. very
further- we find a spirit that can be described by
THE

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no lesser word than sublime. One might go on in·
terminably, recalling the enormously varied impres·
sions that the literature we care about makes on us.
If we are sensitive enough, every writer who is worth
the name will make an impression peculiarly his own.
If we are sensible enough, we shall enjoy, or at least
try to enjoy, each of these impressions in its own way.
But our business with them now is not to separate
or to enjoy them; it is to realize how many and how
various they are, and then to inquire what trait they
have in common. For the quality of style before us
- the emotional quality to which I give the name
" force " - includes them all.
In truth, I believe these various qualities, different as they seem, possess in common a trait more
significantly characteristic than their differences. One
and all, they hold the attention of a reader. Force,
then, the emotional quality of style, I may define as
the distinguishing quality of a sty le that holds the
attention.
Of course, like clearness, force is in some degree a
re la ti vc quality. What will interest one man will
quite fail to interest another. Mr. Darwin, you remember, could find nothing in Shakspere; and it is
not improbable that many people of a literary turn
would fail to find anything in the works of Mr. Darwin.
And we have all heard intelligent people eagerly disputing as to whether a given book is interesting or"
not. I remember such a dispute last summer about
a novel called" Sir Charles Danvers," which impressed

I

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237

me as tiresome ; but to call it tiresome when the rest
of the company had actually enjoyed it was simply to
utter an absurdity. The fact that they enjoyed it
showed that to many sane human beings it was not
tiresome at all. Nothing, in fact, can be trusted to
hold everybody's attention; nothing even with certainty to bore everybody. But though in this matter
it is perhaps harder than in the matter of clearness
to appeal to the average man, I believe that we may
safely say that what will hold the attention of the
average man- of the ordinary human being-is in
most respects a better piece of work than what will
appeal only to a single class. To fastidious people
there will al ways be a charm about what other people
do not know enough to appreciate : herein, I believe,
lies half the secret of academic pedantry. To people
not of a fastidious turn there will al ways be a less
holy, if not less inhumane, charm in horrors, and
broad jokes, really shocking to others. But now and
then you will find something that appeals to coarse
people and fastidious alike. Perhaps as notable an
example, in a small way, of what I mean as has appeared of late years are the earlier operas of Gilbert
and Sullivan. There was something in them that
filled our theatres for months with popular audiences ;
and something, too, which very honestly delighted a
class of people who find what generally pleases popular audiences utterly abominable. There have been
verses and music enough meantime highly edifying
to the elect ; and there have been things they called

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ENGLISH COMPO SITION.

FORCE.

239

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comic operas by the dozen, highly profitable to thea·
tres of the lower sort. But in their own little way ,
" Pinafore " anJ the "Pirates of Penzance" and "Pati ence " were a great deal more forcibl e, in the sense
in which I use the t erm , th an the works called better,
and th e works admitted to be worse, errch of 'rhich
appealed to the emotions of oul y one of th e classes
wh o joined in enjoyj ng these. A lways rem c mb e rin ~,
th en , Urnt the av erage man is not a -vul gar follow, but
a man who combines the traits common to gentle and
to vulga r alik e, we may safely say that the most for cible writin g is that which holds the attention of th e
average man.
If we were not given so constantly to forg ef tin g
things th at we know perfectly well , it woulJ seem al n10st n eedless to repeat what I repeat now. vV e are
aware of the force of a given piece of style only as an
impression, - thou gh an impression, to be sure, of
which we are very k eenly aware. At a given momen t
our wits may be so lazy that we cannot say certainl,r
whether we understand what is said to us or not; but
there are few moments in life when we do uot know
whl~th e r or not we arc bored. Any piece of style s11h·
mi Ltcd to us will interest us - will hold our attenti on
- or not; and this matter of emotional impression, thiR
question of \Yhether we are interested or bored, is nt
once so much more palpabl e alld so much more subtilo
a thing than the matter of intellectual impression..:_
the qu estion of wh ether or not we understand a thingtha t we are apt to forg et h ow it comes to us. Yet, ns

we have reminded ourscl ves now with perhaps tedious
frequency, a given piece of sty le presents to our eyes
only certain arbitrary marks, which common cons~nt
makeR symbolic of certain arbitrary sounds, which
common consent in turn makes symbolic of certain
more or less definite phases of thought and emotion.
In other words, as we have said more than once, the
only means by which th e qnalities of style can be
conveyed from writer to reader are the elements.
Force, then, just as s urely as clearness, must be
sought, and sou ght onl y, in th e elements. The qu estion befor e us becorn cs Ycry dcfrnite: "'W hat trait in
the clements of style - in words, alone or in composition - is favorabl e to force?
One trait, in general, I believe, may safely be urged
as frequentl y farnrabl e to it; and that is the trait we
particularly considered in th e last lecture, - denotation the trait that is chiefly favorable to clearness.
The ' textbook of Rh etoric whi ch I have found most
suggestive - Professor Adams Hill's - defines force
as the disting uishing qnality o[ a sty le tlrnt is efficient
for the purpose in hand. Less satisf:ictory to me, because less specifi c, than the rtdinition 1 have offered
you, this of Professor Hill's is e.drcmcl.r su ggesti ve
at the point we have now rea ch ed. W c have seen already that the cases where a writer wish es not to be
clear are far less common than th e cases wh ere he
wishes to be thorou ghly und e rstood. If clearness be
his purpose, then any style whi ch is not clear must
for his purpose be in effi cient, and f'l o, by Professor

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

Hill's definition, lacking in force. Almost any one
of the examples I offered you in the last chapter
-the vague or ambiguous words, the long involved
sentences of the lawyers who so serenely disregard
unity and coherence alike - is as remote from force
as from clearness. And though we cannot. say that
what is vague or ambiguouR or obscure will for that
reason fail to hold the attention, we may safely say in
general that what is clear is very much more apt to
hold it.
But very obviously clearness and force are by no
means identical ; and while clearness should generally underlie force, clearness of itself will not secure
it. '\Te must look, then, in the elements further than
denotation for the trait that shall be favorable to the
quality now before us.
To recognize this trait distinctly, it will be well, I
think, to revert to a few familiar examples. In the
midst of the American Revolution an event occurred
familiar to yon all.
General Arnold betrayed the
American cause. A British officer, travelling in disguise with messages of this treason, was arrested by
some local patriots, and fell into the hands of Wash·
ington. This unhappy officer, Major Andre, was tried
by court-martial and met a tragic fate. Now, how, in
a single sentence, should we describe what happened
to him? We all know what it was. But here nm
four separate phrases, each of which accurately tells
what happened, yet each of which tells it in a distinctly different way : "Major Andre died": that i&

FORCE.

241

perfectly true ; and if we were breaking such news
to a relative, that would probably be the wisest form
to begin with. " Major Andre was killed" : that is
equally true; so are " Major Andre was executed,"
and" Major Andre was hanged." Now, there is little
doubt, I think, that each one of these phrases would
be more apt to hold attention than the preceding.
" He was killed" is a more forcible assertion than
"he died ; " "he was executed" than" he was killed;"
and most forcible of all is," he was hanged." If we
now consider these four phrases together, we shall
find that each includes the last. Whoever is killed
must die; whoever is executed by any means must be
killed; whoever is hanged must probably be executed.
In other words, each term, more definite than the
laHt, suggested or connoted all the preceding ones.
Again, to take not single words or phrases, but words
in composition, compare these three simple statements : "I found him very agreeable one afternoon;"
"I found him very agreeable one wet afternoon;" "I
found him very agreeable one wet afternoon in a country house." Now, all that the word wet says is that
the afternoon was watery ; but it clearly implies that
it was an afternoon when you would not care to be
out of doors. All that the words in a country house
state is the simple fact of locality ; but they imply
that you were in a place where not to be out of doors
was probably a serious trial to the temper. So the
last statement as a whole, "I found him ;-ery agreeable 011e wet afternoon in a country house," suggests,

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ENGLISH COl\rlPOSITION.

FORCE.

thou gh it docs not state, th at the person spoken of
was one whose ch arms could overcome a pretty had
t emper. At the same time, it is a ph rase which J
fancy anybody would admit to h old the attention
more st rongly than either of its predecesso rs; and it s
superiority in force li1 'S not so much in the ba.re facts
whi ch it adds to the fin;t stateme nt as in the thoughts
and emotions it suggests. Still again, take this sente nce from one of M. de Maupassant's stori es: "It
was t l1 e 15th of August, -the feast of the Holy Virg in , a nd of the Emperor Napoleon." Ile states only
two facts about the 15th of August, and these in the
simplest of words. Neither by itself would h ol d one's
attention eno ugh to remain long in memory. But put
them together; think wh at the Holy V irgin means to
Catholic Europe, and what th e Emperor Napoleon
m ea ns to those who are not subdued by the magic
gen ius of Bonaparte, - and you h ave a sentence t hat
when mid-August comes about will hove r in you r
head. Yet the force of this - so greatly superior to
the for ce of either statement by itself - lies not in
what is actually said, but wholly in what is impli ed,
suggested, connoted, in thi s sudd en, unexpected an·
tithes is. I sh all ask yon to belieYe these simple exam·
ples typical. If they are, tl1ey will long ago haYe
shown you what I beli eve to be true: th at the trait
in the elements of style which is favorable to force
is connotation.
ln less teclrnical language this means that a forci·
blc writer k uuws not only what he wishes to say, but

also what he wishes to imply ; he understands, it is to
be hoped, what he wis hes a reader to know, but he
understands more profoundly still, and indeed, for his
immed iate purpose of force he should understand
chietiy, into what mood he wishes t he readP.r to be
thrown . A curious example of what I mean took
place at Cambridge a few years ago. The Phi Beta
Kappa Society of Harvard College, which consists of
the fifteen or twenty best scholars in each college
class, and a fe w other people whom these choose on
the ground of sc holarship or intellectual note, is probably in temper as conse rvative a body as is to be
fo und in N cw England. It is t heir custom every year
to have a public oration, to which they march in solemn procession, headed by t he oldest living members.
Toward the end of Mi·. Wendell Phillips's life, he
was in vited to deli ver one of these orations, a little
to the disquiet of prudent Phi Beta Kap pa men, who
were aware that his temper was not precisely of a con·
servativ e order. A good many went to h ear him with
much cnriosity as to what he might say, and apprehension that they m ight have to disapprove it by
silence at mome nts which to less balanced minds
might seem to call for applause. In the earlier parts of
his oration they found th emselves agreeably surprised !
he said nothin g to which th ey were unprepared to
assent, and what he said, he sa id beautifully. They
listened with relief and satisfaction ; when the moment for applause came, they cordially applauded.
So the oration went on with in creasing interest on tho

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part of the audience. Finally, when some fresh moment for applause came, they applauded as a matter
of course ; and it was not until they had done so that
they stopped to think that what the cleverest of our
oratorical tricksters had betrayed them into applauding was no less revolutionary an incident than the
then recent assassination of the Emperor Alexander
of Russia. Now, this result was attained simply by a
skilful use of words : in this case very probably by
a deliberately malicious use of words that should
make a theatre full of people do a thing which not
one of them really wished to do. It was not what he
said that they applauded; it was what he implied, not dynamite and dagger, but that not very clearly defined notion of liberty and freedom and the rights of
man, which still appeals to the American heart.
I am far from proposing a malicious trick like this
for a model. But it is certainly a notable example of
the kind of thing that an honest man who would
speak or write forcibly might legitima tely want to do;
namely, of the power of so holding attention that
whoever listens or reads is carried along in spite of
himself. Of course the secret of such consummate
power is not to be learned, - at least by many. It
can, however, be analyzed ; and the analysis will
teach us more than one thing that may help us at.
least to enforce our own style. Our present business, .
then, is to see, if we can, by what means we may
master some of the secret of force; or in other words,
how we should proceed to give our words and our

FORCE.

245

sentences and our larger compositions the connotation
that we wish to convey to readers.
Perhaps the most suggestive way of answering this
question is to examine in some detail a phase of style
to which so far we have given little attention. In
the old-fashioned books of Rhetoric this took up
rather more space than anything else. It was classified and suuclassified and named in detail by long
words mostly derived from the Greek, to an exten t
that may well have affected the reason of anybody
who tried to understand the appalling texts. But the
object of all this lifeless business was precisely the
object before us this even ing; namely, to discov~r
how to write forcibly. The phase of style to which I
refer is that generally described as figure8 of speech.
· In the old books such things as Interrogation,
Exclamation, Antithesis, Climax, and other mere arrangements of words were classed as figures of speech ;
but the more recent books spare us this confusion
and confine themselves to the kind of figures which'
I shall discuss here. These are what may be generally classed as Tropes, - a convenient name for
words, singly or in composition, diverted from their
original meaning to suggest or signify something analogous. In Professor Hill's book, which, as I have
said, has always seemed to me the most refreshingly
sane, figures of speech are treated as a specific means
of securing force ; and even he names more than I
am able to keep distinctly in mind. There is one
called Synecdoche, for examole. :rnd another callerl

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Metonymy, which I al ways confused until I discovered
that there was no earthly use in keeping them sep&.·
rate. Like th e figur e8 that everybody knows by name,
- Personification, Metaphor, Simile, - these have the
common trait that is sufficient for us, and I believe
for any practical purpose: they are Tropes, - they express a meaning by a name other than its rigorously

really see daybreak, wonder why we do not see it
oftener. Now, among these circumstances associated
with daybreak, none has impressed traditional human
beings more than the general awakening of birds and notably of poultry. There is in English, then,
a very common metaphor for early morning, - coclccrow. What this names is simply one of the circumstances associated with daybreak or early morning,
- one of the facts more or less definitely connoted
in the earlier terms. It suggests, instead of naming,
the literal meaning. JJforning is literal, and not forcible. Daybreak, still literal, is certainly more forcible, on account of the greater definiteness of its
connotation ; one of the things it connotes is the
awakening of birds. Cock-crow is a figure of speech;
it carries the process of forcible selection one step
·farther; it names the connotation, it leaves the
denotation to be inferred.
If tropes, then, figures of speech, are essentially
mere exaggerations of the normal process of forci.ble selection, we may conveniently study in them
the nature of the process .
The first trait in them to which I would call your
attention is that, far from being artificial creatures of
a finished civilization, they lie at the root of all language in its primitive forms. You all remember that
passage in Carl.rle where he speaks of the very word
- attention - that I have already mentioned so often
in this discussion of force. To us it is a dull and life·
less term enough; but to a Roman, when he stopped

246

.

- -- -

proper one.
Before proceeding directly to the study of these, it
may be well to specify by example precisely how they
name ideas. Suppose, for example, that you wish to
describe the first hours of the day in a single word.
The literal name for it is morning; but 11iorning i:3 a
word which bv itself suggests - connotes -nothing
very definite .• It covers every hour from midnight to
noon, and to most of us means simply that time
of day when we may have breakfasted, but certainly
have .not lunched. If we wish to name our idea in a
way that shall suggest the associations which in our
memories cluster about those rare hours when we
have known for ourselves the phenomena that ga,·c
mythology the figure of Aurora, we have in English
another literal word, far more forcible, far more definite in its connotation. Instead of the literal word
morning, \Yhose connotation is very weak, we may use
the literal word daybreak, ·whose connotation is tolerauly strong. \V"hnt it names is merely the glow in the
eastern sky that tells of the coming day; but it suggests all manner of thin gs, -the cool, clear air, the
general sense of awakcnin?; that makes us, when wo

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to consider, it would still have had its literal mean·
ing. Tenda means to stretch; ad means to or toward; attention really means a stretching out toward.
In some remote past it was a metaphor used Ly
some old speaker of Latin who percei vcd that the
process of mind by which we attend to anything is
very like the physical process by which we stretch
out our hand to grasp a tangible object. Again, when
something has puzzled us, and at length we begin, by
a process of attention, to grasp its meaning, there is a
big Latin word by which we 1 r.ay express what occurs.
·w e may say, with perfect propriety, that we apprelwnd it. With much less formal propriety, small boys
have a way of saying, under these circumstances, that
they catch on. A ve ry slight knowledge of Latin will
serve to r emind anybody that these two phrases mean
precisely the same thing. Apprehend is nothing more
nor less than the Latin for catch on. The original
maker of the word went through precisely the mental
process that has produced the phrase which nowadays we condemn as slang. He saw the likeness between th e mental process of what we now call apprehen·
,qion and the physical process of grasping. He called
the one by the name that really denoted the olher.
By and by the literal meaning, in other languages
than Latin, at all events, fell away; the figuraLiro
meanin(J'0 became literal. We can see by these few
examples what a friend of mine meant when, a few
years ago, he declared all our modern language to be
nothing but a nosegay of faded metaphors.

Travellers among savage tribes almost always remark the very figurati YO habit of speech common to
primitive peoples. ·w hen Sir Walter Ralegh went to
Guiana, for example, he hatl a long talk with an old
chief about the history of the country. It was now iu
possession of a people foreign to the chief in question;
and this is how the old Indian describeJ. the invasion.
" When his father was Yery old," writes Ralegh, "and
himself a young man, there came down into the large
valley of Guiana a nation from so far a.ff as the sun
slept (for such vrnre his own words)." Again, uneducated people among ourselves have a way of using
figures with a freedom and an aptitude that is sometimes surprising. I remember a Yankee villager,
some years ago, who saw a small boy knocked down by
. the recoil of a new shot-gun. " 'T ain't surprising,"
he said; "till a gun gets used to you, she's apt to be
skittish." Quite how much of this spontaneous personification was a matter only of s peech I never knew;
the man's mind was so simple in its habit that perhaps
he really thought of the gun as a sentient creature, just
as primitive jurists thought of the weapons they punished for committing murder. But his figure was
a good one. Still again, those strange little ignorant
savages that are growing up about us - our own children -have a way of using figures of speech that
many poets might envy. I remember not long ago
hearing a small voice outside a dining-room door,
where a company was in the midst of dinner. Somebody went out to sec ·w hat the matter was; and th ere

249

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was a little man of six in his night-gown. "I waked
up," he ex plained; ''and by and by I felt as if everythi ng was coming, and I'd better get away." I have
rarely heard a more apt description of the effect produced by the mysteriously inaudible voices of the night.
You can see at once why children and untutored
folks and savages - people in the condition of those
who first made language at all - use fi gures of speech
so fr eely and effectively. Th e things they rea1ly know
are few; but what th ey know, they know pretty
well. It is not often that they are called upon to
recognize or to name any fact that is beyond the
range of their daily experience. When they are so
called upon, a double state of things arises : in the
first place, the novelty of the idea they must name
excites their interest, arrests their attention far more
than would be the case with people who have new
shades of thought a hundred times a day ; in the
second place, as the number of words at their disposal is relatively small, they are driven to describing this new id ea in terms of comparison with
something already familiar to them. And as the
things already familiar to them are generally thin gs
that remain permanently familiar to everybody, their
figures are fi gures that appeal to almost any human
understandin g they address.
With more hi ghly civilized people th e case is different. Among the imaginative productions lately submitted to me by pupils is a description of a ni ght
journey by rail. The traY eller tells how he looked

out of the window, and saw the lights from the train
flying across a snowy country, lilce a paclc of wolves
or a swarm of ghosts. 'Now, I never saw a swarm of
ghosts, or even a pack of wolves ; and unless I had
frequently seen such scampering night-lights as he
likened to these unusual phenomena, I should have
h ad so slight a notion of what he meant that I should
not h:ne been much impressed by his desc ription.
Agaiu, to cite a poem of local interest to any Bostonian, when the Rev. J 0!111 Cotton, first minister
of Boston, died, some verses were writ.ten to his memory by the Rev. Benjamin Woodbridge, whose name
stands first in the catalogue of graduates of Harvard
College. And here is how he described Mr. Cotton:

250

''A living, breathing Bible; tables wh ere
Both covenants, at large, cngraven were ;
Gosp el and law, in 's heart barl each its column;
His bead an ind ex to the sac;red volume;
His very name a titlepage; and next,
His life a comm entary on the text.
0, what a monum ent of gl ori ous worth,
Wh en in a new edition he comes forth,
·without erratas, nwy we think be '11 be
In leaves and covers of eternity!"

That is no bad specimen of the laborious rhetoric
cultivated by the scholars who founded the college
so dear to many of us ; but nothing, continued for
any len gth of time, could Le much less effective,
much less definitive of any connotation that would be
a.roused in an ordinary'mind by contemplating the per·

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son and the virtues of the Rev. John Cotton. Again,
in " The Nation " I once found a most surprising
review of Mr. Henry Adams's last volumes of American history. In this review there is as much laboriously ineffective metaphor as you oft n find crowded
into an equal space. Take this sentence, for example ' about President Madison : "In accepting the
.
words as an immediate and prospective revocat10n
of the decrees, and in promptly acting upon that
understanding, he pierced hirnself through with many
sorrows and was betrayed into a diplomatic position
which l1e felt to be most uncomfortable, and which
was made doubly uncomfortable by the slings and
arrows of the Federalists." After a few paragraphs
of this sort of thing, you are not only left in the
dark as to meaning, but - if you have energy enough
left - you are more than bored, you are exasperated,
at what seems like deliberate perversity of diction.
These few examples are typical of such use of figures among educated people as has led so many good
teachers to advise pupils to use no figures at all.
But in real literatme there are plenty of figures
that are very different from these, - figures that you
appreciate at once, figures that you remember, figures
better yet than those of all the untutored makers of
language. Take Dr. Holmes's saying about Boston
which has passed into a proverb: -

Take what Sir William Temple; the most deliberate
and formal of gentlemen, wrote about life : -

252

" Boston State House is the hub of the solar system.
You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had
the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar."

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" When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and
the best, but like a froward child, that must be played
with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls
asleep, and then the care is over.''
Take that famous lament of Cardinal Wolsey, in
"Henry VIII.," which generations of school declamation have not spoiled: "This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And hears his blushing honors thick upon him;
'l'hP- third day comes a frost, a killing frost ;
And -when he think!<, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a ripening- nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do."

Better still, take the writer whose figures have always
seemed to me supreme : I mean Dante. They are so
wonderful that you cannot translate away their power.
In this lame English prose of mine, I believe much of
their force still remains. I take, almost at random,
two passages from the "Inferno" that I have never
forgotten since the first day I read them. The first
tells how Dante and Virgil, having emerged from a
wood, find themselves on a great dike that skirts the
edge of a sandy plain. "Already," he goes on, " we
were so far from the wood that I could not have seen
where it was, even though I had turned about, when
we met a troop of spirits, that came close to the

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dike. And each of them peered at us, as of an evening one peers at another beneath the new rnoon, and
they knit their brows at us, as an old tailor does at the
eye of a needle." I have yet to find a passage in literature that in so few words gives a more marvellously
suggestive notion of what that dim and ghostly twili aht is like when one cannot tell quite what one secs,
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when every mystery is doubly mysterious, and the
crescent moon h angs low i.n the west. The second
passage from Dante is that more famous one which
occurs early in the story of Francesca: it is the figure
that Mr. James Lowell, with pardonable enthusiasm,
somewhere calls perhaps the most perfect in all literature. Dante and Virgil are standing on the edge of
a cliff ; and through the dark air before them the
blasts of hell are sweeping th e spirits of those who
are damned for their lusts. And Dante would speak
with two whom h e sees clinging together, - "the two
that seem so light in the wind." So h e calls to them.
And " even as doves, called by longing, with open,
unmovincr winers fly to the sweet nest, borne through
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the air by will, so these issued from the swarm.
I might go on endlessly, from Dante, from Shakspere, and from thousands of the lesser masters,
showing figures such as every lover of letters must
be glad to have. If teachers could teach tl:e secret
of such as these, their task were another thmg than
the dreary one they find it.
The examples we have before us already, however,
are enough for our purpose. If, as I believe, they arc

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255

truly typical, they will warrant us in drawing certain
conclusions as to what makes figures effective, and
what fails to. And if the essence of tropes be, as I
have suggested, the same thing, a little exaggerated,
that underlies all force, - namely, a deep sense of ,
connotation,-these conclusions will h elp us toward
some knowledge of how, with force in view, we may
choose and compose the elements of style.
The effective figures, we find, are used by two perfectly distinct claRses of men: first, untutored savages,
peasants, children, - people whose knowledge of life
and command of language is as elementary as possible;
secondly, people who may be broadly classed as mas- ·
ters of the art of literature, -peopl e whose knowledge
of life and command cif lan guage becomes, as we consider the best of them, as comprehensive and exhaustive as human power will permit. The ineffective
figures, we find, are used by the far more numerous
class of writers and speakers which comes between
these two,-those who have awakened from elementary
unconsciousness of the limits of their perception and
expression, and who have not yet attained the serene
certainty of mastery. In this class most of us inevi
tably find ourselves. We are born into conditions ·
that preclude the possibility of pristine unconsciousness ; and unless we are lucky enough to be born men
of genius, we can attain anything resembling mastery
only by years of patient work. The question before
-as, then, is how we should proceed in our effort to
attain it.
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To answer this, we may best examine a little more
critically the examples already before us, to discover
if we can what traits the effective figures possess, and
what the ineffective. We have already seen some of
the traits of the elementary figures, - those used by
savages and peasants and children. Whoever has
lived lonab enouah
to be conscious of Nature is familiar
0
with sunset, and the long stretch of sleepy night that
follows : to any human being the phrase " they came
from as far off as the sun slept," must instantly conTey, in perfectly familiar terms, a familiar notion of
extreme remoteness. Whoever has seen a restless
horse knows what a Yankee means by slcittisli, and
instantly feels the likeness between this trait in animals and the behavior of a gun in the hands of an
inexperienced sportsman. Whoever has the most
elementary experience of human emotion knows the
disturbing sense of the mysteries about us which
sometimes comes to us as we lie awake, and which
can be likened to the approach of nothing more definite than that vaguest of things, everything. So when
the old king of Guiana said that his enemies came
from " as far off as the sun slept ; " aud when the
Yankee countryman said that a new gun is " apt to
be skittish;" a~d when the frightened child said he
had hurried out of bed because he "felt as if everything was coming,"-each of these elementary beings
used a figure so familiar in substance that anybody
can instantlv understand it. In each of these cases,
too, the an;logy between the figure and the thing it

FORCE.

257

really signifies is so close that the moment it is pointed
out, any human being can appreciate it. The connotation named is a connotation that might readily have
occurred to any human mind. It is, in short, a thing
that is wholly within the grasp of that imaginary personage whom we have seen we should always presume
ourselves to address, - the average man.
Turning to the other group of effective figures, the figures used by the masters, - we find the state
of things surprisingly similar. When Dr. Holmes
likens Boston State House as it appears in the eyes of
good Bostonians, to a hub, he likens it to something
that everybody he addresses knows; and the analogy
is one which everybody he addresses instantly perceives. When Sir William Temple likens life to a
fretful child, he likens it to somethi1ig that everybody
knows; and the analogy is one that everybody can
understand. When Shakspere - or whoever wrote
Wolsey's lament- likens the rise and fall of human
greatness to the growth and the fate of a tree nipped
by frost, he does the same. So does Dante, when
he tells us how the spirits peered through the murky
air as men peer at one another beneath the new moon ;
and how they knit their brows, as an old tailor knits
his brows at a needle's eye. So, too, when he like11s
the way in which Francesca and her lover emerged
from the swarm of spirits to what every one of us has
seen again and again, - the motionless flight of the
dove with outstretched wings, gliding· through the air
as if moved by no grosser power than unfettered will.

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258

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

In each of these cases the substance of the figure is
so familiar that any human being knows it; and the
underlying analogy -the connotation that the figure
names- is so close that the moment it is named any
human being can understand it. In short, like the
work of untutored people, the work of the masters is
work that is addressed to the comprehension of the
average man. In other words, it is broadly, sympathetically human.
I know of few single facts which so clearly exem
plify what I had in mind when I said so decidedly
that all writing should on general principles be addressed to the average man, - not to this class or
that. Here we are face to face with the fact that in
one great phase of writing - in the use of Tropes those figures which are obviously the best, and are
admitted to be the best, are precisely those that people
in general can best understand.
Turning now to the ineffective figures, we shall see
without much trouble that what makes them ineffective is either that they are in themselves unfamiliar, or
that the analogy b~tween them and what they are meant
to stand for is by no means simple. When a student
likens the lights of a passing train to a pack of wolves,
he likens them to something that very few people have
been unfortunate enough to observe. A reader may
fancy what a pack of wolves would be like, but he does
not know. When the student likens these same lights
to a swarm of ghosts, he likens them to something which
no human being ever saw, and which, as we have per·

FORCE.

259

haps remarked, Dante himself made vh·idly real only
by comparing it to things within everybody's experience. 'l'he student, in short, has named connotations
that could not arise in ordinary minds. In point of
fact, the simple adjectives, "swift, mysterious," would
have expressed his meaning a great deal more forcibly.
Again, when the Re''· Benjamin Woodbridge compares
the Rev. John Cotton to a "living, breathing Bible,"
he compares him to a thing that we all kuow something about; but when we agree that the Bible is a
holy book, and that Mr. Cotton was a holy man, the
likeness seems exhausted. When we are told that
his name is like a titlepage, his head like an index,
his life like a commentary, and his appearance in
heaven like the issue of a new edition without "erratas," we may be impressed by the ingenuity of the
conceit, but we certainly are neither enlightened concerning Mr. Cotton, nor much stimulated to find out
anything more about him. The analogy is not close
enough to make the figure mean much: if it holds our
attention at all, it holds it for a reason far from what
was in the writer's mind,- simply because it is so
ingeniously absurd. The connotation, in short, is not
such as would present itself to any ordinary mind.
Again, when the writer in "The Nation" speaks of
Mr. Madison as "piercing himself with many sorrows," and thereby "placing himself in a diplomatic
position," where he was uncomfortably exposed to the
"slings and arrows" of political opponents, he does
two or three unfortunate things. In the first place,

E~GLlSH COMPOSITION.
260
he likens Mr. Madison's discomforts to "slings and
arrows," weapons wholly unknown to modern military
experience ; but we can let that pass as an allusion to
Shakspere. Hamlet, you remember, talks of "the
slings and arrows of outrageous fo~·tune." ~n ~he
second place, he speaks of Mr. Madison as prnrcrng
himself with sorrows; now, how on earth any human
being could ever pierce himself ·with a sorr.ow I find
myself quite unable to imagine. In the third plac~,
he suggests that by means of this piercing Mr. Madison was betrayed into a position peculiarly exposed
to the slings and arrows we ha,·e accepted on Shakspere's authority ; now, if you cai: imagine h?w any
process of self-piercing can result rn betrayal mto an
exposed position, you can do more than m?st men.
In short these figures are not only bad m th em·
selves _'unfamiliar in substance and remote in anal·
O'
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nor will you often find one which more distinct~y
shows the real trouble with mixed metaphors: m
connection with a given idea, they name and make
equally conspicuous connotations that. ~re ~utually
incompatible. If in considering the ongt~ial idea you
let your mind follow out one of these lines of con·
notation, you constantly get farther away fr?m the
other. Either by itself would perhaps serve its pur~
pose; to present both together is to ask yo~ to do
two perfectlv different things at the same time,

FORCE.

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261

In these ineffective figures, then, we find the substance remote from human experience, or the analogy
something quite foreign to any connotation which the
real idea would suggest in any ordinary human mind,
or both. In some cases - like those of the student
and of Mr. Benjamin Woodbridge - the figures mav
be laboriously elaborate; in some, like that of th~
writer in "The Nation," they may be stupidly careless.
But both alike are ineffective because they are not
addressed to the average man. They are not broadly
human; they are not a bit sympathetic.
In that word sympathetic lies, I believe, the secret
that whoever would learn to use figures well is seeking;
and I need not repeat that what one seeks who would
learn to use figures well is precisely what any one must
seek who would learn to choose and compose the elements of style with force. We have studied figures
so minutely only because they are exaggerated types
of force, - actual connotations instead of merely connotative terms; and now we are come to a point
where we can see that the process a writer must turn
to who wishes to improve this phase of his style is not
so much a technical process as a process of self-culture. There is an old commonplace, "Style is the
man.'' What anybody expresses must ultimately be
what he himself knows and feels. Here we can see
that failure in expression commonly means failure to
know ~nd to feel as much as we ought to, - in a single
word, imperfect sympathy both with what we would
express, and with those whom we address.

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FORCE.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

human life, as day by day it has presented itself to
real human beings; and as the months go on, more
and more of these boys begin to find out for themselves how far from monotonous a thing even the
routine of a college life may be if you will only use
your eyes to see, aud your ears to hear. Many of
them, too, begin by and by to feel what any sympathetic writer must finally feel: that this real human
life of theirs, this human life that is peculiarly theirs,
is the source from which they must draw whatever
they really have to say. It is not often that they
learn more than this, - how to use this daily ex·
perience, this real knowledge, in writing of a ~ore
formal kind. But one counsel that I have given
them sometimes proves fruitful. When they use figures, I advise them, let them be sure, whatever they
write about, that these figures be drawn from their
actual experience. Thus by degrees they may come
to learn both how they may train themselves to find
in life more than those blindly unsympathetic beings
who pass through this world hardly aware that it is a
living one; and how when they have found these
things, they may begin to use them. Then I try constantly to remind them that whenever, for any rea~on,
they undertake to express themselves about anythm~,
they must try to understand it in just the way m
which their daily notes have shown them they can
learn to understand the commonplaces of daily life.
Each thing, each thought, has some sentiment.' so~e
emotion, some subtile significance, bound up w1th it i

I

267

and this, as well as the thought or the fact itself, one
must learn better and better to know.
But, as we have already reminded ourselves, it is
not enough that we und erstand what we wish to express. In the second place, if we wish our expression to have certainty, we must understand too what
sort of human bein gs we express it to. A single example will perhaps suffice to show the danger in this
respect to which we are all liable. In one of Mr.
Henry James's stories a rather cultivated American
who has thoroughly read what is called standard'
English literature, meets an old English lady, who, to
his delight, proves to have known Byron. He proceeds to ask if perhaps she knew Charles Lamb too.
"One didn't meet him," she answers. And there, in
a single phrase, you have three views of Charles
Lamb. To the American he is a great man of letters;
to the Englishwoman he is a city clerk~ quite out of
society ; to Mr. Henry James - and to the public Mr.
James addresses - he is both. To us, in our comfortable modern culture, both the American, who
thought Lamb a very great man, and the Englishwoman, who thought Lamb a nobody, are rather
comically limited. But to the Englishwoman the
American probably presents himself as crudely ignorant of the simplest facts in worldly life; and to the
American, the Englishwoman, who is simply what her
surroundings would have made any normal human
being, probably presents herself as a very deliberate
snob. In other words, neither of them is in a position

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is produced by a fine, firm sense of what the elements
of his style may be made to do, in denotation and in
connotation alike.
For, as we have seen, the secret of clearness lies in
denotation, the secret of force in connotation ; the
secret of clearness in what is said, the secret of force
in what is left unsaid . And I believe that one experience very familiar to any teacher, will go far to
prove this. I have somewhere seen a story of the
younger Dumas, that when his first successful play
was produced, some old Parisian man of letters
complimented him on the firmness of his style. To
which Dumas is said to have replied, ll y a un fi er
dessous ("There is no end of it out of sight"). He
meant, I take it, that he had produced the notable
firmness of his dialogue - a trait remarkable in most
of his dramatic work - by tho very simple process of
courageously striking out needless words and phrases,
- making each word do full work. By this very process, you see, he would make what words are left
stronger and stronger in their connotation. In a similar way, every teacher must have discornred, in his
own work as well as in that of pupils, what surprising gains in force may be made by what at first sight
seems to a writer a deliberate process of weakening.
The truth is that in written style as ~ell as in declamation there is at any given moment a fairly distinct
limit to the power of any given man. You can shout
just so loud and no fouder; you can be just so passionate, just so funny, just so pathetic, and not a bit

FORCE.

.,.,

271

more. Now, if you often do your utmost, anybody
will recognize it. That terrible sanity of the average
man is always watching you. But if you keep your
ultimate power in reserve, nobody will be able to
say just how much farther you might easily have
gone, had you chosen. There are moments, of course,
that call for _your utmost .power; but these are rare.
And your utmost strength should be reserved for
them. The analogy of rant on the stage or in the
pulpit is a very close one. You all know how fatal
the effect of that is ; and the final weakness you all
feel there is a question of connotation. Slowly but
surely, amid all this racket, comes to you a growing
conviction that this man cannot do a bit more. There
is no mere technical device for strengthening style,
then, more apt to be of value than the deliberate
weakening of passages you have written in your very
strongest way. Such deliberate weakening of all but
the very rare passages which really demand your utmost power results at once in a connotation directly
opposite to that of vocal or written rant. It is evident, in such cases, that there is power in reserve.
The more you listen, the more you read, the more
you feel it. And how great it may be there is nothing
to show. The tact with which style may be kept
strong enough to connote no weakness, and weak
enough to connote indefinite strength, is perhaps the
finest trick of the writer's trade. Whoever has beCTun
b
to master it will have learned for himself that the
secret of force lies in connotation.

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attempt to change them ; for no single ex::i.mple could
much better illustrate what I believe to be the real
nature of the quality.
What we have in view, you see, is the resthetic
quality of style, - that subtile something in a work of
literary art which makes us feel delight in the workmanship. Beauty, some call it; charm, others; others still, grace, ease, finish, mastery. Yet none of
these terms, any more than the one I have chosen,
speaks for itself. Most palpable, of course, in kinds
of writing whose first object is to give pleasure, - in
poetry, or in that finer kind of prose that we recognize
as belonging to literature, - the quality I mean need
not be wholly absent from even the most technical
style or the most commonplace matter. We all feel
it in the great poets; we all feel it in such prose as
Addison's; in less certain form we all feel it in such
modern prose as Mr. Matthew Arnold's, or Mr. Walter
Pater's, just as we feel its absence in every-day journalism or in the astonishing vagaries of Carlyle or of
Mr. Addington Symonds. But I think we do not all
feel it in other places where nevertheless it exists; in
technical treatises, for example, in every-day letters, in
every case where human beings attempt the task of
embodying in written words the elusive, immaterial
reality of thought and emotion.
Our first task, then, is to realize what we mean; to
fix in our minds the quality to which we are now trying to give a name. By so doing, we shall see whv
any name yet found for it must be unsatisfactory; and

VIII.
ELEGANCE.

last quality of style is far more subtile than
either of the others. Any style that we can understand, we have found, is clear; and the secret of
clearness lies in the denotation of our words and
compositions. Any style that will hold the attention, we have found, is forcible; and not so obviously,
but I hope almost as surely, we have determined
that the secret of force lies in the connotation of our
words and compositions. But we come at last to
a more elusive matter than force. What is it in
style that may be trusted to please us; and what
trait in the elements of style may be expected to
secure it?
In my first chapter, I suggested to you both the
name by which I shall describe the quality in question
and the definition I shall give it. Elegance is the distinguishing quality of a style that pleases the taste.
By framing and repeating this definition, however, I do
not mean that it satisfies me. On the contrary, both
name and definition are among the least satisfactory ·
things I have ventured to offer you. Yet, paradoxical
as it may seem, this very fact has inclined me not to
THE

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ELEGANCE.

And this unspoken word is the final secret of beauty.
Fifty years later, in that England of Cavaliers and
Puritans that was in feeling centuries away from the
passionate Renaissance of Elizabeth, John Ford, in hi!:!
tragedy of the "Broken Heart," wrote this song: -

And only a few years ago the most notable of our
living American poets, Mr. James Lowell, gave us
these lines: -

" Can you paint a thought; or number
Every fan cy in a slumber 1
Can you connt soft minutes roving
From a dial's point by moving 1

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

276

" No, oh no ! yet you may
Sooner Jo both that and thiB,
This and that, and never miss,
Than by auy praise display
Beauty's beauty ; such a glory
As beyond all fate, all story,
All arnrn, all arts,
All loves, all hearts,
Greater than those or they,
Do, shall, and must obey."

In a poem as far from these in character as the limit!
of literature allow-in Pope's" Essay on Criticism" are these lines, which say the same thing: "Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there 's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles Poetry ; in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach.
"True wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinc cl at sight we find,
That 0ui vcs Ufl back the 8hn.dow of the mind."

" I have a fancy : how shall I bring it
Home to all mortals wherever they be 1
Say it or sing it 1 Shoe it or wing it,
So it may outrun or uutfly me,
Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free 1
"Only one secret can save from disaster,
Only one magic is that of the master.
Set it to music ; give it a tune, Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze brings you,
Tune the wild columbines nod to in June J
"This is the secret: so simple, you see I
Easy as loving, easy as kissing,
Easy as- well, let me ponder - as missing,
Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three."

Each of these poets in his own way has said the same
thing; and when we ask ourselves what this thing is,
we find it something that in our own prosy way we
have already tried to keep in mind. The work of any
artist - and as surely as M. Jourdain spoke prose,
every writer must be essentially an artist - is a far
more subtile and wonderful thing than we are apt to
realize. It is nothing less than an act of creative
imagination, than giving to the eternally immaterial
reality of thought a visible, material body of written words. As Wordsworth put it in the passage I
cited from De Quincey, style is the "incarnation of
thought; " and this thought which we would incar·

278

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

nate is an infinitely subtile, infinitely varied thing.
And the means of incarnation that we mortals have
is a very limited thing, - only a few thousand arbitrary sounds, to which good use, and nothing else, has
given approximate meanings. At best the incarnation can be only a feeble shadow of the reality, - a
symbol to which nothing but deep imaginative sympathy can give anything like the significance which
the artist longed to pack within it. By irrevocable
fate expression must be eternally, almost tragically,
inadequate.
.
There is no single example of this more notable
than the pha::;e of fine art which I am disposed to
think most characteristic of this last half of the
nineteenth century : I mean the music-drama of
Wagner. Any one can appreciate how great a poet
Wagner was. In " Siegfried," for example, when the
dragon lies sleeping on his hoard, Wotan comes to
warn him of the approach of the hero who is to slay
him ; and from the depths of his cave comes the
growling answer, " Ich lieg' und besitze.
Lass mich schlafen,'' -

"I He here, possessing. Let me sleep." In seven
words Wagner has phrased the spirit that made
the French Revolution what it was; that among ourselves to-day seems to many so terribly threatening
to the prosperity of our own country. But Wagner is
not only a poet; most of you, I think, who have let

ELEGANCE.

279

yourselves listen, must have felt the indefinable
power of the endlessly interwoven melody by which
he seeks to express in music, too, the thought and
em~tion for which poetry alone is an inadequate
velucle. Perhaps you must go to Baireuth to know
the. rest. But certainly at Baireuth, where every
cngme of modern art was at his disposal, Wagner has
urought all the other fine arts to his aid : architecture
in the simple lines of the darkened theatre itself
where the music of the instruments fills the air one'
knows not whence ; painting, in scenery in costumes
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of heroic figures, where for once the
pageantr_y ~f the stage is treated as seriously as any
great pamtmg; even sculpture, as when, through the
whole cele~ration of the mystic sacrament, Parsifal
stands motwnless as any figure cut from marble. No
one art of expression was enough for Wagner; and it
was at last his fortune to control them all. yet when
all was done by this man, who seems to me the greatest of modern artists; when at the point where each
art by itself had done its utmost, a fresh art came to
do more .still,-. the final reality (the real thought
and emotwn which all this marvellous thinO' would
express) is as far away as ever. Even th~t wonderful " Parsifal," with all its fusion of the arts is
anothe~ thing, and an infinitely lesser thing, than ~he
great simple truth which lies behind it: that the true
secret of wisdom is infinite sympathy with humanity
good and evil.
'
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ELEGANVE.

expression lies the secret of the profound discouragement that must often attend even the greatest of
serious artists when he is all in earnest. Shakspere
himself phrases what I mean: -

ment that we laugh at in horse-cars, all that meets
the eye are the written words. It is somethin<T in
tl~em, and only something iu them, that makes ali° the
difference.

"Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him of wealth possest,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least."

Whoever would work earnestly must learn, I believe,
to know this mood ; to face, with courageous resignation, the inevitable truth that underlies it, content
with the thought, in which lies no exhaustible stimulus, that, do what he may, his ideal must always be
beyond him, and so that there can never be any moment of accomplishment when he may not eagerly
hope and strive to do better and better still.
We are far enough now, it seems, from Addisonian
elegance ; yet we are coming near to the place where
we can see why, perhaps unwisely, I have chosen the
term elegance to express that final quality in literary
work which makes us recognize its art as fine. This
quality, we clearly see, is a very wonderful thing, - a
thing whose essence has eluded the greatest masterR
as well as the dabblers ; a thing which no words we
have can adequately phrase. And yet when we stop
to think once more, and ask ourselves by what meanH,
in works of literature, we become aware of this impalpable quality, we find ourselves just where we have
so often found ourselves before. In the greatest
poem, as truly aR in the most impudent advertise·

..

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281

Is ~his thing a thing we can in any wise define?
That is. ~he question now. Have words, alone or in
co~n?os1tion, any trait that is favorable to this exq~i~1tely subtile quality to which I have given this
trivial name of elegance J!
. We have seen already that every word we use must
m greater or less degree possess two distinct traits der~otation and connotation. It denotes the idea
wluch good us<='. agrees that it shall stand for; it con~otes the very various and subtile thoughts and emot1~ns which cluster about that idea in the human
~und, whose store of thought is so vastly greater than
its store of .words with which to symbolize thought.
And the traits that words possess, compositions must
possess too; sentences, paragraphs, chapters, books,
put tog:ther the words which compose them, and all
the traits of these words. In all the elements of
s~yle, denotation and connotation may alike be recogIllz.ed. The secret of clearness, we saw, lies in denotation; the secret of force in connotation. But we
h.ave already seen that when all is done, the expression of thought and feeling in written words can
~eve~ be complete. Do what we may, with denotation
m mmd and connotation too, our sty le can at best be
only something
" That gives us back the shadow of the mind."

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283

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEGANCE.

No expression can be so perfect th~t a b~tter cannot
be imagined. In this truth, I believe, hes the final
secret of the quality I call elegance. The more ex. "tely style is adapted to the thought it symbolizes,
qms1
·t·
the better we can make our words and compost 1011s
denote and connote in other human minds the mean·
ing they denote and connote in ours, the greater
charm style will have, merely as a work o~ a~t.
In a single phrase, the secret of elegance hes m

among some great mass of things the one thing that
shall best serve our purpose ; aud this is precisely
what the earnest writer would do who seeks constantly
to adapt his style more and more exquisitely to his
thought and emotion. In the very difficulty that
meets us here, in the choice of a !lame, we can see, in
concrete form, the nature of the quality we arc considering, and the very remote approximation of style
to thought with which the limits of human language
so often compel us to rest satisfied.
To turn now to a few examples of the quality as it
reveals itself in literature, we may best consider it in
its finest form. ·In poetry everybody perceives it most
clearly. Of course, the dialect of poetry differs from
that of prose. To write prosy poetry, or to write
prose full of words that belong to the vocabulary of
poetry, is instantly to forget that the secret of elegance
lies in the adaptation of style to thought. But the
adaptation which gives its charm to the finest poetry
is, after all, adaptation of means to end; and just such
adaptation of style to meaning is what gives its charm
to that fine prose whose purpose differs from that of
poetry, and whose outward form must difier accordingly. Take a single word to begin with. For gellerations, English prose has discarded the pronoun thou
and all its derivatives. No lover uses it to his sweetheart; nor could the phrase "thine eyes " stand for a
moment in serious modern prose. But the moment
we turn to song we find the phrase still acceptable :
"Drink to me only with thine eyes," might have been

282

adaptation.
.
I said at the very beginning of this chapter, that I
was dissatisfied with the name - elegance - which I
have given this resthetic quality of style; and yet th~t
I was induced to keep it for the very reason that it
dissatisfies me. Now, I think, you can see why. \V e
begin to understand, I hope, what t.he qualit~ is; anJ
if you will stop to think, you will fi~d, I ~eheve,_ that
our language contains no word wl11ch will_ begm at
once to denote and to connote all that we wish to express when we name the quality. In such str~its, I
often think, we may best choose a word whose literal
meaning when we scan it closely, will remind us of
what w: really mean ; and the literal meaning of
elegance comes nearer what we mea~ now :lrnn thnt
of any other word I have found. With all 1ts c~nno·
ta ti on of fashion and fastidiousness and over-n 1ccty,
elegance means when we stop to remember our Latin,
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.
the quality that distinguishes anything that 1s care-fully selected. The words it comes from - ex nml
lego _ mean literally to pick out, to choose from

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ENGL18.tl CO.M.k'OSITION.

written yesterday. Not very long ago, I saw a. little
poem, written at Harvard College, and in many respects charming. The first line of it, though, ran
thus:" Thy eyes are mirrors of strange things."

Now, just as in Ben Jonson's line the style seems perfectly adapted to the thought, so in this line there is
something lacking. A moment's study will show that
it i8 only the letter n. "Thine eyes " has a sound
which we recognize as charming ; "thy eyes" has a
clumsy repetitiori of sound which subtilely recalls the
"ki-yi " of a small boy. Remote as this connotation
is, it is enough to make the second line a far less exquisitely adapted one than the first. In poetry and in prose too - the mere question of sound, the
mere choice of a single letter, may make a passage or
mar it. Transfer that n, for example: suppose for a
moment that Ben Jonson had written, "Drink to mo
only with tliy eyes," and that the modern poet had
written, " Thine eyes are mirrors of strange things ; "
and Ben .Toni::;on's line is no longer certainly the
better. Agam, take a single phrase, no longer from
serious literature, but from the work of a friend with
whom I once discussed it. He was writing, in toler·
ably impassioned prose, a description of a landscape
remarkable for a certain softness of beauty. "No
rock peeped forth," he wrote, "save from a bed of
verdure soft as a woman's breast." Putting quito
aside the question of felicity of figure, he found him·

ELEGANCE.

285

self dissatisfied with that sentence, because there was
in it a connotation of voluptuousness foreign to his
purpose. After a while he changed one word, and
then found he had said what he meant to the best of
his power. Instead of woman he wrote mother: " N 0
rock peeped forth save from a bed of verdure soft as
a. mother's breast.'' The only change is in the choice
of a more specific word; but the whole connotation
is altered, and the style is as finely adapted to the
thought as that man could make it.
Again, compare two passages of verse to which I
have called your attention before: the opening lines
of W u~dsworth's "Skylark/' and those of Shelley's.
You will find them side by side in the " Golden Treasury." Here are Wordsworth's lines: " Ethereal minstrel I pilgrim of the .sky !
Dost. thou despise the earth, where cares abound t
Or while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground 1Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still."

And here are Shelley's lines: " Hail to thee, blithe spirit !
Bird thou never wert
'
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

In the long words and the slow measure of Wordsworth' s first line " Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky I " -

287

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

ELEGANCE.

there is something that keeps the mind where the
contemplative poet would have it, - down on earth.
In the short, ecstatic words of Shelley's first line -

ble. See too, if you will, the pathos of a single word
in the beginning of Francesca's speech: -

286

" Hail to thee, blithe spirit I " -

there is something that lifts the mind straight away
from all things earthly. Change a word in either of
these, change even a syllable or a letter, and some·
thing is lost.
Again, take, almost at random, one of Shakspere's
descriptions: the beginning of the speech that tells
how Ophelia died : " There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream."

Try for yourselves, in seventeen words and twenty
syllables, to pack even half so much of a picture as is
there ; and you will see for yourselves how marvellous
those lines are in their exquisitely simple adaptation
to the purpose of the poet. rrhen read the passage
through; and when you have finished, see for yourselves how this simple picture that begins it sets the
whole in a background of just such gentle, homely
nature as should best make us feel the loYeliness of
the dying girl, and the mournfulness of her end. Or
turn to Dante, and see how in the fifth canto of lhe
"Inferno" where he tells the story of Francesca, lhat
'
.
wonderful simile of the doves, full of suggestions ot
light and love and purity, softens and makes mourn·
ful the dreadful story of sin and expiation that in
lesser hands than his might have been merely horri·

" Siede la terra dove nata fui
Sulla marina, dove 'l Po discende
Per aver pace coi segnaci sni."
"The land where I wa~ born lies by the shore,
There where the Po comes (lown into the sea,
To have at last peace, with his following streams."

No word but peace could so give the suggestion of all
that might have been, had these sinners kept from
the sin which has doomed them to the eternal torment
of hell. I should not stray from English, I suppose;
English affords us examples enough to last forever.
But Dante happened to be the first poet who spoke to
me ; and when I think of all that is best in literature, I cannot help thinking of him.
We have seen enough of what this exquisite adaptation of means to end is like. It is time to turn to
another example, where a real question arises. Is
the passage that I shall now recall to you exquisitely
. adapted to its purpose, or does it fail to produce the
effect the poet had in mind ? I refer to the last line
but one of Mr. James Lowell's " Secret," which I cited
a little while ago: "This is the secret: so simple, you see!
Easy as loving, easy as kissing,
Easy as -well, let me ponder-as missing;
Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three."

Charming lines we must all find the first and the
second and the last ; but how about the last but one ?

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.
288
In the midst of the simple melody about it, that conscious little phrase," well, let me ponder," startles us ;
it is a disagreeable discord. At fi.rst we are annoyed ;
why on earth did he spoil a prett.y poen~ by such an
ugly blemish? But look at the lme agam, as~ yourself what it means ; and you will find that i~s very
purpose is to show how very easily we may fail to do

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what we have in mind ; it is: -

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'' Easy as - well, let me ponder - as m1ssmg.

Could four words more subtilely suggest just the kind
of failure that the line describes? And if this is what
the poet had in mind, could four words, after all, be
much more exquisitely adapted to his purpose? It
is like that line of Pope's, who complains bow, in bad
verse, the measure drags : " And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.',

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But the art is more subtile than Pope's; you only feel
its effect ; until you stop to analyze it, you do not see
how the effect is produced.
.
Few examples, I think, could bring us more directly
to a fact that critics of style are very apt to forget.;
and yet which every one must fully realize before lus
criticism of style, as style, can be certain. Style, I
may remind you again, is the expression of thought
and feeling in written words. To a critic of style, e.
given piece of style, then, presents a double problem,
but a double problem of which the separate part~ are
not clearly distinguished. First, he sees the written

ELEGANCE.

289

words which stand for the thought and feeling that
were in the writer's mind ; secondly, he sees through
tho.se writt~n words to the thought and the feeling
wluch they mcarnate. Now, what he knows, until he
begins to analyze, is merely a general impression : he
understands or fails to understand ; he is interested
or bored; he is pleased or repelled. And a careless
critic confuses the two elements which may well be
present in these primary impressions ; but, as I con.
ceive style, we must separate them rigorously. An
artist, I believe, has the right to express whatever he
will; what he chooses to express may be a very hateful thing or a very trivial, but if his expression be exquisitely adapted to his purpose, we cannot deny that
technically his art is fine, and that if he displeases us
e>:'er so much in his purpose, ·he has by the fineness of
his art executed a work in which, as technical critics,
we may honestly delight. In brief, I believe that
until we fully understand a writees purpose, until we
really know both what he would denote and what he
would connote, we cannot safely object to any word or
any composition on the ground of what I haYe
called elegance.
Take, for example, two phrases, - " Them that
wasn't," and, " By thunder ! " The former is as
ungrammatical as three words can well be ; the latter is, to say the least, very slangy. But see how
those phrases come into these verses by Mr. Henley:
to get the full effect, I must quote the whole little
poem.

290

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.
",Talk of pluck ! ' pursued the sailor,
Set at euchre on his elbow,
'I was on the wharf at Charleston,
Just ashore from off the runner.
cc c It was gray and dirty weather,
And I heard a drum go rolling,
Rub-a-dubbing in the distance,
Awful, dour-like, and defiant.
", In and out among the cotton,
Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchol'f!,
Tramped a squa<l of battered scarecrows, Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar.
" ' Some had shoes, but all had rifles ;
1'hem that was n't bald, was beardless;
And the drum was rolling Dixie,
And they stepped to it like men, sir 1
" ' Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets,
On they swung, t.he drum a-rolling,
Mum and sour. It looked like fighting,
d ,, "
And they meant it too, by thun er .

I doubt if you can find a more skilful. use o~ word~ .
The old blockade-runner, sick in hospital, gives th~s
little glimpse of what he saw in the Confederacy: it
ives some of us a glimpse of the Con~ederacy that
!re are not very used to. Change a smgle one of
those irregular terms of bis. Instead of' "Them that
as n't bald was beardless," write, "Those who were
:ot bald were beardl~ss ; " instead of' " And th~y
. t oo, b Y tlmn der 1· " write ' " And
meant 1t
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. m
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ELEGANCE.

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fade. The very vulgarity of the phrases is perhaps
what most of all so finely adapts the expression to
the thought.
Again, take this passage from De Quincey's " Confessions;" it tells of his mood when he ran away
from school, and wondered whither he should go.
Notice how the colloquial vulgarity of one or twa
phrases expresses, in a way that nothing else could
express, the overwrought emotion he has in mind.
" Amongst these attractions that drew me so strongly
to the Lakes, there had also by that time arisen in this
lovely region the deep, deep magnet (as to me only in all
this world it then was) of William Wordsworth. Inevitably this close connection of the poetry which most of
all had moved me with the particular region and scenery
that most of all had fasten_ed upon my affections, and
led captive my imagination, was calculated, under ordi-·
nary circumstances, to impress upon my fluctuating deliberations a summary and decisive bias. But the very
depth of the impressions which had been made upon me,
either as regarded the poetry or the scenery, was too
solemn and (unaffectedly I may say it) too spiritual to
clothe itself in any hasty or chance movement as at all
adequately expressing its strength, or reflecting its hallowed character. If you, reader, were a devout Mahometan, throwing gazes of mystical awe daily towards
Mecca, or were a Christian devotee looking with the same
rapt adoration to St. Peter's at Rome or to El Kodah,
the Holy City of Jerusalem (so called even amongst the
Arabs, who hate both Christian and Jew), how painfully would lt jar upon your sensibilities, if some fri end,

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ELEGANCE.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

sweeping past you upon a high-road,.witb &
ing to the circumstances) of drom~dariea oi
carriages, should suddenly pull up, and a&J'.1: ,
fellow, jump up alongside of me. I'm oil fi
Sea and here's a spare dromedary,' or 'O~
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,•'il
and here's a well-cushioned barouche. .z.seu.IGDN
convenient it might happen that the"invita~on""
still it would shock you that a. journ~y- wnuw•~­
witbout your consent, could not but assume ·dMt
eventually of a saintly pilgrimage, shouldtaJ'll
.
its initial movement upon a casual BWD:,IDODlt
vulgar opening of ~omentary convenien~.•

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ly condetnn their work ; but this fact does not
,my . opinion, at all affect the value of their work
· ~a·'.!Work bf art. I have in mind such things as the
ries 1of M. Guy de Maupassant. The French are
er artists than we ; but according to our standards,
all events, they are apt to apply their a.rt to very
minable subjects. More than half the time M. de
upassant's stories deal with matters that no decent
. .1out of France would for a moment think worthy
'his pains. The impression left on you by reading
stories is unpleasantly debasing, - at least, if
happen to have been born a respectable Yankee;
..you will have to read far and wide before you can
d s~ries in which every word and every turn of
tenoe is adapted to its purpose with more subtile
· J.A.nd some of the stories that· are in themselves
t ~atcful cab give, and rightly, to the technical
·~ the keenest delight. As style, his style often
. . s perfect.
In.English, on the other hand, this state of things
more frequently reversed. Far more commonly
Jind. the motive of an English novel to our taste ;
rally enough, for the genius of any literature is
~ttom .the broad human nature which marks the
le..who use the language in which that literature
~ed. But over and over again, in stories irre~ h_able or even edifying in motive, we find false
~es .that make them as subtilely disagreeable as if
rt dealt .with most repellent things. I remember
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. ew years ago, picking up a novel in which a
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ELEGANCE.

charming young woman was engaged in sewing,
while a m~ddle-aged gei;itleman sat by smoking. Both
were agreeable characters. But in the course of the
evening the young woman bit off her thread, and got
a piece of it stuck between her teeth; and the smoker,
who had been gnawing the end of his cigar, put the
unpleasantly fringed stump of it in a neighboring
saucer. It is probable that we have all seen charm..
ing women similarly inconvenienced by refractory
threads, and very agreeable men whose methods of
thoughtless smoking were similarly remote from
winsome ; but such sights have not enhanced in
our minds the impression of charm commonly pro·
duced by the individuals in question. Indeed, if· we
wish to keep the charm in mind, we have a polite, ~­
if not deliberate habit of forgetting the unpleasant
little traits which, if we choose to look for : theI;l1,
would mar the charm of anybody; and if ' we ue
writing stories in which we wish the reader's sym•
pathy to go with our characters, we should be careful
not to make the characters do anything disgusting.
Not, I may repeat, because even very disgustint;t
matters may not be deliberately introduced in ' any
work of art; but because our purpose for the mom~n~ ·
is not to excite disgust. Heroines, then, should ~ot
get thread stuck between their teeth, - simply becauee
such a proceeding is essentially unpleasant; for the '
same reason, we should wink at the fact that ag~· ·
able elderly gentlemen sometimes masticate the enda
of their cigars. .A style which introduce~ such t1-aita.
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in .such characte:s is exactly what M. de Maupassant's
sty le co~mouly is not, - admirably unadapted to the
purpose m hand.

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~ctions that are out of character, indeed, are con-

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vemently bro~d types of what I mean by inelegance.
In eve~y?ody s life there are endless details which,
~or artistic purposes, are out of character. No man
IS great to his body-serYant, you remember. nor
, any~ody so. ~ontemptible as not to have man; engagmg qualities. A medireval soldier like Otl 1811
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wou. ~n a I probability occasionally amuse himself
by smgmg comically ribald songs; and Scotch gentlemen of the period of Macbeth would very likel . .
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momen t s of relaxation, take part in national dances
Bu~ for Shakspere's purpose . these. wholly naturai
traits would have been out of character ; tbey would
have attracted attention to phases of life which for
the moment we are not properly called on to observe
On the whole, then, we may be content that Othell~
does not lead a drinking chorus, and that Macbeth
does not gladden the gallery with a Highland fling;
not because the real Othello or Macbeth would not
h~ve done such things serenely, but because if they
did such .things on the boards, they were by no means
such satisfactory protagonists in tracredy I
l t
'f s
o
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n s ior ,
I
hakspere had made them act out of character he
would have missed the quality we have agreed to ~all
elegance.

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There is one trick of style to which I have referred
before, which is commonly resorted to from a mistaken

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ELEGANCE.

ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

notion of literary taste, and which is responsible for '·
much of the minor inelegance that disfigures O!lr
literature. I mean euphemism, - the naming of a
disagreeable idea by a word not in itself disagreeab,le.
There are times in life, of course, when we have to
mention disagreeable ideas ; at such times we may
well ask ourselves whether we may not best mask them
a little. But generally, I think, the better plan is to
ask ourselves whether we may not best of all leave,
them unmentioned. There are few safer habits than
calling things by their -real names ; in that case we do
not mention hateful things needlessly. On the other
hand if we habitually palliate hateful ideas, we begin
befor~ long to lose our sense .of their hatefulness.
As a result one hears a great deal more than one need
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of such phenomena
as accompany the experience
of ·
a landsman in a rough sea, or as make starched ·
linen unbeautiful in July. And to take au example,
where the real idea is not disgusting, but sol~!11!1•..
think for yourselves how habitual euphemism ,. d~
grades the great fact of death.
e all know w~at ~
"to die" means; it means somethmg we all have •to
face and that we all face with some degree of .dread! ·
Tender-hearted people resort to metaphor : " to pa.a. -.
away," they say, or," to fall asleep." U ntendei: people · .
take up the euphemistic metaphor : "to pass on," the7 ·
say, or, "to kick the bucket." And a little while· .a~ .
I saw in a newspaper that some unhappy creatw:f
who bad taken his life had " executed a determ\!1!'
tion to become a gloomy corpse." Grosser indecenoJ. ,.,

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297

I think, not even the vilest of our vilest news-mongers
could invent. And all this comes from deliberate
neglect of the real secret of elegance, - of constant,
earnest effort to adapt our means to our end, our
style to the thought and emotion it must express.
We have seen enough, I think, to understand now
that nothing but constant, earnest effort can result
in that habitual adaptation of means to end which
must mark the style of a master. We have seen enouo-h
0
besides to understand that there is no little truth in
the vulgar conception of elegance in style, which holds
as a standard such a writer as Addison. It is true
tha.t we have in English very few writers whose style is
more exquisitely than his adapted to the purpose for
which it is used. It is also true that Addison very
rarely has in view any purpose not in itself ag1:eeable.
There is in the man, with all his obvious limits a
'
certain sustained urbanity of temper that has made
him for nearly two ".lenturies the acknowledged
model of literary breeding. But if literature could
express nothing but polite breeding, it were an unspeakably less potent thing than many of us rejoice
to find it; and the real secret of Addison's literary
excellence is not his urbanity of temper, but the fact
that, given his temper, his style expresses it almost to
perfection..
There is in Addison's style, however, one subtile
trait which it shares with any style, no matter how
different in aspect and effect, which possesses the
quality we have agreed to name elegance. Thi-i is

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the ease of habitual mastery. You all remember the
old saw which I have quoted to you already: .Ara
celare artem (" The finest art seems artless") To a
great degree, I think, any style which we may ulti..
mately regard as a model, adapted to it~ purpose as
exquisitely as human power can adapt it: possesses
this trait of ease. In much style that is clear as
crystal the trait is absent. In reading Geo.rge Eliot's
novels, for example, one is constantly sensible of the
effort that very notable writer is making. In much
style so forcible that you care little whether it · be '
clear or not, the trait-is equally wanting. In Carlyle,
for example, or in Browning, you may look far before
you find it. And sometimes, as in most of the pros~
of Landor, you may find it fatally divorced fr?m force;'
if not from clearness. But the ideal style is a style
that is clear - that cannot be misunderstood ; that'·is
forcible, _;hat holds the attention; and that is ·'ele- .
gant - that is so exquisitely adapted to its purpose ·
that ~ou are conscious of its elegance only by subtilel1
feeling the wonderful ease of habitual mastery . . , · ..
Such habitual mastery of style is what we must
strive for if we would give our work this finaL qual·
ity of elegance. The question before us, the~, ia
how we may strive for it. In a very little while, I
think, we may get some manner of answer. Style, w.e
must always remember, is the expression of thought
and feeling in written words. To express th~ugbt ., .
and feeling with the ease of mastery, we must ·m tht ,
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ELEGANCE.

299

hand that is always at command. In some degree,
then, that daily work which we saw so grea.t a factor
in the. securing of force will serve our purpose here
too. Whoever will let no day pass without its record,
nor any record be other than the best he can make,
will do much ; but he will not do all. He must train,
too, with equal constancy his power of perception.
One phase of perception, concerning which I have
as yet said nothing, becomes of real importance here.
I mean perception of what is fine in literary art. It
is not hard for one who has very little such percep·
tion to write clearly, nor very hard for him to write
with a great degree of force. But it is not often, I
think, that one can learn to give one's style the final
quality which comes from the most exquisite possible
adaptation of style to thought, unless one has trained
his power of appreciating and enjoying that quality
in the works of the masters. Trained it, I say deliberately. With some of us it is inborn ; with some it
is so dormant that nothing but strenuous work can
arouse it. But even those who possess it most will
not waste the hours they give to earnestly developing
it. One is sometimes inclined to think that native
love for art is a fatal gift, preventing him who has it
from ever being sure of what is really good ; and
those who do not possess this native love for art may
surely: by earnest work, arouse in themselves percep, tions of which without the work they would hardly
deem themselves capable.
There have been endless discussions of what poe

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try is ; and no definition of it that was ever framed
has proved adequate. Each new critic makes his new
one· and no better one than the last. But this at least
we :Uay say : that poetry is the finest form of literary.
art. And the secret of its fineness lies in an adap-.
tation of word- and even of the most subtile sound
- to meaning that comes as near perfection as human
power can bring it. Like all fine art, poetry ~a? give to
human beings a kind of pleasure more exqmsite, more
lasting, purer than can come from anything but fine
art. And this pleasure any sane man can by and by•.
begin to feel. I say tliis with conviction because as a
teacher I have so often seen boys, to whom poetry
seemed merely a clumsy statement of ideas in lines
that broke off before they reached the edge of the
page, teach themselves, by deliberately resolving ~
find the charm that other people had found there;
slowly to know that keenest of delights which comes
when at last they can begin to feel that what theJ
read is, above and beyond its meaning and its interest, a thing of lasting beauty. And I am sure that.no
other earnest work will bring half so sure and lasting
a benefit to whoever would finally master the art of·
letters as will come to him from a mastery of "wbat ,
poetry means.
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I do not mean, of course, that every man should ·
fancy himself a poet, or that any bm . poets ~hou~4
seriously try to express their thought or emotion IQ
the terms of poetry. Yet it is a notable fact t\l t. ·
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ELEGANCE.

301

,literature, who have not at some time tried their hand
at verse. What 'they learn by the effort is oftenest,
perhaps, that poetry is not for them; that what they
say mu~t be said in what seems to so many the less
sublime vehicle of prose. But in the very process
of learning this, they have learned, too, if not the
secret, at least the charm, that makes the finest of
literary art the marvellous thing it is. Beyond the
perception of life that we saw the forcible writer must
seek, beyond the perception of human nature which
should make him know the human beings he addresses, beyond the perception of what words suggest
or connote, as well as of what they mean, the writer
who would attain the certainty of mastery must traiu
himself in that finest of perception that delights in
the great works of the masters.
Something of this every one who thinks of these
matters we have been discussing perceives for himsel~. It is some gleam of this perception, perhaps,
which makes almost every one who longs to write
well try his hand - by no means well as a rule - at
poetry. It is some gleam of this perception that
makes so many, equally earnest and more sanely
aware of their limitations, saturate themselves in conventional culture and then try piteously to express
themselves in a way that shall speak to fellow human
beings. The masters can write poems ; the masters
?an enjoy the masterpieces : this they see, and stri vmg to write and _to enjoy, they fancy they are rising
toward the point of mastery. The truth, though, as

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we have seen long ago, is that whoever would write
with thorough mastery must write in a sty le that has
not only the resthetic quality we have just been · con ~
sidering, but that has too the emotional quality and
the intellectual as well. And these qualities, I' be~
lieve, must be striven for in the order in which we
have considered them. First of all, be clear: address
the average human being, remembering not what is
commonplace in him, but what is human. Then be
forcible : do not content yourself with merely addressing him, but dq your utmost to hold his atten~
tion. Finally, when these things are done, let your
style have all the grace, the finish, the charm, that
your finest care can give it,- remembering that .no
style is finally good until along with clearness an'd
force it possesses too the quality we have named elegance. In other words, when you choose and compose
the elements of your sty le, let your first thought con·
cern their denotation ; your second, their connotation ;
and only when these are secure, let yourself begin that
ceaseless effort whose end shall be a finer and finer
adaptation of style to meaning.
Finer and finer, I have said purposely.
I have repeated it, I cannot repeat -too often that
we are dealing now with something that can never
be perfectly accomplished. There have been · great
writers, blind teachers tell us ; look at them, reverence
them imitate them. When you equal them or approach
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mood of so many of our teache1·s and guides -seems
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803

to me a phase· of that deep tendency in human nature
to glorify the past, to worship at the shrines of
heroic ancestors, to look far back in primeval times
for traces of the golden age. Great things have been
do_ne, and good, in life and in art; and these great
tlungs are the most precious treasures that have come
to us from the humanity that is gone before. But
what makes the great works of expression that have
come down to us so precious is not that they are
themselves supreme, but that they are the best images which human beings, akin to us in all but the
genius which makes them sometimes seem more akin
to divinity, have yet been able to make of the supreme
truths of thought and emotion which each knows for
himself in that great, endless world of immaterial
reality. We every-day men cannot see far. Our
thoughts and passions are petty things at best; and
when we are. brought face to face with the thoughts
a~d the passions of the masters, which seem by the
side of ours so vast and glorious, we are apt to forget
that the noblest expression of the noblest art is as
petty a thing beside the great, infinite expanse of
truth that the masters strive to express, as is our
work beside the little truth which is all that reveals
itself to our eyes.
Far enough all this may seem from the technical
matters with which we have concerned ourselves; and
yet without something of this in mind I could never
have faced the dreary work of professional teaching
that has almost insensibly become the work of my

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life. Year after year I must plod through ream upon
ream of manuscript that college students write iu an
effort to learn how to make themselves writers. Bewildering, depressing, maddening, debasing, I should
have found this work years ago, but for the growing
conviction, which strengthens as the years go by, that
the meanest of these works, if we will -only let ourselves see it truly, is a very marvellous thing. Careless, thoughtless, reckless as these boys so often are,
the most careless, the most thoughtless, the most
reckless of all, has put before me an act of that
creative imagination ·for which, as I have said to you
before, one can find no lesser word than divine. All
unknowing, and with the endless limitations of weak·
ness and perve1·sity, he bas looked for himself into
that great world of immaterial reality which, just as
be knows it, no other human being can · ever know ·;
and with these strange, lifeless conventions we· call
words he has made some image of what he has known '
in that world which is all bis own ; and that image
begins by and by to arouse within me some concep1
tion of what life has meant to him.
·•
Petty enough this thing that life has meant to
these thoughtless boys must often seem ; yet .it is
an unspeakably greater thing than · the lifeless
words h1 which they have striven to set it forth.
And as year after year I have striven to understand
what these lame and blundering words and sentence&
mean, to penetrate the symbol, to grasp the thought, ·
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ELEGANCE.

305

how they may better the work that seems so worthless, I have found myself year after year more and
more aware that what they have done in their little
way is what the masters have done in the way that
we like to call great. More and more I have come
to know that the realities which lie behind the symbols ~hat make the greatest works great are things
as far beyond the mere symbols themselves as the
thoughtless thoughts of these college boys are beyond
the symbols their pens so carelessly scrawl. And
year by year there has come to me, amid this work
that seems so dreary, the growing knowledge that
beyond the ken of the students, and beyond the ken
of the greatest of our masters too, lie unending, infinite realms of ·truth. And these no human power
can ever exhaust ; here to the end of time human
beings may constantly seek farther and farther, with
endless hopes of more to come ; and here these endless stretches of truth not yet known, and truth per.
haps never to be known to human beings, make the
work of the greatest of the masters seem almost as
small a thing as the work of the pettiest of the
pupils. For what either has revealed is but some
unspeakably little fragment of infinite eternities.
Technical, dull, lifeless, as all these things I ham
been prosing about must seem to whoever has not
studied them deeply ; dull and lifeless I fear as
I ~ave made them seem to many of you: - the/ are
tlungs that lead us by and by into a conviction of
the truths of idealism that to some minds could

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ENGLISH COMPOSLTION.

never come so strongly by any other means. And
idealism, I believe, is a truth that cannot be shaken ..
What we read is but a symbol of the living -thought
behind it; what we see and know in life are but
symbols of some greater, deeper, infinitely more real .
truth beyond them all, that oniy in these material
forms can be revealed to such beings as we, who are
Ii ving here on earth. Whatever leads us to such
thoughts as this is a thing that leads us to thoughts
that make us wiser, better men.
~
It is this that makes me more and more feel that
the work so many of us are trying to do at Harvard
College, the work of which I have tried to give you
some account, the work of any earnest teacher of
this subject - composition - that seems to most uien·
so dull, is a work that may rightly claim a place·
in any system of education, no matter how high ' it
hold its head. If teacher or pupil keep himself•
down to the symbol alone, he sinks hopelessly into"
the depths of pedantry. But if teacher or pupil keep
himself alive to the truth that what he is striving to
accomplish is no less a thing than an act of creative
imagination ; if he learn to know that in his own little
way he is trying to do just such a thing as the great- ·
est of the masters have done before him; if through
the symbol his eye learn to seek and to know rthe
infinite reality of truth that lies beyond, - he will find
that even though technical mastery never come, he
will learn more and more the infinite, mysterious sig
nificance of that human life that each of us is' liviug

ELEGANCE.

307

for himself. The old systems stJmve to brinO' us to
such wisdom by reverent study - and someti~es by
cruelly irreverent mangling - of the greatest works
of the masters: . There are minds, and not a few, that
can., come thither only by such means; but there are
other minds, and not a few, I think, who can come
~hither better .by such humbler means as ours: by striv..
mg eaph for himself to do his best. By and by he must
come to know how little a thing that is Ly the side of
what he longed to do; and by and by he will find that
t~us he has come to learn how vast a thing beside the
little that the masters have accomplished is the thing
for which they have striven. So, by one roa<l as bv
the other, men may come at last face to face with
what most of all wise men love to face, - with the
infinite realities that '1\e, and that must forever lie.
beyond human ken.
,

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IX.
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SUMMARY.

IT bas been my purpose to lay before you, as simply
and as broadly as I could, the theory of style to which
ten years of study have led me. To most people, aa
I said in the begin}llng, this matter that we have been
discussing seems a question of endless detail, and of
detail which may be declared in every case right ,o r
wrong. To me, as I have tried to show you, it seems
rather a matter governed by a very few simple ~ gen·
eral principles. The art of composition, like .any other
art, can be mastered only by incessant, earnest practice and effort; but the principles that should gov·
ern the conduct of whoever would learn to practise
it, and the ends he should keep in view, seem ~
me the principles and the ends - and no others that I have attempted to lay before you. My task Ja
almost done. There remains for me only to sum up,
as briefly as I can, the substance of the eight chaptera '
in which I have striven to tell what I know of the
elements and the qualities of Style.
Style, the expression of thought and feeling in wri~
ten words, must affect readers in thi;ee distinct .waya,.
- intellectually, emotionally, and resthetically. TQ

809

the qualities in style which produce these effects we
give the names Clearu.e,ss, Force, and Elegance. But
any piece of style presents to the eye only those arbitrary marks that common consent, good use, has
made significant of those arbitrary sounds - words
- that good use has made significant of ce1'tain more
· or less definite· phases of thought and emotion. The
qualities of style, then, can be conveyed from writer
to reader only by means of the way in which these
black marks are chosen and arranged, - in brief,
only by our choice and composition of words. In a
given piece of writing, then, we may discover why a
given quality is present or absent by analyzing the
elements presented to the eye. In this analysis it is
convenient to examine the elements in four stages :
first, Words by themselves; then those compositions of
words that we call Sentences; the~hose compm1itions
of sentences that we call Paragraphs ; and finally,
those larger compositions to which we may give the
name of Wholes. Of words we must always remember
that they are arbitrary sounds to which meaning is
given only by good use. Our choice of words, then,
must be absolutely governed by good use; but within
its limits we are able to produce widely various
effects by varying our kinds of words and our num·
her of words. Of sentences we must always remember that tbey are largely governed by good use, - to
which in this case we give the name "grammar.''
Within its limits, however, we are free to vary the
kinds of our sentences, and to apply to our sentences

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ENGLISH COMPOSITION.

SUMMARY.

the three principles of composition. The -tl~
principle of Unity, concerns the substan~ of ,
position : each composition should gr~up. 1taelf·~·1.1UU!99
one central idea. The second, the prmc1ple of";Jl•ll'
concerns the external form of a composition~
.
1
chief parts of each composition sho~ld be 8? ~as readily to catch the eye. The third, .t he prmol
of Coherence, concerns the internal arrangemen~o
composition; the relation of each nart of- a. com ,..
tion to its neighbors should be unmistakable: ,
stantly hampered in sentences by the
authority of good use, the operation of. these,pr}~.-·;,.;-,t
in para(J'raphs and in whole compositions ~
ceed al;ost untrammelled. And the .visible b.ocl
modern English style may conveniently be
as the result of a constant and by no· means "lllllllH....
conflict between good use and these three llllDDll"
principles of composition, which seem elowl1·~to
gaining authority. And now, having· seen thd
secret of the qualities of style must be sought·ID·
elements? we may finally ask ourselves if in ~
ments we may detect any traits that are fa.vo-"'"•'ijhfll
one quality or another. To me it seems that ,~ .
detect a trait favorable to each. · Never ..forafitlltl
the vast extent of our thoughts and emotio!l', ·~
very narrow limits of even ·the widest vooabul~,
remember that each of our words must not1 only,~
an idea but along. with the idea it names mult .
'
.
tilely but surely snggest others. · I have l)OiPWW....1111111
from logic two names -there used ·techniC.U1.-.
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311

express these two powers of words. To their power of
naming ideas, I have ventured to give the name "denotation ; " to their po we~ of suggesting ideas, I have
ventured to give the name" connotation." And I have
tried to show you that such choice and compoRition of
.. the elements of style as shall best denote our meaning
is what Clearness demands; that such choice and
composition of the elements as shall best connote our
emotion is what Fnrce demands; and that such choice
and composition of the elements as shall most exquisitely adapt itself to the eternally elusive immaterial reality of thought and emotion is what Elegance
demands. In a single sentence, to sum up all I have
· tried to tell you, all that ten years of toilsome work
have taught me: the secret of Clearnes~ lies in denotation ; the secret of Force lies in connotation ; the
secret of Elegance lies in adaptation.

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INDEX.

.ADAPTATION, the secret of elegance,
282; examples of, 283-288.
Ambiguity, 205.
Anticlimax, 102, 133.
Argument, 164.
Artifice, 89, 101, 120, 141.
Associatfon of ideas, 71.
Assumptions, 201.
Average man, 198, 2'J9.·
BALANCE, 95.
Barbarisms, 44-47, 50.
Books of reference, 20.
Brevity, 63.

Common errors, 1, 2 .
Commonplaces, 52, 62, 63, 84, 1«,
209.
Compactness, 64.
Compositions, 27-39; kinds of composition, 27, 30 (see Sentences, Paragraphs, and Whole Compositions);
beginning and end of, 33; substance of, 29, 30.
Confusion, 147.
Confusion of. mind, 135, 153, 165,
209-213, 214.
Connectives, In sentences, 105, 108110; in paragraphs, 142-145.
Connotation, 74, 75, 232, 242, 281; in
sentences, 112, 113; in paragraphs,
147-149; in whole compositions,
191 ; in secret of force, 242, 270,
271.
Construction, in sentences, 105, 107,
108 (see Coherence); in paragraphs,
137-142; m whole compositions,
174, 175.
Conversation, 122.
Co-ordination, 109, 145.
Creative imagination, 7, 401 212, 277.

CHAPTERS, 27, 150.
Clearness, 8, 193-233; deftned, 194;
offences against, 202 (see Vagueness, Ambiguity, and Obscurity); a
· relative quality, 194-196.
Coherence, principle of, 29, 34, 35, 96;
conflict with mass, 179, 180; of
sentence, 103-111 (see Order of
Words, Constructions, and Connectives); test of coherence of sentence,
110; historical growth of, 110; of
paragraphs, 134-146 (see Order of DAILY writing, 265, 269.
Sentences, Constructions, and Con- Definition, 221, 222. ·
nectives); test of coherence in par- Denotation, 74, 75, 232, 239, 281;
agraphs, 145; historical developin sentences, 112, 113; In parament of, 145; in whole composigraphs, 147-149; in whole compositions, 173-179.
tions, 191; secret of clearness, 233

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INDEX.

Description, 216-220.
Dictionaries, 16, 20, 26, 51, 67.
Diffuseness, 64-66.
EFFECTS, 55, 56, 58, 60, 67, 85, 89,
111, 112, 146-149, 162, 190, 191,
230.
Elegance, 8, 194, 272-307; defin ed,
272, 275-277, 282; Addisonian, 274,
297; a relative qunlity, 289-292.
Elements of style, 10-39, 150, 151,
189, 191, 192, 239 (see Word~, Sentences, Paragraphs, Whole Compositions); relation of elements and
qualities, 214; summary of, 191,
192.
Emphasis, 82, 83, 100, 102.
EngliMh language, 15, 36, 56, 88.
Etymology, 56.
Euphemism, 296.
Eye and ear, 32, 82, 83, 99, 100.
FASHIONS, 23.
Faults of genius, 197.
Figures of speech, 245-261.
Fine art, 131, 142.
Force, 8, 194, 234-271; defined, 236,
239; a relative quality, 236, 238.

IDEALISM, 305-307.
Idioms, 78-80.
Immaterial realities, 6
Impressions, 234-236.
Improprieties, 44, 47-50, 81.
Inadequacy of expresswn, 278 -280,
302-305.
lndecis10n, 147.
Individuality, 264.
Inelegance, 293-297.
Inflections, 36, 88.
LANGUAGE, 13, 76, lH; written and
spoken, 16, 38, 82, 93, 127.
•
Languages, dead, 18-20.
Letters, 11.
Letter-writing, 25.
MAss, principle of, 29, 32-.1" 96; ·
conflict with coherence, 179, 180;'
of sentences, 99-103; test of man
of sentences, 100; historical devel·
opment of, 100 ; of paragraphs,
126-134; test- of mass of para,.
graphs, 128-130; historical development of mass of paragraphs, 133;
in whole compositions, 162-173.
Mastery, 298.
Material symbols, 7, 32, 213.
Mechanical devices, 165, 173, 211.·
Metaphors, 61; mixed, 260 (see Figures of Speech).
'
Method, 201, 210, 212, 230, 23L' "!
Misunderstanding, 68, 69.
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Monotony, 120.

GENERAL principles, 2.
General term11, 214, 216.
Good use, 13-26,' 28, 35-39, 42, 69,
77, 82, 83, 99, 114, 135, 141, 150,
151, 152, 189, 190, 212, 222 (see
Reputable, National, and Present
Use); violations of, 43-50 (see Barbarisms, Improprieties, and Sole- NAMES, 41.
cisms); good sense, 78, 120, 131, Narrative, 163.
National use, 21, 22.
142.
Grammar, 77; English, 77-81.
Grammars, 16, 201 26.
OBSCURITY, ~06-209, 223-228, "''.
Order of word11, 36, 37, 104, 1061 of
sentences, 135-137; of paragrapha.
HABIT&, of expression, 268; of
.~.
173, 174.
thought, 63, 661 85, 114.

.INDEX.
PARAGRAPHS, 27, 32, 38, 39, 114149, 229; defined, 119; beginniugs
and ends of; 127, 180; kinds of,
121.
Parallel construction. See Constructions.
Perception, 262, 265, 299-301.
Plan of this book, 39, 186-18!"1.
Planning of compositions, 116, 153157, 186; value of care in, 181185, 229, 230.
Platitudes, 204.
Poetry, 299-301.
Practical men, 228.
Present use, 21, 23.
Prevision, 117, 126, 131.
Principles of composition, 28-39, 180,
189, 190, 192, 229 (see Unity, Mas~ ,
and Coherence); in sentences, 96111; in paragraphs, 122-149; in
whole compositions, 151-192; in
practice, 224, 227.
Problems, 136, 190. ·
Proper names, 14, 72-74.
. Proportions of compositions, 132.
Pr...nctuation, 82.
Purposes and methods, 292-29&.

815

Simplicity, 198-200.
Solecisms, 78, 81.
Specific terms, 216-220.
Spencer's "Philosophy of Style,"
86.
Style, 3, 7, 39 (see Elements and
Qualities), 39; a conflict between
usage and principle, 39, 99, 102;
historical development of English 1
90-95, 98, 100, llO, 126, 133; periodic and looge, 85-87.
Subject, shift of, 108, 141 1 143.
Subordination, 109.
Suggestions, 71, 72.
Summaries, 156, 177, 178.
Supreme works of art, 198.
Sympathy, 261-270, 292; with subjects, 262-267; with readers, 267.

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Thought and emotion, 4, 67. 212.
Titles, 157, 214-216.
TransilionR, 178.
Tropes, 245.

UNITY, principle of, 29-.12, 96; oC
sentence, 30, 32, 96-99. 224; test
QuALITt~s of style, 7-10, 17, 40, 193,
of unit~· of ~entence, 98 ; of para302. See Clearness, Force, and
graph, 30, 32, 122-126; test of uniElegance.
ty of paragraph, 124; violation of
unit~· of paragraph, 125; of whole
composition, 30, 32, 15!J-162; test
RANT, 271.
of unity of whole composition, 155;
Reminiscence, 203.
disregard of unity of whole compoReputable use, 21.
sition, 159-161.
Revision, 116.
Use. See Good Use.
Rhetoric, 2; textbooks of, 28.
V AGUENRSS, 202-204.
SELF-CULTURE, 262.
Vocabulary,
50-52, 67.
Sentences, 27, 82, 37, 89, 76-113,
Voice, shift of, 108, 141.
222, 229; defined, 76; beginning
and end of, 100, 102; kirids of, 8391!; long and short, 84, 89, 92, 94, WRAKENING of style, 270.
98, 223, 224;
hole compogitions, 27, 32, 38, 39,
84-89, 92, 94, 98; b:_::a::.la::n.::c::e_:::dµ9....___ _,__,50-192, 229 ; beginnings of, 166-

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168; ends of, 168, 172; proportionB
. of, 169-172.
Words, 13-26, 39, 41-75; big and lit·
tie, 52, 57, 62; discrepancy between
words and ideas, 67-75, 112, 147,
222; figurative and literal, 62, 60,
. 62; foreign, 46 ; general and ape-

cific, 62, 118-00, ~ 1 kinda of, 60-ela
Latin and Saxon, 112, ~7, 89; ,
new and slang, 411; number of, 8166, 218; obsolete, 45; order of,'lt. ,
37, 104, 105 (see Cohuuoe)t .
written words, 7; 12, ~ ,
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