necessary to dwell upon the importance of grammatical correctness in style. It must be evident that pure English consists in something more than well-chosen words; and that these words, when connected together in phrases, must accord with the standard which has been established by the best authority. English grammar requires far more attention than it usually receives from the literary man. It may not be so logical or so symmetrical as that of the classical languages, and there may be not a few points about which professed grammarians differ; yet it may be affirmed that this very looseness and comparative lawlessness arises from the world-wide comprehensiveness which distinguishes it, and it should incite every writer to master whatever difficulties there may be.

The solecism is a subject that belongs to grammar, and not to rhetoric, and all violations of the rules of syntax may be found fully discussed in the works of Latham, Fowler, Angus, and others.

CHAPTER V.

PERSPICUITY IN SENTENCES.

$ 49. PERIODIC AND SIMPLE STRUCTURE.

PERSPICUITY depends not only upon the choice of words, but also upon their arrangement.

Sentences, in their various divisions of simple, complex, and compound, naturally fall into two great classes-long and short; and these produce such an effect upon the manner of composition that style itself has been classified upon this basis. Where the writing is chiefly characterized by long sentences, it has been called "style periodique," and also "style soutenu;" where short sentences abound, it has been called "style coupé." These words, however, have not yet been naturalized in our language, and the terms "periodic structure" and "simple structure" are for various reasons preferable. Of the two, the simple structure is the more conducive to perspicuity, for where the sentences are long great care is needed that the clauses be kept in their proper order and relation; that the leading subject

be retained prominently before the mind; and that too many things be not crowded together. In short sentences the difficulties are not so great; and although they have their own faults, yet obscurity is by no means one of them.

French prose literature is considered by competent critics as superior to all others in perspicuity, and it is a significant fact that the simple structure prevails there to a greater extent than elsewhere. The French writer aims in the first place to make his meaning clear, and seems to feel instinctively that this aim may be best secured by the short sentence. On the other hand, that of Germany is distinguished by its lack both of brilliancy and perspicuity; while at the same time it is marked by the frequent recurrence of long, clumsy, and unwieldy periods. German prose literature has produced no group of great writers like those of Rome, France, and England; and its chief fault lies in the persistent choice and careless treatment of long sentences. The genius of the language commends the periodic structure to the German writer, but this is no excuse for the awkward manipulation of words.

In English prose there are abundant examples of both styles. The long sentence characterizes the writings of Hooker, Milton, Johnson, Gibbon, and De Quincey, while the short sentence is the chief feature in Bacon's Essays, and in the works of Addison, Sterne, Lamb, and Macaulay.

This subject is well presented by De Quincey in the following passage:

"In French authors, whatever may otherwise be the differences of their minds or the differences of their themes, uniformly we find the periods short, rapid, unelaborate. Pascal or Helvetius, Condillac or Rousseau, Montesquieu or Voltaire, Buffon or Duclos-all alike are terse, perspicuous, brief. Even Mirabeau or Chateaubriand, so much modified by foreign intercourse, on this point adhere to their national models. Even Bossuet or Bourdaloue, where the diffuseness and amplitude of oratory might have been pleaded as a dispensation, are not more licentious in this respect than their compatriots. One rise in every sentence, one gentle descent-that is the law for French composition, even too monotonously so; and thus it happens that such a thing as a long, involved sentence could not be produced from French literature, though a sultan were to offer his daughter in marriage to the man who should find it.

"The character of German prose is an object of legitimate astonishment. Whatever is bad in our own ideal of prose style, whatever is most repulsive in our own practice, we see there carried to the most outrageous excess.

Lessing, Herder, Richter, and Lichtenberg, with some few beside, either prompted by nature or trained upon foreign models, have avoided the besetting sin of German prose. Among ten thousand offenders we would single out Immanuel Kant. . . . A sentence is viewed by him, and by most of his countrymen, as a rude mould or elastic form admitting of expansion to any possible extent; it is laid down as a rude outline, and then, by superstruction and epi-superstruction, it is gradually reared to a giddy altitude which no eye can follow. Yielding to his natural impulse of subjoining all additions or exceptions or modifications, not in the shape of separate consecutive sentences, but as intercalations and stuffings of one original sentence, Kant might naturally enough have written a book from beginning to end in one vast hyperbolical sentence."

English prose literature affords abundant examples of each style; some authors prefer the short sentence, others the long, while others again exhibit in their writings an equal proportion

of both.

The following is an example of the simple structure:

"The allies had during a short time obtained the most appalling successes. This was their auspicious moment. They neglected to improve it. It passed away and returned no more. The Prince of Orange arrested the progress of the French armies. Louis returned to be amused and flattered at Versailles. The country was under water. The winter approached."MACAULAY.

With this may be contrasted the following example of the periodic structure:

"Were I ambitious of any other patron than the public, I would inscribe this work to a statesman who, in a long, a stormy, and at length an unfortunate administration, had many political opponents almost without a personal enemy; who has retained on his fall from power many faithful and disinterested friends, and who under the pressure of severe infirmity enjoys the lively vigor of his mind and the felicity of his incomparable temper." GIBBON.

In all vivacious writing, the simple structure is very generally employed; and it lends itself readily to a brisk and brilliant movement of thought:

"Don't tell me that I am grown old and peevish and supercilious; name the geniuses of 1774, and I submit. The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and in time a Virgil at Mexico and a Newton at Peru. At last some curious traveller from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul's, like the editions of Baalbec and Palmyra."-HORACE WALPOLE.

In graver composition, especially of the didactic sort, the periodic structure is more common. This is especially seen in the works of Dr. Johnson:

"And yet it fills me with wonder that in almost all countries the most ancient poets are considered the best; whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift conferred at once; or that the first poetry of every nation surprised them as a novelty, and retained the credit by consent which it received by accident at first; or whether, as the province of poetry is to describe nature and passion, which are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those who followed them but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images.”

Both styles are often employed by the same writer. The following examples are taken from Leigh Hunt's essay on Books:

Periodic structure :

"Sitting last winter among my books, and walled round with all the comfort and protection which they and my fireside could afford me, to wit, a table of high-piled books at my back, my writing-desk on one side of me, some shelves on the other, and the feeling of the warm fire at my teet, I began to consider how I loved the authors of these books; how I loved them, too, not only for the imaginative pleasures they afforded me, but for their making me love the very books themselves, and delight to be in contact with them."

Simple structure :

"I intrench myself in my books equally against sorrow and the weather. If the wind comes through a passage, I look about to see how I can fence it off by a better disposition of my movables. If a melancholy thought is importunate, I give another glance at my Spenser. When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean it literally; I like to lean my head against them."

The following passages are from the writings of Chalmers: Periodic structure :

"Though the earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it were extinguished forever; an event so awful to us and to every world in our vicinity, by which so many suns would be extinguished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetfulness-what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship?"

Simple structure :

"These poor animals just look, and tremble, and give forth the very indications of suffering that we do. Theirs is the unequivocal physiognomy of pain. They put on the same aspect of terror on the demonstrations of a menaced blow. They exhibit the same distortions of agony after the infliction of it. The bruise, the burn, or the fracture, or the deep incision, or the fierce encounter with one of equal or superior strength, just affects them similarly to ourselves. Their blood circulates as ours. They sicken, and they grow feeble with age, and finally they die, just as we do."

§ 50. RULE FOR THE GENERAL ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS IN

A SENTENCE.

Attention must be paid to the general arrangement of words in a sentence.

The rule which is usually given for this is as follows: The words and members most nearly related should be placed in the sentence as near to each other as possible, so as to make their mutual relations clearly apparent. The same rule is also stated in the following words: Those parts of a sentence which are most closely connected in their meaning should be as closely as possible connected in position.

From inattention to this various errors frequently arise. Sometimes the adjective is placed in a wrong position :

"The Episcopal Church furnishes the assurance of an organic and unbroken unity and succession from the apostles, by a line of unbroken bishops, down to the bishop of this diocese."

The writer should have said, "an unbroken line of bishops." The adverb is misplaced in the following sentence:

'They thought that, if he wanted his civil rights, he ought to have sent in his application for pardon at least."

Here "at least" seems to qualify "pardon," but it was intended to refer to the act of sending in an application; and it should have been," he ought at least to have sent in his application.'

The position of the relative should receive careful attention:

"I struck the animal with my knife on the head, which, being made of bad steel, broke, and I was left at his mercy."

"They flew to arms and attacked Northumberland's horse, whom they put to death."

In these sentences the position of the relative is such as to give an absurd turn to the meaning.