THE BALANCED SENTENCE.

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ings can be expressed in exactly the same form of grammar, with the same sound on the ear, we are affected with some degree of surprise, while also enjoying the pleasure of harmony.

140. When a new and distinct meaning can be conveyed in nearly the same words, our feeling of surprise is all the greater.

In the sentence, "this is true but not new, that is new but not true," there is a double application of the balance. First, the sameness of sound in the contrasted terms true and new; and, secondly, the employment of the identical terms, with a mere transposition, to convey a new meaning.

"What is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" is an example to the same purpose. "A juggler is a wit in things, and a wit a juggler in words," is an ingenious combination of simile and balance, to illustrate the real nature of wit.

A good example, containing a profound truth, is furnished by Coleridge :-"When we meet an apparent error in a good author, we are to presume ourselves ignorant of his understanding, until we are certain that we understand his ignorance.' Senior says :-"Charity creates much of the misery it relieves, but does not relieve all the misery it creates."

Napoleon described the tactics of war, as "the art of being strongest on a given point at a given time."

141. The balanced structure is frequently combined with antithesis, or contrast.

"In peace, children bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children." Here the members are balanced, and are also made to convey antithetical or opposed meanings. This addition enhances the effect of the balance.

"If you wish to enrich a person, study not to increase his stores, but to diminish his desires." "Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools." "The laughter will be for those that have most wit, the serious for those that have most reason."

142. The purest form of antithesis is the obverse

iteration, in which character we often find it accom panied with balance.

In an obverse proposition, the equivalent fact is stated from the opposite side; "heat relaxes the system; cold braces it." "Light cheers; darkness depresses." The following from Bacon combines this form of antithesis with the balance. "Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." "To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in

The style of the Proverbs of Solomon abounds in obverse iteration (see chap. xii. xiii.); and the iterated statements are more or less balanced.

143. Sometimes the contrast of the balanced members is a species of epigram.

As, "when reason is against a man, he will be against reason." This is the epigram of the obverse identical proposition. "Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more," is another of the same. "He should consider often, who can choose but once," is a kind of epigram turning on the opposition of often and once.

The following have the full point of the epigram, together with balance:

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'Frequently we are understood least by those that have known us longest." 'High life below stairs." "He can buy but he cannot gain, he can bribe but he cannot seduce, he can lie but he cannot deceive."

Helps quotes from Southey the balanced and sarcastic innuendo, as if a number of worldlings made a world.”

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144. The contrast may amount only to the pointed expression of difference, without opposition.

In this case also, the balance is often carried out with great elaboration, as in Pope's comparison of Homer and Virgil, and the analogous contrast of Dryden and Pope by Johnson. "Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the better artist: in the one, we most admire the inan; in the other, the work."

THE CONDENSED SENTENCE.

"Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull;
Calm without rage, without o'erflowing full."

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145. Merely to keep up the same leading term, under change of meaning, has the effect of the balance; as, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

"And Rome may bear the pride of him

Of whom herself is proud."

Bentham's celebrated expression of the end of politics and of morality," the greatest happiness of the greatest number," -is balanced in sound, in grammar, and in the recurrence of the word greatest.

“The right man in the right place."

The poet is "dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." (Tennyson.)

"Man desires not only to be loved, but to be lovely."

"Man proposes, God disposes," is a balance in the termination of the balanced words. Also, "Cleanliness is next to god liness."

"Chronic diseases must have chronic cures."

146. IV. The Condensed Sentence. This is a sentence abbreviated by a forced and unusual construction.

Sometimes we find the same verb applied to incongruous objects, as in the expression "separated by mountains and by mutual fear." "Brutus instituted liberty and the consulship." An ordinary writer would have used two verbs to suit these different objects; "Brutus obtained freedom for the State, and instituted the consulship."

Gibbon (who delights in these condensations) describes Spain as "exhausted by the abuse of her strength, by America, and by superstition." Again: "The system of Augustus was adopted by the fears and the vices of his successors." "The Caledonians were indebted for their independence to their poverty no less than to their valor.” "Of the nineteen tyrants who started up under the reign of Gallienus, there was not one who enjoyed a life of peace or a natural death."

There is an artificial condensation in the line of Pope,

"Nature and Homer were, he found, the same."

Such constructions as the following are admissible occasionally :

"After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island (Britain) submitted to the Roman yoke."

"The Danes appeared next year off the eastern coast, in hopes of subduing a people, who defended themselves by their money, which invited assailants, instead of their arms, which repelled. them." (Hume.)

"This conduct of the court, which, in all its circumstances, is so barbarous, imprudent, and weak, both merited and prognosticated· the most grievous calamities." (Ib.)

147. The Condensed Sentence is sometimes used for comic effect.

"Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea."
"To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite.”

The following sentence from Macaulay on the visit of Peter the Great to England is a telling satire. "The Russian grandees in London came to the court dropping pearls and vermin."

148. The profuse employment of the Balanced Sentence, in conjunction with antithesis, epigram, and climax, determines the Pointed Style.

This combination is seen in Pope, Junius, and in a less degree in many others. It is also termed the "Epigrammatic " style. The French excel in epigram and point. The excess of this quality in Tacitus, Lucan, and Seneca, is usually identified with the decline of the Latin language.-It is the nature of all artifices that call attention to the form of the language, after a time to become fatiguing; the more pungent an effect is, the more sparing should be its introduction.

149. Whatever be the subject, or the kind of composition, there are certain things to be attended to in the structure of the sentence.

PLACE OF THE PRINCIPAL SUBJECT.

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When we come to treat of the various kinds of composition, we shall find their several peculiarities occasionally impressing a special character on the structure of the sentence; but we are now to consider the laws that are generally binding. Campbell, in the Philosophy of Rhetoric, observes, with reference to the sentence, "The only rule which will never fail, is to beware of prolixity and of intricacy." Prolixity means overcrowding; intricacy arises when it is not easy to ascertain the relation of one member to another, or when there is a degree of complication amounting to the unintelligible.

150. I. The Principal Subject of a sentence should occupy a conspicuous position. This may be:

(1.) In the beginning. "Learning taketh away the wildness, barbarism, and fierceness of men's minds."

This sentence occurs in Goldsmith: "Nature, with most beneficent intention, conciliates and forms the mind of man to his condition.”. Here the principal subject (as the context shows) is not nature, but the mind of man; accordingly, the preferable arrangement is, "The mind of man is, by Nature's beneficent intention, conciliated and formed to its condition."

To quote another example:-" Homer's beautiful description of the heavens, as they appear in a calm evening by the light of the moon and stars, concludes with this circumstance' and the heart of the shepherd is glad.' Madame Dacier, from the turn she gives to the passage in her version, seems to think, and Pope, in order to make out his couplet, insinuates, that the gladness of the shepherd is owing to his sense of the utility of those luminaries." Now, in the second sentence, the prominence is given, not to the main theme of the sentence, which is the gladness of the shepherd, but to Madame Dacier and Pope. The desirable order would be: "The gladness of the shepherd seems to be attributed by Madame Dacier, from the turn she gives to the passage, and by Pope, in order perhaps to make out his couplet, to the sense of the utility of these luminaries."

“The State was made, under the pretence of serving it, in reality, the prize of their contention, to each of those opposite