nity was presented, he praised through the whole period of his existence with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if a comparison be instituted between him and the man whose pupil he was!" Condensed thus-"Pope professed himself the pupil of Dryden, whom he lost no opportunity of praising; and his character may be illustrated by a comparison with his master."

A Paraphrase, or Commentary, which professes to explain something difficult or obscure, is often a kind of circumlocution.

The devices of exposition will be fully stated hereafter. What is called the paraphrase is usually a diffuse rendering of the original. As applied to Scripture, Campbell and Whately both animadvert on the practice of expanding "every passage hard or easy, nearly to the same degree."

Examples of the dilution of a forcible original in a paraphrase are cited by Macaulay, from Patrick :-" In the Song of Solomon is an exquisitely beautiful verse. 'I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love.' Patrick's version runs thus: 'So I turned myself to those of my neighbors and familiar acquaintance who were awakened by my cries to come and see what the matter was; and conjured them, as they would answer it to God, that, if they met with my beloved, they would let him know-What shall I say?—What shall I desire you to tell him, but that I do not enjoy myself now that I want his company, nor can be well till I recover his love again?'

The term paraphrastic has come to signify a style enfeebled by circumlocution.

Prolixity expresses the accumulation of circumstances and particulars to the extent of encumbering the meaning.

There are lengthened forms used for giving emphasis and importance; as, "It would take a good deal of argument to convince me of that," instead of simply "I doubt that;" "If one were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and

prosperous, one would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." The periphrasis here is justified by the momentous nature of the fact to be introduced.

Circumlocution may be employed with poetic effect, as in

Milton:

"Nine times the space that measures day and night

To mortal men, he with his horrid crew

Lay vanquished rolling in the fiery gulf."

There is elegance in Cowley's periphrasis-" set himself up above all that was ever called sovereign in England."

The Euphemism often takes the form of circumlocution, as in the following, commended by Longinus: "The appointed journey," for death; "The fallen are borne forth publicly by the state,"❞—that is, buried.

CHAPTER III.

ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS.

64. As the grammatical order of words is not always the best for effect, this order is frequently departed from in poetry, and sometimes in prose.

Grammatically, in English, the subject precedes the predicate; and, in constructions containing a transitive verb, the order is subject, verb, object; but an altered order may add to the force of the expression.

Thus the predicate may be placed first, "Great is the mystery of godliness." "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord." "Silent they lie." "There appeared to them Moses and Elias."

"The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,

And shrieks the wild sea-mew.' ""

“ Nabal (fool) is his name, and folly is with him.”

Campbell observes that our translation of the Bible has

missed the effect of the original in the passage, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city." By placing the participle of the predicate first, the force is restored: "Fallen, fallen, is Babylon, that great city."

The verbal root may be made to precede the auxiliary in compound tenses; as, "go I must," "do it he shall."

The object of the verb is brought forward to the place of emphasis in these examples: "Silver and gold have I none." "Such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard."

"They could take their rest, for they knew Lord Stratford watched. Him they feared, him they trusted, him they obeyed."

The adverb, when unusually emphatic, is occasionally made to precede; as, "Up goes my grave Impudence to the maid." The negative adverb may thus be made emphatic.

"Not in the legions

Of horrid hell, can come a devil more damn'd

In ills to top Macbeth."

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," &c.

The place immediately after a conjunction, adverb, or adverbial clause, beginning a sentence, is emphatic, as in Mil

ton:

"At last his sail-broad vans

He spreads for flight."

Also the place after the name of an object addressed:

"Powers and dominions, deities of heaven,

Me, tho' just right and the fixed laws of heaven

Did first create your leader,-"

"L Among many nations there was no king like Solomon; nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause to sin."

Thirdly, the place after a call to attention; as, “Behold, now is the accepted time."

In the following example, the inverted arrangement has to be aided by a pleonasm: "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?"

The foregoing are Campbell's chief illustrations of the change of order for effect. We have still to see the reasons.

PLACE OF QUALIFYING WORDS.

75

65. There are certain principles of arrangement that enable us more readily to apprehend the meaning of a complex statement.*

The first is that qualifying words should precede the object that they qualify; as, a black horse, a decidedly favorable answer.

This principle is otherwise expressed thus: "No concrete image should be suggested until the materials for it have been presented." The reason is, that if the name of the concrete thing is given first, "horse," for example, the image formed by the mind is likely to be wrong; probably a bay horse, as the most common, is pictured. Hence, when the word "black" is added, the mental image must be unmade; the bay color has to be suppressed and the black inserted, unless we have been accustomed to suspend the act of conceiving until all the expected qualifications are known. It is, therefore, better that the word black should prepare the way for the mention of horse. The English usage of placing the adjective before the noun is thus justified on principle. So with the adverb and the verb.

As the predicate of a proposition modifies the subject, like an adjective immediately qualifying it, there is a ground for making the predicate precede the subject. The mention of "great" should precede "the mystery of godliness," as it is under the condition implied in "great" that the mystery is meant to be imagined. The following verse from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner," although elliptical in its structure, illustrates the general principle :—

When the predicate verb is accompanied by some limit or qualification as its complement, the limiting circumstances ought to come first. The priority of the verb, as well as of

* Taken from Herbert Spencer's Essay on the Philosophy of Style (Essays, p. 228).

the complement, is illustrated in the opening of Keats's "Hyperion":

"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone."

A conditional clause precedes the main clause, from the same consideration. If the main clause stands first, the hearer conceives it unconditionally, and then has to re-shape his conception. And generally, subordinate clauses are properly made to come before their principal. Containing, as the subordinate proposition does, some qualifying or explanatory idea, its priority prevents misconception of the principal one, and therefore saves the mental effort needed to correct such misconception.

The following is an example of the conditional clause placed first: "Were the honor given to wealth and to title bestowed exclusively on high achievements and intrinsic worth, how immense would be the stimulus to progress !

In the next example, two subordinate statements are given in advance, and the principal comes last.

"The secrecy once maintained in respect to the parliamentary debates, is still thought needful in diplomacy; and, in virtue of this secret diplomacy, England may any day be unawares betrayed by its ministers into a war costing a hundred thousand lives, and hundreds of millions of treasure; yet the English pique themselves on being a self-governed people!"

66. A second principle is, that the words and expressions most nearly related in thought should be placed closest together. This consideration may prevent the foregoing principle from being carried out to the full.

The longer the time that elapses between the mention of the qualifying clause and that which it qualifies, the longer must the mind be burdened with unemployed ideas; and the burden is increased according to the number of qualifying clauses. Hence, other considerations being equal, preference is to be given to the arrangement that entails the fewest and the shortest suspensions. The following instance will illustrate what is meant :