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II. The variable element includes the points on which men do not feel alike. Ages, countries, and individuals, differ in their sense of what is excellent in composition.

Thus, as regards age and country:-The taste of the Greeks, reverentially accepted in many things by after ages, allowed to orators and poets a license of personal vituperation that would now be condemned. Again, nothing has varied so much in different times as the mode of representing the passion of love; allusions forbidden by the taste of our day were permitted in former times.

As an example of change of taste, compare the ancient rules of Tragedy (adhered to in the French stage), which forbid the introduction of comic scenes, with the English practice in that respect. "It was Dryden's opinion, at least for some time, and he maintains it in the dedication to this play (The Spanish Fryar), that the drama required an alternation of comic and tragic scenes; and that it is necessary to mitigate by alleviations of merriment the pressure of ponderous events, and the fatigue of toilsome passions. Whoever,' says he, cannot perform both parts, is but half a writer for the stage." (Johnson's Life of Dryden.)

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Taste is also a matter of personal peculiarity; varying with the emotional constitution, the intellectual tendencies, and the education of each individual. A person of strong tender feelings is not easily offended by the iteration of pathetic images; the sense of the ludicrous and of humor is in many cases entirely wanting; and the strength of humane and moral sentiment may be such as to recoil from inflicting ludicrous degradation. A mind bent on the pursuit of truth views with distaste the exaggerations of the poetic art. Each person is by education more attached to one school or class of writers than to another.

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CHAPTER V.

THE SENTENCE AND THE PARAGRAPH.

THE SENTENCE.

132. THE rules of Syntax apply to the concord, the government, and the arrangement of words in sentences. Under the head of Arrangement, it is laid down that qualifying words should be placed near the words they qualify, a rule having clearness expressly in view.

A sentence in any way ungrammatical incurs the risk of being obscure, if not a perversion of the meaning; more especially in cases where the rules of syntax are violated, where the pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions are not correctly introduced, and where the different parts of the verb are misapplied.

In the present work, under the Number of Words (p. 67), and under the Arrangement of Words (p. 65), principles were brought forward having reference to the structure of the sentence.

133. In a rhetorical view, sentences are divided into various classes.

I. A distinction is made between the Period and the Loose Sentence. In a Period, the meaning is suspended. until the close.

The first sentence of Paradise Lost, if stopped at Heavenly muse, would be a period; short of that point, no complete meaning is given. Continued as it is to line 16 in prose or rhyme, it is loose; there being several places where the reader might pause without incompleteness.

The following is another example :-" Shaftesbury's strength lay in reasoning and sentiment, more than in description;. however much his descriptions have been admired!" In this sen

PERIODS-LOOSE SENTENCES.

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tence, we might stop (1) at reasoning, (2) at sentiment, (3) at description, where, at all events, we should expect a final conclusion; to our surprise, a conditional clause is still to be added. On the general principle of placing qualifying statements before the parts qualified, the sentence should be inverted thus:" However much Shaftesbury's descriptions have been admired, his strength lay not in description, but in rea soning and sentiment."

"It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is as absurd to expect them without it as to hope for a harvest where we have not sown the seed." A sentence of this character is rendered periodic, by reserving the predicate"cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind"-to the last; but there is often an advantage in availing ourselves of the construction with "it is," to commence with the predicate. If the clause "that application acquisitions" were

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omitted, the sentence would be a good specimen of a period; the next clause being kept in suspense by the use of the correlatives as―as, and by the adverb where.

The next example brings into view other connectives whereby the meaning is suspended:-"But on this topic they are either silent, or speak with such uncertain utterance that they might have as well been dumb. A few slight changes would make it loose; "they are silent |, or else speak with uncertain utterance |, so that they might have been dumb | as well." Compare also, "He speaks so clearly as to be always understood;" with, "He speaks clearly, so as to be always understood."

To take another instance.

"On the whole, while the Essay on Criticism (Pope's) may be readily allowed to be superior in execution, as it certainly is in compass, to any work of a similar nature in English poetry, it can hardly be said either to redeem the class of didactic poems on æsthetics from the neglect into which they have fallen, or to make us regret that the critical ability of our own day should prefer to follow the path marked out by Dryden, when he chose to discourse of poetry

in his own vigorous and flexible prose." The last clause, when he chose, &c., is not essential to the completeness, and the sentence is therefore loose.

The loose sentence must be of frequent occurrence; our language not permitting the inversions requisite for the constant practice of suspending the sense. Even when a meaning is grammatically complete, we are often aware that something has yet to be added to explain or qualify what has been said, and we still keep up the attitude of expectation. In the sentence, “The mature man, in the desire to get quit of an early habit, attempts an imitation |, in which he is prevented from succeeding by the lasting consequences of the unintentional imitation | into which he had glided when a child,” there are several places where we might close with an intelligible sense, but we feel that the writer will still add something to make his meaning more definite and clear.

In the following, the stoppage might occur at a great many points, yet the sentence is not viciously loose, because the additions, although they could be dispensed with, chime in to advantage with what went before: "The only light of every truth is its contrasting error |; and, therefore, in the contemplation and exhibition of truth, a philosopher should take especial care not to keep himself too loftily aloof from the contemplation and exhibition of error, as these proud spirits Plato, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Hegel, most undoubtedly did, much to the detriment of their own profound disquisitions |, and to the loss of mankind, who, had their method been different, might have profited more largely by their wisdom!" The last clause but one "had their method been different" could have been placed at the end, which would have added to the looseness.

134. The participial construction is one of the hinges of the period.

This is one of the advantages accruing from the participle. The following period would be a very loose sentence, but for the suspension arising out of the participial clause. "Accustomed to a land at home where every height, scen dimly in the dis

SHORT AND LONG SENTENCES.

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tance, might prove a cathedral tower, a church spire, a pilgrim's oratory, or at least a way-side cross, these religious explorers must have often strained their sight in order to recognize some object of a similar character."

135. The periodic form, while keeping up the attention and being a collateral security for the right placing of qualifying words, is favorable to Unity in

sentences.

This will be illustrated afterwards. In the meantime, the examples quoted will show that, in the loose sentence, the additions tacked on may readily lapse into digressions.

It is desirable, in some measure, to counteract the tendency of our language to the loose sentence, by interspersing periods on all suitable occasions.

136. II. Sentences are divided into Short and Long.

Among the points of mere variety in style, is the length of the sentence. Irrespective of this, each kind has its advantages. The short sentence is the easier to understand; the long, besides affording more room to expand the sense, may admit of an oratorical cadence and be graduated to a climax.

It is in the long sentence principally that we encounter the faults of intricacy, prolixity, ambiguity, and vagueness.

Short sentences, unvaried by long, have an abrupt effect in prose, and are still more unsuited to poetry.

For example:-" Antony has done his part. He holds the gorgeous East in fee. He has revenged Crassus. He will make kings, though he be none. He is amusing himself, and Rome must bear with him. He has his griefs as well as Cæsar. Let the sword settle their disputes. But he is no longer the man to leave Cleopatra behind. She sails with him, and his countrymen proclaim how low he has fallen."

137. III. The Balanced Sentence. When the different clauses of a compound sentence are made similar in form, they are said to be Balanced.

The style of Johnson abounds in this arrangement :—“Con

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