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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: 66 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

parties, who professed in specious terms, the one a preference for moderate Aristocracy, the other a desire of admitting the people at large to an equality of civil privileges." As amended by Whately, the sentence runs thus: "The two opposite parties, who professed, in specious terms, the one a preference for moderate Aristocracy, the other a desire of admitting the people at large to an equality of civil privileges, made the State, which they pretended to serve, in reality the prize of their contention." The improvement is manifest. The two opposite parties is now made prominent at the beginning of the sentence, as its subject; the leading idea that they made the State the prize of their contention is placed at the end as the principal part of the predicate; and the structure is rendered periodic.

Again: "It is not without a degree of patient attention, greater than the generality are willing to bestow, though not greater than the object deserves, that the habit can be acquired of examining and judging of our own conduct with the same accuracy and impartiality as that of another." Altered thus (by Whately): "The habit of examining our own conduct as accurately as that of another, and judging of it with the same impartiality, cannot be acquired without a degree of patient attention, not greater indeed than the object deserves, but greater than the generality are willing to bestow." The change consists in beginning with the principal subject. The sentence is unavoidably loose; any attempt to suspend the sense by throwing the verb acquired to the end would probably cause, in the shape of artificial inversion, a worse evil than the looseness.

151. (2.) After an adverbial phrase, or clause, or some statement evidently subsidiary.

The prominence of the principal subject is not affected by qualifying phrases or clauses that are manifestly such. "In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, the Arabian peninsula may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but irregular dimensions."

The sentence: "A dozen will do, for illustration, as well as

POSITION OF IMPORTANT WORDS.

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a million," is more effective thus:-" For illustration, a dozen will do as well as a million."

A passage already quoted (§ 134) as an example of the period, "Accustomed to a land," &c., shows also that the principal subject may follow a participial clause.

152. (3.) At the end. The close of a sentence gives prominence no less than the beginning.

The subject of the sentence may be thrown to the end with a special emphasis:-"The wages of sin is death."

"On whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is his wonderful invention." This is an arrangement for maintaining the interest, by not disclosing the main idea till the very end.

"There is not, and there never was, on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church.”

"On seeking for some clue to the law underlying these current maxims, we may see shadowed forth in many of them, the importance of economizing the reader's attention." Here, as often happens, the principal subject of discourse is not the grammatcal subject of the verb. The writer intends to put it last, and he accordingly makes it a grammatical object, and so, without an inversion, secures for it that position.

"Add to your faith, virtue."

153. II. The Predicate of the sentence is also a principal part, and should have a situation corresponding to its importance.

The close of the sentence is, in our language, the usual place of the predicate, and the opposite order, although agreeable to the first principles of arrangement (§ 65), is considered an inversion. "Blessed are the merciful."

154. When statements of some length enter into the subject, or the predicate, the places of emphasis are to be reserved for the most important words.

A subordinate phrase should not occupy a position where we naturally look for a principal.

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Every attempt to dispense with axioms has proved unsuccessful; somewhere or other in the process assumed theorems have been found." In the latter clause, the unimportant word found has usurped the place of prominence belonging to assumed, on which the real force of the remark hinges. The sentence should either begin or end with assumed:-" Assumed theorems have been found in the process somewhere or other;" or, "Somewhere or other in the process there are found theorems that are assumed."

"That our elder writers to Jeremy Taylor inclusive quoted to excess, it would be the very blindness of partiality to deny." Transpose the clauses: "It would be the very blindness of partiality to deny that our elder writers quoted to excess.'

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"Nor is the reason which has led to the establishment of this moral law difficult to be discerned." The words difficult to be discerned are not the emphatic words of the sentence. Better "Nor is it difficult to discern the reason that has led to the establishment of this moral law."

"And the convertibility of the ordinary mode of description with this new one may be easily shown in any case." "And it is easy to show in any case the convertibility of the ordinary mode of description with this new one."

"The praise of judgment Virgil has justly contested with him, but his invention remains yet unrivalled." More emphatic thus :-" Virgil has justly contested with him the praise of judgment, but no one has yet rivalled his invention."

"He that tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more, to maintain one." Amended:-" for, to maintain one, he must invent twenty more."

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"Both Greeks and Romans drew prognostics from prodigies that is to say, from rare natural appearances; among which comets, meteors, and eclipses held an important place; "among the most important of which were comets, meteors, and eclipses."

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In the following sentence, the emphasis rests on the conditional clauses, and they are with obvious good effect given last:-" Of what consequence are all the qualities of a doctrine, if that doctrine be not communicated; and communicated it is not, if it be not understood?"

The following is from Paley:-"Amongst the causes assigned for the continuance and diffusion of the same moral sentiments among mankind, we have mentioned imitation." This is as it ought to be. He continues, "The efficacy of this principle is most observable in children;" here too an important word occupies the close.

As, in an army on the march, the fighting columns are placed front and rear, and the baggage in the centre, so the emphatic parts of a sentence should be found either in the beginning or in the end, subordinate and matter-of-course expressions in the middle.

It may sometimes be the nature of the clause to refuse emphasis to itself; so that, though placed at the end, it does not interfere with the importance of a preceding clause. In the sentence, "Dissipation wastes health, as well as time," the loose addition, as well as time, cannot deprive health of the stress that would naturally be put upon it.

155. III. A Sentence is required to possess Unity. This means that every part should be subservient to one principal affirmation.

Blair's rules on this point, together with his examples, have been copied by succeeding writers. They are these:

(1.) In the course of the same sentence not to shift the scene. "After we came to anchor, they put me on shore, where I was welcomed by all my friends, who received me with the greatest kindness." Here the putting on shore completes one act, and what follows changes the scene, and should have made a new sentence.

(2.) To avoid crowding into one sentence heterogeneous ideas. "Tillotson died in this year. He was exceedingly beloved both by King William and Queen Mary, who nominated Dr. Tennison, Bishop of Lincoln, to succeed him." The last clause, having no natural connection with the leading proposition, ought not to have been included in the same sentence.

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