Through constantly aiming at a balanced structure of sentence, Johnson sometimes approaches this fault. Speaking of the style of Pryor, he says: "He had often infused into it much knowledge and much thought; had often polished it into elegance, often dignified it into splendor, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity; and did not discover that it wanted the power of engaging attention and alluring curiosity."

The coupling of synonymous words and phrases is admissible under the following circumstances :

(1.) When one word does not express the full sense intended.

No two words are exactly synonymous for all purposes; one has a shade that the other wants; and it may take both to give the whole meaning. Hence we are accustomed to such phrases as "ways and means," "passing and transitory," "subject-matter." In legal documents synonymous words are joined for the sake of exhaustive completeness. When Wordsworth couples "the vision and the faculty divine," he intends that the two phrases, which are nearly alike, should unfold between them a greater amount of meaning than either conveys.

(2.) For the sake of putting greater stress on the prominent points of the exposition.

Good exposition requires that the main subject should be distinguished from the subordinate parts. This is effected, among other ways, by dwelling longer upon it; and repetition by means of equivalent phrases may be occasionally resorted to. "The head and front of his offending:""the end and design."

It is implied in the foregoing principle that wordy diffuseness should be especially avoided in subordinate clauses and statements.

It is often better that a subordinate clause should be feeble or obscure, than that it should be raised out of its place by amplification. Gibbon, speaking of the deification of the Roman Emperors, says: "This legal, and, as it should seem,

injudicious profanation, so abhorrent to our stricter principles, was received with a very faint murmur by the easy nature of Polytheism." This is better than, "by Polytheism, which was of a nature easy and accommodating."

(3.) In strong passion, when the mind is disposed to dwell upon the object of the passion.

Chatham's famous address abounds in tautologies referable to this principle. "I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this house and in this country." So, Bolingbroke exclaims in an invective against the times: "But all is little, and low, and mean among us. Cicero's exultation over Catiline's discomfiture was expressed by the use of four verbs nearly equivalent in meaning—“Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.”

Affection and admiration lead to similar repetitions.

99.66

It is desirable to avoid such tautologies as the "first aggressor," the "standard pattern," the "verdant green,' some few." So, excess of inflection is objectionable; as "chiefest," "extremest," "worser," "most highest."

62. II. REDUNDANCY, or Pleonasm, consists of additions not essential to the sense.

As when something sufficiently implied in the words already used is also separately expressed. The following is an extreme illustration: "They returned back again to the same city from whence they came forth;" the five words in italics are redundant. "The different departments of science and of art mutually reflect light on each other;" either of the expressions in italics embodies the whole idea. A very common redundancy is exemplified in the expression, "the universal opinion of all men." In the sentence, "I wrote you a letter yesterday," the words a letter may be omitted, being already implied in "I wrote you."

While Tautology adds a superfluous word in the same grammatical place, Redundancy repeats the meaning in a different. place: "I rejoiced at the glad sight."

Campbell remarks that our language contains many compound words in which there is redundancy: as, unto, until, selfsame, four-square, devoid, despoil, disannul, oftentimes, nowadays, downfall, furthermore, wherewithal. Sometimes terminations are added to words without a specific meaning: as, mountain, fountain, meadow, valley, island, climate; for mount, fount, &c. Again, we find double terminations of the same import, as in philosophical, tragical, political. In many such cases, the different words gradually acquire different senses— climate, clime; politic, political.

Redundancy is permissible, for the surer conveyance of important meaning, for emphasis, and in the language of passion and of poetic embellishment.

In giving directions and instructions, it may be right to add an explicit statement to what is already implied; as in military despatches and official instructions.

"We have seen with our eyes," 99 66 we have heard with our ears," are redundancies that give emphasis to the action expressed.

The epithets and amplifications of poetry may add nothing to the meaning, but they fulfil the end of the art, which is to give pleasure.

"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn

is an accumulation of picturesque circumstances to which the rules of brevity would not apply.

Nevertheless, as the loading of style with epithets leads to the fault called Turgidity, it must be kept under the restrictions hereafter stated with reference to the quality of strength in composition.

63. III. CIRCUMLOCUTION means a diffuse mode of expression, such that the remedy for it is, not omission of parts, but the re-casting of the whole in terser language.

The following is an example: "Pope professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportu

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

"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