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·Ty
HINTS ON THE ART OM
ok
ENGLISH COMPOSITION
IN
PROSE AND VERSE
BY
A. MILLER, MA
Principal, Government College, Ajmer
AND
Supdt European Education, Ajmer-Merwara
WITH A FOREWORD
BY
FJ FIELDEN, MA (LOND), MA (CANTAD)
Principal and Professor of English, Agra College
AGRA
GAYA PRASAD & SONS
EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHERS

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·FOREWORD This comprehensive little book is based upon the author's personal experiences in teaching Indinn students and is the outcome of much careful thought and preparation with a view to the immediate needs of the class It should therefore prove scry useful both to teachers and students of the B A and B Sc classes in our Indian Colleges and Universities The book differs from many of its kind in attempting to treat both prose and verse within the same covers and to some extent along the same lincs, and while all may not agree with the author's views on the thorny subject of prosody, his theories and examples should at least prove stimulating and suggestive The book is also well adapted to the needs of the privace student, or of anyone who wishes to be able to write English well, and to appreciate good writing, without having to be ground through the mill of a University curriculum The varicty of the subjects treated and the interest of many of the passages chosen as cramples combine to place this work apart from the usual run of excellent but dull and uninspiring manuals on English composition, and ought to encourage enthusiasm in the further study of one of the most beautiful languages and one of the finest literatures in the world r J FIELDEV, VA (LOND), MA (CANTAB) Principal and Professor of Cuglish, Agra College

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·CONTENTS PAGE 1 3 7 میا 12 16 25 SUBJECT 1 INTRODUCTION 2 THE ARTICLES CONCORD 4 CASE S VERBS 6 CHOICE OF WORDS 7 THE SENTENCE 8 STYLE 9 VIT AND HUMOUR 10 SIMPLICITY or STYLE 11 FIGURES or SPEECH 12 TASTE 13 POETRY 14 PROSODY 15 CRITICISME 16 WORDSWORTH'S POCTRY 17 NovaAN'S STYLE 18 HINTS ON Essay WRITING 19 NARRATIE CouroSITION 20 DESCRIPTIVE COMPOSITION 21 REFLECTIVE COVOSITION 32 36 41 51 56 68 70 81 101 109 111 114 120 121 125

·22
23
24
126
128
129
134
25
26
27
28
29
30
PARAPHRASE
PRECIS WRITING
PUNCTUATION
OUTLINES OF ESSAYS
EXERCISES
PECES FOR PARAPHRASE
SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS
PIECES FOR ANALYSIS
PARSING AND ANALYSIS
EXERCISES ON QUALITIES OF STYLE
151
166
181
185
187
31
189

·INTRODUCTION One frequently meets with men who can read and understand books in Russian, French, Hindustanı, English, but are unable to speak or wnte these languages We should be wrong to say that they know them They bave but a half knowledge No one can be said to know a language, until he is able to express his thoughts clearly and concisely in that language. Hence it is essential that in the study of a foreign language and in the study of our mother tongue, the reading of standard authors should be accompanied by practice in the art of composition A few decades ago, a man might get on well enough in the world, and make a name for himself as a great adminis trator, or a great soldier, though he had little knowledge of the art of composition, and could scarcely wnte a letter But in our day, thc mcanest office boy must be able to wrc a letter in clear and idiomatic language. From the lowest point of view, then, composition is one of the arts necessary alike to the professional man and the arosan, which we must acquire, if he wish to be more than hewers of wood and drawers of water The truc student however, has higher and less utilitanan aims He socks moral = and intellectual improvement, and the study of the art of composition will aid him in his search To the man of lcusure It is a source of noble and pleasant amusement, stimulating his energies and talents, and saving him from the terrible ennui that comes to a man without occupation The busy man comes from the bustle of the world into the peace and quiet of his study to refresh himself with moral 1 ·2 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION and intellectual truths, as one who tastes delicate fruits in a sccluded garden When vexed with the anxieties, or tired with the vain diversions of the world, how gladly he wel comes lettered ease In the creations of his own mind he can find much to delight, much to amuse him In writing we may find a consolation for all the alls of life. If our lives are spent in the toil and bustle of a great and thronged city, what more happy hours can we have than those which we devote to quiet thought and recreation? If Fate has sent us to secluded country places, or to foreign solitudes, far from the haunts of men, composition will save us from sloth, the pitfall into which the lonely man u liable to fall Think of the great consolation that Sir Walter Raleigh den rived from it during his long imprisonment. Remember how Meton, Bacon, Scott, and many others, were supported by it in the midst of great misfortunes, and how it cnabled them to go on bravely smiling through their tears Happy are those that labour and become learned, for these are the advantages that accrue to them Thc power of writing with vigour and success is the fruit of persey erance You who wish to write well must read with concentration and thoughtfulness, filling your minds with bright and happy thoughts ·A THE ARTICLES The indefinite article an or 'a is a form of the numeral one, and it is still used as a numeral in a few phrases such as 'two of a trade never agree , a year or two In sentences like let me remain a few days a few more years shall roll, the article goes to the plural a singular meaning, but the phrasc a few takes a plural verb, as Here are a few apples The article a is used before words beginning with u, ew, or cu which are sounded as if they began with the letter y, eg, a useless man, a universal truth, a cwer, a culogy, 2 yell When an accented syllable begins with h', we use the article a, as, a hero, a heavy load But when the syllable i unaccented, we write an as an historical lccture, an hotel, an hypothesis One and once arc sounded as if they begin with vv and so we write a one cyed man, a oncc trusted friend Certain phrases are formed by the article a following an adjectic qualificd by as, hou 100, so - The bad man shall attend as bad a master thuis is too horrible'a crimc, it is wiched to accusc so good a man Such words as all, both, half go before the articles --Half a loaf all the money, both the boys. THE DETINITE ARTICLE The is used to designarc a person or thing that has been mentioned before or that is assumed as known - This is the man of a hom I spol c. Tlic hing is dead ·4 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION So we say, the sun, the moon, the stars the sky, the honzon, the earth, the air, the sea, the atmosphere, ctc. Similarly we put the before the names of persons or things well known, or occupying a unique position, as - -The capital of India, The Emperor of India, The Archbishop of Canterbury, The Emperor William, But we say King George, Queen Victona, King James, etc When a noun is defined or limited by an adjective or adjectival clause, or by a prepositional phrase, the article 'the is often placed before it, eg, This is the house where I was born There is the good man of whom I spoke Now is the winter of our discoa tent. The' is used in a widening sense to designate a class of persons or things,- The horse is a useful animal' In this sentence the horse means the whole class of horses Sim: larly, The cow is a sacred animal, The tiger roams in In dian jungles The used before adjectives converts them into nouns denoting a class,--the rich the poor, the cowardly, the sick With these the verb is generally in the plural, as, The virtuous are happy The sick are cared for The is used before adjectives in the superlative degree – The last rose of Sum The strongest man that ever lived The most strenu ous efforts will be made. The_Is some times emphatic, and means the chief, the greatest, the notorious, - I am alone the villain of the carth The is not used before proper names names of persons, towns, countries, capes, lakes, or parts of the earth - Socrates, London Delhi, Bengal, Burma, Cape Horn, Lake Superior but there are many exceptions to this rule - (a) We use the, when the chief of a clan 15 mentioned, as the Bruce, the O'Donoghue, or where the person mentioned is infamous, as the mer etc.)

·THE ARTICLES Dubarry (6) The is used before the names of nations, seccs, the Brash, the French, the Aryans, the Shiahs, and before the names of countries which denyc their names from natural objects such as rivers, mountains and lakes in the neighbourhood, as, the Punjab, the Terai, the Riviera, the Lakes, the Sahara (c) The is used before names of ranges of mountains, rivers, seas, Oceans. Thus we say, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Ganges, the Bay of Bengal, the Aravallis But single mountains do not usually have the articlc, -Mt. Abu, Mc. Esercst (d) Names of lakes capes, and parts of the carth, when followed by a propositional phrasc, rcquire the as the Lake of Gencra, the Cape of Good Hope (c) When the name of a person is limited by an adjective, or an adjectival clause we use the, the cavious Casca, the good Philip, the Smith you know is not the Smith I mcan When a common noun is used so frequently that it comes Very near to being a proper noun, we do not need the article. For example, to say I am going up to town (London) This omission of the article is very common in prepositional phrases expressing time and place -at daybreak, at dann, at sunrisc, since moming, by land and sea Day was breaking hen we set out' In a similar way we say, in depth, in height, in size, by name, etc. When a noun designates all the material of its kind there is, it docs not require the aruclc 15, -ron is the most uscful of all metals Tobacco is a narcotic. But if we wish to speak of a portion of the material and to distinguish it in ·6 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION some way, we qualify it by an adjective, or adjecuvai cause and prefix the,—The iron produced in England is of the finest quality The tobacco grown in India is excellent. The is often used with names of ships regiments ions as, The Royal George, the Grenadiers, the Erinpuras, the Cross Keys Most collective nouns are preceded by the article as, the army, the navy, the crowd But some are so wide in meaning as to include all the human race, and so omit the article, as, mankind, posterity The article is omutted (1) after a possessive case — The king s authority His wifes anxiety (2) before titles and in addresses, as, General Munro, Field Marshall Joffre, Sir Thomas Lipton, Gentlemen of the Jury (3) in prepositional phrases, in favour of, in full, at length, hard of heart, kcen of eye sound in limb (4) before nouns denoting places, buildings parts of the body, which are frequently used -10 town, in church to College under foot, by heart. (5) when several nouns follow one another -palace dome, tower, lake all glittered in the sun (6) in comparative sentences espe cially after like and as ---clear as daylight, black as right, creeping like snail unwillingly to school General remarks on the articles An adjective qualified by as, how, too, so, precedes the in definite article es so good a man Too warm a fire All, both, Half, precede the article —Both the boys Half the world When there are two or more adjectives preceding the same noun the article is used only once, cg-The still, said music of humanity A green mantling vine But the has to be repeated when different things are meant —the inner and the outer wall Similarly we say They dismissed the Secretary and Treasurer (one person) They dismissed the Secretary and the Treasurer (two persons) We $2y a pestle and mortar whcel and axle because we look upon the two 2 ·CONCORD 7 things as one, but, the figures of a horse and a rider', because they are two different things. The INDEFINITE ARTICLE (1) It designates one of a class, I saw a sailor He had the look of a student. (2) Sometimes it is used before a proper noun to denote whole class He has the wealth of a Midas He has the abilities of a Lloyd George In the sentences 'James I was a Stuart, Elizabeth was a Tudor , the article denotes one of a family (3) With abstract nouns it expresses some feeling of the mind, He flew into a passion. She went away in a rage. That is a great pity (4) It is used frequently after certain pronouns, espccially what and such,—What a man What a splendid view On such a night (5) After many it forms a common idiom,- Many a man and many a maid Werc dancing in the woodland glade (6) After numerals a has a distnbutive force --Mangocs were thirty a rupec Apples were two a penny CONCORD The noun before the verb should be considered as the sub ject, and the verb should be made to agree with it. Sometimes voters make the verb agree with the noun that comes after it, as in the sentence the most noticeable feature of the roads in Cashmere are the poplar trees Here the serb agrecs with the poplar trees, because they are the subject of thic arter s thought. But the sentence sounds unpleasant, and sould be better atten The poplar trees are the most noticeable feature of the roads in Cashmere Similarly the sentence, ·8 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION The most slovenly thing about him were his boots, would be better written, 'His boots were the most slovenly chung about him Mistakes in number are very common when a plural nour comes between a singular subject and its verb, or when a singular noun comes between a plural subject and its verb, as, No one but novelists write such nonsense' The verb should be singular, agreeing with no one, but even then 16 would look awkward It would be better to wricc, Only novelists write such nonsense In the sentence, 'They smoked long cigars, the fragrant aroma of which were praised', were' is wrong, because the subject of the sentence is aroma' When we use collective nouns, the sense determines the form of the verb, as And now the foe are approaching' And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing' If we think of the individuals, the plural is used, but if we think of the whole body, the singular is used. "The people is one, and they have all one language "The mob werc clamouring loudly The mob was rushing to the marketplace Nouns of multitude should not have both a singular verb and a plural pronoun in the same sentence ment is said to have mutinued and murdered their officers, is a bad sentence Remember that 'news is singular 'What is the news to-day? Bellows' is plural The bellows are on the hearth Words such as scissors snuffers, often take a plural verb But we can say, a pair of scissors, a pair of snuffers Where are the scissors? A pair of scissors is required We make a distinction between subjects denoting quantity and subjects denouns number Such a sentence as, Every few yards gives you a different net', is correct, The regio ·CONCORD because the real nominative is a certain distance. Similarly, Three quarters of the work is allotted to me, is correct, because the real nominative is the idea of quantity In Thret. fourths of the proceeds are mine', the idea of number makes the verb plural When a subject is composed of two nouns joined by and, the verb is usually plural James and John were there 'The whur of propellors and the throbbing of an engine were heard But if the order of words is inverted, the verb may be singular, as,-- Then was heard the whir of propellors and the throbbing of an engine 'For thinc is the kingdom, the power and the glory In such cases the verb is in agreement with the first noun, and must be applicd to cach of the following words separately In the sentence, 'Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy wealthy and wise the singular verb is used, becausc early to bed and carls to rise us looked upon as a single condition, a logical unity The going carly to bed and getting up carly, combined together make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise Taken scparately they will not have this effect We often find two nouns joined by Sand' follox ed by a singular verb but this is in instances where there is identity of meaning in the nouns, or where usage has linked them together so frequently that they are looked upon as one. Tor cxample, When distress and anguish cometh upon you Prozcobs But even their mind and conscience is defiled In the sentence Dombey and Son is a novel the subject 15 3 title and therefore singular When the subject is a relative pronoun, the verb agrecs with the antecedent, as I that #ntc to you am the author 'V'c that are of a noble race of the story ·10 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION In the sentence, I must be friends with you', we speak of two or more persons, and the sentence is equal to, we must be friends Also notice the idiomatic expressions, 'It is 1, 'Is that you? The verb in the sentence His assistant and successor was chosen yesterday us singular, because 'assistant and successor denotes one man. If we mean two men, we must write His assistant and his successor were chosen yes terday His clerk and agent was prompt to appear , refers to ont man The poet and the musician were present, refers to two men Unity of subject makes it correct to use a singular verb as Sex and three is ninc. , Twice five is ten , Hanging and Wiing goes by destiny Nouce the sentences, 'The captain with his crew was sent on board The museum with its contents was destroyed "The captain and his crew were sent on board , The museum and its contents were destroyed We use and where the sense re qures 3 plural verb After neitber, eitber, etery, cach, we use a singular verb, as Every man loves his freedom Everybody is dissatisfied with his salary Either means one or the other Place thern on either side mcaos on one side or the other In the sentence, On archer side the river le Fields of barley and of rye ather is used wrongly for each Esther and neither refer to one of two things only, and it is wrong to say, Here arc fifty pens You will find that either of them will do Ve should write any Another refers to one of many the other to one of two as Two women shall be grinding at the mul the one shall be taken, and the other left Two men were standig ·CONCORD 11 15 on the road, and another came up' The room was full from one end to another, is wrong, because a room has only two ends We must write The room was full from one end to the other Vhen two singular nouns are joined by or or nor we use the singular verb, but when one of the nouns is plural, wc put it next to the verb, and make the verb plural In this garden arc nor vegetables nor fruit When nouns and pronouns, or pronouns and pronouns, are joined by 'or or nor the usage is vanous For example, Either he or I am in the wrong Neither you nor I are in the wrong Neither he nor I is in the wrong The best way is to make the verb agree with the ncarest The possessive of the indefinite pronoun one ones, and chc possessive of the numeral pronoun one is his or her! Onc does not forget one s own name I saw onc of the ladies drop her glove I saw one of the trees dropping its leaves' Note that he, his, him, may scand for common gender, as suppose cach of us tries his luck But a sentence such as, 'Neither he nor she could make up his mind, would sound cry awkward, so we should cxpress it in another way, Hc and she alıhe were unable to decide The concord of the pronoun with the noun means vanes By this means you will bc able to succeed By these means you will succeed In a similar way we say this many sumthese many hours, thus nineteen ycars With sort or kind the pronoun must als ays be singudar It is wrong to write I do not like these sort of people or These sort of crrors are common What the grammarians call the error of proximity is the very common mistake of putting the verb in the same number as the noun nearest to it instead of making it agree with the subject for exampleor its - mers, ·12 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Neither of his compilations were published The verb should be was agreeing with neither It is not easy to determine the number of the verb, when the subject contains the connective as well as James as well as Mary was there. Napoleon as well as Wellington were great generals Where the verb is to be plural, it will perhaps, be better to use and CASE If a writer is not careful his work is likely to be dis figured by solecists, or mistakes in grammar In conversa uon we often use phrases that are grammatically incorrect, such as, Its me, Who do you mean 'Let you and I look into the matter When we are writing we have to consi der not conversational usage, but correct grammar, and say, It is I Vhom do you mean Let you and me look into the matter In the last sentence the pronoun nue is governed by the transitive verb let Similarly "Let he that looks after them, look on his hand,' should be Ler hum 7 etc! A noun or pronoun, in apposition to another noun must always agree with it in case In the sentence, 'Ask the murderer, he who has steeped his hands in the blood of another", murderer is in the objective case, and therefore we must write bim in apposition with murderer We must remember that as and than are conjunctions In the sentence I love you more than him , there is an ellipsis of I love between than and bim and the full sentence would be, I love you more than I love him I love you more than he is equal to I love you more than be loves you There is a mistake in the lines And though by heaveas severe decree She suffers hourly more than me' because the writer has used than as a preposition He should ·CASE 13 have written "than I (do)" Similarly, 'Phalaris who was much older than her , is wrong, and should be, "Phalaris who was much older than she" We must write not, I am as good as him, but, “ I am as good as he not Sorrow not as there that have no hope', but, Sorrow not as they that have no hope A relative pronoun after than somctimes gives us trouble. We cannot write Than whom , and yet we cannot wait Than who It is necessary to change the construction But and save, when they mean except, require the objective casc after them, because they are prepositions alonc, heres none but thee and I , is wrong Wote but the We are and me When we use a participle we must be careful to see that It has a subject In the sentence, Referring to your letter of the 25th instant will you kindly note that I will arnic in Bombay on the 30th Referring has no subject. It cannot go with you We must write With reference to etc. , Stmilarly Hoping for an carly reply, yours truly , 15 wrong We must insert I am after reply Instcad of writing, Walking round the base of thc hill, the road becomes very rough', we should watc, Is onc walks round the base of the hill the road becomes very rough This wrong use of the participlc has probably arisen through confusion between it and a perfctly correct use of the participle very common in English, called the Absolute Construction In this construction the participle has a subject of its on which is not the same as the subject of the princsplc vcrb For cramplc The bacalc being over, thc soldiers shared the spoil The run having ceased ac returned home We call this use of the parti ciple che nominatıc absolute, and it is cquivalent to the abla livc absoluto in Latin These are just one or tro cxamples of the muscahes wc arc likely to commut, if we do not study Grammar ·14 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION When we use the phrase God s love" we may mean two things, either the love that God has for man, or the love that man has for God Grammarians call Gods the subjectue genitive, if the phrase means the love that God has for man and, if it means the love that man has for God, they call it the objective genitive The fear of God", evidently means the fear that man has of God, and in this phrase of God is the objective genitive That is, God is the object of mans fear In the sentence For who would bear the whips and scorns of time The oppressor s wrong the proud man s contumely the oppressor s wrong means the wrong that the oppressor does to others and the proud mans contumely mcans the contumely, or scorn, that the proud man shows to others. Both the genitives are subjectile genitres After some adjectives such as like, nacar, worth we use the objective case as, He was like his father He was near me Often after like and near, we use the proposition to, as, 'But no more like me than I to a rabbit Nearer, my God to thee. The sentence Her is sold like thou is wrong We should write like tlxe, or else as thou The use of like in 'He walks like I do vulgarism. The adverbial object is generally used to express dura, tion of time, extent of space place, measure He lined here twenty years He ran three miles" It weighed six pounds It is worth a rupee" After the verb teach we use two objects as, 'He taught We also use two objects after such verbs ask promise, refuse give, forgne, but one of them is an indirect object, He asked me a question Herc me is indirect and price is paid, and shc 1$ 2 25 me mSIC ·CASE 15 is equal to of me When a sentence containing two objectives is turned into the passive voice, one or other of the objects is retamed For example You taught me language becomes in the Pas- Sive voice, 'You were taught language by me Language here is called the Retained object Verbs of making, appointing, creating, tbınkang, cousidering, supposing, believing, take two obiccts — We made bin king" I consider him a gentleman The second object, in such sentences, is called the objectre complement, or factsfsve object When such verbs are used in the passive voice, as 'He was made king by us 'He was considered a gentic man by me, the retained factitive object is called the subjecteve complement The Datne or Indirect Object denotes an object more or less remotely affected by an action or by an attributc The Indirect Object is most frequently used after verbs of giving promising shoning tellmg etc impersonal verbs, as mctlunks, mcsecms, adjectives of similanty and prori mity, some interjections gave lume a booh (cquals to bint) He told me a story (me cquals to me) Voc 45 me (Indirect Object) Tbe Datue of Advantage or Disadvantage Saddle me the ass' (me equals for me) He plucked me ope his doub let (me cquals for me) I will roar gou as gently as any sucking dove (jon equals for 2011) Rob mc the exchcquer This dative indicates that the person denoted by thc pronoun is interested in the action The Ethic Dalne is used to show sympathetic concern or indirect interest. I'll do gou your master what good I can' Take you this We must be careful in the use of belurch and among 'He divided the orange between his brother and sister Hc divided the oranges among the children' Among denotes distribution to se cra! I (for me) ·16 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION VERBS In requests, the past tense is sometimes used as a polite form, but it is better to use the present tense. In, "Might I ask you to excuse my absence, it is better to say may In, 'Would you kindly reply to my letter, we should use, 'will After the past tenses of like, intend, try, and simlar verbs, wnters often wrongly use the past tense of the verb that follows, as, I intended to have written to you' The idea of past time is given in I intended, and it is not necessary to repeat it. We should write "I intended to write to you, Instead of We expected that he would have come home yes terday, we should wnte, he would come.' Sometimes writers, especially Scotch wnters, use shall and will wrongly When we wish to express simplc futurity, we say I shall, you will, he will, we shall, you will , they will. When we wish to express intention or determination, we say I will, thou shalt, he shall, we will, you shall, they shall Thou shalt do no murder means you are commended not to murder 'You shall obey me means that you are expected, or will be forced to obey me. The boy shall do what he is told to do means that the boy must do what he is told When we say I will go this afternoon" 'We will meet you this afternoon or They shall be there, the verb expresses a promise or intention In I shall be there this afternoon", and we shall be there this afternoon the verb shall simply does duty as an auxiliary verb forming the future tense Similarly 'He will not be able to attend You will sec him tomorrow imply simple future action In writing letters and in answering invitations we usc such czpressions, as, I shall be obliged I shall have much ·VERBS 17 expresses deter as save hun 1S pleasure, I shall be thankful , because they express simple fu tunity and there is no espression of promisc or intention in them The sentence I shall be drowned and no one will saye me expresses simple futurity, but the sentence I will be drowned and no one shall save me mination to die When we put such sentences into reported speech, we usc sbould and rould in place of shall and rull respectively, He said that he should be drowned and no one would (Futurity) But in ordinary direct speech should mcans ongbt to, and would means it antcd 10 He should be dron ned cqual to Hu ought to be drowned No one would lic there is cqual to No one winted to Inc thare Sequence of tenses- The sequence of tenses in dependent clauscs often causes difficulty The general rule is that after a pomary tense in the principal clausc wc harc a primary tense in the sub ordinare clause and after an historical cense in the principal clause we have an historical tense in the subordinate clause The primary tenses are the present, the Future, and the Pro sent Perfect. The histoncal tenses arc the Imperfect, the Past Simple (preteritc) and the Past Perfect Cramples I am in doubt where the road Icads Hc has in doubt where the road lcd Who is it? He asks who it is He asked who it was Shall I go or you? He asl cd whether he himself or you should go I was surprised that I was unable to find you He said that he was surprised that he was unable to find them If he has it, he will give it He said that if he had it He said that if he had it (then) he 4.210 2 he would give it ·18 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION it (then) He sud that if he had had it, he would have given it He said that if he should get it, he would give it A present or a future tense may be followed by any tense I believe he was there I shall remain if he has gone away" When there is a comparison in the dependcoc clause the rule does not hold, as, He liked you better than he likes me Clouses referring to future conditions If you seek you will find The principal clause only has the future tense In this our idiom is different from that of other languages. If God please, I shall grow nich If you do not speak you will suffer for it If min were to find a treasure he would be ncher, but not more thrifty" If you have done this, you will be punished He said that if they had done that, they would be punished Adjectres and Adverbs We must be careful not to give degrees of companson to adjectives that do not admit of comparison, such as tinique, ann ersal perfect, ideal, square, almigbts, es erlasting clerna, sound, solid, 101d A very unique specimen is illogical because 7 mique means the only one of hind Thus orange is alntost quite as rape as that Wcan say tallesh, birrerish, meaning approximating to tall bitter etc. We can qualify comparatives by such words as somewhat, almost, much still, but we must be careful in the use of these words We should not use the superlative degree of the adjcctise when compar. ing tho thungs I have two dogs Vím and Bounscer and Bouascer is the best Say better He is the politest of the Say more polite Sometimes a doublc superlatire is found as- This was the most unkindest cut of all Julises Cæsar its two ·THE VERBAL NOUN 19 Double comparatives were formerly common, but they are now regard as vulganisms, c.g, more truer, more sooner, worser We should use qualifying adverbs such as perbabs, probably rather, somewhat, very sparingly cg, This is some what extraordinary He spoke someu bat harshly And we must be careful in using wbence, thence, butket, thitber From whence have you come? is wrong, because whence means from where Write Wheocl have you come have come from thence should be I have come from there Thence means from that placu Hiiber means to this place Thither means to tbat place it is better to say Come here than to say Come luther Tbe Verbal Nou and the Gerund The Verbal Noun and the Gerund are both nouns ending in ing The Gerund is transitive and governs an object, while the Verbal Noun takes no object. He is fond of fishing (Verbal Noun) Playing cricket is pleasant (Gerund) ing (Verbal Noun) I lihe singing songs (Gerund) When a Gerund is preceded by a noun or pronoun, the noun or pronoun must be in the possessive case as I objcct to your coming I was vexed by his not coming Occasionally we meet with expressions like Sec her play (playing) The verbal noun may be qualified by an article, an adjectic, or pronoun, as I hear the singing of birds Much drinking is injurious His smoking is injunous to him We often use the Verbal Noun and the Gerund after scrbs of desisting omitting preventing arording for example He as orded mecting me i have donc citing We are presented 'I like singfrom going ·20 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Relatne Clauses We must distinguish between continuatne or 1100 defin ing relative clauses, and defining relative clauses. A non defining or continuative clause simply gives nis additional information about the antecedent --eg At the first meeting which was held yesterday This simply gues us the additional information that the meeting was held yes terday The king, who was present said etc 15 really cqual to, the king, and he was present, suid ctc.' The non defining clause gives explanation, description comment, but it does not limit the antcccdcnt. A defining relative clause limits the antecedent and en ables us to select the particular individual meant from the whole class denoted by the antecedent The man who call d yesterday, left no address I was present at a meeting that was held yesterday If you remove the defining clause you destroy the meaning of the antecedent The sentence, My mother that left Agra last night will shortly arrive 15 wrong because it implies that there are several mothers and one of them is referred to as s having left Agra A non defining clause should be used My mother who left Agra last night, will shortly arnic All which I can do is useless should be All that I can do is useless Rules (1) That should never be used to introduce a non defining clause We should always use who or 1 hich (2) Who or which should not be used in defining clauses except when cuphony or custom is against the use of that We do not say 'The struggle which lay before him but "That lay (3) Who and zlom are as a general rule used of ra Qonal beings That used of persons is considered archaic or out of dare, but when the antecedent 15 # or 2 superlatia or any word of exclusive meaning such as all only any it is ·TELATIVE CLAUSES 21 15 a right to use that For example Who is it that talks of failure The first man I sax was Jones Anyone that knows anything knows this The only man that I know of (4) Luphony demands that ut bich instead of that that, as, This is that which I told you of (5) That has no possessive casc and cannot take a preposition before it The house that is happened in bad sentence We should write The house in which this happened Note-No comms is used with a defining clausc Two commas are used with a non-defining clause It is wrong to introduce 1 clause with a relative pronoun preceded by and but, nor unless there is another relative clause carlıer in the sentence There is 1 statement in your paper, and which I have just seen Omit and Accordingly we have newspapers belonging to various political parties and which contain the opinions of a particular community, creed or religion Omit and This book was written by a friend of mine and 11 th whom I have a great intimacy Omit and Sometimes we find 3 relative pronoun introducing a clause though there is no antecedent I rent liomc for a book which presented me from being in time The fact of fetching the book proiented me from being in time It is better to write and this for which Order of Words We should be careful to observe the proper order of Nords, or our writing will be full of crrors and ambiguities We must be careful herc nc place the adverbs merely, only, at least for example Homer was not only the maker of a nation but also of a language is wrong because 'not only is in the wrong placc. It should come after maker If he not the greatest king he was the bst acro- of majesty ·22 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION musician at least that ever filled a throne We should put at lesse before the best actor Cramples of urong arrangements These form of con versation by degrees multiplied and became troublesome Put by degrees after multiplied This morning when one of Lady Lizard s daughters was looking over some hoods and n bands brought by her tirewoman, with great care and diligence, I employed no less in examining the box which contained them We should put with great care and diligence before over For sale, a piano the property of a musician, with carved legs. It is the piano that has the carved legs, and we should write, For sale a piano with carved legs, the property of a He recurned home with the ring that had caused him so much trouble in his waistcoat pocket Wc should say, When he recurned home he had in his waistcoat pocket the ang which had caused him so much trouble There are two important pnnciples to be observed, named the principles of Priority and Proximity Qualifying words, phrases and clauses should come be fore what they qualify and as near as possible to what they qualify The captain took the things which the gods pro vided with thanhful good humour Here with thankful good humou- qualifies took Ve slould write The capcain with chanlful good humour took the things which the gods, provided The Captain cook with thankful good hu mour the things which the gods provided I cannot possibly I cep you in my service 39 I had intended, after your bad be haviour should be After your bad behaviour I cannot pos sybly keep you in my sers ice 25 I had intended Rules of Priori) The subject comes before the verb cxcept in the follow or ·ORDER OF WORDS 23 ing cases, — When we arc quoting duect specch as, 1 I agree with you, said he 2 In questions Does the boy learn English? Where docs the clerk live In exclamatory sentences — May you be happy! What a wilderness is Rajputana' 4 In commands Go (you) Come (you) here 3 Looh you - Never yet S In conditional sentences when there is no conjunc tion - Vcrc you my frend you would not trcat mc so 6 In cmphatic sentences Blessed are the mech Rich is the reward of the righteous Down the glen came arnicd men 7 In a principal clause following a subordinate clause When pride comes then comes shimc S In sentences containing nor, 1111r etc was shape so drcad Nor can it be denicd Never have I sccn , for cmphasis The verb usually gocs before the object But there are the following exceptions to this rule The object is put bufore the cob for emphasis or when it is used as 3 connectic -- Sulicr and cold hasc I nonc This wc rcadil, belicic 2 In pocery we often find the object born con th- sub ject and the verb Thic birds their notes re 1 nca 3 Reliurc and interrogauso pronouns come befo-c thc verb When shall I send? Which way shall I po The indirect object usually gocs before the direct object He have me a bool Tell me a stor) But it gou be fore the personal pronouns Give it nie Table 1 him to ·24 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION In poetry - The adjective usually goes before the noun The er ceptions to this rule are I remember I remember the fir trees dark and high 2 When the adjective is itself qualified A man he was to all the country dear The adjective should come 15 near as possible to the noun This is the rule of proximity, or nearless The sentence, "It is proposed to build a bath for students 99 feet long, xs absurd, because the rule of Proximity has not been observed We must put 99 feet long after bath' The adverb usually goes before an adjective or another adverb You are too serious The train will be in almost at once The adverb comes after an intransitive verb and after the object of a transitive verb He plays cocket well HC runs well But an adı erb of time sometimes goes before the verb, He seldom comes here He often comes latc. Seldom he smiles or smiles in such a sort as if he scorned himself In this sentence seldom comes first for the sake of emphasis The adverb comes between the autiliary and the parti ciple, The boy was immediately expelled Tell me what he has just said He was now bent on taking the govern ment into his own hands We must be careful not to put an adıcrb bectveen the sign of the Infinitic (to) and the Infinite as I request you to kindly inform me To eagerly desirc, to quickly go This mistake is called the mistake of the Split Infinite and is considered 1 s crv senious one We should write I rc quest you to be kind cnough to inform me Instead of 1 hope to thoroughly recover soon He should arite "I hope to recoser thoroughly soon To see clearly 15 better than to clearly sec To be seen clarly is better than 'to ·CHOICE OT WORDS 25 clearly be seen Sometimes it is difficult to avoid splitting the infinitsc. Ve should not write We must expect you to at least attend to what we say, but should express the idea without using the infinitive at all Some people object to splitting of any kind For instance, they write, earnestly may be hoped instcad of, 'may be carnestly hoped But this is being pedantic The proper place for the adverb is between the auxiliary and the verb, as in the latter example. We must be careful about the position of only nearly, almost They should go immediately before the words they are mcant to qualify As a rule propositions go before the word to which they belong, as I go from the city But there are many crccp tions, as What are you talking about ? Certain conjunctions go in pairs and we must be careful to use the corresponding pairs – Though yer Whether ather or neither and such that as 35 So as not only but not only but also not merely but. We must be care ful to place these double conjunctions in the proper place In the sentence, He had neither the courage to beg nor steal ncither is in thc v rong place It should be before the Infinitive He had the courage neither to beg nor steal As well as is sometimes placed wrongly as The gentle men attended the cricket match as cll as the ladics Here we should write as well as the ladies immediately after the gentlemen CHOICE OF WORDS It is necessary to have a thorough mastery of the language so that we may hnor the cract meanings of the words or nor both 35 such ·26 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION ties of we use, and their suitability for expressing the sen e we wish to convey By constant reading of good authors we can get this, and a command of idiom and at the same time develop our taste for strength and delicacy and all the other bezu expression All obscurity of expression arises from confusion of thought, and want of proper words Whatever a man con caves clearly, he can express clearly Unless a man has the ability to think, he ought not to write When a writers thoughts are distinct he can express them well, if he has a good knowledge of words and idiomatic espression Perip! cuity or clearness, is not merely a freedom from fault Ic is a beauty When an author gives us no trouble of smarch ing for his meaning, and carries us through his subject with out causing us any cmbarrassment, we are delighted Wc find his style like a clear stream, through which the pebbles at the bottom can be seen quite clearly Diction descrves very careful attention We must try to use words appropriate to our subject and this will be the chief source of beauty in our writing Cicero says - 'What ever his theme he will speak as becomes it neither meagrals where it is copious nor mcanlı where it is ample, nor in this way where it demands that but keeping his speech level ith the actual subject, and adequate to it As there is a charming diction so there is another the is noble As there is a polished rhythm so there is another that is dignified as variety adds grace to onc passage so to another it adds fulness. Good writers are always carcful in their choice of words and phrases Here are a few examples taken at random from onc book --She was as much amused as pigued On the accession of Elizabeth, Protestanum reached its bigb ualet mark in Europe Elizabeth s councillors were cibarrass d in their loyal attempts to steer in the direction she had prescribed, ·CHOICE OF WORDS 27 by her nervous habit of catching at the rudder lines whenever 3 new doubt occurred to her ingenious mind The Larl of Moray was a man of sufficient capacity hindly heart un daunied resolution and unswerving rectitude of purpose Bothwell was only 3 bull beaded, blundering, swordsman Rizzio was doubly detestable to them as the bram of the Queen's clique and as a low born foreigner Moray was an honourable and conscientious man, of judged by the standard of his environment Spanish ships tvere seized The crews worc hanged, or made to u all the plank. There is no way of getting a good vocabulary except by much reading and constant consultation of a good dictionary It is only by observation that we can find the correct uses of words for crample we find that extem porary is used as an adjective is an exter aporary sermon au extemporary prayer while cxtempore is used as an adverb as, be preaches extempore, be prais autempore Sometimes writers use 3 word wrongly becau they are under the impression that its mcaning is the same as that of another word similar to it For examplc Fic behaves in church in a re Herc rcucrent should be used romplaisant where the writer meant "complacent Coni plaisant means flattering or ou or cager to please, while coniplucout mcans contented Niistahes of this kind arc called Afalaprops Sheridan in his play The Royals makes fun of a lady who lvas a tendency to make such mistahes Afrs Malaprop-Obserse me Sir Anthony would by no means wish a daughter of mind to be a progeny of learning I dont think so much larning becomes a young Roman for instance I would never let her meddlc with Grech or Algebra or Hobrok or Simon), or Muxicas or Paradoxes or such inflammatory branches of learning-neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathe maucal astronomical diabolical instruments --But Sir Anerrend way He is cry ·28 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIO thony, I would send her at nine years old to a boarding school in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice Then, Sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts and as she grew up I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countnes but above all Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not misspell , and mispronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do and likewise that she might reprehend the true incanıng of what she is saying This Sur Anthony, is what I would have a woman knon and I donc think there is a superstitious article in 16. The use of Prepositions after certain words is a frequent cause of crror The only way to learn to avoid mistakes us to be observant when reading good authors Here are a few common mistahes -- This is different to that (from) 1 differ wib you in opinion (from) This is in accordance to rule (with) I have a strong antipathy for cats (to) He has great aptitude in mathematics (for) He has a great aler sion for work (to) You should show benevolence to the poor (towards) I recognised him in his talk (by) Take a glance on the village (at) Do you acquiesce to what I say (in) I san him subsequent to his arrival (on) The following list will seric to show the need for careful observation of the usage of the best writers - I agree with (somconc) I agree to (something) He is an authority on (a subject) He has authority over (someone) He has my authority to do something) I communicate with some one) I communicate (something) to (some onc) I concur with you in your opinion I differ from you, This is different from that. H ·CHOICE OF WORDS 29 say ng OLCT I entrust you with it I entrust it to you The mistake originates in a fallacy The mistake originates with you I am sorry for you I am sorry about your loss I prefer death to dishonour I saw him subs-quent on his arrival I rely on you I am averse to this proceeding He is disqualified from atcending He is disqualificd for work We should write in the circumstances, rather than under the circumstances to direct attention to , rather than 'lo call attention to , needless to say meher than it gors rent bout Last denotos position Latest denotes time should not be used for more than Hardly should not be used for scarcely in expressing quantity To ir an cipornment is wrong for lo mke an experiment After is a better word to use than subsequently Total, or abolc is better than aggre- Common is better than mutual Synonyms are words having the same meaning but there is always some nice difference been een them and the writer has to scicct the word that will conse, lus meaning cractly For instance to choose been een confer and besion it is necessary to understand that to confer is the part of authority While to bestow is the part of a generous man es Thc ung ersity conferred upon him the title of LLD The millionaire beston cd a gift on the orphan Again the difference between to admit and to confess is that the latter is stronger og I admit my fault I confess my guilt and bctn con crime vice sin gate ·30 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Crime Vice, Sin Crime is an offence against the state. Vice is an offence against morality Sin is an offence against religion Examples of Synonyms Abyss, chasm, gulf Abjure forswear, renounce. Absurd ridiculous, preposterous Actual real identical, authentic. Accord, agreement, harmony Blast shriyel wither, blight Brutal inhuman savage, cruel Burden, weight load, sorrow Compound, combine, mix Compound adjust, settle, Conceive, thunk imagine, understand, Coax wheedlc cajole, entice Coerce compel, force constrain Crude unrpe, immature unfinished Custom fashion usage Custom habit, practice Dashung, venturesome Division partition, separation Flexible pliant, supple clastic Imminent, threatening impending Impact, collision, shock Liking inclination preference Lct, allow permit, suffer Loyales fcalcy fidelity Mob, rabble rout Murmur, mumble complain Offence, misdemeanour trespass Quail, shrink falter Proper fit suitable ·CHOICE OF WORDS 31 Proper becoming, correct, Many words are misused owing to their similarity of sound or spelling, og aisle isle, cereal, serial, faint, fcint, nay, neigh, right write, wright Pare pair Whether, weather Manc, main Halc, haul Yew, ewe Threw, through Way, weigh Vain, vane. Sewed, sowed Deprecate means to pray against, as Wc dcprccate the Wrath of God Depreciace means to lessen in price, or to disparage, as, Hc depreciates their fame Factious means rebellious Factitious means artificial Immanent means present as, God is immanent in the world Imminent means threatening as Danger is imminent Eminent mcans famous Aesthetic mcans loring beanty A cetic means austere Ingenious means skilful, cleitt Ingenuous mcans simple frank Palatal means perlammg to the palate Palatial mcans like a palace Curb means to chuck herb mcans thx stone placci ed gott isa of the side of a footpath Mendaciti mcans lyng falsehood Mendicity means loggary ·32 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Innocent means not gulty, simple inoffensive Innocuous, means domg no harm THE SENTENCE Sentences are long or short, simple or complex, periodic or loose. When the leading thought in a sentence is kept to the end, the sentence is called a per od The sense is not completed till the end of the sentence Qualifying adjuncts are put at the beginning of the sentence, phrases are used instead of clauses For example Almost everybody in our land except humanita cians and a few persons whose youth has been depress cd by exceptionally aesthetic surroundings, can under stand and sympathist with an admiral or a prize fighter The period has the following advantages Qualifying adjuncts can be put in their proper places, there is opportunity for pomp, gravity, dignity and music and clearness is made easy But it strains the readers attention, and if employed too much gives your writing an artificial appearance. In a Loose sentence qualifying clauses are added after the principal clause For example 'We must consider then whether we arc to do as you say or not for I am still what I alsvays have been, 2 man who will listen to no voice, buc the voice of the reasoning which on consideration I find to be the trucst The Loose sentence is simple and natural but it is apt to become careless and clumsy and to lack clearness because qualifying adjuncts may easily be pur in the wrong place The Short sentence is useful because it is simplc forable, and cmphatic but it makes writing sound abrupt and it makes minor details too prominent The Long sentence is useful in oratory and dignified ·THE SENTENCE 33 prosc It puts minor details into subordinate clauses and thus ads clearness It allows the water to use thythm or musical cidence But it is not so simple as the short sentence and it strains the reader s attention The best kind of composition is a mixture of long, short, simple, complex penodic and loose sentences. Such a mixture lends : ariety, and interest to your wnting The Unity of the sentence A sentence should cypress one thought, and therefore it is an offence to put screral thoughts into the sime sentence For example, His own notions were always good but he was a man of great expensc', is a bid sentence The following sentence The deceased, who was unmarried retained his faculties to the last , is bad, because there are two thoughts and the sentence implies that hc retained his faculties because he was unmarried PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION AND THE BALANCED SENTENCE Tivo members of a thought expressed in the same scntcncc should make two parts of the sentence framed in the same way Tor example He did not mention Lconora nor that her father was dead would be better written, Hc did not mcntion Leonora nor her father s death. When to idcas arc connected so as to require only a copulatıc it is agreeable to find a connection in the words that express the ideas, cren if the connection is only similanty of initial letters es Thc peacoch in all his pride docs not display half the colour that appears in the garments of a British lady, slien she is dressed either for a ball or a birthday My lifes companion and my bosom friend Onc faith, onc fame one fate shall both attend When the different parts of a sentence are consructed in the same way it is said to be balanced In that war he man fully put to hazard luis case lus fame, and his splendid fortunc عي ·34 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION The Balanced Sentence is pleasing to the car because of ses rhythm. For example The world in which our duties lie is as waste as the wilderness as restless and turbulent is tb ocean, as inconstant as the wind and wather 'Natural bistonans tell us that our climate of itself and without the assistance of art, can make no further advances towards a plum than to a sloc, and carries an apple to no greater perfection than a crab The balanced sentence is a great and to the memory, and is very common in proverbs eg, The fear of a king 1s 2s the roaring of a lion Judgments are preparcd for scorers, and stripes for the backs of fools It helps simpliary and dear ness by putting statements side by side for comparison For example, - 'It is impossible to fix any limit to the amount of a fine which will not other be so high as to be ruinous to the poor or so low as to be no object of terror to the rich' It makes a sentence energetic and impressive Priyatc crcdit is wealth, public honour is security It adds to the effect of wit or epigram He is a man of low stature but of high parts.' The Paragraph is a series of sentences dealing with some particular subject or face. UNITY ON THE PARAGRAPH Lach paragraph should deal with one subject, and there should be no digressions and no irrelevant statements ordinate points which are relevant to the main subject of the paragraph should be created shortly so as not to draw the reader s attention from the main subject The subject of the paragraph is generally stated in the firse sentence, or in the sentence otar the beginning but some times the subject is not repcalcd till the end of the paragraph 15 reached Examples of Paragraph Structure A grain of anger or a grain of suspicion produces Sub- ·THE PARAGR III 35 his carc strange acoustical effects, and makes the car greedy to mark offence Hence we find those who have once quarrellcd, carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to break the truce To speak truth there must be moral equality or else no respect, and hence beereen parent and child intercourse is apt to degencrate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become engrained 'And this mobility is a special talent entrusted to a sort of indestructiblc virginity, 1 magic armour with which he can pass unhurt through greac dangers and come unbedaubed out of the miriest pass ages Let him voyage speculatc, see all that he can do all that he may his soul has as many lives as a cat, he will love in all weathers and never be a halfpenny the tvorse Those who go to the devil in youth, Ruth any ching like a fair chance were probably little north saving from the first they must have been fouble fellows, creatures made of putty and pacl thread without steel or fire, anger or true joyfulness in their composition Important ideas should be dealt with in long paragraphs and ideas of litele importance, in short oncs The writer must keup a sense of Proportion in the paragraph as well as in the wholc composition and by a long paragraph he will cmphasise the idea contained in it The beginning of a paragraph should be interesting and the end of it impressive. Successivc sentences that repeat or illustrate the same idea should be formed alike This is called thc Parallel Construction or thic Balanced Structure The various points of a paragraph should be arranged in a natural order ·36 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOV sion and punty of STYLE The Style of a composition depends on the characterisucs or distinctive qualities shown in the language used Style 1 the most important part of iting It clothes the thougho as with a garment and the quality of the composition pines according as the garment is good or bad It requires prea expression and rejects all low slang phrases and loose slıp shod cxpressions To write well us to write naturally, casily and forcibly, is one who has a thorough com mand of language would talk It is comparatively cay to write as Dr Johnson wrote in a pompous style, selecting long and Icarned words high sounding and imposing from their learning It is also casy to write a gaudy style, splendid and glittering vague and incomprehensible, where the senses hidden in a multitude of pretty phrases But it is a harder matter to express our meaning in simple and familar words out of a dozen to select the one that exactly fits our idea to use the true idiom of the language The following are the intellectual qualities of style Simplicity, Clcarness Impressiveness and Picturesqueness. Simplicia -To obtain simplicity you must use simple words aloid classical words use concrete terms rather than abstract ones, and individual terms rather than general terms. Simplicity in the structure of a composioon is helped by the obscrvance of grammatical rules by the use of the short son tence and the loose sentence, by using suitable figures of speech and surtable examples and illustrations Clearniss is that quility of style in virtue of wluch : writers meaning is conscyed with cractness To attain it you must be careful to use words which will convey the mean ing intended and you must avoid any sort of ambiguity Impressit eness is that quality of style that draws the at tention and tends to fix the matter in the memory It can be ·STYLC 37 atrained by high sounding language, sharp and abrupt sentences, striking figures of speech, such as Caclamation, Hyper bole, Interrogation Simules Antithesis, Repetition A sudden change is especially impressire. Tor example, the introduction of a nevy thought or an epigram a closer simile or a contrast Irony and Innuends are always impressive Examples His bugle Wart of Harden blew Pensils and pennons wide sere flung To heaven the Border Slogan tung St Mary for the young Buccleuch ! Spreading herbs and flor ctets bright Glisten d with the dew of night Nor herb nor flox ret glistened there But was carved in the cloister arches as fair Picturesqueness A description is picturesque when the thing described is so well presented to the mind that it is as clear and vivid to the mind as if actually seen It is obtained by language that suggests light, colour, shape position, attitude action, etc. Examples And soon a score of fires i reen From height, and lull and cliff nicre se n They gleamed on many a dusky turn Haunted by the lonely carn On many a cairns gres pyramid Where urns of mighty chiefs lie lud Scott The moon on the cast one shone Through slender shafts of shapely stone By foliaged tracons combined Thou would st have thought some fairy s hand Thixt poplars straight the ozist and ·40 KIVTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION With thichet overgrown grotesque and wild Access denied and overhead up gret Insuperable haghts of lofticst shade Cedar and pinc, and fir, and branching palm A sylvan scene and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of stateliest vice Yer higher than their tops The verd rous wall of Paradise up sprung Which to our general siro gave prospect Large Into his nether empre neighbouring round And higher than that wall 3 circling row Of goodliest trees laden with fairest fruit Blossoms and fruits at once of golden huc, Appear d with gay cramell d colours mixed All the most striking circumstances are selected in order to fill the mind with admiration or astonishment while all that is mean or trivial which might distract the attention and destroy the impression is avoided Burst as a ware that from the cloud impends And swell d with tempests on the ship descends White are the decks with foam thie winds aloud Honl o er the mists and sing through every shroud. Pale crembling tired the sailors freezc with fears And instant death on every wave appears Pok Avoid abstract and general ternis Images cannot be made stoking except by using concrete terms 'The cloud-capt ton is the gorgeous palaces The solemo temples, the great globe its If Yea all which it inherit shall dissolve TL Tempest Here the mind is carned higher and higher by ach succeeding imags, till it feels the emotion of grandeur and sublimity strongly God said Let there be light and there aas light 15 a good example of sublimacy ·STYLE +1 When an endear our is made to raise an unworthy object beyond its proper rank se get bombast instead of sublimity CS For ce- To sec the flat upon the ocean more Angels drer side the curtains of the skies And heaven as if there vinted lights aborc For tapers made to glaring comets rise Emotions are roused by Motion and force and thesc contribute to Grandeur Regular motion is preferred to irregular motion Undulating motion is preferred to motion in a straight line We love the motion of warcs, of a ship under sasl of a serpentine river Torce is agreeable because it includes activity ample when painters paint a country landscape they generally show smoke ascending from a cottage, because motion 15 pleasing In a display of fireworks there is this beauty of motion upwards and there is also added the beauty of force which stirs the mind to activity Descriptions of motion, games, wrestling and leaping are all capable of rousing the cmouon of grandeur Him the Almughty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the cthcrcal sks With hidcous ruin and combustion dor n To bottomless perdition there to de ell In adımanuine chains and penal firs Who durst defy th Omnipotent to arms." Wilton WIT AND HUMOUR Laughter is caused by a pleasant cmotion and it has the cffect of relaxing our minds and brightening our spirits Ic may be good humoured or it may be all natured and full of malice. To may laugh happily at the foibles and peculiarities of others, or ac may laugh scornfully at their misfortunes or their deformitics We may laugh merely at ome striking ·42 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION idea, or some peculiar arrangement of words. What is called Vit in an author is this power of amusing us for a moment by a stringe association of ideas, or by the cleser analogies he employs Epigrams puns, irony, thesis similies all come under this definition of Wit because they give us an agreeable surprise For example, Health chucily keeps an atheist in the dark For rhyme the rudder is of verses With which like ships they stect their courses' The following examples of Wit are anecdotes told about Douglas Jerrold a dramaust of the carly part of the nine teenth century *Call that a kind man, said an actor, speaking of an absent acquaintance a man who is away from his family, and never sends them a farthing! Call that kindness!' Yes' replied Jerrold, unremitung bindacss In a railway carnage one day, 7 man tas holding forth on the beauty of nature. 'In reading in the fields,' said the man sometimes a cow comes and bends its head over me. I look up benignantly at is.' With a filial smde, scanned Jerrold Ridicule or cancature, is a form of Vit chat rouses con remptuous laughter It is ill-natured and mured with malice, and its object is to influence our minds against anyone or any thing For example He never broke any mans head but his own and that was against a post, nhen he was drunk I do semember him at Clements Inn like a man made after supper of a checse paring When he was naked he was for all the storld like a folked raddish nath a head fantastically caried upon it with a knife This is a joual, coarse kind of cleu crness Humour on the other hand, produces good natured laughter and is therefore cry beneficial to our minds. As ·STYLE 43 an crample we may take a passage from Washington Irving The opinions of this junto were completely controlled by Nicholas Vcdder a patriarch of the village and landlord of the inn, at the door of which he took his scat from morning uill night, just moving sufficiently to avoid thr sun, and her in the shade of n large trec so that his neighbours could tell the hour by his moi ements as accurately as by a sundial It is true hic is rarely heard to spcah but smoked his pipe incessantly His adherents however (for escry great man has his adherents) perfectly understood him and know how to gither his opinions Wien anything that was read or related displeased him he was observed to smoke lus pipe vehemently, and to send forth short frcquent and angry puffs but when pleased lie would inhale che smoke slowly and tranquilly, and sometimes taking the pipe from his mouth and letting thic fragrant vapour curl about his nose would gravely nod his hcad in tol on of perfect approbation The passage shows a kindly appreciation of what is laughable Some writers indulçc in a strained form of humour hich seems to consist largely in the use of cragscratcd high sounding language It is sometimes called polysyllab c humour Charles Dickens and George Elliot were very prone to this For example The rooks crc crowing with many voiced monotony, apparently--by a remarkable approximation to human in telligence-finding great conversational resources in the chance of weather G Elliot Jugs of sacer, and watering pots acre Lept in secret places ready to be discharged on the unoffending lozs sticks were laid in ambush behind the door sallics were made at all hours and incessant kar pretailed Perhaps this was an agrecable crcitement so the donkes boya or perhaps the more sagacious of the doncs understanding hor the case stood. стог ·44 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION delighted Bith constitutional obstinacy in coming that varen Dickens The first care of the two unsplit friends was to estn cate their unfortunate companions from their bed of quruk ser a process which gave them the unspeakable sausfaction of discovering that they had sustained no injury, beyond sundry rents in their garments, and various lacerations from the brambles Dickens With an accuracy which no degree of dextcnty or prac tice could have ensured, that unfortunate gentleman bore swiftly down the centre of the reel, at the very moment when Mr Bob Savryer was performing a flourish of anparal leled beauty ---Bob Sawyer had risen to his feet but ML Winkle was far too vise to do anything of the kind in skates. He was scated on the icc making spasmodic efforts to smile but angush was depicted on cvery lineament of his counte- Dickens This kind of humour is better avoided. Another playful form of humour is in the form of an anticlimax as She wont off in tears and a scdan chair" Dickens says — Miss Nipper shook her head and a tin nance Canister Some people wrongly think that the use of the phrases is humourous as metoo funny for words the worthy and gallant gentleman, Jchu for cab dryer Hebc for a waitress. Inversion is sometimes made use of by way of humour 25 Aptly asked and yet the anså er is plain cnough, he replsed Sweet and ingenuous as are your faces I cannot read upon them that you would prove to be Wings and friends to the good old cause True lumour » full of simpathy and love We find it ·STYLE 4S in Don Quixote, in the description of the follics of the knight and the absurditics of his servant Sancho Panza in Gold smiths charcterization of Dr Primrose, in all the plays of Shakespeare in the Canterbury Tales It is this elcment of sympathy and love in humour that distinguishes it from Wit. Wit is the short and transient expression of mırth, and it may be cutting and bitter but Humour is a fired and permanent checrfulness and it is founded on good nature Patlus is the quality of style that rouses gentle, tender feelings cg Milton s Lyadas Tennyson 3 In Memoriam Wordsworth s A slumber did my spirit scal Ridiculo is wit mixed with malice It includes Sarcasm in which Epigram innuendo and irony arc cmployed It causes all natured laughter Satire combines sarcasm and ndiculc Music includes Melody and Harmony, the former meaning a pleasing flon of language, and the latter meaning the suiting of the sound to the sense General remarks Thc concise water uses words, phrases and figures of speech wluch are all espressive of his meaning *There is nothing saguc or ambiguous in the erpression When a style is too concise it becomes abrupt and obscure, and al. niaxt cpigrammatic If on the other hand a style is too diffuso It sends to be arak and tiring to tlic reader The use of careless and unnicaning cpithets vaguc expressions poor arrangement of clauses shon that 1 n riter s grasp of lus subject is not firm and that he has no clear idea of what he wants to conscy to the reader Harshness of style comes from paying too much attention to Streuşth Lase Perspicuity and Smoothness are neglected for the sake of hard and unusual hords and constructions.

·46 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Addison s style is an arcclicnt model for beginners. It has the qualities of punty, precision and perspicuity, elegance, casc and simplicity The scatenccs are well constructed, easy-flowing and musical Therc are no far ferched im ages or laboured expressions, but all is natural and without affectation There is a great deal of humour of a rare kind His style is deficient in strength The chief faults of style are fault; grammar affectation, obscurity, verbosity, excessive brevity of sentences, or para graphs, which may be called baldness lack of variccy, tau tology, puerility, want of connection bertueen sentences or paragraphs, lack of emphasis, want of balance, harsh rhythra, bad punctuation Affectation is the use of fantastic ornaments and un natural cpithers cg If the savour of clungs lies cross to honesty if the fancy be fond and the appebre high toward the subaltern beiulies and lower order of worldly symmetries and proportions the conduct will infallibly turn this latter way Shaftesbury Though Shaftesbury s stylc used to be admired for its pomp and clegance it has artificial clegance and affectauon. It lachs simplicity and it is full of arcumlocutions Obscunty is due to want of a clear conception of the subject about which we wnite and this carelessness of thought leads us to use unsuitable words or to arrange them a rongly Thus she announced her engagement to Mr Brown' 15 not clear It might mean that she told Mr Brown that she 35 engaged or that she told others that she was engaged to Mr. Brown Ixcessive brcvity, the wrong order of words and choice of the wrong #ords are the chief causes of obscunty Verlosity is the use of unmeaning cpichats superfluous words and tautological expressions e.g I won sly sce often' Nine times the space that measurss day and night ·STYLE 47 To mortal men he with his horrid crew Lay vanquish d rolling in the fiery gulf milton How much better is — Therefore whosoci cr hcarcth these sayings of mine and docth them, I will liken him to a Wisc man, who built his house upon a roch, and the rain des cended, and the floods came, and the winds blery, and beac upon that house, and it fell not for it was founded upon a rock -than the following Wherefore he that shall not only hear and receive these my instructions but also remember and consider, and practisc, and live according to them such a man may be compared to one n ho builds his house upon a rock for a house founded upon a rock stands unshaken and firm, against all the assaults of rain, and floods, and storm, so the man who in his life and conversation actually practiscs and obcys my instructions, will firmly resist all the temptations of the devel, the allurements of pleasure and the terrors of persccution, and shall be able to stand in the day of judgment and be rewarded of God Dr Clarke Brezily For the sake or brevity we must never sacrifice cicarness interest, variety, proportion, or emphasis, Important ideas should have long paragraphs Variety in the length of nords sentences and paragraplis is used to make the ideas clear, to make the ideas interesting and suggestive, and for emphasis Unnecessary vancty is to be avoided as when Tibenus is called the luxurious despot then the foreshadower of Nero, and again 'the gloomy and discontented monarch Mixed and confused metaphor is an other crample of bad sancty Tanlolog) mcans the repetition of the same sens in different words. It is a form of verbosity Connection Ideas that belong to the same hcading should be grouped together Connection should be shown by arrangement, for one idea is a cause or effect of another comparisons and Contrasts are u.eful for connecting paragraphs ·48 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COVEPOSITION and sometimes the connection can be shown by the use of sur able words as Then, while also, for, because but although. The repecition of some word in the previous sentence ml sometimes be useful Lmphasis The beginning and the end of a sentence are emphatic positions Cleamess brcvity, force, vigour dignity are all important for emphasis Usc rcpetition, change the words using both abstract and concretc, and vary the forms of the verbs and the forms of the sentences Throm unim portant ideas into the background Use parallels and con trasts and refutation The use of proverbs paradores cpi grams hyperbole and humour, inverted order metonymy, and cheasmus is very helpful to make a composition emphatic. As examples we may quote life cternal' (inversion) sail" for ships (mcronymy) here to-day to morron gonc (chiasmus) What I have written, I have written And whiter than the paper that was wat on Was the hitc hand that writ (word plas) Reyebm Prose has its metres as well as poetry The ancient writers paid much attention to this, and 210ded all harsh and zingling sounds Quick rhythm is advantageous when describing exciting events or for passionate orators, and slower rhythm for quich narraine and logical reasoning, Rhythm depends on choice of words length of sentences and punctuation When you have written a composition, sead It aloud and see that it runs smoothly and sounds well Taults Avoid the crcessite use of qualifying adierbs, as perbaps possibly rotbur, a little someu bud, dismelly Aroid commercitiimis such as such the same cg I am pleard to read the correspondence in your paper, and lope that good will be the result of the same There are certain books that almost defy classification and this voluine is one of such The uic of also as a conjunction is sloscnly The use of ·STYLE 49 1 etc is slow enly Do not use abile unmeaningly Avoid misquotations, es To morrow to fresh woods and pastures netv (fields) A goodly apple rotten at the heart (core) An ill favoured thing, Sır, but munc own (poor) That last infirmity of noble mund (the minds) Avoid jingles, which are an offence against cuphonyes . There have been no penodical, general, physical catastrophes He lived practically csclusi elg on mull We cannot make out why he makes this distinction He felt that there was no ill-feeling' Avoid alliteration in prosc cg Onnard glided Dame Ursula, now in glimmer and now in gloom Avoid repeared prepositions, con Devoid of any accurate knowledge of the mode of development of many groups of plants and animals Avoid sequence of relatives Avoid sequence of tbal or other conjunctions. Avoid mctrical prose Avoid Tantolog), c.8, Miss Tot aas often in the habit of assuring Mirs Chich that He had come up one morning as Mas frequently his ctc. Wont The dann is overcast the morning lorers And-heavily in clouds brings in the day Addison Here the same thought is repeated thrice. Hon many are there by whom these udings of good ncas were neser heard ? Such phrases as plain and crident Borslup and adoration clear and obvious, pleasure and sat isfaction intents and purposes courage and resolution, are objectionable Expressions such as foul dirt, verdant freon umbngcous ·SO HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION shade sylvan forest, subject matter, some few, contain a cau tology Pleonasm implies a superfluity of words, or the use of more words than are necessary They returned back again to the same aty from whence they came forib" The words in Italics may. be omitted If I happen to have any losure on my bands" Avoid Redundancyeg Moreover too do we not all feel"? Some substance equally as yielding" Be careful about the use of but and though There is no Deed of but in the following sentence. 'In vain did I struggle to be free, but they held mc as fast as ever" If sn vain had not been used, but would have been correct. But the substance of the story is probably true, though Voltaire has only made a slıp in a name Omit only, and though will be correct Avoid using as to whether Be careful not to mix up two idioms such as, for example "I take trouble and It costs me trouble The result of the mixture is disastrous It did not take him much trouble" Instead of saying It gives me the greatest pleasure n adding my testimony we should say other I have pleasure in add ing , or, 'It gives me pleasure to add We must be careful to write the correct form of an idiom For example it would be a bad mistake to wntc, in the face of it , instead of, On the face of it We must be sure that we understand the meaning of an idiom before we use st. It would be wrong to say For days he stayed in his cottage acver darkening the door, because the idiom to darken the door means to enter We should be careful to yoid the use of casual clauses beginning with as ·SIMPLICITY OF STYLE One of the greatest difficulties of the writer is to be simplc, and natural, and sincere, to know what his sentiments are, and to express them plainly and truthfully, without affectation or too much ornamentation This quality of sincerity and truth to sentiment is a rare quality in Literature as it is in Life. Men are always striving to say things in a clever way to usc stnking epithets and odd conceits, to invenc clever analogies and strange contrasts, in a word to be witty and showy But who boastech himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain Take, for example, this passage from Stevenson We grow ashamed of our distresses, nevy and hot and coarse, like villainous roadside brandy, Hc scc lifc in acrial perspective, under the heavens of faith, and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented clders look for- Ward and take patience Fear shonks before them like a thing reproved, not the flitting and cffectual ſcar of death, but the instant dwelling fear of the responsibilines and res enges of lisc Here is no elegance ease, and simplicity, but rather, an unnatural striving after nos clty, a forced cle crness a conscious secking for style Onc might call it the Tormented Style Take again, the following passage from a modern story He had the soft purnng ways of a cat, the tact of a Jesuit, the penetranon of a money lender the sensibility of a musical amatcur and the morals of a maid-of honour We can see in this the authors desire to shinc, to shra ·52 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 1 1 cleverness and ingenuity, but we know very well that it not sincere and that it is not true painting of character Even the best of our modern authors strive after fant tic imagery Mr HG Wells, for example, writes.- History and political philosophy in the modern wol are like bashful dons at a dinner party They crumble the bread and talk in undertones and clever allusions to the nearest neighbour, abashed at the thought of addressing whole table In the following passage from R L. Stevenson It was fair day in Great Missenden There were the stal set up sub jove, for the sale of pastry and cheap toys ar a great number of holiday children thronged about the sta and noisily invaded every corner of the straggling villag They came around me by coveys blowing simultaneously u on penny trumpets as though they imagined that I should fi to pieces like the battlements of Jericho I noticed one amor them who could make a wheel of himself like a London bo and seemingly enjoyed a grave pro eminence upon the streng of the accomplishment, there is admirable sincerity, pri cision and perspicacity but the punty of its diction is nu improved by the expression sub jove or by the adver seemingly and however one may admire the cleverness the simile and allusion like the battlements of Jencho seems to be rather far fetched If the young writer wishes to cultivate a good and pur English style let him begin with the Bible, and with such ry nowned authors as Addison In Addison will find punts precision, perspicuity ease much rare humour elegance an simplicity Addison s sentences are well-cosntructed, eas flowing, and musical There he will find no far fetched im ages, or laboured expressions but all natural and withou affectation, though it may be found that the style is deficien in force and strength.

·SIMPLICITY OF STYLE 53 terms Let him read the works of George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Darwin, Gilbert White In them all he will find sincerity and Simplicity and these are the foundations of Style Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer Purity means the use of such words and expressions as belong to the idiom of the language To attain purity of style we should use short and familiar words in preference to long and uncommon oncs single words in preference to roundabout cxpressions concrctc terms in preference to abstract Instead of, continual vigilance is imperative, it is better to write we must ala ays be on the watch Thc signs of the times point to the necessity of the modification of the system of administration, could be succen more simply, "It is becoming clear that the system of administration must be modified In many cairs the answers lached care Write Many answers lacked care Mr Jones has been made the recipient of a silver medal We should watc Mr Jones has reccued a silver medal Propriety is the selection of such words as are most suitable to cxpress our ideas When we can write with both puril, and propriety our style will be perspicuous Annter must try to avoid offences against purity and propriety such as alicuis1115, barbarisans archussunis, idiotismis colloquialisms and slang, Inie porases improprieties prouincialismus Aliensnis are words or idioms from a foreign language, I have hunger for I am hungry me furiously to think for. This causes me to consider the marter carefully re your letter for, with reference to Sans, for athbont fir up), for arrange, dejouruer for luncixon, Our English language has no need of such odd hords and phrases from forcign languages. It is close compact full and expressile It is good coin and sc ought not to debase such as * This gives your letter ·54 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION it with alloy A famous writer says, He who debases our language with foreign words is like a fashionable lady who sells her fine gold and silver plate to buy China Archaisms and barbarisms include new coined words and absolete words and errors in etemology, such as, behest' for 'order uneath for underneach, whilom' for formerly I trow for I think Many writers make frequent use of archaic words, in order to give their works an appearance of originality, but in reality these obsolete words and phrases give the style 20 air of vulganty Examples are it were idle, it were fuule, pn thee i faith beshrew me, it irks me, I had as lief, by dint of, a moot point. Vulgar and low expressions The use of like for as is vulgar Sins that are degrading me like they have many others In 'Whatever is the use of wrangling about it , whatever is a colloqualism These sort is a vulgar expression, as, These sort of people would take it as a compliment Other examples arc, She is uncommon pretty (uncommonly) Don t rub it in' (draw attention to it) Slang He quit speaking, for he left off speaking", 'fix up for organize just lovely for 'quite lovely anyway' for 'at any rate, sweet for charming rice" for charming awful for very bad , frontispiece for face game , it 15 up to you to do this, instead of, it is your opportunity and duty to do this He is up against a difficulty, instead of, He is faced by a difficulty Blooming, to hedge to tackle a problem, on your own, to climb down bedrock price, and so on Trite pbrases are such expressions as are used frequendy by people who have a lack of words to espress their meaning, and so make use of a sort of formula eg the irony of fate a work of supercrogation, the pity of it, to leave severely alone, 'play the ·SIMPLICITY OF STYLE SS more in sorrow than in anger, depend upon it, you may take my word for it, I am old fashioned cnough to thinh, somehow, wear and tear, little or nothing sleeping the sleep of the just, too funny for words A Danucl comc to judgment! Madding crowd, damn with faint praise, something is rotten in the state of Denmark the powers that be a wolf in sheep s clothing, rule with a rod of iron, study to be quiet, in the twinkling of an eye. Idrotisms (from the Greek word idiotes, a private person) are expressions peculiar to individuals, such as anusce, complected Improprieties are words and phrases used in a manner contrary to good usage For example, lays for fres, donican for degrado, observation for observance Provincialisms are words commonly used in places remotc from intercourse with the centres of laming and not gencrally known by educated men, such as bgte for cowsbed, cumberers for cucumbers Solecisms are crrors in grammar Writers often make mistakes in the use of comparatiscs, as This noble nation hath of all others admitted fewer corruptions instead of "This noble nation has admitted fewer corruptions than any other , We cannot usc of with the comparative, ctcept in one case * He is the taller of the eno Another common error is to write the plural wrongly, as scraplıms instead of scrapbim or to wnte seraphim instead of the singular seraph The pronouns ofton are a stumbling block, as, Each of the scres should keep within its particular bounds and content theniselts to exult within their respective districts' Here the pronouns do not agree with the antece. dont cach Precision means the retrenchment of all superfluous words, and the using of only so many words as *il cxpress the idea ·56 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSTTTON : 1 fully A vnter may fail in three ways, (1) His words me not express the idea he means to express (2) they may press the idea but not fully (3) they may express the ide but with something more than he intends Precision is opposed to these faults It means to expre the idea, and nothing more or less than the idea FIGURES OF SPEECH A figure of speech is a departure from the ordinas simple way of expressing our ideas, so as to impress the read more and to adorn our style The chief figures of speech are (1) Tropes and Repetition depending on the use c single words The Tropes include Metaphor, Metonymy an Synecoloche (2) Figures depending on associations of sumulanty or difference as Simile, Allegory, Fable, Parablc Antithesis, Ep. gram (3) Figures depending on suggestion as Innuendo, Irons Litotes Interrogation (4) Apostrophe, Hyperbole Personification, Clima Antclimax or Bathos The following are common examples of tropes Umbrage, for free as, Vhere the dun umbrage hangs" Sorrow, for tears, as, Again Ulysses veiled his Agaun unmann d a shower of sorrow shed Similarly blindness is used for darkness day, for light u inter, for a storm at sea Youth and beauty, for those u la ore young and beautiful Youth and beauty shall be lud ur dust 1erdure for a green field Fleecy winter, for snow. groce, for the birds in 1, as ships for the seamen Agonizing ships mountains fo- the sheep on them · Bleating mountains field for t) battle-- Well fought pensive head Vocal grote ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 57 field , stcel for sword Mars, for war, Venus, for beauty, Cupid, for love, Ceres, for corsi, Neptune, for the sea, Vulcan, for fire, Virgin Snow for pure snow, Tottering state, impe- TIONS Occan angry flood summer lufc shalloni ſcars A Metaphor is a comparison implied but not formally stated, as --He is the pillar of the state (chief support) I took part in a storns discussion Having traced the first furrow round the Globe Elizabeth thought that the treasure should be kept, as a pawn in the game All da clt on the injury done to him He cagerly stvallon cd the bart which Hatkins throw to him There is a trde in the affairs of men Edwards seven sons whereof thyself are one Werc seven for branches springing from one roor Some of these branches by the dest nies cut Bur Thomas my dear lord my Lfc my Gloster One Nourishing branch of his most loyal root Is hached down and his summer lases faded By Envy s hand and Murders bloody 2x Richard II Farewell a long faren ell, to all my greatness! This is the state of min today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope to-morrox blossoms And bears his blushing honours thick upon him The third day comes a frost a Lulling frost And when he thinks good casy man full surely His greatnets is a npenins mins his root And then he falls as I do Mletonmy is a figure of speech in which the propcrucs of onc object are extended to another related object, as giddy brinh, danng nound covard stord listening fear, As then the force of subterranean sind transports a hill Herc thc instrument is looked upon as the agent. Sometimes an eficct us erpressed as an attribute of the cause as joural wine musing midnight, religious light astonished thought, mournful gloom ·58 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION O had And the merry beils ring round And the jocund rebecks sound Sometimes an attribute of the effect is expressed as an attribute of the cause — 'No wonder, fallen such a penicions height Why peep your collard swords half out their shells" Here a quality of the agent is given to the instrument. A stupid moment motionless she stood When sapless age, and weak unable lunbs Should bring thy father to hts drooping chair In these a quality of one subject is given to another Sometimes a arcumstance connected with an object us expressed as the quality of the object. Breczy summit, I died before that well fought wall Tis ours the chance of fighting fields to try Synecdoche is a figure in which a part is made to com prehend the whole or the whole is put for a part,-_ 'All hands were at work (hands, for workmeni) A Daniel come to judgment. (Daniel, for a wise judge) A simile is a com parison between objects of different kinds, and is introduced by like, as, so, tbrıs, or some such word Fоr еxаmрlе, - Errors like straws upon the surface flow Pope Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart, Thou had st a voice whose sound was like the ses Vordsworth An allegory is a continuous metaphor It describes a ching under the image of another, as - Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt, thou bast cast out the heathen and planted it Thou didst cause it to take deep root and it filled the land The hills were covered with its shadon, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. Why hast thou then broken down her bedges so that all which pass do pluck her? The boar out of the woods doth waste it, 31 ·FIGURES OP SPEECH 59 and the wild beast doth devour it. Return we beseech thec, O god of hosts look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vinc, and the vineyard thy nght hand hath planted, and the branch thou madest strong for thyself --Psalm 80 An Allegory consists in choosing a subject having properties resembling those of the subject we wish to represent. - hasc to discover the subject represented by reflection Thc Fable is a short allegory, generally drawn from animal life, and intended to convey a moral The Fox and the Grapes The Hare and the Tortoisc , and all Acsop s Fables arc examples The Parable is an allegory drawn from human life, and conveys some moral lesson, as - The Parable of the Sower, The parable of the Prodigal Son, etc., in the New Testament. Antithesis means opposition in the parts of thc thought imitated in the expression For example With a proud heart he sore hus humble weeds Coriolanus Had you rather Cacsar acre living and dic all slaves, than that Cacsar were dead to live all frec mon Verbal Antithesis is a different matter, and cannot be considered a beauty of style There is a certain liveliness in it which makes it appeal to low minded people A light safe doch make a bear, husband There is no opposition of ideas here, but a close connection between cause and effect. Will maintain Upon luis bad life to make all this good. Ning Richard 11 A negative and an affirmative proposition should not be connccted by a copulatie - If it appears not plain and prose untrue Deadly divorce step bera een mc and you An Epigram is a figure in a hich apparently contradictory words are brought together cg The child is father to Conspicuous by its absence In Innuendo the meaning is not clearly stated but inthe man ·60 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION you art 2 5 sinuated, eg, Nothing is locked up from my scrvant This insinuates that my servant steals Irony is a figure which states the opposite of the real mcaning which is suggested by the tone of voice, as very clever fellow where the speaker means that you are 2 dunce You are a pretty fellow', meaning anything but a compliment In Litotes we convey an idea by denying the contrary of it, as, He is a citizen of no mean city , mcaning that he comes from a great and noble city Interrogation is used to make an idea more effective Can two walk together except they be agreed ? Lives there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own my nanse land ? Personification means the speaking of inanimate things as if they had sensibilıty, and power of voluntary motion. pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth That I am meek and gentle with these butchers Thou art the ruins of the noblest man That ever Lyed in the tide of time Julius Caesar Persons in a passion of grief crave sympathy, and con vert inanimate things into sympathetic beings Alcestes when dying invokes the sun the clouds the earch, her husband's palace etc Sce Alcestes Act 11 Scene 1 The battle is over said the king, and I behold the blood of my friends Sad is the heath of Lena, and mournful the oaks of Cromla Terror has the same cffect As when old ocean roars And heaves huge surges to the tromblong shores Iliad Go view the setting sea The stormy wind is laid but the billows still tremble on the deep und seem to fear the blast Fingal Joy is also actributed to inanimate objects, eg - ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 61 scroso As when to them ho sal Beyond the Cape of Hope and now are past Mozambic off at sea north cast Hinds blow Sabean odour from the spicy shore Of Arabia che Blest with such delay Well pleased they slack thar course and many 1 league Cheer d with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles Paradise Lost Descriptie personification Nights candles are burnt out and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops Romeo and Juliet But look the morn in russet mantle clad Walks o cr the dew of yon high eastward hill Hamlet This figure is common in Milton s L Allegro and Il Pen- Abstract terms such as Slander Pleasure Revenge, Death Sleep are frequently personificd Personification as a bold figure and should be used with reserve It ought not to be used in a plain narrative The poct Thomson uses the figure extravagantly, c.8 - O Vale of bliss' O softly su clling hills! On which the poner of cultivation lies And joys to see the wonders of his tot Then sated Hunger bids hu brother Thirst Produce the mighty boni Nor manting is the bronn October drarn Mature and perfect from his dark retreat of thirty years and not his honose front Flames in the light refulgent Personification to be of use must have some resemblance to reality Tor cramplc it is easy to imagine the winds in fury - destroying louses ships etc., but personification such as the following is immoderac The barge she sat in like a burnished throne 1 ·62 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Burnt on the water the poop was baten gold Purple the sals, and so perfum d, that The winds were lovesick with em Antony and Cleopatra Apostropire This figure resembles Personification in Personification we attribute feeling to an inanimate object. In Apostrophie we attribute presence to a sensible being thos absent Happy are thy people, o Fragal! Daughter of Heaven, fair art thoul the silence of the face is pleasant Hyperbole expresses a momentary conviction that an object is greater or less than it really is * And I will make thy seed as the dust of the carth so that if a man can number the dust of the carth, then shall thy seld also be numbered Genesis Now shield with shield with helmet helmet closed To armour amour, lance co lance opposed Hosc aguast host with shadowy squadrons drew, The sounding darts in iron tempesta fler Victors and vanquished sao promiscuous crits And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise With streaming blood the slippery fields are dy d And slaughtered heroes swell the dreadful tide Thoresby who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital has recorded in his Diary such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara It is a fault to introduce an hyperbole into the descnp. tion of anything ordinary or famuiar, nor can it be uscd of any dispiriting passion such as sorrow Shakespeare s linesa Draw them to Tiber s banks and weep your tears lato the channel tell the lowest stream Do kits the most exalted shores of all ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 63 must be considered wrong, because the thought expressed as unnatural The following linc from Chaucer is an excellent example of the right use of hyperbole Up rose the sun, and up rose Emilie" Climax (from the Greek word meaning a ladder) is a figure in which the idea is expressed by suggestion gradually rising in force or intensity, as, Masters, well born and bred, were in the habit of beating their servants Pedagogues knew no way of imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils Husbands, of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives Macaulay Nowhere could be found that sensitive and restless compassion which has in our time extended a powerful protection to the factory child to the Hindu widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and water cashs of every emigrant ship which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be ill fed or overworked, and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer Anticlimax or Bathos is the opposite of climax USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE The beauty of a figure depends on the nearness of the relation between the figurative use and the proper use of the word Simules metaphors, and allegones cannot be agreeable of the resemblance is too strong or too weak For example weighty crack for loud crack is unsuitable, because a loud sound has no relation to a weighty solid So moving softness, breathing prospect, dewy light, lúcid coolness, are unsuutable Steep me in poverty to the very lips Here poverty is compared to a liquid which it cannot possibly resemble.

·62 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Burnt on the water the poop was beaten gold Purple the sails and so perfum d that The winds were lovesick with 'em Antony and Cleopatra Apostrophe This figure resembles Personification. In Personification we attribute feeling to an inanimate object . In Apostrophe ne attribute presence to a sensible being who is absent Happy are thy people, O Fingal ! 'Daughter of Heaven, fair art thoul the silence of thy face is pleasant Hyperbole expresses a momentary conviction that an object is greater or less than it really And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered Genesis Now shield with shield with helmet helmet closed To armour armour lance to lance opposed. Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew, The sounding darts in iron tempests flew Victors and vanquished join promiscuous cries And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise With streaming blood the slippery fields are dy'd And slaughtered heroes stell the dreadful tide Thoresby who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded in his Diary, such a series of penils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean, or to the Desert of Sahara It is a fault to introduce an hyperbole into the descrip tion of anything ordinary or familiar nor can it be used of any dispirting passion such as sorrow Shakespeare s lines- Draw them to Tiber s banks and weep your tears Into the channel will the lon est stream Do kiss the most exalted shores of all ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 63 must be considered wrong, because the thought expressed is unnatural The following line from Chaucer is an excellent example of the right use of hyperbole Up rose the sun, and up rose Emilie' Climax (from the Greek word meaning a ladder) is a figure in which the idea is expressed by suggestion gradually rising in force or intensity, as, Masters, well born and bred were in the habit of beating their servants Pedagogues knew no way of imparting knowledge but by beating their pupils Husbands, of decent station, were not ashamed to beat their wives Macaulay Nowhere could be found that sensitive and restless compassion which has in our time extended a powerful protection to the factory child, to the Hindu widow, to the negro slave, which pries into the stores and water casks of every emigrant ship which winces at every lash laid on the back of a drunken soldier, which will not suffer the thief in the hulks to be all fed or overworked and which has repeatedly endeavoured to save the life even of the murderer Antıclimar or Bathos is the opposite of climax USE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE The beauty of a figure depends on the nearness of the re lation between the figurative use and the proper use of the word Similes, metaphors, and allegories cannot be agreeable of the resemblance is too strong or too weak For example weighty crack for loud crack is unsuitable, because a loud sound has no relation to a weighty solid So moving softness, breathing prospect, dewy light lucid coolness are unsuitable. Steep me in poverty to the very lips Here poverty is compared to a liquid which it cannot possibly resemble 3 ·64 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION below it Here is a letter lady And every word in it a gaping wound Issuing life blood The proper sense of the word ought to bear some proportion to the figurative sense, and not soar above it, or sink Every circumstance that agrees with the proper sense should be avoided Write my Queen And with mine eyes I ll donk the words you send Though ink be made of gall" Cymbelme The last line is out of placc, because the person is going to drink ink figuratively Similarly, 'No my heart is turned to stone I strike it and it hurts my hand Olbello The last sentence is out of place A metaphor ought to be short, and not crowded with minute details The Faery Queen is not pleasing for this Mixed Metapbor should not be undulged in Their action has kindled a blaze that will spread a wave of indigoation throughout the land Whether the British lion was roaming the plains of Canada or climbing the mountains of India it would never draw in its borns, or slink into its shell We don t want to see the cup slip from our lip just when we are in sight of the wioning post. I am of ladies most deject and wretched That suck d the honey of his musc VOR'S Whether tis pobler in the mind to suffer The stiags and arrors of outrag ows fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them The mind is distracted by the transition from one image to another intricate and involved figures should be avoided, cs reason ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 65 44 The mingling tempest waves its gloom The distant waterfall swells in the breeze A sober calm flecces unbounded ethes It is wrong to jumble together metaphorical and natural expression It leads to confusion and obscurity This precious stone set in the silver sea Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as 2 moat defensive to a house Against the envy of much happier lands Richard II In the first line Britain is compared to a jewel, and in the second line there is the plain expression of thought COMPARISONS AND METAPHORS AND CONTRASTS Aid clearness, arouse interest and give pleasure encourage the reader to reason and draw inferences, help the memory, are a kind of repetition give emphasis, variety, scope for hu- : mour encourage originality and observation, encourage very wide learning and studying, save a great deal of time and labour, enable the author to use masses of information suggest many ney points are valuable evidences increase sympathy 9 The best comparisons are drawn from Nature, famıly life, and familiar things OTHER FIGURES OF SPEECH OR DEVICES Transferred Epitbet The adjective qualifying a person 13 transferred to a thing as He lay all night on his sleepless pillow He closed his busy life at the age of thirty Oxymoroil in which two terms of opposite meaning are | combined to form an expressive phrase as Love is a pleasing pain Make a noise quietly This is a cruel Lindness Apostrophe Where the speaker addresses some inanimate object or some abstract ider, as if it were a living person, 5 - 1 ·66 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMTOSITION as o Duty, if that name you love Onomatopoeia Where the sound of words is made to suggest the sense, as, I heard the ripple lapping on the craga Alliteration Consists in the repetition of the same inidal consonant in two or more words, as, Ruin seize thee ruthless king" A strong man struggling with the storms of fate Alliteration is a term also used to mean the recurrence of consonants of the same class anywhere in a sentence, p, b, m, f, v, are Labials t, d, th, arc Dentals. k, c, qu, g, ng, are Gutturals r and 1 are Liquids In the sentence 'Quietly rested bencatb the drums and tramplings of three conquests' there are a large number of dental sounds d, t, th, all letters of the same class, and I recurs several times Inversion is a great and to beauty For example - On a sudden open fly With impetuous recoil and jarning sound The infernal doors Of mans first disobedience, and the frut Of that forbiden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woc With loss of Edeo, call one greater man Restore us and regun the blissful seat, Sing heavenly muse The balanced structure and the parallel construction enhance the beauty of a composition Balance Everyone that heareth these words of mine and doeth them shall be likened unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock and cveryone that ·FIGURES OF SPEECH 67 out heareth these words of mine and docth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand etc.' Parallelism Who will lead me into the strong city, and who will bring me into Zion COMMON FIGURES OF SYNTAX Ellipsis is the leaving out of some portion of the sentence, 25,– He or they were present in which was present is left Can you play? I will try to Zeugma means the joining of a word to two or more other words, when it has a natural connection with only one of them, as, Your hearts will throb and weep to hear hem speak' Pleonasm or redundancy of words, including Hendiadys in which one notion is expressed twice, as, With mught and "They were routed and put to flight' Transposition—changing the order, because the main thought in the mind is spoken first. "Echoed the hills Let us die, and rush into the midst of the fray Chiasm making a contrast by a parallel expression in the reverse order as We eat to live, but we do not live to eat' We live to die but we die to live Here to day, to mor row gone Paradox A paradox is an unusual opinion that contradicts the commonly accepted opinion A paradox Which comforts while it mocks! Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail Browning This hind of paradox is another name for originality of thought, or for something new in Scientific knowledge When writers make paradoxes for the sake of gaining a reputation for orginality, they generally fall into exaggera tion, and though there may be a foundation of truth in their main > ·68 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION . thought, the statement of it is apt to be so embellished with brilliant wit and epigram, that the reader who takes the literal meaning is apt to be misled TASTE Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift 18 like clouds and wind without rain Proierky What is taste? It is a sound judgment on all questions of Art It must have its basis on a deep study of Literature and Nature, on the cxercise of thought and reflection, of observation and comparison Without these things, your taste will be superficial and false, founded on ignorance and con ceit It is true that taste is to some extent a natural gift. It 18 a natural sensibility, but it cannot be brought to perfec tion without proper cultivation The natural power of feel ing and sagacity must be brought out and developed by study, precept and observation The mental faculties must be yo folded by hard study The power of perception and discri mination, enabling one to distinguish between night and wrong between truth and falsehood, between beauty and false lustre, between grace and affectation must be culavated. The mind must be stored with proper ideas and improved by culture and experience Taste is the power of enjoying, or rejecting, whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination One must have sensibility to emotions and be suscepuble to impressions of beauty There is a dangerous tinsel in false taste by which the unwary mind and young imagination are often fascinated Beauty implies simplicity It is beautiful nature without affectation or ornament but in modern times we have given up simplicity We are creatures of art and affectation Our senses are perverted Our minds lose their natural force and ·TASTE 69 in this flavour Our imagination, instead of growing vigorously and bearing beautiful fruit, 13 distorted, and produces no flowers and diffuses no fragrance Simplicity propriety, and innocence no longer please those who have false taste Instead of taking delight in the sweet notes of the lark, or the nightingale we are delighted by the strains of the jazz band in which theer is no refinement of sound at all Instead of delighong in the scent of sweet briar honeysuckle jasmine, new-mown hay, and roses we take delight in noxious scents produced in chemical laboratories If our senses are perverted from nature way, the power of our imagination must be disordered and our judgment unsound We develop a false appetite which the natural food of the mind will not satisfy The soul is pleased by toys and baubles and superficialities and, like an infant is inspirated by the sound of a rattle In this depraved state the mind cannot enjoy the charms of natural and moral beluty The ingenuous blush of innocence the plain language of sincerity, the chantable feelings, the virtue of beneficence, the very glow of health and the swelling lines of beauty are despised as ignorance, rudeness, and rusticity Thus we see that moral and natural beauty are intimately connected, and that moral beauty, or virtue is essential to the formation of good taste Virtue indeed is the foundation of good taste, or rather yıtue and taste are founded on sensibility But virtue must be informed, and taste instructed The heart cultivated by precept and warned by example improves in sensibüity which is the foundation of taste It acquires a habit of sympathy which responds to every instance of generosity compassion and magnanimity Innumerable instances of these qualities are to be found in history By reading Plutarchs Lives and similar historical works one will unconsciously come to love vitue and patriotism, and to detest vice cruelty, and corruption In reading the great authors one will also cultivate literary taste, and will begin to relish the energy, ·70 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION greatness and sublimity of Shakespeare, the melody and patbos of Tennyson, the tenderness of Burns, the elegance of Popes the grace and sentiment of Hernch By such reading the seeds of taste will soon be made to germinate, grow, blossomn, and bear perfect fruit. The study of Science and Philosophy also will be found useful to enlarge the stock of ideas exercise the reason, and ripen the judg ment. POETRY The word poetry is derived from the Greek word potern to make, and signifies anything made or created But it has been restricted to mean the productions of the imagination, and it may be used to include certain prose compositions such as the Book of Job and the prophetical wntings in the Bible. Usually however the term poetry is limited to compositions subjected to rules of metre and rhyme, which aim at giving pleasure just as the other fine arts, Painting Afvsic, Sculpture, Architecture, aim at giving pleasure The essence of Poctry lies in the nature and adornment of the thoughts expressed. Good poetry appeals co the senses, the intellect, and the emotions, Its main purpose is to give a refined pleasure which all can enjoy It is not meant to convey information or to in culcate morality though it may do boch of these things im perceptibly Wordsworth looked on Poetry as a vehicle for moral teaching, but a work of Art is never improved by hav ing an obvious lesson The principal forms of poetry are the Epic poem Dra mats, Lyrical Descriptive Pastoral, Didactic and Satinc poetry The Epic poem deals with an extensive series of events and the actions of numerous persons The Heroic Epic or High Epic, describes the achiciements of the heroes of anti ·POLTRY 71 206 quity and of Gods Examples of this are Homer s Iliad and Odyssey Virgil's Aeneid, Tasso s Jerusalem Delivered, Miltons Paradise Lost, though the last two might also be called e Sacred Epics The language of the Heroic Epic is always dig; nified and stately Byron s Childe Harold bas che length and narrauve structure of an epic, but it is full of satire, and the Fette expression of his sentiments and reflections, so that it might be called Lync as much as Epıç The Idyl is a sort of minor epic describing natural scenery and the actions and manners of meo in ordinary lfe Goldsmith s Deserted Village, Tennyson s Idyls of the King, Milton s Allegro and Il Penseroso are such Idyls The Ballad is another form of minor Epic DRAMATIC POETRY A Drama is a composition representing an animated conversation between various persons from whose speech the movement of the story is gathered It is vivid lively, and its interest and intensity are increased by stage accessories, scenery, costumes, etc Aristotle made the following reflections regarding tragedies of the moral kind (1) That by means of pity and terror, they refine or purify in us all sorts of passion An innocent person falling into adversity ought never to be the subject, for such a subject excites pity in a minor degree, and gives no moral in truction (2) The history of a wicked person in a change from misery to happiness ought not to be represented, because it excites neither compassion nor terror (3) The misfortunes of a wicked person ought pot to be represented, for they will not move our pity, nor cause any feeling of terror except in the vicious (4) The only character fit for representation is neither br 3 they pes!

·72 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION eminently good nor eminently bad The misfortune is to be not the effect of vice, but of some involuntary fault All dramatic poetry is either tragic or comic. Tragedy generally deals with the actions of some man, or men, of high estate which lead him, or them, on to some great calamity generally ending in death Shakespeare s Coriolanus, Othello, Julius Caesar are such tragedies There are three stages in a Tragedy (1) The Expose tion (2) the Conflict (3) the Catastrophe Thus in Julius : Caesar we have first the Exposition, or explanation of the dis content of the Roman patricians, second the Conflict which shows the vicissitudes of fortune that attend the conspirators till the assassination of Caesar, and third the Catastrophe 10 which fate brings about punishment for the wrong doing of the patricians, when Brutus and Cassius perish Comedy aims at producing amusement It is gay, jovial, and muthful There are a series of amusing situations which lead to a complication and lastly the solution or denoument, so that it is built up in much the same way as a Tragedy The Comedy always ends happily Note--The word situation is used to mean a striking event, happening or accident Effect is a word used to ex- Press the strong impression made by details In Othello when Desdemona by accident drops her handkerchief the conse quences that follow are terrible Thus a great dramatic effect 18 produced Lync poetry was originally a kind of poetry accompanied by the music of the lyre (Greek lyra) It is the direct expression of the poets own thoughts and emotions and out ward things are treated of only as they effect his thoughts and feelings. To use a philosophical term, it is subjective, as op posed to epic poetry which is objecime Lyric poetry includes the Ode the song (including sacred songs or hymns and secular songs such as love songs, battle songs, humorous ·POETRY 73 m songs), the Elegy, the Dirge, the Sonnet The term Elegy includes all plaintive strains such as, Grey s Elegy In a Country Churchyard, Tennyson s In Memoriam A Dirge is a funeral monody, as, Cowpers The Loss of the Royal George Pastoral poetry deals with rural sights and objects It was in the court of King Ptolemy that Theocritus wrote the first Pastorals with which we are acquainted Examples of Pastoral poetry are Vergu s Eclogues, Milton s Lycıdas, Allan Ramsay s Gentle Shepherd Didactic poetry (from Gree! Didaskein-to teach) gives religious and moral teaching Young s Night Thoughts Pope s Essay on Man Wordsworth s Excursion are examples Didactic poetry may also instruct in practical and scientific subjects, as when a poet writes in verse a treatise on Agriculture or Gardening, or Cider making Satiric poetry is meant to influence public opinion by laughing at vice and folly Pope s Dunciad, and Dryden's Satires are examples of such poetry Poetry is the product of the imagination and it is necessary for us to get an idea of what we mean by this Imagination is the working of the intellect in interpreting what is external (objective) as an ideal or as an image (subjective) It is that power of the mind, which works on the data supplied by the senses (sight hearing, touch etcetera) and embodies them into images altogether separate from local and temporal limitations, images full of meaning and appealing most to the emotions, images which answer to our preconceived notions of what is beautiful and lovable, and which accord with the deepest longings of the soul We look at an object and perceive certain qualities in it We notice its size colour movements, and so on The mind supplies sensations coming from other sources by association memory provides us with images of similar objects (The memory of a thing is very different from the thing itself, since ·74 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COLOPOSITION the latter exists in some place, but the former exists only in the mind) The mind amplifies these sensations and interprets them in the light of its own emotions When this mental process is carried to its full extent, memory is freed from 183 reference to some existing object it is no longer limited to some particular time or place, and we get an image In hus poem 'The Daffodils' Wordsworth describes his sensations on seeing a field covered with daffodils, golden in sunshine, and dancing in the wind, and in the last verse he tells us about the image which is independent of time and place - For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood They flash upon that, inward eye Which is the blus of solitude The ideal or image calms and soothes the spirit. The mind turns to the image after the actuality has passed away The highest form of imagination is that in sight into the hidden meaning of things which is not attainable by memory or reflection It sets the idea which memory has given free from its surrounding and accidental circumstances, and reveals it as a universal truth independent of outward events In this respect Poetry differs from History History tells us of certain events that happened. Poetry shows us the passions and aspirations of men which are permanent and true ja all ages and go to make History Similarly in everything the creative imagination saizes upon the permanent meanings things and embodies them in images which will give anyone who meets with them in his reading, the like power of appre ciating or apprehending the universal meaning of facts. The scenes of Nature appeal to us, because there is some connecnon between the working of our spints and those of Nature Vordsworth espresses the connection between man and Nature, and his poetry appeals to us because it makes articulate this feeling of the connection between man and of ·POETRY 75 His poetry Nature which we ourselves are unable to express expresses interests which are common to us all and therefore it will appeal to mankind through all ages The product of the imagination may also be the result of a morbid state of mind, in which case the poet does not interpret Nature anght, but finds his own mood reflected in the workings of Nature For instance in Sohrab and Rustom Mathew Arnold, in describing the effect produced by the dreadful cry of Ruhsh, the horse, says And Oxus cudled as it crossed his stream This is so fanciful that it appears unreal and forced Ruskın has called this form of aberration the Patbetic Fallacy When the creative power of the imagination is not such as to create images which express the universal thoughts of mankind, we have what is called Fancy Fancy does not create images It merely connects ideas together using simules metaphors, and poetical figures of various kinds Fancy gives us pleasure and stimulates us, but it does not reveal the hidden heart of things Realism is imitation, and imitation gives pleasure, the pleasure of mimicry and caricature For example, a photograph, or a Dutch painting gives pleasure But the truest imitation is seldom found in so-called Realism There is a higher realism, such as we find in Hamlet Even in the work of the realist the ideal is not absent Wordsworth s theory Was that the diction of ordinary life is the proper diction for poetry, but he uses only a part of the ordinary diction of men, a part suitable for his purpose, and he combines it into an ideal form Both realism and idealism depart from ordinary human life but idealism seeks a higher plane of thought, feeling and action Romanticism deviates much from the prose of life It abounds in what is wonderful and fantasac in passion and ·76 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION in mystery Yet the moss troopers in Scott s Lay of the Last Minstrel which is a romantic poem, resemble the real moss troopers VORDSWORTH'S THEORY OF POETRY Wordsworth asserted that his purpose was to make poetry by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation Assum ing that a state of yivid sensation a state of poctical the language of men in such a state, when se lected and made metrical, will certainly be poctry But if Wordsworth means that the language of anyone in a state of excitement is poetical, he is certainly wrong Poetry is not merely the language prompted by strong passion and emotion for, if that were the sole requisite for poetry, all men would means excitement be poets Poetry, like Painting, is an art, and cannot be practised under the influence of passion any more than Painting can Poetical emotion is quite different from ordinary passion or emotion just as musical emotion or the feeling of what is beautiful in Painting, is different from ordinary passion, There may be plenty of ordinary passion or excitement and yet nothing of poetical or musical emotion Poetry consists in idealizing our experiences, and emotion will not produce this idealization The emotion must be of a peculiar kind and the mind must be endowed with peculiar gifts before the idealization can be effected. Poetry is not the language of men in 7 state of ercitement nor yet the uns cation of the language of men in such a state It is an idea lized imitation, a mixing of the poet s mind with the subject which gives the subject a not character As in Painting a good picture or a good portrait is never a more copy of nature but always owes something to the artists own spit, so in Poetry, the good poem on es something to the poet's ·POLTRY 77 own spirit ALLITERATION, ASSONANCE AND VOWEL SOUNDS A common ornament of English poetry, and, indeed, of the poetry of all nations consists in the frequent repetition of the same initial letter and this is called alliteration The jingle of sound that is made by repeating the same consonant over and over again is pleasing to the ear This is the explanation of our love for such combinations of words as, safe and sound, through thick and thin, in weal or woe, for kith and kın All through our poetry this ornament is used, and I shall do well to give a few examples of it from our poets In the summer season When soft was the sun In this there is frequent repetition of the letter s *Pilgrims and palmers Plighten them together Here the letter p recurs frequently Other examples of the use of this ornament are For eloquence the soul song charms the sense. Milton Full fathom five thy father lies Of his bones are coral made Shakespeare Ruin seize thee ruthless king Gray For not to have been dipt in Lethe lake Could save the son of Thetis from to die But that blind bard did him immortal make With verses dipt in dew of Castilie Sprinset *The far breeze blew the white form flew, The furrow followed free We were the first that ever burst Into that sulent ses. Coleridge ·78 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION In modern English verse alliteration is not so rauch used as it used to be, but it is still quite common. For example, in the line Our steetest songs are those that cell of saddest thought there is a recurrence of s and tb Our popular songs seem to rely upon this ornament for their appeal to the people, as, She was as beautiful as a butterfly And as proud as a queen Was pretty Little Polly Perkins Of Paddington Green. But alliteration is not always such a simple matter as thus. In such lines as, O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O stay and heart Your true loves coming That can sing both high and loty." the alliteration is not luated to the initial letters of words, but the recurnng letters m, r, s, and I are found scattered about and with a very beautiful effect. Again in the sentence Quietly rested beneath the drums and tramplings of three conquests' There are a great num ber of dental sounds, d, t, and th, all letters of the same class and this recurrence of consonants of the same class also goes by the name of alliteration. So that it is evident that alliteration is not always so simple a matter as 10 'Round and round the rugged rocks the ragged rascals rap When describing souods it is possible to find soft sound ing words or harsh sounding words to suit the sounds we are describing, and when describing mokon we can choose words which have some similarity to the motion they signify, by ra son of the celenty, or slowness of their pronundation Some words are lofty and dignified and therefore suitable for ex pressing lofty ideas others are harsh sounding and suitable ·POETRY 79 for expressing harsh thoughts Words of many syllables propounced slowly and smoothly are expressive of grief and melancholy Vowels sounds descend from high to low in the following order 1, €, 4, 0, # Diphthongs such as oi, ai, are more agreeable than short sounds By choice of the best vowels and the liquid consonants l, m, n, and t, soft c and the labials þ and b, m, soft sounds can be expressed while harsh sounds can be made by b, by the gutturals k, s, ch, ng, q by aspirates as f, pb, ib, by double r and by s, ch, sh Examples O er all the dreary coasts. Dreary gleams Dismal screams Pires that glow Shrieks of woe Sullen moans Hollow groans And cries of injured ghosts Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows But when loud surges lash the sounding shore The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar Pope Good poets choose their words so as to make the sound echo to the sense For example, With many a weary step and many a many a groan Up the hill be heaves a huge round stone describes slow laborious movernent, and Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain Flies o er the unbending corn and skims along the main descnbes quick movement, When the merry bells In, ning round ·80 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION + And the jocund rebecs sound To many 1 youth and many a maid Dancing in the chequer d shade Milion's L'Allegro The quick movement of the anapasts in the third line 15 well adapted to the theme Slowness and gravity are shown by long syllables , by slow, and solemn movement of the rhythm Haste and speed are shown by short syllables, and by quick, rapid movement. When describing a terrible person, or the roar of waters against the shore or any harsh noise the writer will choose harsh sound ing consonants and suitable vowel sounds For example, look at Multon s description of the opening of hell gates of a sudden open dy With imperuous recoil and garning sound, Th infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder Similarly in Lycidas. Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw" In short, there should be agreement between the words and the thought Heroic sentiments require elevated lang uage, tender sentiments require soft and flowing words, grave and didactic thoughts require plain language, void of orna ment Assonance is a term used for the repetition of the same vowel sound a device which is considered an ornament of style by many authorities and its use is very effective. The poet Spenser was fond of it, 25 may be seen from the frequent repetition of the vowel 1 in the lines, A gentle kaight was pricking on the plain Yclad in mighty arms and silver shield Wheran old dints of deep wounds did remain The cruel marks of many a bloody field Wordsworth on the other hand, advocated a system of vowel variation, and this is the principle generally followed by ·PROSODY 81 modern poets In the following lines from Tennyson it can be seen bow greatly he varied the vowel sounds And leaping down the ndges lightly plunged Among the bulrush beds and clutched the stvord And strongly wheeled and threw it The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour of the moon Both alliteration and assonance may be used in prose if they are not employed excessively In rustic song assonance is sometimes used instead of rhyme as in And pray who gave you that jolly red nose? Cinnaman Ginger Nutmeg and Cloves PROSODY Prosody deals with the laws of verse The writer of verse has to arrange lus lines into definite measures of sounds definitely accented, and this arrangement is called the Metre In other words Metre is the arrangement of a succession of accented and unaccented syllables measured off in lines of equal or varying length. This regularity of accent is called Rlrythm Thus in the lines No mátel no com rade Lufcy knew She dwelt' on ål vide moórl The sweetlest thing that évler grew] Besídel z human door there is a beat or accent upon alternate syllables, and there are four accented syllables in the first line, three in the second four in the third and three in the fourth line. In reading poetry the accented syllables are not all stressed 25 in the examples showing the scansion Following the verse rhythm too closely will result in a sing-song kind of reading The reader follows the sense and modifies the verse rhythm by dropping a beat here and there, and sometimes by shifang a beat. Speech rhythm is not so fixed and rigid as verse rhythm, 6 ·82 HINTS ON THE ART OF CYGLISH COMPOSITION 5 and merely suggests the verse rhythm For example, Verse thythm It blessleth him that gives and him that tákes Speech rhythm It blesseth him that gives and him that tikes Verse rhythm Tomorrow is our predjding day And wél will then repair Untól the Bell) at Ed/monton All in a chause and par Speech rhythm Tomorrow is our wedding day And we will then repair Unto the Bell at Edmonton All in a chaise and pair Rhyme consists in the similarity of sound in the final syl lables of two or more lines Thus in the lines quoted aborc knew and grew make a rhyme, and moor and door make a chyme, chough the latter is a poor one because door should be sounded dore--not at all like the sound of moor In order to get a perfect rhyme the vowel sounds of the chyming syllables must be the same, as me, be If she be not fair to me What care I how fair she be. And if the syllables end in 1 consonang, the consonants also must be the same, as trys and cry, sigbt and light, es Golden lads and girls all must Like chimney sweepers come to dust The similanty between these final syllables must be a similanty of sound as well as of form Heath and deatb do not form a rhyme because they are sounded differently The consonants preceding the ropel must be different, c& post and last form and storni, rain and gain Rhymes of one syllable are called single English poetry ·PROSODY 83 frequently has double rhymes and triple rhymes, in which the rhymes extend over two syllables and three syllables respectively, e.g, quiet and diet, sharing and caring are double rhymes glorious and victorious, scrutiny and inutiny, dutiful and beautiful are triple rhymes Notice that in double rhymes the last syllables are identical, and in triple rhymes the last two syllables are identical, while the first syllables in both obey the law of single rhymes Rhyme is not a mere ornament of verse It is invaluable to mark the endings of the lines of the metre, and renders the Rhythm more distinct than the accents alone would do Modern unrhymed verse is not satisfactory at least for popular poetry The ency rhyme found in the poetry of all nations and it seems to be the result of an instinctive craving for well marked recurrence and accord METRE Metre is the rhythmical arrangement of words in lines of equal or varying length A foot is the unit of metre. It consists of two or three syllables, one of which is accented The accented syllable is spoken of as long, and represented by the mark () or ( ), while short syllables are represented by the mark () The feet most used in English verse are The jambus The trochee The dactyl The anapaest The amphibrach A verse 15 a line of poetry, and verses are classified according to the kind of foot and the number of feet occurring in them So we have iambic trochaic dactylic, anapaestic and amphibrachic verse Lines containing ·84 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIO one foot are called Monometer two feet are called Dimeter three feet are called Trimeter four feet are called Tetrameter five feet are called Pentameter SLX fcet are called Hexameter seven feet are called Heptameter EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT KINDS or VERSE lambic trimeter His sword/ tvas in its sheath His fingers held the pén! When Kém{penféldtf went down With twice four hun/dred mén] lambic tetrameter The way was fong the wind was cold| The minstrel was infirm and old Woe worth the chásel woe worth the day That cost thy life my gállant grey Or if the air will not permit Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom Für from all resort of mirth Save the cracket on the hearth Or the bellman s drowsy charm To bless the doors from nightly hiro In this, lines S, 6, 7, have the first foot of cach line shortened by the omission of the unaccented syllable for the sake of variation. This iambic tetrameter is a very common metre most of the old romances and Scotts and Byron s romantic poems are written in it. Wordsworth uses it frequently, as in the linn Scott Milton ·PROSODY 85 A perfect woman nobly planned To warm to comfort, and command And yet a spirit still and bright With something of an angel light lambic pentameter O máy I join the chóir invisible Of those immortal dead who live agáin In minds made bétter by their présence live In pulses starred to generosity Two such I saw what time the laboured ox In his loose traces from the furrows came And thé swinked hedger ác his supper sat Milion Oh foolishness of men that lend their ears To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub Praising the lean and sallow abstinence. This metre is much used If the lines are rhymed it is called the Heroic Measure and if unrhymed, it is called Blank Verse EXAMPLES OF THE HEROIC MEASURE Could Natures bounty satisfy the breast The sons of Italy were surely blest. Whatever fruits in different climes are found That proudly nise or humbly court the ground Whatever blooms in torrid tracts appear Whose bright succession decks the varied year With vergal lives that blossom but to die These here disporting own the kindred soil Nor ask luxuriance from the planter s toil While sea born gales their gelid wings expand To winnow fragrance round the smiling land Goldsmuib's Traveller ·86 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled And still where many a garden flow r grows wild There where a fen torn shrubs the place disclose The village preacher's modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear And passing rich with forty pounds a year Remote from towns he ran Ius godiy race Nor cer had changed nor wished to change his place, Unskilful he to fawn or seck for power By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour Far other aims his heart had lcarned to prize More bent to raise the wretched than to rise His house was known to all the vagrant train Hc chid their wand nngs, but relieved their pain. Goldsmith See what delights in sylvan scenes appear! Descending gods have found Elysuim herc In woods bright Venus with Adonis strayed And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade. Come lovely nymph and bless the silent hours When swains from shearing seck their nightly bow rs, When weary reapers quit the sultry field And crowacd with corn their thanks to Cercs yield This harmless grovc no lurking siper hides But in my breast the serpent Love abides. Here becs from blossoms sip the rosy dew But your Alexis knows no swects but you. Pok With floods of gore that from the vanqurshed fell The marshes stagnate and the risers spell Mountains of slaio lie heap d upon the ground Or must the roarings of the Danube drownd Whole captive hosts the conqueror detains In painful bondage and inclonous chains Ev n those who scape the fetters or the sword ·PROSODY 87 Nor seck the fortunes of a happier lord Their raging hing dishonours to complete Marlborough s great work, and finish the defeat Addison Under Chaucer and the poets of the early period, the sentence was allowed to follow its own laws, independently of the metre The divisions of the sentence sometimes coincided with the divisions of the metrt, and sometimes crossed them The sentence flowed on from one line to another, or, in other words, the end of the line of metre did not mean a break in the sentence or the end of the sentence The sense went on from one line to another without any pause on the rhyming word, and when the sentence does end, it usually ends with the first line of a couplct For example, A knight there was and that a worthy man That from the tyme that he first began To nden out he lovede chyvalrye Trouthe and honour freedom and curtesie. Ful worth was he in his lordes werre And thereto had he riden, no man ferre As well in Cristendom as in hethenesse. In this we see how the sense of the second line runs on into the third line and that of the third into the fourth This way of letting the meanıng run on from one line to another, without pause or emphasis on the rhyming word is sometimes spoken of as the enjambement sometimes as the overflow Chaucer always makes use of it and it is common right on to the Elizabethan poets, though some have a tendency to fit single sentences into single lines, or into couplets lecting emphasis fall on the rhyme This latter method became usual in the 17th Century and is to be found in Dryden 1631-1700 and his contemporaries For example, All human things are subject to decay And when Fate summons monarchs must obey ·88 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION This Flecknoe found who, like Augustus, young Was called to empire, and had governed long Dryde Of these the false Achitophel was first A name to all succeeding ages curst For close designs and crooked copasels fit Sagacious bold and turbulent of wit. Dryle This becomes very monotonous and Dryden relieves the monotony by introducing double rimes, triplets, and some times an Alexandrine line For example, Time place and action may with pains be wrought, But genius must be boro and never can be taught. This is your portion this your native store, Heaven that but once was prodigal before To Shakespeare gave as much she could not give him more. The first two lines have a double rhyme, and the last three lines form a triplet. Lines two and five are Alexandrnes. When we come to Pope 1668 1744, we find no attempt to relieve the monotony of the verses by such expedients, and we also find that causes and sentences are clipped so that they fit exactly the metrical division of the versc For crample- And por unveiled the toilet stands displayed, Lach slver vase in mystic order lud First robed in hite the nymph intent adores With head uncovered the cosmetic powers. A heavenly image in the glass appears To that she bends, to that her eye she reans, The inferior priestess at her altar s side Trembling begins the sacred ntes of pade. Pope's Rope of the Lock Leigh Hant, 1784-1859, and heats 1796-1820 took Dryden as a model, but uscd freer and more colloqwal lan guage. The following passage is Leigh Hunts Abou Ben Adhern — ·PROSODY 89 I pray thce then Abou Bea Adhemma; his tribe increase! Awoke one night, from a deep dream of peace And saw within the moonlight in his room Making it rich and like a lily in bloom An angel writing in a book of gold Exceeding peace had made Beo Adhem bold And to the presence in the room he said — What writest thou? The vision raised its head And with a look made of all sweet accord Answered The names of those who love the Lord And is mine one? said Adhem Nay not so Roplied the angel Abou spoke more low But cheerily still and said Wnto me as one that loves his fellow men The Angel wrote and vanished The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed And lo! Ben Adhem s nime lcd all the rest. BLANK VERSE Blank verse consists of lines of five iambuses It is the noblest of our metres, and is used by our great dramatists, and by our epic poets Shakespeare and Milton are the chief masters of this form of verse In a strictly regular line the accents are five in number and fall on every alternate syllable as in the line When down along| by pleasfant Tém|pe s stream) but much license is allowed in varying the feet, and the length of the lines Sometimes a trochee, or an anapaest, is substituted for an iambus as Left for repéntfance none for pár don left Tweaks me by the nose! Gives me the lic in the throat An unaccented syllable is sometimes added to the last foot 15 ·90 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Which the poor hearts would fain deng} and dire not. To-mórrow and to-mór[row and to-morrow Shakespeare often glides over a short syllable, is— Of thinking tool precisely on the cyént And sometimes he expands 3 monosyllable into a ds syllable as But for your private sát{sfácaón. EXAMPLES OF BLANK VERSE Now my co-mates and brothers in exile Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Thao that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the enviou, court? Here feel we but the penalty of Adam The season s difference as the icy fang And churlish chuding of the winters wind Which when it bites and blows upon my body, Even till I shrink with cold I smile and say This is no futtery these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am. Snect are the uses of adversity Which like the coad ugly and veoomous Wears yet a precious jewel in his head And thus our life crempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees books in the running brooks Sermons in stones and good in everything As You Like It Mislike me not for my complexion The shadowed livery of the burnished sun To whom I am a neighbour and near bred. Bnng me the fairest creature northern born Where Phoebus fire scare thans the icicles And let me make incision for your love ·PROSODY 91 To prove whose blood is reddest his or mine. I tell thee, Lady, this aspect of mine Hath feared the valiant by my love, I swear The best regarded virgins of our clime Have loved it too I would not change this hue Except to steal your thoughts my gentle queen. Merchant of Venice Your virtue is my privilege for that It is not night when I do see thy face Therefore I think I am not in the night Nor doth the wood lack worlds of company, For you in my respect are all the world Then how can it be said I am alone When all the world is here to look on me? A Midsummer Night's Dream Oh world thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, Whose hours whose bed whose meal and exercise Are still together who twin tivere in love Unseparable shall within this hour On the dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity So fellest focs Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep To take the one the other by some chance Some trick not worth an egg shall grow dear friends And interjoin the issues Coriolanus Cowards die many times before their deaths The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard It seems to me most strange that men should fear Seeing that death a necessary end Will come when it will come ·92 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION lambic Hexameter The blackl and dárksome nights the bright and glad some days! Jodif|fercat árel to him his hópe) on God that stíssi This metre is sometimes called the Alexandrac, because an old French poem celebrating the deeds of Alexander the Great, was written in it. lombic Heptameter Now glórly to the Lord of Hósts] from whóm) all glórſies are And glór y colour sovereign Liegel Ling Henry off Navatre. This metre is sometimes written in lines of four feet and three feet alternately, the latter rhyming It is called Balled metre and Service metre, because ballads and hymns are often written in it. Examples of Ballad Metre Nor dim nor red uke Gods own head The glorious sup uprist Then all a verred I had killed the bird That brought the fog and must. The naked hulk alongside came And the train nere counting dice The game is done! I've won! I vc won! Quoth she and whistles thrice. Coleridge Our English archers bent their bows, Their hearts were good and true At the first light of 2rrows sent Full three score Scots they slew O Christi it was a grck to see And Ikewise for to hear The cries of men all in the gore And scattered here and there At last these to stout earls did meet, ·PROSODY 93 Like captains of great might Like lions mor d they laid on load And made a cruel fight They fought until they both did sweat, With swords of tempered steel Until the blood like drops of rain They trickling down did feel Mixed Metre In this the number of feet in the line varies eg There was a time when méadow grove and stream! The cárth and every cóm_mon sight/ To médid seem Appárſelled in celésaal light| The glórly and the freshness of a dream. Sometimes we find lines which contain one or two syllables more than the usual number Such lines are called Hypermetric For example As id le ás a painted ship! Upón a painted 6clean (Hypermetric) EXAMPLES OF TROCHAIC METRES Trocbaic Trimeter When the lámp is sháttered] When the cloud is scattered| Sháu al woman s virtues move (H) permetric) Mé tol pérish for her love (Hypermetric) Trochaic Hexanıcfer Hóly!| Hóly!| Hóly! All theļ saints al dore theel Cásting down the golden) crowns al round the glassy (Hypermetric) Longfellow uses the trochaic metres frequently For txample In the market place of Bruges stánds thel bélfry 6ld SC3 ·94 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOV and brovn Thrice consumed and thrice selbuilded still it witches o ér the town! EX IMPLES OF ANAPAESTIC METRES Anapaestic Dimeter As ye sweép) through the deep Anapaestic Trimeter I am monarch of 111] I survey My right there is nonel to dispute From the cenſtre all round to the seal I am lord of the fowlſ and the brutel Anapaestic lines are often varied by the introduction of other feet, and odd syllables for example: Tear death?ſ to fell thc fógl in my throat) The mist/ in my face! Wlien the saotvs begins and the blastsl denotel I am ncárling the place The power of the night the press of the storm The postſ of the fóc BrouTuys Here we have iambics mixed with anapaests, and the verses are fast and spirited In the gloom of November were passed Dáss not of gloom to my mind. Break | breahl break] On thy cold/ grey stones o Séa And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me EXAMPLES OF DACTYLIC METRES Dactylsc dimeter One more unfortunatel Wary of breath Rishly im pórtunatel Gone to her deich drndy ·PROSODY 95 Touch her not scórnfully Think of her mournfully Géntly and humanly Dactylıc Trimeter Mérnly mérrily | shall I live now Under the blossom that hángs on the bough Examples of Ampbibracinc metres Oh hush thee my bábyl thy site was a knight! Thy mother, a lády both gentle and bright| The woods and the glens and the coners whichl we see They are all] belonging dear báby| to thee There came to the beích a poor éxile of Erial The dew on his thin robel was heavy and chill Lochiel | Lochiel | beware of the dáy) When the Lowlandsl shall meet theel in battle array Amphibrachs may be alternatively scanned as Anapaests, thus Oh hush thee my báſby thy Sirel was a knight Thy mother a Ialdy both gentle and bright in which case the first foot of each verse is an iambic. * * ☆ Mixed verse In order to relieve the monotony of verses of uniform length and containing the same number of feet, modern poets frequently vary the length of the lines, and the kinds of feet in them. This kind of poetry goes by the name of Mired Verse. Examples So with the thrótt/lag hindi of death at strife Ground be) ar Grammar Still though the raccle parts of speech were nfe While he could stämmer Sirve and hold cheap the stron ·96 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH CONTOSITION Learn nor account the pang dare, never grudge the thre! For thence the paradox Which comforts while it mocks Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail What I aspired to be And was not, comforts mc. There bel nóne of Beauty s daughters With a máglic like thée! And like music on the waters Is thyl sweet voice to me! A couplet is composed of civo consecutive lae rhyming together, a triplet is composed of three such lines, eg, A couplet And see the children sport upon the shore And hear the mighty rolling evermore A triplet Oh come with old Khayyan, and leave the wise To calk one thing is certain that Lifc dics One thing is certain and the Rest is lies Stanzas A stanza is a group of verses recurring regularly in a pocm The chief varieties of stanza used in English verse re (1) the four lined stanza with alternating rhymes 2. The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o er the leas, The ploughman homeward plods in weary way And lases the world to darkness and to me Now fades the glimmering laodscape on the sght, And all the air a solcmn stillness holds Sare where the beetle wheels hus drooing flight And drowsy tinklings loll the distant folds In this stanza chere are five accented syllables in each ·PROSODY 97 ine, and the alternate lines rhyme There is a six lined stanza similar to the above, with the ddition of a rhyming couplet at the end The Chauceran seven lined stanza was a great favourite ip to the reign of Elizabeth The following stanza is an exmple, and it will be noticed that in this stanza lines 1 and 3 !, 4, and 5, and 6 and 7 rhyme. Among this poor folk there dwelt a man Which that was bolden poorest of them all But high God some time sende can His grace into a little oxe stall Janicula men of that thorp him call A daughter had he, fair enough to sight And Grısılde this young maiden hight Ottava Roma is an eight lined stanza, cach line containing en syllables five of which are accented The great Italian Poets Dante and Arosto wrote in this stanza It is not much used in English poetry, but Byron used it in Don Juan. It has three rhymes, lines 1, 3 5 2, 4 6 7 and 8 For eximple Twas in the season when sad Philomel Weeps with her sister who remembers and Deplores the ancient woes which both befcl, And makes the nymphs cnamoured to the hand Of Phacton by Phoebus loved so well His car (but tempered by his sure s command) Was given and on the horizon 8 verge just now Appeared so that Tithonus scratched his brow The Spanserian Stanza consists of nine lines The first eight lines are iambic pentameters, and the last line is an Alexandrine. The rhyming lines are 1, 32, 4, 5, 7, 6, 8, 9 Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, Of all that might delight a dainty care 7 For example ·98 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Such as at once might not on living ground Save in this paradise be heard elsewhere Right hard it was for wight that did it haare To read what manner musicke that more bee For all that pleasing us to living care Was there consorted 10 one hırmone, Birds voices instruments winds waters, all agrec. - And steedy Avance by hum did nde Upon a camel loaden all with gold Two tron coffers hung on either side, With precious metal full as they might hold And in his lap a heap of coin he sold, For of his wicked pelf his god he made, And unto bell himself for money sold, Accursed usury was all his crade, And night and wrong alike in balance neighed SARF Some thought to raise themselves to high degree By riches and unnghteous reward, Some by close should ring some by flatteree, Others through friends others for base reward, And all by wrong ways for themselves prepared Those that were up themselves kept ochers lorer Those that were lower themselves held others hard Ne suffered them to rise or greater growc But creryone did strive his fellow dorn to throwe Spense The Spenserian Scanza has been used in more moder poetry, as in Byrons Cbilde Harold and in Bums Collst Saturday Night The Sonnel is a fourteen lune stanza, cach line of ten sy lables The lines arc jambic peatameter The Italian Petrarchan, sonnet consists of two parts, the Oclove, consist ing of two quatrains and having only two rhymes and the ·PROSODY 99 Seslette, consisting of two groups of three lines which have two and sometimes three chymes Other varieties of arrangement are found in the sonnets of Milcon and Wordsworth, but the difference is chiefly in the last sıx lines EXAMPLES Wordsworth s sonnet on Westminster Bridge is of the genuine Italian type Earth has not anything to show more fair Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touchung in its majesty The city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning silent bare Ships towers domes theatres and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky All bright and glittering in the smokeless air Never did sun more beautifully steep In hus first splendour valley rock or hill Ne er saw I never felt a calm so deep The nver glideth at his own sweet will Dear God! the very houses seem asleep And all that mighty heart is lying stilli The rhyming scheme is, lines 1, 4, 5, 8 2 3 6 7 9, 11 13 10 12, 14 English sonnets have various rhyming schemes, as 1, 4, 7,2 3, 6,8 9, 11 10 12, 13, 14 and 1, 3 2 4 5,7, 6 8, 9, 11 10 12 13 14 This last is the Shakespearean form, eg, Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove Oh not it us an ever fixed mark ·100 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION That looks on tempests and never shakeo, It is the star to every waadering bark- Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. Love s not Times fool, though rosy lips and checks Within his bending sickles compass come Love alcers not with his bref hours and wecks But bears it out ev a to the edge of doom. If this be crror ao apon me proved, I never wrt, nor do man ever loved It may be divided into three staozas of four lines eacher and a final couplet. A sonnet to the nightingale TO THE NIGHTINGALE O nightingale that on yon bloomy sprav Warblest at eve when all the woods are still Thou with fresh hope the lover s heart doch fill While the jolly hours lead on propitious May The liquid notes that close the eye of day First heard before the shallow cuckoo s bull Porcend success in love oh of Joves will Have linked that amorous por r to thy soft las, Now timcly sing ere the rude bird of hate Forecel my hopeless doom in some grove nigh As thou from year to year hast For my relief yet hadst no reason why, Whether the muse or love call thee bis mite Both them I serve, and of their trun am I TO THE MOON Queen of the silver bowl by thy pale beam Alone and pensive I delight to stray And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream Or mark the floating clouds that cross the way And while I gaze thy mild and placid light sung too late Milon ·CRITICISM 101 Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast And oft I think fair planet of the night! That in thy orb the wretched may have rest, The sufferers of the earth perhrps may go, Released by death to thy benignant sphere And the sad children of despair and woe Forget, in thee their cup of sorrow here. O that I soon may reach thy world serene, Poor wearied pilgrm in this toilung scene - Mrs Smstb 1 CRITICISM As an example of the kind of criticism a student is called upon to mahe, we will take Keats Sonnet On First Looking Into Chapmans Homer, and examine it Much have I travelled in the realms of gold And many goodly states and hingdoms seen Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep browed Homer ruled as hus demesne Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken Or like stout Cortez, when with cagle eyes He stared at the Pacific and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmisc Silent, upon a peak in Danien. First let us remark upon the sound and rhythm of the poem It is written in iambic pentameter, and 13 scanned as follows Much hável I trávfelld in the realms of gold And mánly goodlig states and kingdoms seen ·102 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOY Round manly western asſlands hível I been Which bárds in feallty toj Apollo hold Lines 1, 4, 5, 8, rhyme togecheragold, bold, told, 20! bold Lines 2, 3, 6 and 7, lines 9 11, 13 and lines 10 12 14 rhyme. This form of the sonnet is common in English. The flow of the words is melodious and pleasing, and they is largely due to the skill with which the poet makes change in the vowel sounds, and alternations of short vowels with long vowels He arranges consonants and sowels, so that there is no harshness of sound In the line "That deep-brovved Homer ruled as his demesne the letters p, b, m, are soft sounding labial letters, tb, r, l, art soft or flat consonants Sometimes Kcats makes one or two vowels sounds predominate in a line, as in the line When a new planet swims into his ken Where the vowel e occurs four times, and i three ames. In this line too, we observe the use of soft consonants ub, , m and The only hard consonants arc i and k In such phrases as 'purc serenc, swims', loud and bold', the sound echoes to the sense This suiting of the sound to the sense is called Harmony Secondly let us look at the diction, or choice of words There is digarty and stateliness in the words No common place words that might offend the taste arc craplo; cd, ercept perhaps the word 'stared' Words like bard, fcales, deep browed demesne serene ken are used instead of familur words, and indeed it is a characteristic of heats, and some times a fault, that he searches for unusual words, and coans compound adjectives like 'derp brourd' Deep broured 13 a very appropriate adjective to imply having great mental power It means that Horner had highly developed frontal lobes Swims is also a very appropriate expression for the frictionless movement of a comet through space. Thirdly let us consider the figures of speech. Realms of ·CRITICISM 103 The me- Gold is a figurative expression or metaphor for the rich domain of Literature especially Poetry and History taphor is a good one. States and kingdoms Leeps up the same metaphor Western Islands is a metaphor for the Literatures of the various nations of the West. Each nation s literature has its own peculiar qualities and distinctive aspects Hence the metaphor islands is suitable Never did I breathe its pure serene This metaphor compares Homer's thoughts to a pure serene atmosphere. The plain meaning is never did I take in, or appreciate the beauty and nobility of Honier s ideas Like some watcher of the skies Like stout Cortex etc are very appropriate similes Alliteration In the lines Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his hen there is the repetition of the same initial consonants Another example is the recurrence of the letter d, in- That deep-browed Homer ruled as hus demesne Yet, did I never breathe its pure serene The repetition of vowel sounds as a and o in the lines Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold is another noticeable feature. Qualities of style The style is simple, clear and impresdrye by reason of its noble sound and its unusual similes and metaphors The similes make it Picturesque When we read of Cortez standing upon a peak in Darien and with eagle eyes staring at the Pacific, the scene is presented to our minds as vividly 18 if we actually saw it That is what is meant by picturesqueness in style. The chief quality of the sonnet is its Strength It is full of vigour and liveliness and it rouses our mental energy The ·104 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION thoughts are all of noble things The admiration of the glory of the poet, the renown of the astronomer, and the brater of the adventurer cyoke in us a sense of dignity, majesty and power, and arouse a feeling of admiration for all that grex in the world. As already mentioned, the sonnet has Euphony, Melods. and Harmony In this sonnet Keats usually makes the end of a sentence, or cause, coincide with the end of the line Only in the list four lines does he make use of Enjambement, allowing the sea tence to run on from one line into another As another example, let us consider Tennyson s Morted Arthur The metre of this poem is iambic pentameter, or blant verse. great dal of So all day long! (the norsel of battle rolled Among the mountains} }by/ the winter #1. In reading there is a slight pause in each line called the caesura, and marked in the passage chus (}}) A of the charm of verse depends upon varying the position this pause, or caesura. Tennyson varies it constantly Teanyson often acccats the first syllable of the first foor of a line, as me Yét for a man may fáil in duty twice And the third time may prósper get thec hence But of thou spire to fling Excálbut I will arise and slay thee with my bands. Rapıdıry of movement is expressed by a succession of short Towels and slow movement, by long vowels, 15 in - 'Then quickly rose Sir Bedligere and ran and, Then took with care and kacclag on one knce Oer both his shoulders drew the laoguld hands And ning bore him through the place of tombs ·CRITICISM 10S and, And so strode back slow to the wounded king' THE STYLE OF THE POEM Notice the Simplicity of the poem, which is due to the use of familiar words, the use of short sentences, loose sentences, and appropriate figures of speech, for example 'But as he walked Kiag Arthur ganted hard Like one that feels a nightmare on his bed When all the house is mute So sighed the King Mutterog and murmuring at his car, Quick qucki I fear it is too late and I shall die Clearness There is no ambiguity as to the meaning This is due to the right choice of words, the illustration of his meaning by suitable metaphors and similes, correct grammar, and attention to the rules of Order Impressiveness In places the poem shows intense feel- 198, which is expressed in strong well-chosen language, in exclamations, and abrupt sentences, for example To whom replied King Arthur much in wrath Ah miserable and unkind, untrue Unknightly trastor hearted! Woe is me! Authority forgets a dying king Lad widowed of the power in his eye That bowed the will Picturesqueness Examples of this quality are numer- Ous - the winter moon. Brightening the skirts of a long cloud ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the built Counting the dewy pebbles fix d in thought. the shining levels of the lake in the many-kaotted waterflags ·106 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION That whistle stiff and dry about the marge.' Clothed with his breath and looking as he walked Larger than human on the frozen hills 1t lies Deep mcadow d, bappy far with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. There is strength, dignity and loftıness in such passages as Thou hast betrayed thy nature and thy name, Not rendenng truc anstvers as beseemed Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight 'More things are wrought by prayer Than thus world dreams of Wherefore let thy voce Rise like a fountain for me night and day ecc." and pathos in So saying from the pavement he half rose Slowly, with pain, reclining on hus arm, And looking wistfully with wide blue cyes As in a picture But she that rose the tallest of them all And fairest laid his head ороо her lap, And loosed the shattered casque and chafed his hands And call d lum by his name complaining loud And dropping biccer tears against a brow Striped with dark blood for all his face wus white And colourless and like the withered moon Smote by the fresh beam of the springing cast Ah my lord Arthur vlucher shall I go? Where shall I hide my forchead and my eyes Melody In the lines I think that rc Shall never more at any future time Delight our souls frith talk of knightly deeds ·CRITICISM 107 5 Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were There is a great predominance of open vowel sounds and much variety of consonants, chiefly soft consonants, and the result is a pleasing flow of language Another example is It is not meet Sir King to leave thee thus Ardless alone and smitten through the helm A little thing may barm a wounded man. Harmony Letters are so combined as to express harsh sounds, as in *The bare blach cliff clanged round him as hc based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp smutten with the dint of armed heels in which harsh consonants predominate And then comes a change to soft liquid sounds to express the quiet of the lahe- And on a sudden lol the level lake And the long glories of the winter moon In these lines the use of alliteration and assonance is noticeable. The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based There is alliteration with b and cl and the vowel a is repeated Lol and long is a good example of assonance Swift movement is shown by the use of hard consonants and short vowels Quick quck! I fear it is too late and I shall die But the other swiftly strode from ndge to ndge Various sounds are imitated by the choice of suitable words, 28, I heard the ripple washing in the reeds And the wild water lapfung on the crag Diction Tennyson s vocabulary consists for the most part of simple and familiar words The number of words derived from Greek and Latin is comparatively small, so that ·108 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH courošov - his words are easily understood by the average reader Bet he avoids well-worn words and trite phrases The reader will notice this in such phrases 25 — The sequel of to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous koights Whereof this world holds record Clothed in whute samite, mystic, wonderful, As bescemed thy fealty As thou art Hef and dear Knightly growth that fringed his lsps' The giddy pleasure of the eyes And o er him drawing it the winter moon Brightening the skirts of a long cloud ran forth And sparkled keen with frost against the hils. "This way and that dividing that swift mind Counting the dety pebbles fixed in thought. But the other swiftly strode from ndge to ndge Clothed with his breath and looking as he walked Larger than human on the frozen hills. Figures of Speech Tennyson was a great lover of N: ture, and most of his similes are drawn from natural phenomcon Shot like a streamer of the northern morn Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By night, with noises of the Northern Sca So sud hc, and the barge with oar and ou More from the brink like some full breasted sman That futing a wild carol ere her death Rulles her pure cold plumx, and takes the flood With wirthy webs for all hur face was white ·WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 109 men And colourless and like the withered moon Smote by the fresh beams of the springzag east General Remarks Tennyson wrote carefully, after much thought. He kept in view all the rules of his Art, and obeyed them faithfully His verses are smooth and polished Tennyson is never difficult by obscurity or carelessness of style. The beauty of bus poetry lies in the sweetness of its melody, the fitness of its music to its thought and its emotion, the change of harmony that gives variety to the ear WORDSWORTH S POETRY Wordsworth was an advocate for simplıcıty of style He says in his introduction to the Lyrıcal Ballads, the poet ought to imitate, and as far as possible, adopt the very language of I have taken as much pains to avoid what is usually called poetical diction as others ordinanly take to pro He denounced the use of the conventional images and phrases commonly used by poets at that time. He thought that there was too much unreality and affectation, artificiality and conventiality in verse, and that a poet ought to use a simpler diction, the diction really used by men He looked upon the public taste as depraved, because it took no delight in simple subjects treated in a simple manner, but wanted stirring ocidents, sentimental tragedies, and blood curdling novels So, instead of taking some stnking subject and working it up and embellishing it, he took simple incidents from humble and rustic life and used the language of simple rustic His aim was to get rid of all the superficialities and trappings of civilization and to get down to the essential Passions of the human heart the feelings that are common to al men. But where he adhered too closely to this aim, he failed to please the public. The transition from the refined duce it. men ·110 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSTOY and polished diction of previous poets to the plain colloqui! language used by Wordsworth excited ridicule. Jeffreys of the Edinburg Review said, 'Thus will never do' sad, un deed, much of Wordsworth s work is marred by errors of us. Many of his ballads are childish, and his attempus at humour puerile Lines such as, For still the more he works the more Do his weak ankles swell in Simon Lee, and the lines about poor Betty, This pitcous news so much it shocked her She quite forgot to send the doctor To comfort poor old Susan Gale are deplorably weak and childish. Similarly Peter Bell, The Idiot Boy, Goody Blake, We are Seven, though they contain lines showing much tenderness and pathos, have in cher ! diculous images and associations In such stanzas as the fol lowing grow double Up! upl my friend and quit your books Or surely you II Upl upl my Friend and clear your looks Why all this toil and trouble?" Wordsworth surely lays himself open to the charge of Coleridge that he failed to distinguish between prose and poetry Much of Wordsworth s work is in reality prose Bur fortunately, Wordsworth did not allow this passion for pizza language to spoil all his work Such poems as the ode to Duty, the Ode on the Intimations of Immortality Laodami. Tin tern Abbey the Sonnets the shorter Lyrics much of the Et cursion are pure in diction, and deep and truc in feeling There is no puerility or excessive simplicity in them some of them arc icry claborate and difficult and full of metaphysical ideas There is in them all that is most tender and thoughtful in the average Englishman all that appeals to the ordinary simple human affections. All our ordinary Indeed.

·WORDSWORTH'S POETRY 111 7 ture on man rules of conduct and morality are set before us an poetry of the finest workmanship Wordsworth s favourite subject was the influence of Na- He views man in connection with external objects and shows how Nature ennobles and en ches the mind of man. He blends metaphysics with pictures of life and scenery, and in doing so shows deep meditation and great descriptive power Sometimes he resembles Milton in the sublimity of his thought in his choice of suitable words and images, and in his depth of feeling His Sonnets are pure in thought and pure in diction, showing no strain or effort, showing the art that conceals art Could anything be finer than the Sonnet on Westminster Bridge? Here is chaste and noble simplicity showing true poetical power and dignity, without any of the prolixity and diffuseness that mars hus longer poems In the Lyrics about Lucy there is a sweetness and delicacy of thought that is typical of Wordsworth The best work of Wordsworth fully deserves and will always hold a high place in our literature NEWMAN S STYLE We shall best consider Newman s Style by examining one or two passages from the book 1 That further advantages accrue to us and redound to others by its possession, over and above what it is in itself, I am very far indeed from denying but independent of these we are satisfying a direct need of our nature in its very acquisition, and whereas our nature, unlike that of the inferior crcation, does not at once reach its perfection, but depends, in order to it, on a number of external aids and appliances, knowledge, as one of the principle of these, is valuable for what its very presence in us does for us after the manner of & habit, even though it be turned to no further account nor any direct end subserve ·112 HINTS ON THE ART OP ENGLISH COCOSITIOV tion When we examine this passage we shall find that New man had a fondness for Latin words His diction is to a large extent classical There are at least twenty words in this pass age derived from Latin words, and some of them such as accrue, redound, subserve are not readily understood by one who has not studied Latin This alone makes his wntus difficult for Indian students He also uses phrases and constructions borrowed from Latın. Such as these those, for the latter the former and in this passage we have the very condensed phrase in order to it for in order to belp ti to reach its perfec tron Newman makes little use of the short sentence He & nerally uses long sentences with numbers of qualifying clauses and parentheucal clauses so chat they need very close atten But the attentive reader has no difficulty sa following the thread of the argument, and finds that the meaning u given with precision and clearness The constant succession of long sentences is however a fault, and tends to weary the reader His style would have been improved by a little more variety, by the use of simple and short sentences interspored with his long ones Newman makes frequent use of inverted order as in the sentence "That further advantages accrue to us and redound to others by its possession oser and above what it is in itself, I am very far indeed from denying Here the placing of the subordinate noua clause, or object, first, is for the sake of emphasis But this artifice of style somcames become very awk Ward and clumsy as in the following sentence. And to take a different instance, hence again 35 is Cri dont whenever personal gain is the motive, still more distinc tite on efect bas it upon the character of a given pursuit." A good ample of Newman s use of the balanced struc ·NEWMAN'S STYLE 113 bure of the sentence is seen in 'Yet it was an art as intellectual in its nature, inspite of the pretence, fraud and quackery with which it might, then, as now, be debased, as it was heavenly in its aim Where Newman uses the short sentence his style is much more lively and more picturesque For example Sea faring men, for example, range from one end of the earth to the other, but the multiplicity of external objects which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical and consistent picture upon their imagination they see he tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it tells no story They sleep and they rise up, and they find themselves now in Europe, now in Asia they see visions of great aties and wild regions they are in the marts of commerce or and the Islands of the south they gaze on Pompeys Pillar or on the Andes and nothing which meets them carnes them forward or backward to any idea beyond itself The short sentence and the simple language make the style forcible, expressive and the language is picturesque in that it calls up in our minds pictures of great cities, deserts islands mountains and monuments of antiquity You will also notice the strong effect of the parallel construction in the portion of the passage Newmun does bot make a great use of the ornaments of stylc but here and there we find apt metaphors and similes In the above passage they see the tapestry of human life as I were or the turong sidle" is a very suitable metaphor, because the wrong side of a piece of tapestry gives no clear picture but a blurred and imperfect one, if any at all The long sentence lends itself to the development of musical cadence or harmonious sound and we find that New m20 s style has thus quality For example, in the sentence — Everything stands by itself, and comes and gots in its turn like the shitung scenes of a show, which leave the speclatter 8 ·114 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION tator where he was Incidentally you will nonce in this sentence the use of alliteration the recurrence of inaal s and w which ads like musical sound of the sentence Netman s style is influenced by the study of the gresi Roman authors, such a Cicero It is stately, nch, and copress excelling in lucıdıry of exposition in rhythm and cadeace r sometimes resembles the prose of Ciccro HINTS ON ESSAY WRITING Read books on History, Biography, Science, Sociology, from which you can gather ideas Take passages, and study them to find out the qualities of style in them Be obse vaat when you are out walking in the town or in the country You will get many ideas from the life around you Cold vate your memory, and before you begin to wnte gire muud thought to your subject. Arrange your thoughts in orde so that your paragraphs may have coonection with one an other Concentrate your attention on your work and cals Make your essay clear, correct, concise and interesting, and when you have finished it, revise at once Attend to the connection and cohesion of the parts of Group together all ideas that are connected and may come under the same heading Thic connection is a link between one des and another, and this may be a cause or bond rance, or effect Or the link may be just a casual one 21 when in talking some mention of a thing leads on to another topic, and this again to a third subject Connection between paragraphs can be shora by the arrangement of your headings by comparisons, and contrasts Suitable words such as el like same tine in spite of, en ik mieantime tben but, although also uble, for beruuse, help to make the connection clearer an interest in it or twice the essay ·HINTS ON ESSAY WRITING 115 The following passage from Macaulay s Clive will exemplify the above The situation of India was such that scarcely any aggression could be without a pretext, either in old laws, or in recent practice All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty, and the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives, confounded the confusion, by applying to Asiatic politics the public law of the West, and analogies drawn from the feudal system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an independent prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so He was independent in fact If it was convenient to treat him as a mere deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no difficultv for he was so in theory If it was convenient to consider his office as an hereditary digoity, or as a dignity held during life only or as a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the Mogul arguments and precedents might be found for every one of these views The party who had the heir of Babar in their hands represented him as the undoubted, the absolute sovereign, whom all subordinate sovereigns were bound to obey The party against whom hus name was used did not want plausible pretexts for maintaining that the empire was in fact dissolved, and that though it might be decent to treat the Mogul with respect, as a venerable relic of an order of things which had passed away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of Hin dostan Observe (1) that the main idea of the paragraph is in the first sentence (2) that all the ideas in the paragraph have a bearing on, and serve to Ilustrate the main idea of the pragraph Thus the Unity of the paragraph is preserved, (3) that there is an evident and clear connection between each sentence and the pre- ·116 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COXIPOSITION cediag one, (4) that the sentences vary in length and in kind Some are loose and some ir periods, (5) that there is the use of the parallel coms truction Observe the Principle of Unly throughout your des or Composition There should be one main idea in your com position, which all the other ideas serve to cıplain and illus tratc, and many ideas which do not at first sight appear to have anything to do with the subject may be introduced they have some bearing on or throw light on the man de Thus to have Unity we must sec that each part has some con nection with the other parts, and that there is nothing un necessary, or irrelevant. In addition to the unity of the wholc composition, there should be unity of the paragraph and voity of the sentence Keep in mind the principle of proportion Give an im portant des a longer paragraph than you give to an unmportant idea Attend to the connection between the parts of your composition, which depends on Order and Arrangement, and last of all attend to Variety There should be sancty sa th length of the paragraphs, variety in the length of the sco tences and in their construction, variety in figures of speech in the choice of words, in the rhythm and so on Bs vins you will make your meaning more clear and cmphatic, and you will secure the interest and attention of the ruder Example of 1 oriely on I be use of words Every quality that is requisite in a man to make bismo completely and honourably prosperous is necessary to endir success in the games of boys, Emplossi Brevity, claarness force, dignuty vandt.

·HINTS ON ESSAY WRITING 117 epigrams, antithesis, similes, hyperbole and humour all help to make a composition emphatic The emphatic positions in a sentence are the beginning and the end and so we often find that writers put the subject at the end of the sentence, jarring sound On a sudden openfly With sudden impetuous recoil and Th infernal doors This inverted order is also a great aid to beauty, as in Of man s first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe With loss of Eden till the greater man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat Sing heavenly muse To secure emphasis it is sometimes a good plan to begin with a refutation of a wrong view of a matter, and then give the correct view Give prominence to the main ideas, and throw unimportant ideas into the background All striking devices of style, such as the use of inversion, metonymy, epigram contrast, etc, are aids to emphasis For instance Inversion-life eternal Metonymg—'sail instead of ship red tape instead of official formalities the pen instead of written words Cblasm— Here to-day, to morrow gone Word plaz— What I have written, I have watten And whuter than the paper that was writ on Was the white hand that wat. Variety in the choice of words, in the length of sentences, and paragraphs is useful for emphasis, for setting forth your ideas clearly and for making your composition interesting ·118 IIITS ON THE ART OY ENGLIS11 COMPOSITIOV and suggesave But you must be arcful in your choice of words If you were describing a football match, it would not do to speak of the football as the leather or the sphere That would be unnecessary yanety Also in strving after variety you must be careful not to indulge in mixed mera phors Brevity As an aid to brevits it is a good exercise to do Precis writing or to take the work of a icrbose inter and re write it brely After you have finished your essay you may re-arrange your headings and re write the essay Remember that your important ideas should have long para graphs, and that you must noc sacrifice proportion for the sake of brcvity Nor must you give up interest and Variety for the sake of brevity Interest Always try to make the beginning of your composition interesting so as to cngage the attention of the reader An anecdote, a companson a quorauon a question a refutation of a fallac), an appeal to the readers emotions an absurdity, a paradox, 1 humourous remark, will rouse in For example of one began with the parador Blessed arc the poor , the reader would immediately be interested to know why the poor are blessed Every paragraph should begin with an interesang idea In coding your paragraphs, and your whole composition avoid abruptness and cameness Try to be as interesting and impressisc as possible. Clearness To attain clcarness of style, be careful about your choice of words, and the order of your words Asod technical terms and use concrete terras in preference to abs tract terms. Make use as much as possible of comparisons, of metaphors and contrasts Do not stric aftcr cucire brerity Clearoess is a great aid to strength and impressicness poser of persuasion and memory Forcr and Vigour of stylc depends greatly on the units terest ·HINTS ON ESSAY WRITING 119 earnestness and conviction Men like Carlyle and Browning have it naturally A style is said to have vigour and force when it appeals to the reader s emotions and moves him to love indignation, compassion, anger, courage, obstinacy etc A forcible style is clear, simple, emphatic, dignified How to form a style Study the writings of the best authors For instance take a page of Addison s writing But you must be careful not to imitate too slavishly, or you will hamper your own power of expression, and form a harsh, stiff style. Your thoughts are more important than your style Study to have clear ideas, good sense, and a lively imagination. If your ideas are confused and indistinct your style will be so too But if you have clear ideas, and feel strongly, you will be able to express yourself clearly and forcibly Write slowly and carefully at first Afterwards you may write with facility and speed but if you are careless and hasty in the beginning you will acquire a bad style The main faults of style are the following grammar (2) Obscunty, and want of clearness through the use of the wrong words, or the use of technical terms (3) Excessive brevity of paragraphs and sentences, which leads to baldness (4) Excessive length is also bad (5) Lach of variety Sentences or paragraphs of the same construction or the same length, become monotonous (6) Tautology (7) Want of connection between words or sentences, or paragraphs (8) Want of balance (9) Too few figures of specch and theroncal devices. Questions, Epigrams Comparisons Contrasts Repeation etc. should be freely used (1) Bad ·120 HINTS ON THE ART OF ITGLISH COMPOSITION (10) Harsh rhythm (11) Bad punctuation NARRATIVE COMPOSITION Includes the telling of fables or sconcs, accounts of (cats such as a game, a social gathering, a battle, the reign of a monarch, the biography of some great man the history of a period Biography Ulustratcs most of the principles that have to be obscri cd in Narrative Composicion (1) Events should be atten in chronological order, and the place and amc of cach event should be stated (2) Refer to the subject's, carly lifc, cducation and environment and shon how these had an effect on his character (3) The narrative will be made morc interesung and graphic by pargraphs on the subject s personal appearance, his mental qualities, and opinions. (4) If there is any digression, or change of scene, or introduction of new characters the reader should always be warned of it. (5) New characters and their doings must be kept sub ordinate to the subject of the biography, and must not be dealt with at great length (6) Occasional summaries to recall the main events, arc uscful to aid the memory In narrative composition the guiding pnnciples are order ond colxrence All the most important inadents should be related in proper sequence, and dates should be fupplied If you were writing a biography of Milton, for example, you Fould give an account of his parentase, date and place of his birth arly cnvironment and education profession in vica, leading inedenis in lus career, personal appearance domestic habits money athars reading opinions, family and ·NARRATIVE COMPOSITION 121 . a detailed criticism of his works In writing history we must keep our magination in check, and heep to facts Our reflections must be solid and moderate The commencement should be modest, and bold thoughts and figures kept in reserve, until the reader s mind has been worked up to the required pitch for appreciation of them. If the subject is for entertainment, not for instruction, it ought to be described as it appears, not as it is in fact Objects should be painted so accurately as to form in the mind of the reader distinct and lively images Every useless circumstance should be left out. In writing an account of an historical event, a scheme, or outline should be first drawn up and kept in mind The following is the usual scheme for a narration of a battle (a) Date (b) Causes, remote and immediate What issues are involved (c) Nature of the country (d) Description of the forces their condition, discipline and numerical strength (e) Positions tahen up by the opposing forces (f) The ame of the battle, weather, details of the fight, and incidents which affected the result Losses on each side. (8) The consequences of the battle, immediate effects and permanent results The wnter should always let the reader know from what point the battle is viewed Creasy s account of the battle of Waterloo is a very vivid one, and will serve as a model DESCRIPTIVE COMPOSITION This kind of composition gives a clear and detailed account of objects, experunents manufacturing processes towns, countries, nvers natural scenery etc Give a map ·122 IIINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION In describing a complex objects, you should give a se neral idea of the whole, the size and shape of it, and then of all its parts in order For example if you were describing a thermometer, you would give a boof general descnpuon of it, then proceed to tell about its history --Fahrenha- Celsius-Centigrade-Reaumur Then describe the differ cnt forms--mercury in glass-dir in porcelain-maximum and minimum thermometers etc. Next describe the parts in detail, draw a diagram, and show how the boiling point, and the freczing point arc marhed Last of all all about the uscs of a thermometer In describing a town, or a district or a great building, It is sometimes good to begin at the central point, and suppose that you visit all the differenc quarters in tum from the same starting point. This method is somcumcs called the Meibod of Exploration Another method of describing a town or country is to imagine that you arc on a hill top, looking dona on a town, or orer the country You will then give what is called a Panoramic description Another mcthod of description is to ante as if you were 7 traveller describing your onn experiences. For instance if you were wnung a description of India you might imagine yourself going round the coast in a ship and touching at all the important sca ports, and chen taking rallady journeys through the interior, describing all that you sec Whates er makes the description vid and picturesque Till help the reader, and impress the scene on his mind and mention of the effect of the scenery on the foclings ill also be helpful You should mention time, shape, colour, position atutudo acuon etc. The following 19 3 scheme for a descripuro esuy on a country, or a cour (d) Localıt, natural advantages climate mers moun ·DESCRIPTIVE COMPOSITION 123 tains, sei-coast, etc (6) Causes conducing to development and prosperity (c) The people, their character, education, religion, etc. (d) Products, manufactures commerce, exports and imports (c) Railways and other meins of communication () Relations with other countries or towns The following passage is a good example of descripave writing O you hard hearts! you cruel mca of Rome! Know you not Pompey? Many a time and oft Have you climbed up to walls and battlements To towers and windows yeu to chimney tops Your infants in your arms and there have sat The live long day with patient, expectation To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome And when vou saw his chariot but appear Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath his banks To hear the replication of vour sounds Made in his concave shores? Julius Caesar Unnecessary circumstances should be left out but if a circumstance is necessary it cannot be descnbed too minutely Some well-chosen circumstance is more powerful than a number of trivial circumstances or incidents Reasons that are common and known to everyone should be taken for granted To express them is puenle An elevated subject requires an elevated style. A senous subject ought to be watten about in plain, strong language a familiar subject in familiar simple language A description being imaginative should be adorned with high sounding words and figurative expressions. Waters of inferior quality indulge in craggeration, and superlatives, eg- ·124 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COVITOSITIOV When black brored Night her dusky mantle spread And wrapt in solemn gloom the able sky When soothing sleep ber omate dew's had shed And scald in silken slumber as my eye My walcul thoughts admit no balmy rese Nor the shoes blus of soft oblsion short But racchiul woe distracts my aching breast My heart the subject of corroding care From haunts of men with nod nng steps and slow, I solitary steal, and soothe my persive ROC Here we have some exaggerated cpichet with cach noun Descriptive writing aims at transforming the reader into a spectator Dean Swift, for example bestons life and colour on all hus subjects, and caves nothing vaguc Addi son, too, is very particular, for example - "You would take his valct de chambre for his brother hus butler as grey headed his groom is one of the gravet men that I have cver seen, and his coacliman has the looks of a privy Councillor' The principal object of a narrauon or a descnption should be put in the strongest light. For example a I re cyed with best regard and many a time Tb hamony of their tongues hatha ato bondage Drought my tou diligent car for several virtus Ilsy I liked xereral women never any With so full soul but some defect in lier Doth quarrel with the noblest grade the on d And put it to die foil But you o you So perfect and so poorless we created Of crory Creatures best Tk Tamil With the conserting I forget all ume All kimont and their change J plase slike Sweet us the breath of mor, kur nung sweet dyدا د many الFu ·REFLECTIVE COMPOSITION 125 With charm of earliest birds pleasant the sun When first on thus delightful land he spreads Hış orient beams on herbs, tree fruit and flower Glistering with dew fragrant the fertile earth After soft showers and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild then silent night With this her solemo bird and this fair moon And these the gems of heaven her starry train. But neither breath of morn when she ascends With charm of earliest birds nor rising sun On this delightful land nor herb fruit, flower Glist ning with dew nor fragrance after showers Nor grateful evening muld nor silent night With thus her solemn bird nor walk by moon Or glitt ring star light without thee is sweet. Paradise Lost as tion REFLECTIVE COMPOSITION The Essays usually set in examinations are (1) On argumentative subjects such as 'War versus Peace Is the study of science more beneficial than the study of languages? (2) On political and social questions of the day, such The Caste System, Compulsory Educa- (3) On quotations, such as, Honesty is the best policy (4) On literary criticism, as, The Poetry of Wordsworth The first requisite for writing essays of this kind is a stoch of vaned information The student should fill his mind with ideas by reading, by conversation with his fellows and by observation of the facts of lifc about him It is difficult to recommend books for reading, because the choice is 50 ·126 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION varied, but the works of Walter Raleigh Mathew, Arnold, Hamerton, Hazlitt Thoreau, Emerson, Burkc, Dickens Froude, Rushin Herbert Spencer Leeky will be helpful. After collecting facts, opinions and ideas the essayıst next proceeds to sort them out. Out of the mulutude he selects those most important for his purpose, those that are clear in his mind so that he can use them and arrange them easily He should aim at a logical sequence of ideas. He must consider first how the ideas are related to cach other, and how they are related to the cnd that he has in view He starts with a definite conclusion in his mind, and he marshals his facts and ideas so that they all conduce to that conclusion In short the process of essay wnting may be summarised thus (1) Set out clearly what you intend to prove (2) Give all your arguments (3) Summarise your arguments and draw your con clusion Having donc all this, the essayıst all proceed to cxpress his ideas in the best and most forcible language he has at his command He will strive to use all the devices and ornaments of style, and to avoid all the faults of style such as repetition of ideas, faulty grammar, slang, cliches to which attention has been already draan. PARAPHRASE A paraphrase is a translation of a passage into a clearer and simpler form It is a useful exercise, because it makes you pay attention to the exact use of sords it increases your vocabulary, and it makes you concentrate your thoughts You have to study the passage carefully and get a thorough grasp of its meaning before you can reproduce it in other words It is difficult to lay down rules for para phrasing and only a few general directions can be given Usually the diction should be altered by the sub 1 ·PARAPHRASE 127 stitution of synonyms 2 Long and complex sentences should be expressed in shorter and simpler ones 3 Figurative language must be dealt with carefully You may change metaphors into similes, or express thern literally A simile may be changed into a metaphor But be careful not to mix figurative language and literal language in the same sentence Metonymy and synecdoche should disappear 4 Indirect speech may be put into the direct form, and Yice versa Do not give undue emphasis to any part of the para phrase Each sentence should have its due share of attention and receive proportionate treatment 6 Keep your own ideas out of the paraphrase You must keep to the thoughts expressed in the passage 7 Your paraphrase must be well watten and lucid Examples of paraphrase (1) Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth puse (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days Milton Fame, the weakness of noble minds that lingers on after all other faults have been eliminated urges a pure souled man to despuse pleasure and devote himself to toul Parapbrase (2) But tis a common proof That, lowliness is young ambition s ladder Whereto the climber upward turns his face But hen he once attains the upmost round He then unto the ladder turns hus back Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. Julius Caesar Parapbrase It is a common experience that when a man is ambitious, he at first affects humility and is graceful ·128 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMITOSITION for any aid, but when he has attained the object of his ambı ton, he holds his head high and is proud, scoring the steps by which he rose to greatness EXPLANATION OF A PASSAGE An explanation means somethung more than a paraphrase. You are to expound and silustrate the ideas in the passage, to write notes on allusions and references, and on grammattcal constructions and figures of speech PRECIS WRITING A precis of a single passage is simply an abridgem no or summary giving the leading idea, or ideas of the passage A précis of a series of letters or documents condenses all the substance of the letters, or documents, into a short narrative The chuck advantage of a precis is that it saves time, because by looking through the precis the reader can grasp the main opinions of any correspondence, without having to read through the whole correspondence It is useful to the student, because in making a precis of his text book he will fit his attention on the main facts and ideas set forth in the booh, and when the time for the cxamination draws near he will find the precis very valuable for refreshing his memory If a teacher comes to his class room furnished with a precis of his lecture, he will be able to teach morc effectively than if he works in a casual hap hazard way Simularly 2 precis of a scrmon wall be an invaluable help for a preacher who delivers luis scrmon without reading from the manuscript A barrister too finds precis vncing uscful for armaging important cridence in clear and logical order, may have it ready to place before the jury so that he ·PUNCTUATION 129 Before starting to write a precis, the student should read all the material carefully and master it, then select the important points and reject what is unimportant Then he must wnte a simple, clear narrative, avoiding ambiguity and wordiness, and giving most prominence to important features As a rule a precis will be about one fifteenth of the length of the original documents, but there can be no rigid rule, because the length of the precis must depend on the amount of important material in the original PUNCTUATION The good writer will make his meaning clear as far as possible by the arrangement of his sentences, clauses and phrases but points, or stops, are useful for showing to the reader, without possibility of misunderstanding, the sense and the grammatical construction of the composition, and for showing him the pauses that are necessary for correct reading The usual stops are the comma (,), Dash or Hypen (-), Bracket (), Semi colon (,), Colon (), Period or Full Stop (1), and at the end of the paragraph there is a space The reader makes a short pause at the Comma and a longer and longer pause at each of the other stops in the above order and at the same time, he drops his voice more and more definitely The printer also uses the Note of Interrogation (?), the Note of Exclamation (1), the Inverted Commas () The Comma (,) separates those parts of a sentence, which, though closely connected in sense and construction, require a pause between them Two or more words of the same kind, used in the same connection and without a conjunction are separated from each other by a comma For example She insisted gently politely but firmly Nothing is so intelligible as sincere disinterested love Can flattery soothe the dull cold war of death? 9 1 ·130 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION But no comma 13 necessary in, The carth and the moon are planets 2 A noun, or pronoun, and a phrase, or two or more phrases, when in apposition, are separated from each other by a comma Homer, the greatest poet of antiquity is sud to have been blinds The author of Paradise Lost Milton 35 1 noble minded man. 3 Words or phrases contrasted with cach other, or related to others that follow them, in the same clause are separated by commas False delicacy is affectation not politeness Truth is not a stagaano pool but a fountain, 4 A Comma is put before a non defining or concı nuative relative clause, but not before a defining relative clause Study Naturs, whose laws and phenomena are all interesting Avord cudentss, which must hurt the feelings of other But, Every teacher loves a boy #lo is attentre Every good man loves the country in thich be was born." Parenthetical expressions are separated from the rest of the sentence by commas Benevoleace from whatever side we may contemplate it, is a godlike virtue. A contrace to be valid must be for some legal purpose. 6 A nominative of address is separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma Come companion of my coil Ict us take courage. Idlcacss Joha is cluch mistress of all vices 7 Adjecuval parucipial, and absolute phrases are separated by a comma from the rest of the sentence ·PUNCTUATION 131 We set out Awkward in manner he was all qualified for the post. The sun having risen Having reached the station we caught the train 8 Adverb or adverbial phrases used as connectives, or modifying clauses, are followed by commas, and if used in the middle of a sentence they are also preceded by commas Lastly let me repeat what I sad before On the contrary I believe that truth is a great inspirer Punctuality is no doubt a quality of great importance 9 In inverted order, a comma is put between the parts. of a sentence. With God, nothing is impossible which is the same as Nothing is impossible with God 10 Subordinate adverb clauses are separated from the principal clause by a comma Wit is of no use except it be well used As we grow older distance of time is lessened. When beggars die there are no comets seen. Subordinate noun clauses and adjective clauses are marked off by commas only if there is more than one. 11 Correlative expressions joined by as or than need DO comma Mes are never so easily deceived as when they plot to deceive others It is easier to rouse the passions than to direct the mind. But when joined by other words, it is necessary that comma be put between them 'Though learned and methodical yet the teacher was not a pedant 12 Short co ordinate sentences separated by are commas. Men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever Crafty men condemn studies simple men admire them and wise men use them ·132 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOY Speak as you mean do as you profess and perform what you promise 13 When in a compound sentence, the clauses hayc cach a different nominative, but only one verb which is cx pressed in the first clausc and left out in the others, the ellipsis is marked by a comma Reading makes a full man conversation a scady min and writing an ict man. Curiosity allures the syisc, vanity the foolish and pleasure, both 14 When introducing a quotation, a comma is used. He meationed the proverb, It is never too late to mend When writing figures place 3 comma bera con cach diy ision of notation "The populanod of China Bas 150,029 855 in 1745 AD Notice that in writing dates no Comma is required. The Sem colon () is used to separate long co-ordinate scntences 2 A semi colon is placed between to or more parts of a sentence when any one or more, of them is desded unto smaller portions by commas Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits and conversation but by the character of their lates 3 When there is a series of clauses depending on a proapal clause, the clauses are separated by the Semi-colon Philosophers assert that Nature is unlimited in her operations, that she has inexhausable treasures in reserve that knon ledge will always be progressiic and that all future generations will continue to make discoveries of which we have not the slightest dca When words like as, to wil, namely and abbra viations such as t., 10 46, arc used before 20 cximple, a semicolon is put before them, Many words are spelt differeotly in English as, in quire, enquire jail 6201 ·PUNCTUATION 133 The Colon ( ) is used 1 After a clause that is complete in itself, but is followed by some remark, inference, or illustration, Men s evil manners live in brass their virtues we write in water 2 3 When a sentence consists of two parts which are united by a conjunction, and either of them is divided into clauses separated by semi colons 'Without the capacity of suffering, we might have been what the world in its common language calls happy, the passive subjects of a series of agreeable sensations but we could not have had the delights of conscience, we could not have felt what it is to be magoinimous, to have the toil and the combat and the victory Before a quotation, a speech a course of reasoning, or a specification of articles Let us take, in illustration, three poets Keats, the rcpresentative of sensitiveness Byron, of wilfulness, Shakespeare, of self direction The full stop () or period, serves to indicate the end of a sentence except when the sentence is in the form of a question or exclamation The period must be used after in trals and after all abreviations, as, M.A, BSc, A.D, FRS, T R James The Note of Interrogation (?) is used after words, phrases or sentences in the form of questions When had you good news from home? Who can doubt that man was made for work? The Note of Exclamation (1) indicates passion or emo- It is used in invocations, and addresses and after expressions denoting admiration, sudden joy, terror, surprise, ton etc The heavens and earth O Lord! proclaim thy boundless power Oh! that I had been more diligent ·134 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Marks of parenthesis () serve to indicate that an ex pression is inserted, that has no connection with the sense or construction of the sentence 'I have seco charity (if charity it may be called) insult with an air of pity The dash ) marks an abrupt change in a sentence the suspension of the sense for a time an unespected tum in the sentiment, a long or significant pause Was there ever a bolder captain of a more valiant band? Was there ever-but I scorn to boast Greece Carthage, Romewhere are they His name was—well I can t tell you what i was Dashes may be used instead of brackets to mark a parenthesis OUTLINES OF ESSAYS THE ADOLITION OR THE SLAVE TRADE IN THC ENGLISH COLONICS Owing to the efforts of Wilberforce Stevenson, Clarksoa and others the English slave trade botn een Africa and the Vest Indies was stopped in 1807 The British Government tried to influence the other Powers to take the same action Napoleon after his return from Clba abolished the French slave trade thinking that by doing so he might win the friendship of England Sweden in 1813 and Holland in 1814 followed the example of Great Britain Portugal promised to limit the operations of its traders to the Souch of the Equator Spain however, dren large profits from thsupply of slaves to the Spanish Colonies and was unwilling to lose this source of revenue Lord Coastlcresch at the Congress of Vienna (Feb 1815) made a proposal to appoint a council of ambassadors in London and Part to cxpedite thic closure of the slave tradc but his scheme fell to the ground ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 135 Though the slave trade was abolished and a severe penalty inflicted on English slave traders, slavery continued to exist in the West Indies Slaves were bought from the Spanish traders and the children of existing slaves were not set free, Wilberforce got Buxton, a member of Parliament, to support him in his campaign for the abolition of slavery In March 1823 Wilberforce published an appeal on behalf of the slaves and started a movement, which was largely of a religious character An Antı slavery, Society was founded, with Buxton as its President On the 15th of May 1823 Buxton moved a resolution in the Commons that 'the state of slavery is repugnant to the principles of the British Constatution and of the Christian religion, and that it ought to be hed He argued that the West India planter had no right to human property, and that no account should be taken of the loss which the planter might sustain Canning took the view that Government should consider the planters rights of private property, as well as the well being of the slaves, and that whatever reforms were to be made should be made gradually and equitably to both masters and slaves It was resolved to send letters to the Colonial authorities recommending reforms Tidings of these events were received with a storm of wrath by the planters and with great joy by the slaves The negroes were emboldened to refuse obedience to their task master In some places they even attached the planters and were punished by the planters with great cruelty The news of these disturbances alienated the sympathies of Englishmen from the slaves and caused a reaction against the abolitionists Having the lesson of the North American Colonies still fresh in their minds, the Government hesitated to enforce the obedience of the planters to their recommendations Wilberforce and Buxton found themselves deserted by all but their most determined supporters and ther cause seemed to be lost ·136 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMROSITION By the retirement of Wilberforce in 1825, Buxton was left to carry on the work alone He worked hard to educate the public mind to realise the horrors of slavery In 1826 Government gave the Colonies another year to consider its recommendations. At the end of the year the colonies showed no signs of giving any heed to them Government then sent letters couched in stronger terms of admonition. These were treated with 25 little attention as the other letters by the majority of the Colonies The planters took no sceps to carry out measures for ameliorating the lot of the slaves When the Whigs came into power in 1830 the hopes of the abolitionists were raised Though there was little respite from the consideration of parliamentary reform Buxton found opportunities to raise the subject of slarery during the years 1830-32 In 1832 the abolitionist leaders held meetings throughout the country Peutions poured into Parliament by hundreds Delegates were sent from all parts of the country to a great mass meeting in Exeter Hall. A new bill was introduced into Parlament proposing that all slave children under six years old should be set free at once, and all adults after seven years The bul passed into law in 1834 and the slaves in all British Dominions were free CHARTISA The Reform Act of 1832 was a Middle Class measure and did not remove the discontent of the masses About 1831 a penod of commercial depression set in Several bad hanests increased the sufferings of the peoplc Food became dear wages fell, factories were closed The people thought that their sufferings were due to their want of influence in the Government and the agitation for an extended franchis. began Lord John Russel declared that he would not re open the question of reform But a conference was called bet woon leaders of the working men and a few liberal members of Parliament, and a programme was drawn up to a ich ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 137 O Connor gave the name of the People's Charter 1838 It embodied six demands (1) Manhood suffrage, (2) Annual Parliament, (3) Vote by ballot, (4) the Abolition of the property qualification for members of Parliament, (s) Payment of members, and (6) Division of the country into equal electoral districts A petition askıng for these reforms was signed by a large number of people, including men of great gifts and high character and sent up to the House of Commons The chartist agitation grew more violent as tune went on Torch bght meetings were held in the latter part of 1838, and the more violent leaders of the movement urged their followers to commit lawless acts An insurrection broke out at Newport in November 1839, in which ten persons were killed and a large number wounded Some of the ringleaders including Jones and Cooper, were arrested and sentenced to death but the sentence was afterwards changed to one of transportation The Chartist movement came to a head in 1848 A vast procession was to be formed on hennington Common, South London and thence march to the House of Commons The day of meeting was fixed for the 10th of April The Government cook immediate steps to prevent the procession They declared the assembly illegal and got together a large military force in readiness to prevent any noting O Connor insisted that the orders of the Government must be obeyed, and so the demostration was a failure Only 25,000 Chartists met and the procession was not formed After this Chartism gradually died out It died of publicity, of the tendency of the time to settle all questions by reason, argument and majorities of growing education of a strengthened sense of duty Future legislation was to satisfy the Charasts to some extent in the extension of the franchise and in economic legislature In 1851 Mr Locke hing carried against the Govera- 1 ·138 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION mcnt a motion for making the franchise in counties the same as that in boroughs In 1867 Disraeli's Reform Bill enfranchised in boroughs all male persons rared for the relief of the poor, and all lodgers paying not less than 5 pounds a year rent In the country, persons having property worth £5 a year, or tenants paying £12 a year Manchester, Liverpool Birmingham, Lccds got a third member The university of London got a member Irish and Scotch Reform Bills acre passed in 1868 The Scotch bill was the same as the English ercept that tenants should pay £14 a year, and the qualification as to rating for the relief of the poor was omitted Some new seats were given to Scotland The Irish bill left the county franchise at from £8 to £14 It did nothing in the way of redistribution In 1884 Gladstone's Reform Bill gave the franchise to agricultural labourers, and gave seats to the more populous districts and towns taking them away from boroughs wich a population of less than 15,000 RELIGIOUS TOLIRATION It was a part of a Quakers creed that he must obey our Lords command 'Sx car not at all and therefore he could not take the oatlis required of men entering the service of the Government In 1833 a law was passed enabling Quakers to make an affirmauon instead of taking oaths. Simdar privileges were given to members of other sects and a series of Jeus' Relief Acts were passcd gradually removing their disabilities Peels Government removed the test winch made a Jert take an oath on the true faith of a Christran" before he could hold office as a mayor, alderman or member of the municipal council In 1848 the Jef's made renewed attempts to get into Parliament, but the Lords rejected the Baron Rothchild was elected one of the mea Jows bill ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 139 bers of Parliament for London in 1857, but he was not allowed to tahe his seat. In 1858 Lord John Russel passed a Bill which placed the Jew on a political equality with the Christian The social disabilities of dissenters were also gradually removed The Dissenters Marriage Bill allowed dissenting ministers to perform the marriage ceremony The University of London was established to meet the claims of dis scnters for a liberal education and for admission to Degrees Under Gladstones administration the University Tests Bill of 1871 removed a grievance which had been causing trouble for at least thirty years All lay students of whatever creed were to be admitted to the Universities of Oxford Cambridge and Durham on equal terms No dissenters were to be required to subscribe their names to any religious test The religious tests in the Scottish Universities were also abolished In Ireland after the grant of Catholic Emancipation in 1829, there was a great deal of trouble over the payment of tithes for the support of the Established Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland The Roman Catholic population numbered about 6/2 millions and they were all taxed to support a church which they regarded as alien In 151 parishes there were less than 10 in 198 parishes, less than 20, and in 860 parishes, less than 50 protestants The bulk of the people objected to pay tithes for the support of a church whose members were little more than one tenth of the population of the country They refused to pay the gathes and there were many outrages and much violence Lords Grey, Melbourne, and Peel proposed measure after measure to remedy the trouble but all their proposals were rejected, unul in Lord Melbourne s Ministry in 1836 the Tithes Commutation Act was passed which transferred the duty of paying the tithe from the peasant to the landlord and so made the tithe 1 permanent rent charge Thirty years ·140 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION later, in 1869, Gladstone's Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church severed the connection bets een Church and State in Ireland THE PROGRESS OF EDUCATION In England, Educational reform was very slow In spite of the oumerous Grammar schools, the means of edu cating the people was quite inadequate During the first part of the nineteenth century the Government did all st could to prevent the spread of education Its marm was that the educaton of the masses is dangerous to the state. It was no all 1834 that Government gave a small parliamentary grant for the building of schools The grant was applied to this purpose through the National Datish and Forcign School Soccues representing undenominational cducation In 1869, the Endowed Schools Act provided for the reform of the endowed schools In 1870 the state system of undenominadonal education was introduced. The teaching of Scripture was no longer compulsory Thc State Schools were managed by Local School Boards It was the beginning of a great movement in popular cducacion In Ireland, a bull for Statc cducation was passed in 1831 In 1845 Queens Colleges for vodenominacjonal educa tion were affiliated into the Queen s University COLERIDGE 1772 1835 Educated at Christs Hospital Noted for read ng Vergil for amusement and for some poetry. 1791–Entered at Jesus College Cambridge There he imbibed the sentiments of William I reud a fellow of Jesus who was accused of sedition and unitarianum, and expelled from Cambndge. Coleridge foto discontented with University life and went to London, 1793-yery much in debe A pam in the Morning Chronicle brougb: her i ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 141 guinea and when that was spent, he enlisted in the Dragoons His brother Captain James Coleridge procured his discharge from the army He returned to Cambridge, but left without a degree in 1794 He went to Wales, and then 10 Bristol where he met Southey Southey was stirred by the French Revolution He had a scheme of Pantisocracy and wanted to form a brotherly community on the banks of the Susquehanna where selfishness would be abolished and the virtues would reign supreme In 1795 this scheme was dropped because of lack of funds, much to Coleridge s disappointment. In 1794 appeared the Fall of Robespierre of which Coleridge wrote the First Act and Southey the other two Joseph Cottle, a Bristol book-seller gave Coleridge 30 guineas for a volume of poems In 1795 Coleridge married Sarah Fricker and took up his residence at Clevedon on the Bristol Channel Southey married Mrs Coleridge s sister and left England for Portugal Coleridge lectured in Bristol on Politics and Religion His first prose publication was Conciones ad Populum 1796 Cottle published his first volumes of poems in 1796 Coleridge projected a periodical called the Watchman and made a journey in 1796 to enlist subscribers The Watchman kved two months Colendge was thinking of giving up Literature and becoming a Unitarian preacher Hazlitt telfs about a remarkable sermon delivered by Coleridge at Shrews bury In 1795 Colendge met Wordsworth, and in 1797 he visited Wordsworth and his sister at their home at Racedown in the Dorsetshire hills Dorothy Wordsworth describes Coleridge as thin and pale the lower part of the face not good, wide mouth thick lips not good teeth longish, loose, rough black hair , but all was forgotten in the wonderful charm of his conversation Wordsworth said The only wonderful man I ever bnew was Colendge In July 1797 Wordsworth removed to Alforden to be near Coleridge and ·142 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOV 1 4 the friends spent many happy days together One crening at Vatchett on the Bristol Channel The Ancient Marin first took shape. Coleridge was anxious to embody a dream of a friend, and the suggestion of the shooting of the albatross came from Wordsworth who gained the idea from Shelvoches Voyage (1726) A joint volume was planned Words worth was to show the real poetry that lies hidden in com monplace subjects while Coleridge was to trcat supernatural subjects, to illustrate the common emotions of mankind From this arrangement came the Lyrical Ballads to which Colendge contributed the Ancient Alariner, the Nightingale and two scenes from Ossoria The book was published at Bristol in 1798 A second edition in 1800 included Coleridges Loic To this period belong Kubla Abon and the first part of Christabel In Scptember 1798 Coleridge went to Germany with the Wordsworths. Coleridge went to Gottingen to attend lectures, and learnt the language Hc translated Wallenstein, and published his translation in 1800 Coleridge changed his vices Hc lost his admiration for the Revolution Hc valued the ordered liberty of consti tutional Government, and for the rest of his life his views are as expressed in huis work on Cburch and Stars In 1800 hc lcft London for the Lakes Here he wrote the second paof Christabel In 1803 Southey chummed with Coleridge 2t Greta Hall Kestick, of which in 1812 Southey became th sole renant In 1801 begins the period during which Coleridge san! under the inducnce of opium During the first y car of the century Coleridge - sometimes in London. Hc toured in Scotland with tlic Wordstorths in 1803 visited Malta in 1804 Spent nearly 8 months in Naples and Rome 1805-1806 In 1807 he me De Quincy in Somersetshire and received from him a gift of three hundred pounds In 1809 he started a magazine ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 143 called the Friend which continued only eight months He began to contribute to the Courier In 1808 he lectured at the Royal Institution, and two years later gave lectures on Shakespeare and other poets His friends assisted him with money with success Mackintosh obtained a grant of a hundred pounds a year for him in 1824 to continue during the lifetime of George the Fourth At other times he got help from Stuart the publisher, Poole, Sotheby, Sir George Beaumont, Byron and Wordsworth His children lived with Southey at Keswick Between 1812 and 1817 Coleridge made a good deal by his work The tragedy of Remorse was produced in 1813 and met In 1816 he went to live at Highgate with Mr James Gilman and conquered the opium habit. In the same year Christabel was first published in a volume with Kubla kban and the Pains of Sleep He read a great deal of Poetry, Philosophy, and Divinity In 1816 he published Lay Sermons In 1817 Sybyllıne Leaves Biographia Lsteraria in 1824, his most popular prose work The Aids to Reflection THE EAST INDIA COMPANY When the English first thought of trading with India, the Portuguese and the Dutch were opposed to them The Portuguese were not strong enough to oppose them forcibly, but they were able to put difficulties in their way when negotiating for trade with native states The rivalry of the Dutch was more serious They were pushing and determined, had the advantage of numbers, and were prepared to use force The Dutch had suffered much under the rule of Philip the Second and the political and religious struggles of that time had hardened their temper They had been the sca traders of Western Europe for nearly a century, and had suffered much from the Union of Portugal with Spain when Spain had been strong enough to drive the Dutch merchant ·144 HINTS ON THE ART OP ENGLISH COMPOSITION ships from the seas But the ruin of the Spanish Nary (1588-1596) gaye them opportunities Their veators to the East Indies were from the first, 1595, much larger and more strongly amed than those of thc English The English East India Company was formed in 1600 and sent out ships to bring pepper from Achcen and Bantam nutmegs from Banda, cloves and sago from the Moluccas, silk, indigo, calico, from India The Company had to provide for its own defence, and was not to expect help from the English Government in its quarrels with the Dutch and Portuguese. Thc Dutch East India Company was formed in 1602, and the Government gave it full support. The Dutch wanted a monopoly of the spice trade and they say that they must exercise full soi ereignty over the islands in order to do this Thez vere purposely cruci, and indifferent to human lifc In 1609 chcy scized the Banda Group By 1612 they were at war with the English company After 1615 they treated English ships as prizes to be captured or sunk. King James was indifferent to the deliculics of the English merchants and failed to make an agreement with the Dutch, so that the English trade with the spicc islands gradually decrcased, until there were only a few settlements such as Amboyna and Bantam with which they traded Finally in 1623 the Dutch massacred all the English at Amboy na and gained a monopoly of all the trade with the Eastern Islands The failure of the English Company in the Eastern islands was due to their ignorance of conditions on the spot, and these contempt for cxpert knowledge The English finding the Dutch so troublesome oned to trade where there were no Durch. 1609 Sir H Middleton tried the Red Sca ports, but was davon 1say by the Arab Sultan of Mocha. 1608 Captain Hawkins was at Swally The Portu guese interfered with him Hankins sont to Agra 10 ncgotiate with Jehangir ·OUTLINES OF ESSAYS 145 1609 Captain Best sailed to Surat He fought the Portuguese at Swally and defeated them 1614 Second battle of Swally The Portuguese were defeated again In 1613 negotiations with the Moghul were successful, and the company were granted a site for a factory at Surat Sir Thomas Roe used his influence at the Court of Jehangir 1615-18 From Surat the English opened agencies at Ahmedabed, and Agra, Ajmer, Lahore, and factories at Bombay and Calicut. In 1628 they opened factories at Masuliparam and at Armagoon In 1632 they opened an agency at Gambroon (Bander Abbas) in the Persian Gulf, and in 1639 at Fort St George, Madras, near the Portuguese settlement of San Thome In Bengal the Portuguese had a factory at Hoogly 120 miles from the sea, which was destroyed by the Nawab 10 1632 In 1633 the English built a factory at Piple near the mouth of the Hoogly In 1640 Dr Boughton cured a daughter of the Moghul Shah Jehan, of some sickness, and by way of reward, obtained permission for the company to trade on the Hoogly free of duty They carried on a profitable trade in Silk, Indigo, Salopecre etc 1668 Bombay part of the dowry of Catharine of Braganza, wife of Charles the Second was given to the East India Company in 1668, and became the headquarters of the Company instead of Surat 1696 The English were permitted to build Fort St. William on the Hoogly 1698 They obtained the site of the present city of Calcutta for an annual rept of Rs 1,200 The English East India Company claimed a monopoly of the India trade, but many other traders disputed this claim and they were supported by the King In 1694 the House of Commons declared that it was the right of all Englishmen to trade with the East Indies A new Company 10 ·146 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION was formed and the old Company and the new catered into a competition which almot ruined both in 1728 these Companies joined as the United Company Properly speaking the Company were only merchants, but by degrees they began to take part in the quarrels among the natives and to acquire political power and in fluence and sos ereignty over large regions The Charter of the Company was renoncd at intervals , but the power of the Company was gradually reduced, until the great calamity of the Mutiny, 1857, led the Government to take over all its power in 1858 THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY Formed in 1602 Objects (1) To protect the already considerable trade in the Indian Ocean (2) To help in the carrying on of the long war of independence against Spain and Portugal Before the Union of Portugal and Spain in 1880 the Dutch had carried most of the Eastern produce from Lisbon to North Europe When this trade was taken from them by the Spaniards thay tried to find a route to the east by the North of Europe and Asia and when they found this im possible they intruded on the Portuguese route by the Cape of Good Hope 1595 First expedition reached Bantam and Java Made 2 treaty with the Sultan Returned in 1997 with a saluable cargo By 1602 60 to 72 Durch vessels had sailed to the Indian Archipelago and India The Company cstablished its headquarters at Bacaru and from there carried on ser extensive operations (1) To deal diplomatically with Japan and China ·OUTLINES OR ESSAYS 147 (2) To annex territory in Malay and Ceylon (3) To compete with the Portuguese and English (4) To establish factories at the Cape, Persian Gulf, Malabar, Coromandel and Bengal Main er enit's 1619 Foundation of Batavia 1613 1632 Expulsion of the English from the spice Islands 1638-1658 Expulsion of the Portuguese from Ceylon 1641 Expulsion of the Portuguese from Malacca 1667 Power in Sumatra established by a Treaty with the native princes The Company was most prosperous in 1669 when it had 150 merchants ships, 40 warships, 10,000 soldiers, and paid a dividend of 40% Between 1613 and 1632 the Dutch drove the English from the spice islands and the Malay Archipelago almost entirely The Dutch had 8 centres of Government--Amboyna, Banda Ternate Macassar Malacca, Ceylon, Cape of Good Hope Java The nvalry with the French and English gradually drove the Dutch from the mainland in India, and from Ceylon The increase of its political and military burdens destroyed its profits Early in the 18th Century the Company was embarrassed and became bankrupt It was therefore dissolved in 1798

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·EXERCISES

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·EXERCISES head As a test of your knowledge of the correct use of words construct sentences using the following words correctly Aggravate, collusion commence, detract, distract, feature, individual, initiate, materialise meticulous, motive, mutual, nice, obligation, partake of, recrudescence, transpire, utilise, discard, aesthetic, ascetic, consistently constantly, deprecate, depreciate, factious factitious, immanent, immunent, eminent, ingenuous, lay, lie, personalty, personality, physiology, psychology, transcendent, transcendental, reverend, reverent, perspicuity perspicacity, observance, observation, complacent, complaisant, evasion, evasiveness, requisite, requisition progress, procession, irreparable, irreplaceable solid, stolid resource, recourse, polite, politic, palatal, palacial, cumbrous, cumbersome persecute, prosecute, curb, kerb innocent, innocuous contemptuous, contemptible, virtuous, virtual verbal, verbose, fabian, quixotic platonic, hackneyed, macadamise, extemponse phenomenon, machiavellian ephemeral, plebeian meander amplubi bias autocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, encomium nepotism simony, sinecure litigious illat, elicit, aversion, diversion, mendacity, mendicity, publican publicist, supercilious, superfluous, supine, supernal, circumscnbe, circumvent, agnostic, prognostic dispose, diagnose, asperity austenty, cynicism cosmopolitanism aggrieve aggravate, stationary, stationery abandon, quit, forsahe relinquish renounce, abdicate, resign ·152 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COnrosmOV 2ssassination II Miscellaneous list of a few difficult words, aad words fre quently misspelled-Abscess, accommodation, adolescence, apophthegm, apparelled, asioine, ASSCssment, asthma balance, banisters battalion, bayoncted, beleaguer, broccoli, buccancer, buoyancy, camclopard, caoutchouc, cara vansary, castellated, catarrh, chiffonier, colloqus, colonci, co lonnade, committee, connoisseur, dahlia, demene, dentifrice desiccated dessert, diaphragm, diarrhoca, dilettante, diphthong, disembogue dishabule dysentery, ccstasy, cloresce, clcemosy Dary, embarrass, conui cpigrammatic, cquanimity, crysipelas eschalots, cxcrescence exorbitant, filibuster, fuchsia, fusilier, fustian, galleon gauge, gherkın, guarantes, guerilla, habili ment, hackney cd, hacmorrhagc, harangus, harass illicit, im migrant indicement, inflammation, inseigh incigle, sp ecacuanha, jcopardy, kaleidoscope lachrymose, licutenant, litigious luscious, manoeuvre, myrrh naphtha narrative necessary, nonparcel obeisance, obloquy, occurrence, os allarc, pachydermatous paletot, palisade, palliasse, pa roxysm, pelisse, penphery, phacton phlegm, phoedat, purouette, plaguy, pneumatic poignant promissor), propagate, pseudonym ptarmigan, pumuce pursuivant pu sillanimous quaternay, quay, cucuc quintessence connoitrC reminiscence, remissness, rendezı ous tion rodomontade, saccharınc sausage schedule scythe separate sergeant, sleight solloquy, steadfast, stry chnine, superintendent, supersede surreptitious sur cillance cophant, synecdoche synonym Cassellod tattooing tossclatcd, trousseau tyranny unparalleled saallarc, scrmilion sc tual yuscount y coman yacht. rcsurrec SCISSORS, ·EXERCISES 153 TII EXERCISE ON IDIOM Write sentences rising To fall under, to dilate upon, to accord with, to accede to, to be disposed of, to break with, to bring round to call to account in cold blood, by virtue of, to give out, to put out of court, to join issue, to have an itch for, to smack of, to affect ignorance of, to bear the brunt of, to bear hard upon, to beat the air, to bid fair to, to bring a charge home to, to bury the hatchet, to call a spade a spade, to clip one s Wings, to commit oneself, to feather one s nest, to fall on one s feet, to run the gauntlet, to burn one s fingers, to snap one s fingers at, to open fire, to hang fire to fly in the face of to haul over the coals, to hide one s light under a bushel, to husband ones resources, to lead a person a dance, to leave one in the lurch, to let the grass grow under one s feet, to lie in wait, to levy blackmail, to live fast, to live from hand to mouth to live up to one s income, to lord it over, to lose one s head, to move heaven and earth, to accomplish one s purpose IV Write Sentences using To nip in the bud, it strikes me, it occurs to me, to pay ones way, to reach one s brain, to rest on one s laurels to rule the roost, to run in the same grove, to scatter to the winds, to see how the land lies, to see how the wind blows, to show the white feather, to sound a person to speak extempore, to split hairs, to travel sncognito, to tremble in the balance, to do a thing with a good grace, to be in with, to be out with to up with to be up to, to be well up in, to be near to be set upon a thing, to be Greek to one to be a host in oneself to be a party to, to be a prey to, to be a slave to, to put one out of be all ·154 HINTS ON TIC ART or ENGLISH courOSITIOY countenance to put a spoke in ones wheel, to set ones face against to set people by the cars to stand in need of, to stand in good stead to stand in one s own light, to stand on one s dignity, to take in good part, to throw dust in one s cje, to throw up the spongs, to throw off the mask, to turn onts head, to have a turn for, to turn tail EXERCISE ON PREPOSITIONS Write Sentences using Shut in out, off, up Digress from Dilatc upon Dilatory in Dispense with Engaged wich, in, for, on Fall under, from, upon among Fecd upon, on with Fight with, against, for Glance at, 01 cr Gazc at, on Alade of, for, by Look on for aftcr, above, beyond. Live in at upon on, with among, by Held in, at, b} Fire at with Expert in ac. Cut out, into V CORRECT TIIC TOLLOFNG PHRASES AND SENTENCES He was robbed off his palth Wealth is the route of all #ly ·EXERCISES 155 Why everyone is desirous of being afluenta Three hundred years before, for ago Three hundred years bence, for ago Before three centuries, for ago The murders of many a great men were caused for love of riches He is devoted 11 me (to) One can enable himself of being educated The Suez canal costed all nations thousands of pounds which if no nation would have got, this task would have never finished He was attached by a German torpedo The Serais or Dharamshalas may be turned into the hot beds of immortality I recognised him in his talk He got two sons Have a glance on the village. What to speak of what to say more of him He carved a great figure in this world They use their wealth is proud means, as smoking, drinking or in some other vice means If the treasure of Germany exhausts today rest assure 1t voll bite to dust in no time. Rivers transport goods by means of boats Inside the rivers crops are grown If cotton mills are taken away the city would be decayed We have already told that (sad) People are drawn to nvers for amusing themselves The sea from Calcutta lies at a distance of 75 miles Rivers present a beautiful scenery There are several things in Nature, one of these things 13 nyer When the animal would come there to dank we can hunt the animal A man would not like to leave a nyer for the whole world, ·156 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH CO TOSITION if he could live in floating houses and have a fine game for shooting Bombay is mostly supplied electric from the njer There are many machineries in Bombay Why Rajputana is so thinly populated? Why Arabia is a desert? He lives with his family members The photos and the sceneries The more our famly members are farther the more our love for them incrcises The more is the distance, the more is the increasing of charms of the objects This is the greatest worth sccing spectaclc. It makes him cry and shows his patience tnckling from his eyes. George V was enthroned upon the sos cregnty of India. I fancy that mountain must be a place worth living An avenue of trees with a comfortable gallery between them Now we are to think something about the effect of dis We hope for better things of future tance VII CORRECT THE FOLLOWING STYTENCES AND PIIRASCS couro 1 If thus rere the case, we will have fer disrespectful A man cannot be a specialist in es cry subject. Were it so, we would haic been very glad Deroid a man altogether of the knowledge of history and see that would be the result The result of this training would be that the youth will grow up a healthy man sons. 2 3 ·EXERCISES 157 S The war, or whatever that leads to war 13 again a powerful factor 6 It is very difficult to understand that what studies should be compulsory 7 Please inform me as to whether there will be cricket this evening 8 9 10 11 12 Wealth is the route of all vices Three hundred years before Before three centuries He is devoted in me This is the greatest worth seeing spectacle VIII CORRECT THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES (1) What a beautiful scenery the Taj Mahal presents when looked from the Jumna bridge. (2) Whatever might be the reason of this change, we are sure of the fact that fancy colours the past. (3) To see personally our university examination num ber in the gazette is quite a different thing than to hear it seen, and is the greatest worth seeing spectacle (4) It moves a smile to our lips to see the majestical commands of the ticket collector over the rural passengers (5) We hope everything turning out good in the future, LX Put into Reported speech I am very grateful to you for your reception and for this beautiful key as to which I am glad to see that the chanty Commissioners have made no demur I shall always keep it as a memorial of this Institute but in truth, having been present at the laying of the foundation stone last year, and hay- ·158 HITS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COITOSITIOV ing now declared it open, I am not likely casuls to forget it. Our hearts and our minds to day are full of the emiscar man whose bust is on my Icft He was a remarkable man and I, at any rate, sliall always do all I can to keep his memory green among men He was the most, cruc and broad minded Christin that I have ever hnown and the most true and broad minded philanthropist To drive nith him through the streets of the city of London and still more to go to come of the haunts not far remorc from livs house was a liberal education I do not think we shall a cr sec a man crac.ly/ like him I now most caracstly entreat that your lordshisha-(for on you I presume it finally rests.) ull free mc from the state I am in, either by my immediate recall or by the confirmation of the trust and authority of which you h2schichcrto thought mc deserving on such a footing as shall cnablc mc to fulf! your expectations and to discharge thc debt which I or to your Lordship, to my countn, and my son craign O that is wel, fetch me my closh mi cloak! Stay let mic ses, an hour to go and come A), that will be the least; and then chill be An hour before I can dispatch rith him Or very near Well I will say two hours The loss of luis sister urighed bromly on Curlyles stirils, and the disappointment about luis brærk fredtest him on the site to u inch be msgbt naturally laste turned to seek relief in Tork. Gathe's steady cacouragement as of course inspiring but it bronglit no grisi lo llx mill and the problem of how he was to live was becoming extremely serious. Concious though he Tras of exceptional poxers which the most grudgins of lus ·EXERCISES 159 critics could not refuse to achnowledge, be was discovering to his cost that they ucrc 1100 marketable He could not throw his thoughts into a shape for which the publishers of the day would give him money He had tried poetry, but his verse was cramped and unmelodious He had tried to write stories, but his convictions al etc too intense for fiction His thoughts refused to move in any common grooze He had himself to form the taste by which be could be appreciated, and when he spoke his words provoked the same antagonism which every Indsidual thinker is inevitably condemned to encounter-antagonism first in the form of wonder, and when the wonder ceased, for irritation and angry enmity Ezery clement was absent from his writing which rould command popularity the quality to which booksellers and review editors are obliged to look if they would live thenselies Explain in simple language the meaning of the words and phrases italıcısed And if we go abroad into the world and try the conversation of men, it cannot but grieve us to see a great many things, which yet we must see every day, the censoriousness, the uncharitableness, and insincerity of men one towards an other, to see with what bindness they will treat one another to the face, and how hardly they will use them behind their backs. If there were nothing else, this one naughty quality, so common and reigning among men were enough to make an honest and true hearted man, one that loves plainness and sincerity, to be heartily sich of the world, and glad to steal off the stage where there is nothing native and sincere but all personated and acted where the conversation of men 15 all designing and insidious, full of flattery and falsehood, of good words and all offices one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in his heart he lieth in wat ·160 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH CONTOSITION And when a man has done all the good turns he can, and cndeavoured to please every man, and not only to live in offensively, but cxemplarily he is fairly dealt withal, and comes off upon good terms, if he can but escape the ull fords of men for doing well, and obtain a pardon for those things that truly deserve praise. Eramine the above passage for diffuseness, Tautology Redundancy and Circumlocution. XII Explain the following passage carefully Regrels and speculations on the might bare beens of life are proverbially vain Nor is it certain that there is anything to regret The married life of Carlyle and Janc Welsh was not happy, in the roscate sense of happiness in the fretard cbafc of daily life the sharp edges of the facets of luo il monds renam keen, and they never rear sisto surfaces u blub barmoniously correspond for the forty years shich these two cxtraordinary persons lised together their essental con duct to the world and to cach other was sternly upright They had to encounter poverty in its most threatening as pocta-poserty which they might at any moment have escaped if Carlyle would bure sacrificed bis intellectual integrity, would bore carried bis talents to the market and utilien down to the multitude 11 lx corr flagged it tas bis unft ebo spurred bım on, nor would she ever allow him to do anything less than his very best XII Give the moaning of the following passages and explain the meaning of the words and phrases scalicised Eser since literature had a beginning there have been masters of the call who have prosped eagerly after all the ·EXERCISES 161 scientific knowledge of their time, and have made such use of the fragments theu al ailalle as great artists alone could make Take Shakespeare himself in illustration Everyone knows how his lines bristle with scientific allussons, for bas not the fact been brought against him in the absurd Baconran Controversy Not to multiply illustrations one might almost say that the greater the writer, the more surely do we find him 111 touch with the science of the time This, to be surc, is no proof that scientific knowledge is prerequisite to the practice of the literary art. It is not generally considered that the Americans are a gullible race, they have the reputation of being exceptionally astute Yet large numbers of them appear to absorb with the greatest ardity the rubbish served up by every itmerant ex minister who uses their unfortunate country as a forum wherein to air bis grievances Whenever a British stateman is at large in the United States, our country suffers a vague sense of uneasiness as to what he is going to say next Surely it is time the Americans realised that their country is being exploited, and their credulity insulted by the self-propaganda that is being poured into their willing ears at the expense of our national dignity Monday morning broke heavily The wind was gone but there was a considerable swell' The English were hull down behind The dawn brought a chance still better for it brought an east wind and the Spaniards had now the weather 8age Could they once close and grapple with the Engilsh shups, their superior numbers would assure them of victory, and Howard being to leeward and inshore would have to pass through the middle of the Spanish line to recover his advantage. However it was the same story The Spaniards could not use an opportunity when they had one This time ·162 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION the San Martin was in the thick of it Her double timbert were ripped and torn, the holy standard was cut in tra The water poured through the shot holes The men byt their nerve In such ships as had no gentleman on board, norablc sights were observed of flinching I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by mnonkush ingenuity in forfure hty cogmzunce of the picha become known to the inquisitorial agents--the pit whose her rors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myselfpic typical of Hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultra Thule of all their punishments The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the mcrest of accidents and I haсw that sar prisc, or cocrapment into tomicnt formed an importanc pret tion of all the grotesqucre of these dungeon deaths The year upon which he was now entering, 1793, *19 to sec Bussy ca posed to many trials, to ulness his success{*! ouer riding of the dangers and artifices peculiarly calculair to test the qualities of a statesmon, to show how vain are troops and resources and strong milicary positions when there not a real man to command them In the month of January Bussy, worn out by faugue and exposure was suddenly Amor frated by sochness So severe n as the attach, that unulung As be uas, al a moment so critical, lo relar his grasp of 1 Ibreads of 16x 1 arrors negotistions in u Ineb le ras engaged, lie was nevertheless forced, in obedience to the directions or hos medical advisers to consent to proceed for change of 318 to MachhJiparam 2 It is said bypocrity is the loomuge ilul rice renders IS 11# and ils counterfeit monry indicates the true 15 thercfore thrus no discredit on tuo lrar d profestions when 1 point out the obvious fact that medicine and strolors and 1 ·EXERCISES 163 Hlajs prove attractive to vagabonds Tufts (o notorious criminal) tried both He says of himself in his asual Micawber strain-- Destitute of a single shilling in the world, it was al necessary to levy contributions on the public so that I might elude baggard pou crtys cruel grasp In some places therefore 1 practised plz sic in others told fortunes, and in others again! I discharged the sacerdotal office I could turn my hand uith I equal faculty to either of these scientific branches and acqured Is some celebrity in them all It is easy enough to understand the opinion of Dr John Why Sir he said no man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail You would fancy that any one s spirit would die out under such an aci cumulation of darhness noisomeness and injustice, above all when he had not come there of his own free will but under the cutlasses and bludgeons of the press gang But perhaps a natch on dech in the sharp sea air put a man on bis mettle again a bactle must have been a capital relief, and prize- 1701cy bloodily earned and grossly squandered opened the doors of the prison for a tr nklıng mi son ! Ti 1 tantine, + on the Origin of The prospect of beauty of safety and of wealth united in a single spot was sufficient to justify the choice of Cans- But as some decent mirture of prodigy and fable has in every age becn supposed to reflect a becoming majesty great cities the emperor was desirous of ascnbing bis resolution not so much to the uncertain counsels of human policy, as to the irfallible and eternal degrees of dnrne wisdom In one of his laws he has been careful to instruct posterity that, in obedience to the commands of God he laid the everlasting foundations of Constantinople and though he has not condescended to relate in what manner the divina inspiration was communicated to his mind the - ·164 HIINTS ON THE ART OF ENGI$11 COMPOSITION 3 defect of his modest silence has been liberally supplied by the ingenuity of succeeding writers who desenbe the portam.! 135100 w luch appeared to the fancy of Constantinc, as he slept within the walls of Byzantium. The tutelar geness of the city, a vencrable matron sinking under the wash of years and infirmstics was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid whom his own hands adorned with the smlols of Im. perial greatness Thic monarch atoka mterpreted the cas cious omen and obcy ed without liesication, the will of hessen The day (which gave birth to a city or colony) n as celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by a generous superstition, and though Constantinc might omit some rites wluch sol oured too strongly of their pogan origlia yer he was anxious to letve a deep impression of hope and respect on the minds of the spectators On foot, mith lance in his hand, the emperor himself led the solemn proxes sion and directed the ime u bich uus traced us tx boundury of the destined capital Haring danced, foughs wrestled flirted and died away the best part of his youth Carleton found himself ons day at the end of his tether His eldest bro her small blame to him, put Master Willie to the door At this time he had just happened upon Gil Blas, and the adientures of the picaret quc hero of 1.c Sage almost turned his unseitled brain He too nould hasc adientures. said he te but th. tvorlds made of , and without a penny in his pocke. Or Taller on his back he set out to walk from Tirone to Dub ເs As might be expected, adsentures did not lach behold him pedagoguing in the family of a bullying farmet nding in a hearss pulling off luis shirt behind sie door of : garree to hand it as security to the landlady selling a bard kerchief for mo shillings in some sailors and ar last sulklat ho n sy ont esching into Dirty Lanc Dublin * 111 try ·CXCRCISCS 165 our art The greatest teachers of modern times have believed the sayings of Christ about children, Of such is the kingdom of Heaven It is the last lesson we have learnt, still how imperfectly when it should have been the first For in it is implied the doctnne of the Godhead immanent 10 every human being which may grow and blossom like a flower, and which is both seen and prophesied in the beauty of childhood If education is still a new religion of infinite promise, it is because of the late understanding of that doctrinc, and methods, if they are good are only the practice of it The zery capacity of children for infinite joy over little things, that also is of the kingdom of Heaven It is what most of us have lost, and regret as much we can regret anything There is, for a child Heaven in a Christmas tree in its tinsel stars and candles Heaven in a party with its lights, games and music and we cannot recapture that Heaven with all But nt Chris“mas we can at least witness angels, and remember the time when we here angels too and then also we can remember that all methods of education are but ways that should lead to an innocent and enduring happiness Parse the words italicised in the last two passages It is the peculiar property of any new instrument of road travel to excite first hilarious ridicule and next furious anger Today the cyclist is the chartered libertine of the highway he disregards all rules and manners and is a constant nuisance and anxiety to the drivers of all other kinds of vehicles But I can remember when he went out on the road much as a solitary scout goes out into a hostile country warming with the enemy His troubles were greeted with os, and if some sportive pedestrian knocked him off his perch he had no rcmedy but to hammer his assailant on the spot, and stand the chance of being jailed for the assault The first approach to a motor car that I remember was a steam tricycle It was n perfectly practicable and reasonable ·164 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION defect of his modest silence has beens liberally supplied by the ingesunty of succeeding wnters, who descnbe the 11octurnal V15101 which appeared to the fancy of Constantine, as he slept within the walls of Byzantium The tutclar genius of the city, a venerable matron sinking under the weight of years and infirmities, was suddenly transformed into a blooming maid whom his own hands adorned with the symbols of Im perial greatness The monarch 3 woke interpreted the auspi Clous omen, and obeyed, without hesitation, the will of heaven The day (which gave birth to a city or colony) was celebrated by the Romans with such ceremonies as had been ordained by 3 generous superstition, and though Constantine might omit some rites which savonred too strongly of their pagan origin yet he was anxious to leave a deep impression of hope and respect on the minds of the spectators On foot with a lance in his hand the emperor himself led the solemn proces sion and directed the Ime which was traced as the boundary of the destmed capital Having danced fought, wrestled furted and idled away the best part of his youth Carleton found himself one day at the end of his tether His eldest brother small blame to lum, put Master Willie to the door At this time he had just happened upon Gil Blas, and the adventures of the picares que hero of Ic Sage almost turned hus unsettled brain He too would have adventures I'll try', sud he th bat the wo'lds made of and without a peany in lus pocket, or it wallet on his back, he set out to walk from Tyrone to Dub- Jin As might be expected, adventures did not lack Vc behold him pedagoguing in the family of a bullying farmer, ading in a hearse, pulling off his shirt behind the door of a garret to hand it as security to the landlady selling a hand kerchief for two shulings to some sailors and at last walking his way one e caing into Dirty Lane Dublin ·EXERCISES 165 our art. The greatest teachers of modern times have believed the sayings of Christ about children, Of such is the kingdom of Heaven It is the last lesson we have learnt, still how imperfectly when it should have been the first For in it is implied the doctrine of the Godhead immanent in every human being which may grow and blossom like a flower, and which is both seen and prophesied in the beauty of childhood If education is still a new religion of infinite promise It is because of the late understanding of that doctrine, and methods, if they are good, are only the practice of it The zery capacity of children for infinite joy over lettle things, that also is of the kingdom of Heaven It is what most of us have lost, and regrct as much we can regret anything, There is for a child Heaven in a Christmas tree in its tinsel stars and candles Herven in a party with its lights, games and music and we cannot recapture that Heaven with all But at Christmas tre can at least witness angels, and remember the time when we were angels too and then also we can remember that all methods of cducation are but ways that should lead to an innocent and enduring happiness. Parse the words italıcısed in the last two passages It is the peculiar property of any new instrument of road travel to excite first hilarious ridicule and nert furious anger Today the cyclist is the chartered libertine of the highway, he disregards all rules and manners, ind is a constant nuisance and anxiety to the drivers of all other kinds of vehicles But I can remember when he went out on the road much as a solitary scout goes out into a hostile country stvarming with the enemy His troubles were greeted with foy, and if some sportive pedestrian knocked him off his perch he had no remedy but to hammer bis assailant on the spot, and stand the chance of being jailed for the assault The first approach to a motor car that I remember was a steam tricycle. It was a perfectly practicable and reasonable ·166 HINTS ON THE ART OP ENGLISH COMPOSITION vehicle. But the inventor had forgotten the wise laws of his country He ventured out on the roads with his tricycle and the British Constitution spood aghast This nefarious instru ment violated every possible law and order To the flagrant immorality of wheels less than four fect in diameter it added the shameful felony of a speed over two miles an hour, the foul of sin being in charge of less than three men and the satanic crime of having nobody walking in front with a red flag The moral sense of the community was shaken to its foundations and the unprincipled malefactor was duly punished The first motor car nde I can remember was of some twelve miles It took us about an hour and a half of furious driving The engine was at the back and in the front where modern cars wear their bonnets, was a large tool chest, filled with every implement I have ever seen in a blacksmiths shop except the anvil and the forge. We used most of them in that twelve miles The owner greeted cvery breakdown with fiendish delight and plunged into his tool chest as a dog plunges at a bone He was grimy and smudged all over and the greasier he got the more he smiled If the car had fal len into its cven hundred separate parts he would hasc reach ed the topmost summit of human felicity When he stacced the engine the fly-wheel flung half a gallon of oil all over hun. But he looked triumphant, with the lubricant tnckling down hus smiling countenance PIECES FOR PARAPHRASE At Accshot up leaped of a sudden the sun, And against him the cacıle stood black cvery on To stare through the must tos galloping past, And I saw my stout galloper Roland at la o ·PIECES FOR PARAPHRASE 167 With resolute shoulders cach butting away The haze as sone bluff river headland 165 spray Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought Still where rosy pleasure leads See a kındred grief pursue Behind the steps that misery treads Approaching comfort view The hues of bliss more brightly glor Chastised by sabler tints of woe, And blend form with artful strife The strength and harmony of life Burke s vivid and inflammable imagination was apt to be too inordinately excited by the strange and romantic colouring of Indian scenes and incidents The sombre tragedy of the Asiatic stage affected him like Shakespeare s rendering of some terrible period in English history and hus delineations of them fell into theatrical extravagances Thus the son s office gave cover to the father s power, and his simplicity to the fathers cunning a situation so exactly suited to Nuncomar s special aptitude for wrie pulling and surreptitious intrigues, that it is hard to understand how Hastings could have been induced to adopt tactics that were ncither clever nor particularly creditable While it is remarkable that a petty concession should have been the signal for rebellion in the American colonies such an eletric reverberation across the horizon illustrates the tempestuous condition of the whole political atmosphere ·168 HUNTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Now borne upon the wings of truth sublime Review thy dim original and prime Thus island spot of unreclaimed smooth earth The cradle that received thee at thy birth Was rocked by many a rough Norwegun blast And Danish howlings scared thee as they passed The Roman taught chy stubborn knee to bor Though twicc a Caesar could not bend thee now Tly language at this distant moment shows How much the country to the conqueror owes. Expressive, energetic, and refined It sparkles with the gems he left behind He brought the land a blessing when he came He found thee savage and he left thec tame, Taught thee to paint thy pinked and painted hide And grace thy figure with a soldier s pride Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content The quiet mind is richer than a crown Swect are the nights in careless slumber spent The poor estate scorns Fortunes angry frown Such sweet content such minds such sleep such bliss, Beggars enjoy when Princes oft do miss. Thc homely house that harbours quiet rest, The cottage that affords no pride nor care, The mean that grecs with country music best The sweet consort of mirths and music s fare, Obscured life sets down a type of bliss A mund content both crown and kingdom is When Britain looking rith a Just disdain Upon this guided majesty of Spain And knowing well that Empire must decline Whose chicf support and Sinews are of com Our nation s solid virtue did oppose ·PARAPHRASE 169 To the rich troublers of the world s repose And now some months, encamping on the main Our naval army had besieged Spain They that the whole world s monarchy designed Are to their ports by oue bold fleec confined Front whence our red cross they truimphant see Rıdıng without a rival on the sea Others may use the ocean as their road Only the English make it their abode Whose ready sails with every wind can fly, And make a covenant with the inconstant sky Our oaks secure as if they there took root We tread on billows with a steady foot XIV PARAPHRASE The course of history is like that of a great river wandering through various countries now in the infancy of its current, collecting its waters from obscure small springs in splashy meadows, and from unconsidered rivulets which the neighbouring rustics do not know the name of now in its boisterous youth, forcing its way straight through mounains now, in middle life, going with equable current busily by great torns, its water sullied, yet enriched with commerce, and now in its burdened old age making its slow and difficult way, with great broad surface, over which the declining sun looms grandly, to the sea Thc uninstructed or careless traveller generally finds but one form of beauty or of meaning in the rner The romantic gorge and wild cascade is perhaps , the only I ind of scenery which delights And so it has often been in our estimate of history Vell fought battles, or the doings of gay courts, or bloody revolutions have been the chief sources of attraction while hura ·170 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION less dressed events, but not of less real interest or import. have often escaped all notice XV Examine the follou ing passages for qualshes of style He who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in their hobbies will regard his own with only a very ironical indulgence. He will not be hcard among the dogmatists He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions To be over vise is to ossify and the scruple monger ends by standing stock still Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weather-cock of a brain who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheer fully hazarded makes a different acquaintance of the world keeps all his pulses going true and fast and gathers impetus as he runs, until if he be running towards anything better than wild fire, he may shoot up and become a constellation in the end Such a light as this should shine only on murders and public crime, or along the corndors of lunatic asylums, a hor ror to heighten horror To look at it only once is to fall in love with gas which gives 3 warm domestic radiance fit to Mc by Mankınd you would have thought, might have re mained content with what Prometheus stole for them, and not gone fishing the profound heaven with ſites to catch and domesticate the wild fire of the storm Fifteen years of adventure had hardened into wrought mctal a character never very ductile Tom was now in his owo way an altogether accomplished man of the world who ·PARAPHRASE 171 knew exactly what to say, to do to seeh, and to avoid Shifty and thrifty as old Greek, or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent and perhaps nothing he could not endure He had watched nature under every disguise, from the pomp of the ambassador to the war paint of the savage and formed his own clear hard, shallow practical estimate thereof Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbour and thus, by every germ of spirie sucking the sap from mould ethereal, every human being might become great, and humanity instead of being a rude heath of furze and briars, with here and there a remote oak or pine, would become a grand democracy of forest trees To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes is tragical enough at the best, but when a man has beon grudging himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival that was never to be, it becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy that lies on the confines of farce XVI Pick out and name all the figures of speech that occur in the above passages XVII PHILIP II OF SPAIN Gile the meaning of the following passages Had the mental capacity of this sovereign been equal to bis criminal intent, even greater woe might have befallen the But his intellect was less than mediocre $ion for the bureau his slavery to routine his puerile ambition world His pas- ·172 HINTS ON THE APT OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION personally to superintend defails which could have been a thousand times better administered by subordinates, proclaim cd et cry day the narrowness of his mind His diligence in reading writing, and commenting upon despatches may er cite adınıration only where there has been no opportunity of judging of his labours by personal inspection Those familiar with the dreary displays of his penmanship must admit that such work could have been at least as well done by a copying clerk of average capacity His ministers were men of res pectable ability, but he imagined himself, as he advanced in life, far superior to any counsellor that he could possibly select, and was accustomed to consider himself the first statesman in the world success The materialistic spirit is very strong in the West of necessity it is, in the struggle for existence and position going on there and in the unprecedented opportunities for making fortunes And hence arises a prevailing notion that any education is of Isttle value that does not bear directly on material I should say that the professions, including divi muty and the work of the scholar and the min of lecters, do not have the weight that they do in some other places The professional man esther in the college or in the pulpit is ex pected to look alive and keep with the procession The general motto is, Be alive be practical Naturally also, wealth recently come by desires to assert itself a little in dus play, in ostentatious houses and luxurious living It is not by any esceptional depth of thought, or by any specially profound analysis of the soul that Browning is obs curc. It is by his style By that he makes what is casy diffi cult. The reader does not get at what he means 33 he gets me what Homer, Dante aod Shakespeare mcan Dante and Shakesperre are often dificult through the depth and diffi ·PARAPHRASE 173 culty of their matter They are not difficult, except Shakespeare when he was learning his art by obscurity or carelessness of style But Browning is difficult, not by his thoughts, but by his expression of them A poet has no right to be so indifferent, so careless of carelessness in his art, I might almost say so lazy Browning is negligent to a fault, almost to impertinence the camp Arms and the Church were the professions of the Middle Ages The sprinkling of saints found their vocation in the cloister, men of birth and connection sought luxurious living in episcopal sees and abbeys richly endowed by piety or superstition and bequests wrung from sinners in the terrors of the death bed sluggish or tranquilly inclined spuits swelled the ranks of the secular and regular clergy Nor unfrequently the professions were confounded Unfrocked monks be came the truculent leaders of robber bands as nuns forgetful of their solemn vows, discarded the veil and followed For war was the profitable and popular trade a business for which every able bodied man was adapted Nor was there any lack of occupation XVIII Thoreau had decided, it would seem, from the very first to lead a life of self improvement the needle did not tremblo as with richer natures, but pointed steadily north and as he saw duty and inclination in one, he turned all his strength in He was met upon the threshold by a common difficulty In this world in spite of its many agreeable fea tures even the most sensitive must undergo some drudging to live It is not possible to devote your time to study and meditation without what are quaintly but happily denominated private means these absent a man must contre to carn his bread by some service to the public such as the public that direction ·174 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSTON cares to pay him for or as Thoreau loved to put it, Apollo must serve Admetus This was to Thoreau a sourer necessity than It is to most there was a love of freedom a strain of the wild man in his nature that rebelled with violence against the yoke of custom, and he nas o eager to cultivate himself and to be happy in his own society that he could consent with diffi culty even to the interruptions of friendship Marcus Aure lius found time to study virtue and between whiles to conduct the imperial affurs of Rome but Thorcau is so busy improv ing himself that he must think twice about 1 morning call (1) Sketch briefly the character of Thoreau deriving your facts from the passage (2) Point out any example of irony in the passage (3) Comment on the style of the passage (4) Explain fully the meaning of the passage On the following morning an English squadron under Admiral Varren, hove in sight and bore down upon them The frigates and the schooner slipped away, and after a long chase the frigates were captured The Hoche for sit hours fought four men of-war as big as herself until raked from stem to stero she lay a disabled wrech upon the water Tonc commanded one of the batteries fighting with desperation and courting death, but was untouched by the leaden hail which swept around hum At length the Frenchman struck and was carried into Lough Swelly And if we go abroad into the world, and try the coarersations of men, it cannot but grieve us to see a great many things, wluch yet ve must see crery day, the censoriousness the uncharitableness and insincenty of men one toward an other to sae Bith what kindness they will treat one another ·PARAPHRASE 175 to the face, and how hardly they will use them behind their backs The water must be onginal, or he is nothing He is not to take up with ready made goods for he has time allowed him to create his own materials, to make novel combinations of thought and fancy, to contend with unforeseen difficulties of style and execution while we look on and admire the growing work in secret and at leisure There is a degree of finish ing as well as of solid strength in writing which is not to be got at every day, and we can wait for perfection The author owes a debt to truth and nature which he cannot satisfy at sight, but as he hus pawned bis head on redeeming it It is not a string of clap traps to answer a temporary or party purpose_violent, vulgar, and illiberal--but general and lasting truth that we require at his hands We go to him as pupils, not as partizans We have a right to expect from him profounder views of things finer observations more ingenious illustrations, happier and bolder expressions the choice and picked results of a whole life of study what he has struck out in his most felicitious moods, has treasured up with most pride has laboured to bring to light with most anxiety and confidence of success He may turn a penod in hus head fifty different ways so that it comes out smooth and round at last He may have caught a glance of a simile, and it may have vanished again let him be on the watch for it as the idle boy watches for the lurking place of the adder He is not satisfied with a reason he has offered for something, let him wait till he finds a better reason There is some word, some phrase, some idiom that expresses a particular idea better than any other, but he cannot for the life of him recollect it, let him wait till he does It is strange that among twenty thousand words in the English language, the one of all others that he most needs should have escaped him. He is to give Ve can wait ·sacrificing whole nations to his ambition, his avance, and cool Hardin with his cap and coat of feathers, sacrificing a human riches to his god, will not appear more savage to our eyes thunder Spaniard with a hat on his head, and a gonilla round his neck 176 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITIOV There are more things in nature than there are words in the English language, and he must not expect to lay rash hands on them all at once, Lerrn to write slow all other graces Vill follow in their proper places You allow a writer a year to think of a subject he should not put you off with a truism at last You allow him a year to find out words for his thoughts He should not give you an echo of all the fine things that have been said a hundred tumes XIX EXAMINE FOR QUALITIES OF STYLE There is scarce any folly or vice more epidemical among the sons of men than that ridiculous and hurtful vanity by which the people of each country are apt to prefer themseira to those of every other, and to make their own customs, and manners and opinions, the standards of right and true and false. The Chinese mandarins were strangey sus prised and almost incredulous when the Jesuits shewed the how small a figure their empire made in the general mag small a figure their empire made in the general map of the world Now nothing can contribute more to prevent as friend being tainted with this vanity, than to accuscom ourselves eady to contemplate the different nations of the carth in that the map which history spreads before us, in their rise and their fell in cheir barbarous and civilised states, in the likeness and let the likeness of them all to one another, and of each co itself Be frcquently renewing this prospect to the mind, the Alexecza wrong of the ·PARAPHRASE 177 the wantonness of his cruelty I might show by a multitude of other examples, hon history prepares us for experience and guides us in it, and many of these would be both curious and Important Im ght lihen ise bring several other instances, wherein history serves to purge the mind of those national prejudices and partialities that we are apt to contract in our education, and that experience for the most part rather confirms than removes, because it is for the most part confined, like our education But I apprehend growing too prohit and shall therefore conclude this head by observing that though 20 early and proper application to the study of history will contribute extremely to heep our minds free from a ridiculotis paruality in favour of our own country, and a vicious prejudice against others, yet the same study will create in us a pretrence of affection to our own country Lord Bolingbroke, 1678 1751 Hints (1) Diction (a) happy choice of words and phrases, e g Epidemical, sons of men, how small a figure their empire made Tainted with, purge confined, vicious prejudice, a preference of affection to (6) The copiousness of his vocabulary (2) Construction of sentences Most of them are long with many ideas crowded together Some of them are periods (3) He uses many figure of speech Antithesis metaphor, alliteration etc. Point them out (4) The style is easy, inely and graceful melodious, strong Illustrate by quotations adot 12 ·178 HITS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION EXAMINE FOR QUALITIES OF STYLE (a) Martıvalle was none of those ascetic, withered, pale professors of mystic learning of those days, who bleared their eyes over the midnight furnace, and macerated their bodies by out-watching the polar bear (b) Isabelles remonstrances were drowned in a general and jubilant assent above which was heard the voice of old Lord Crawford regretting the weight of years that prevented his striking for so fair a prize The Duke was gratified by the general applause, and his temper began to flow more smoothly like that of a swollen river when it has subsided within its natural boundaries. The moon on the east onel shonc Through slender shafts of shapely stone Thou wouldst have thought some fairy s hand By foleaged tracery combined Twixt poplars straight the Ozier wand In many a freshish knot had twined Then framed a spell then the work was done And changed the willow wreaths to stone. Spreading herbs and flowers bright Glistend with the dew of night Nor herb nor flow ret glistened there But was carved in the clouster arches 25 fair Goldsmith (c) The chest contrived a double debt to pay A bed by night a chest of drawers by day How do thy potions with insidious joy Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy Kingdoms by thec, to sickly greatness grown Roast of a flond greatness not their own. (d) ·PARAPHRASE 179 1 (8) To them his heart, his love his griefs were given But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form Sivells from the vale and midway leaves the storm Tho round its breast the rolling clouds are spread Eternal sunshine settles on its head Analyse this passage (b) As some fair female unadorned and plain Secure to please while youth confirms her reign Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes But when those charms are past for charms are frail When time advances and when lovers farl She then shines forth solicitous to bless In all the glaring impotence of dress (1) It was an apparition from that modern life which lies like a dark by-strect, behind the goodly ornamented facade that meets the sunlight and the gaze of respectable admirers (1) Dunstan felt as if there must be a little frightening added to the cajolery for his own arithmetical convictions were not clear enough to afford him any forcible demonstration as to the advantages of interest, and as for security, he regarded it vaguely as a means of cheating a man by making him believe that he would be paid Shakespeare (k) 1 The wind shaked surge with high and monstrous mane Seems to cast water on the burning Bear And quench the guards of the ever fixed pole I never did lhe molestation View On the enchafed flood ·180 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 1 If I do prove her haggard Though that her jesses were my dear heart strings I'd whistle her off and let her down the wind To prez at fortune XX Pack out, name, and comment on the figures of speech and other devices in the following Alone alonc all, all alone Alone on a wide wide sea But look the morn in nisset mantle clad Walks or the dew of yon high castern hill 3 It strept with thunderoru noues loud Shaped like a curling snow #hite cloud Or like a demon in a shroud 4 Oh dark dark durk amid the blaze of noon Irrecoverably dark total eclipse Without au lope of day They rowed her in across the hungry foam The cruel crawling foam 2 S XXI Write sentences using the following words correctly - Potable, dropsical, soponfic, cutancous voluble, unique, cackle, bibliomaniac, assiduity, alluring sequestred capricious retributory, indictive epidemic, incongruous delinquent apathy, punctilious, guerdon, sequestrate, amenable, macerate, precedence. XXII Explain and gile cramples of alicnisms, tnte expressions, solccisms, malaprops ·SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS 181 XXIII SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS Besides what is to be had from study and books, there are other accomplishments necessary for a gentleman, to be got by exercise, and to which time is to be allowed, and for which masters must be hired The study of history as an intellectual and moral discipline The pleasures of life in the country Where theres a will there s always a way The poet Cowper Shakespeare s conception of the universe Explain as well as you can the difference between the verse of Shakespeare s mature art and that of his youth The exercise of benevolence The best method of acquiring a hnowledge of literature Genius is an infinite capcatiy for work, growing out of an infinite power of love The ancient civilisation of the Greeks hashmir and its beauties The domesticated animals The Qutab Minar of Delhi The new Secretariat in the Capital of India Grut men of the twentieth century Some popular Indian Superstitions The variety of dresses in India Some great bencfactors of the world Great festivals of different religions in India. Christ, Muhammad and Buddha The great warriors of the world The modern inventions The last Great War ·182 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION Rome was not built in a day' Labour Government in England Socialism and Bolshevism The present state of Indian agriculture Tennis as the favourite game in the world We live in decds, not years – Bailey Absence of occupation is not rest Cowper Love in life and literature The next Var Causes and nature of Industrial Pevolutions Some great writers On the existence of a God O, it is excellent to have a grant s strength But tyrannous to use it like a grant -Shakespeare Radio activity The life of a hermit Civilization Cinematograph The Universities, pist and present The scenery in the neighbourhood of your home The biography of any modern poet *The old order changeth yielding place to new Your idea of a happy life The privileges and responsibilities of a big lindon ner Interviews The handiwork of nature The influence of mountains upon men Some of the more striking ways of communicating news in ancient, medieval and modern times Compare Painting with Poctry Nation! Prejudices. Modern Indian Literatur Town life as contrasted with country life The Drams and thc Novel as vehicles of education ·SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS 183 The best kind of education Travelling as a source of Literature The comparative advantages of State ownership and private enterprise in industry A practical method of abolishing the possibility of wars The meaning of freedom for the individual What do you consider success in life? What in your opinion is the most fruitful field for future scientific research? Discuss the truth of Dr Johnson s view that more useful lessons are to be learnt from Biography than from History Discuss Emerson s statement that It is the office and nght of the intellect to make and not take its estimate Write an essay on the advantages of a technical education The gratification of our thirst for applause is the strongest impulsive influence of average humınity What is the distinction between books of the hour and books of all time? Has Science a Literaturc? The character of Shakespeare s Caesar as shown by his own words and conduct, and by the bearing of others towards him Socrates The qualities that make a great man XXIV Correct the following sentences It was very different and superior to New York 2 I have met men who are not certain as to whether they are engaged on war work 3 We will try and find him 1 ·184 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 4 They were instructed to immediately reform behind the other company IIc cntirclý monopolised the whole of the conversa tion Explain what is meant by alliteration, onomatopo*11, hyperbole, similc, apologue, allegory, pedantry, paradox, ildundancy, bombast, euphuism, euphemism, melody, harmony, pathos, irony, antithesis, mixed metaphor, rhythm XXV 1 Correct the following sentences It was strong and sell fortificd, a point never neglec ted by these knights, and which the disordered state of England rendered pecularly necessary 2 They care little that these homes should only ap proximate in the fantest degree to their own 3 Thinking of them my pen carries as I write. 4 I should not have been sorry to have seen our Col lege team win S Schoolmasters are likely to effectually resent that kind of behaviour on the part of schoolboys 6. John Jones again was found guilty of the murder of his brother on the very flimsiest of evidence. 7 Everyone was as merry as possible, and had suddenly grown contented with themselves and cvery body clse 8 Please inform me as to whether there will be cricket ths cvcning Some attempt should be made to at least modify it. 10 I have lately reccived permission to print the following tale from the author s niccc.

·PIECES FOR ANALYSIS 185 11 They wished me to drink with them, but which I declined. 12 A woman took a post hitherto filled by a man at a lower salary XXVI PIECES FOR ANALYSIS (1) The best you can do, even though you may be a well educated person, is to be silent and strive to be wiser every day, and to understand a little more of the thoughts of others which so soon as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts cven of the wisest are very little more than pertinent questions (2) If at any time we ask what our duty is, honestly seeking to do it, we shall find an answer, the best of all answers in that voice of conscience within us all to which in my first lecture I referred as something divine, as a voice from God. Parse tbe words stalıcısed On Minto Crags the moonbeams glint Where Barnhill hewcd his bed of flint Who flung his outlased limbs to rest, Where falcons hang their giddy nest, Mid cliffs from s hence his eagle eye For many a league his prey could spy (4) No man should be ashamed to own he has been wrong, which is but saying in other words that he is wiser today that he was yesterday (5) My reason for proposing an amendment of it was that your meaning did not strike me, which therefore I have endeavoured to make more obvious (6) They please are pleased they give to get esteem TU seeming blast they grow to what they seem ·186 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION (7) Breathes there the man with soul so dead Vho never to himself hath said, This is my own my native land? Whose heart hath ne er within him burned As home his footsteps he has turned From Kandering on a foreign strand? ANALYSE (1) Then saw they how there hove a dusky barge Dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern Beneath them and descending they were ware That all the decks were dense with stately forms Black stoled black hooded like a dream-by these Three Queens with crowns of gold and from them rose A cry that shivered to the tingling stars And as it were one voicc in agony Of lamentation the # wind that shrills All night in a waste, land where no one comes Or harh come since the making of the world (2) But when Su Lancelot told This matter to the Queen, at first she laughed Lishtly to think of Modreds dusty fall Then shuddered as the village wife who cries 'I shudder some one steps across my grave. (3) Just as perhaps he mused "my plans That soar, to earth may fall Let once my army leader Lannes Warer at yonder wall - Out, twixt the battery smokes there fler A nder bound on bound Full galloping nor bridle drew Until he reached the mound ·187 PARSING AND ANALYSIS ANALY PARSING AND ANALYSIS Analyse The common run of plain men as has been noticed since the beginning of the world are as cager as children for a story and like children they will embrace the man who will tell them a story with abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance that it 15 no mere make believe XXVII Parse the words marked with an asterisk 11 (a) His good natured use* (noun) of great knowledge Its would have been" (past part ) easy for a man with such a memory as* (rel pron ) hus* to become most unpopular It had—what is perhaps rarer among parliamentary statesten than among most people—the flavour of exact thought It is hardly possible for men to pass their lives in ora tonical efforts without losing* (gerund) some part of their taste for close-fitting words ,(b) The rage for what* (comp rel pron ) is called on ginality is pushed to such a length in these days that even* chudren are not considered promising etc. It does not follow that he toot (cor conj) will be a sculptor (c) It was what* Vasco de Gama called the thing when he first saw it. The tree is I need* scarcely say, a palm The rough date palm makes groves on sandy plains but* brings no frut to perfection There is nothing less negotiable than the cocoanut as* the tree presents it Aralysis Construct and give a clause analysis of (1) a complex ·190 HINTS ON THE ART OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION But the straight cut to the convent Six words therc While I stood munching my first bread that month 'So boy you re minded quoth the good fat father Wiping his own mouth twas refection time *To quit this very miserable world Will you renounce -The mouthful of bread? thought I By no means! Brief, they made a monk of me, I did renounce the world its pride and greed, Palace farm, villa shop and banking house, Trash such as these poor devels of medici, Have given their hearts to—all at eight years old Well Sir I found in time you may be sure 'Twas not for nothing--the good bellvful The sarm serge and the горс thac gou's all round And day long blessed idleness besidel Lets see what the urchins fit for that came next Not overmuch thers way I must confess Such a to-do! they tried me with their books Lord they d have taught me Latın in pure svastel Flouer of the clore All tbe Latin 1 construe is "Arno I love! But the majestic river floated on Out of the mist and hum of that low land Into the frosty starlight and there moved Rejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian vaste Under the solitary moon he flowed Right for the Polar star past Orgunje Brumming and bright and large tho sands begin To hem his watery march and dam hus streams And split his currents that for many a league The shorn and parcelled Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted soshy isles Oxus forgetting the bright speed he had In lus high mountain cradle in Pamere (c) 1

·EXERCISES ON QUALITIES OR STYLE
191
(d)
A foiled circuitous wanderer --all at last
The longed for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens bright
And tranquil from whose floor the new bathed stars
Emerge and shine upon the Aral Sea
In one dark torrent broad and strong
The advancing onset rolled along
Forth harbingered by fierce acclaim
That from the shroud of smoke and flame
Peald wildly the imperial name
But on the British heart were lost
The terrors of the charging host
For not an eye the charge that viewed
Changed its proud glance of fortitude
Nor was one forward footstep stayed
As dropped the dying and the dead
THE END

·Priated by K P Dar at the Allahabad Law Journal Press Allebabad Publabed by Goya Prasad & Son Agro