circumstances of those addressed; for though truth is one, and correct reasoning must always be correct, the ways of communicating truth are many. Being the art of communication by language, Rhetoric applies to any subject-matter that can be treated in words, but has no subject-matter peculiar to itself. It does not undertake to furnish a person with something to say; but it does undertake to tell him how best to say that with which he has provided himself. "Style," says Coleridge, "is the art of conveying the meaning appropriately and with perspicuity, whatever that meaning may be;" but some meaning there must be: for, "in order to form a good style, the primary rule and condition is, not to attempt to express ourselves in language before we thoroughly know our own meaning." Part I. of this treatise discusses and illustrates the general principles which apply to written or spoken discourse of every kind. Part II. deals with those principles which apply, exclusively or especially, to Narrative or to Argumentative Composition, - the two kinds of prose writing which seem to require separate treatment. THE PRINCIPLES OF RHETORIC. PART I. COMPOSITION IN GENERAL. BOOK I. GRAMMATICAL PURITY. CHAPTER I. GOOD USE. Importance of correct expression. GRAMMAR, in the widest sense of the word, though readily distinguishable from Rhetoric, is its basis. He who has mastered the mechanics of language has a great advantage over one who cannot express himself correctly, as a painter whose pencil rarely errs has a great advantage over one who cannot draw correctly. To know the proper use of one's native tongue is no merit; not to know it is a positive demerit, a demerit the greater in the case of one who has enjoyed the advantages of education. Yet, not even eminent speakers or writers, not even those who readily detect similar faults in others, are themselves free from errors in grammar, — such, at least, as may be committed, through inadvertence, in the hurry of speech or of composition. "A distinguished British scholar of the last century said he had known but three of his countrymen who spoke their native language with uniform grammatical accuracy; and the observation of most persons widely acquainted with English and American society confirms the general truth implied in this declaration." 1 "It makes us blush to add," says De Quincey,2"that even grammar is so little of a perfect attainment amongst us, that, with two or three exceptions (one being Shakspere, whom some affect to consider as belonging to a semi-barbarous age), we have never seen the writer, through a circuit of prodigious reading, who has not sometimes violated the accidence or the syntax of English grammar." 3 4 Correctness (or Purity) is, then, the first requisite of discourse, whether spoken or written. Whatever is addressed to English-speaking people should be in the English tongue. With a few exceptions, to be hereafter noted, it should (1) contain none but purity defined. English words, phrases, and idioms; (2) these words, phrases, and idioms should be combined according to the English fashion; and (3) they should be used in the English meaning. Grammatical What, now, determines whether a given expression is English? Evidently, the answer to this question is not to be False tests of sought in inquiries concerning the origin, the good English. history, or the fundamental characteristics of the language. However interesting in themselves, however successfully prosecuted, such investigations are foreign to a study which has to do, not with words as they have been, or might have been, or may be, but with words as they are; not with the English of yes 1 George P. Marsh: Lectures on the English Language, lect. v. 2 Essay on Style. 8 Query as to the position of this clause; see p. 140. 4 See p. 34 for an example taken from this very essay. 5 See pp. 10, 61. |