plete to your hearer's mind. You need then give yourself very little concern to inquire for the parish register of its nativity. Whether new or old, whether of Saxon or of Grecian parentage, it will perform its duties to your satisfaction, without at all impairing your reputation for purity of speech." 1

He should seek to conform to Swift's definition of a good style: "Proper words in proper places;" and to the rules by which "any one," as Locke says, "may preserve himself from the confines and suspicion of jargon":

"My lord, the new way of ideas, and the old way of speaking intelligibly, was always, and ever will be, the same. And if I may take the liberty to declare my sense of it, herein it consists: (1) That a man use no words but such as he makes the signs of certain determined objects of his mind in thinking, which he can make known to another. (2) Next that he use the same word steadily for the sign of the same immediate object of his mind in thinking. (3) That he join those words together in propositions, according to the grammatical rules of that language he speaks in. (4) That he unite those sentences in a coherent discourse." 2

The question remains whether, under the general considerations that have been suggested and the rules that have been laid down, any fundamental principle exists.

Spencer's

theory.

Herbert Spencer claims that such a principle is to be found in what he calls "economy of attention." He thinks that the sufficient reason for choosing the best words for the purpose in hand and arranging them in the best order is, that the reader's attention, being thus subjected to the least possible strain from the machinery of language, can be more closely given to the thought; that, therefore, the best

1 J. Q. Adams: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory, lect. xxv. p. 159. 2 Locke: Works, vol. iv. p, 430; Second Reply to the Bishop of Worcester.

writer is he who, other things being equal, draws least upon a reader's mental powers and sensibilities.

Its

This theory is very well as far as it goes; but it does not lay sufficient stress upon the fact that insufficiency. the mental power of no reader is a constant quantity; that, therefore, a writer who increases this power by stimulating mental action arrives, by a different road, at the same destination which is reached by another writer who by a wise economy prevents unnecessary waste. The superiority of the metaphor to the simile,1 and of a suggestive to an "exhaustive" style,2 lies, as has been shown, in each case-partly, at least -in the stimulating power of the former; and the same may be said of the superiority of "words that burn" over those of the cold understanding, and of an orderly over a loose arrangement.

The greatest genius of all is, of course, he who economizes a reader's attention at the same time that he stimulates his energies: Dante, for instance, “whose verse holds itself erect by the mere force of the substantive and verb, without the help of a single epithet," 3 but who "knew how to spend as well as to spare. His simile of the doves (Inferno, v. 82 et seq.), perhaps the most exquisite in all poetry, quite oversteps Rivarol's narrow limit of substantive and verb.” 4 Another principle which underlies all rhetorical rules is (as has been hinted more than once in Variety. the foregoing pages 5) the principle of all the principle of Unity in design conjoined with manifold Variety in methods.

Unity with

art,

1 See p. 91.

2 See pp. 125, 127.

3 Rivarol, quoted by J. R. Lowell: Among my Books (Second Series), p. 38.

4 Lowell: Ibid., p. 40.

5 See pp. 111, 157, 159. See also p. 186.

"A great author is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. . . He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; if he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution." 1

Not that a writer should aim to be the "perfectly endowed man" of whom Herbert Spencer 2 dreams. “To be specific in style," says Spencer, "is to be poor in speech;" but to be in no sense and in no degree "specific in style" is to be "faultily faultless," to be devoid of that individuality which is at once the spring and the charm of genius. Emerson teaches a sounder doctrine in giving the "essential caution to young writers that they shall not in their discourse leave out the one thing which the discourse was written to say," but shall each "obey" his "native bias." "To each his own method, style, wit, eloquence.

"3

"In each rank of fruits, as in each rank of masters, one is endowed with one virtue, and another with another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they who propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should unite the coloring of Tintoret, the finish of Albert Durer, and the tenderness of Correggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would be, who made it the object of his

1 J. H. Newman: Lectures on University Subjects, p. 62.

2 Philosophy of Style.

3 Letters and Social Aims, pp. 274-277; Greatness.

labor to produce a fruit which should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine."1

Shakspere most nearly approaches Spencer's ideal, because he speaks through many voices; but even in him, when he ceases to be Iago or Juliet, "a specific style" can be traced. The fact, however, that his individuality so often eludes discovery renders him to many persons a book rather than a man.

The Unity which every writer should seek is not the unity of perfection, but is that which comes from the conception of a discourse as a whole, and from the harmonious arrangement of the parts in conformity with that conception: the only Variety which can be of avail is that which naturally presents itself. A composition should be "a body, not a mere collection of members," 2 but it should be a living body. Its life must come, partly from the natural qualities of the writer, and partly from his acquired resources, whether of matter or of language-resources which it is not the province of Rhetoric to supply.

1 Ruskin Modern Painters, vol. iii. part iv. p. 43 (American Edition). 2 Quintilian: Inst. Orator. vii. x. xvii.

PART II.

KINDS OF COMPOSITION.

BOOK I.

NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION.

CHAPTER I.

MOVEMENT.

THE essentials of a good narrative, whether of real or of fictitious events, are movement and method, the life and the logic of discourse. If the action halts, the attention halts with it; if the action is confused or self-repeating, the attention is soon fatigued.

sculpture.

The arts of communication by colors or by marble. differ from the art of communication by language, in that they can directly represent stationary objects, but cannot represent action. Painting and sculpture, as they address the eye only, are subject to Limitations of the limitations to which the eye is subject. painting and Hence, painting and sculpture can represent only a single moment of time, since the eye cannot receive the impressions of two successive moments. at once; but they may represent a wide extent of space, or a scene comprising numerous details, since the eye can in a moment receive an impression of a whole that is composed of many widely different parts.