tion, assume the honourable style of a Christian. Not that What is the hardest task in the world? To think. I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on 25 this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. For example, a man explores the basis of civil government. Let him intend his mind without respite, without rest, in one direction. His best heed long time avails him nothing. 30 Yet thoughts are flitting before him. We all but apprehend, we dimly forebode the truth. We say, I will walk abroad, and the truth will take form and clearness to me. We go forth, but cannot find it. It seems as if we needed only the stillness and composed attitude of the library to 35 seize the thought. But we come in, and are as far from it as at first. Then, in a moment and unannounced, the truth appears. A certain wandering light appears, and is the distinction, the principle, we wanted. But the oracle comes because we had previously laid siege to the shrine. 40 It seems as if the law of the intellect resembled that law of nature by which we now inspire, now expire the breath; by which the heart now draws in, then hurls out the blood, the law of undulation. So you must labour with your brains, and now you must forbear your activity and see 45 what the great Soul showeth. - EMERSON: Intellect.1 Compare the difference between these paragraphs in number of words with the difference in number of sentences. 26. Apparently the question is, Long sentences or short? And the answer is twofold. First, as a matter of logic, a given statement is left as an independent sentence or is combined in the same sentence with other statements according as it is coördinate or subordinate. Logically, then, the question becomes, Should this statement receive the prominence of a separate sentence, or should it be reduced to a clause or a phrase? Does it bear on the subject of the paragraph directly; or does it bear indirectly, through its relation to a neighbouring statement? In the former case, being independent, it is a sentence; in the latter, being dependent, it is a clause. This is the logic of paragraph emphasis. And since practice in reducing to clauses statements written carelessly as sentences is a direct means of overcoming a habit of redundancies, it is clear that attention to paragraph emphasis is a large part of conciseness. 27. In the second place, as a matter of rhetoric, the succession of sentences in the first paragraph is smooth, in the second paragraph abrupt. And the difference, though it lies partly in explicit reference, lies mainly in the predominance of long or of short sentences. A paragraph of long sentences, then, has the advantage 1 Quoted in Carpenter's Exercises in Rhetoric and English Composition in this connection. over a paragraph of short sentences in a nicer subordination and an easier flow. But it will not do to think of a paragraph as limited to one or the other. Each has its purpose, and both are necessary to variety. Moreover, since monotony of style means monotony in sentence-forms, variety in length is an end in itself. 28. Again, it is evident from §§ 17-20 that a paragraph is a group of sentences when we consider its coherence. But paragraph coherence affects even the form of the sentences, by what Professor Genung calls "inversion for adjustment"; for paragraph coherence has the same dependence on sentence emphasis as the coherence of the whole essay has on paragraph emphasis (§§ 24, 41). A striking example of this is the following oratorical paragraph: But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, œconomists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.- BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France. It should be added, first, that such inversions, besides contributing to paragraph coherence, contribute also, like the exclamatory and interrogative forms, to empha sis and variety; secondly, that inversion, exclamation, interrogation, all three must be regarded as exceptional. The frequent use of these devices makes style laboured and pompous. The length of a sentence, then, and its form are to be decided, not absolutely for the sentence itself, but relatively to the paragraph. III. THE SENTENCE 29. In English every statement is punctuated as a sentence unless it be definitely subordinated to some other statement as a dependent clause, or coördinated as an equal member. It is not technically incorrect to write The tide was rising; so we ran, though punctuation by comma The tide was rising, so we ran, can hardly be defended; but, however punctuated, in effect those seven words make two sentences The tide was rising. So we ran. For the two statements are left independent, side by side. Read aloud, all three forms have exactly the same effect on a hearer. Not punctuation, but only a definite subordination will make them one sentence We ran because the tide was rising, or, better, Since the tide was rising, we ran. To run two sentences together, even when both, as above, are short and custom admits a semicolon, shows a feeble grasp of both paragraph (§ 24) and sentence. It is much grosser to punctuate a clause as if it were a sentence. Until these two converse errors are eradicated, nothing further can be done. No one can revise for sentence unity until he recognizes the unit. 30. Except in that it is easier to unify a short sentence than a long one, the length of a sentence has nothing to do with its unity. Above are seven words not in unity, and at lines 22-29 in the paragraph at § 17 are seventy words entirely in unity. Besides, the length of a sentence depends, partly upon the exigencies of the individual thought, partly upon the emphasis of the whole paragraph (§ 26). Length, then, is not the test, but relevance, the bearing of the modifiers on the main part. In the following sentence the modifiers move steadily away from the main part: In this uneasy state Cicero was oppressed by a new and cruel affliction, the death of his daughter Tullia, which happened soon after her divorce from Dolabella, whose manners and humours were entirely disagreeable to her. The remedy here is simple. Cast out the irrelevant modifiers. If they are not worthy the dignity of separate sentences, suppress them altogether. In general, beware of the-House-that-Jack-built sentence. 31. But the trouble is deeper. Wherein lies the absurdity of the following sentence? I turned to reply, when the platform on which I was standing gave way with a crash. Here the writer may be taken to represent himself as unmoved in the midst of disaster: When the platform on which I was standing gave way with a crash, I turned to reply. |