4. Plan of Attack. Now suppose you ask yourself, What is the first thing I need help about? What will be your answer? Is the thing you need most Words? Probably not: you have enough for practical purposes. You may find out in time that your vocabulary is limited, but I do not believe that that idea comes to one very early in the business. Is the thing you want an idea of how to construct a Sentence? Not if you have been well trained in English grammar. You may not write the best kind of sentences, but some sort of sentence you can write so as to give a good notion of your meaning. Do you want to know how to Paragraph correctly? The importance of paragraph structure is very great, but one is not apt to realize it at first. Do you want Figures of Speech? If I am not mistaken you would be glad to consign all figures of speech to any distressing limbo that may come to mind-synecdoche, paralipsis, metaphor, prosopopeia, metonomy—the whole tribe of them. I may be wrong, but it seems to me,-in the light of my own experience of twenty years ago and of this very afternoon,-it seems to me that the first thing, the greatest difficulty on beginning, is, How to get the ideas in order. How shall I get just the right things to say? Read and study, observe and think. Get all ready to write, and that's the first problem, it seems to me. Not words at first, not sentences, nor paragraphs, nor even figures of speech. We don't think first of clearness or simplicity or ease, or any of those things that are treated of in the book. We want to pick out just what to say and to get our ideas in right order to put on paper. If, here, we have not some little skill or some little help, out come the ideas, bad and good together, all in confusion, and the result is depressing. Whether this be your first need or not, you will see that there is some sense in beginning here. We have the art of Rhetoric in view, not the science; we may therefore dis pense with a logically methodical analysis. We want to be constructive in our methods rather than critical; we are compelled to be constructive here. We want to consider thought as well as style; this is just the place to consider thought, for at present there is nothing else to consider. The answer to the question, How shall I get together and arrange what I am going to say? goes, in books on Rhetoric, by the name of Kinds of Composition. A good study of this matter will do something to make us feel at home with our material. If we have to write an account of the last football match for the college paper, the principles of Narration' will be of use. If we have to write a paper on some curious fossil discovered in the last geological excursion, Description' is what we want. If we are to answer an examination question, say, "What is meant by the Association of Ideas?" we shall do better if we know something of Exposition.' If we are noting down points for the debate on the subject," Resolved, That Recent Events. have shown it advisable to extend the Suffrage to Women," it will be well to know something of Argument.' Whatever it be, we may for the moment dismiss consideration of Diction, Sentence, and Paragraph. What we want to know is how to arrange our ideas for presentation, and to get what help we can in choosing out the ideas to arrange. Only for a time, however, shall we be able to neglect these other matters, which at first appear merely technical, wholly confined to the very writing itself. Even before we put pen to paper, we shall probably see our ideas arranging themselves into groups, crystallizing, as it were. We shall see that there is a closer connection between this particular two than between either one and the rest. Now if we inspect those two thoughts sticking together, or there may be more: there may be half a dozen,-if we look hard 1 See pp. 24, 43, 83, 33, respectively. at them as they group themselves together and refuse to be drawn apart, we shall see that they are in fact little less than Paragraphs. And practically you might as well arrange your paragraph-structure before you write the words down, for if your ideas be rightly arranged the paragraphs are there, and you will make it easier for the reader if you indicate it in the conventional way. It will be easier for you, too, as you will find; but this is a later matter. So right after the study of Kinds of Composition comes the study of the Paragraph. When we once begin with a good, clean piece of paper, our subject being carefully thought out and arranged and all ready to be set right down, there may be some doubt as to what counsel is most necessary. The thing is to clothe flesh and blood upon the bare skeleton, to give fullness and substance to the mere topics or headings of the outline. Of course much suggests itself at once to every one, but it will be useful to have some notion as to the different modes of presentation that have been common, and some of the different things that one must have in mind in following them out, all of which matters may conveniently be included under the head of the paragraph. Probably no one does much of any writing without becoming aware that he has rather a limited vocabulary. We think of Shakespeare and his traditional fifteen thousand words. How excellent it would be to have so many. As a rule, most people are well content to look over what they have written, and, when they see a word that seems not quite right, they cross it out and put another one in its place. But it would be better to have the right word from the first. Then, as a rule, one has some difficulty, where a word seems evidently wrong, to think up precisely the right one. It would be a great gain if one had always at hand some half a dozen words to choose from. Now our method is constructive; it aims to enlarge and increase the power of expression: there is any way to enlarge and increase the vocabulary, that will be an important part of our work. We shall find, too, that this part of our study is not so disconnected with the nature of our thoughts as it seemed at first. Not with the main blocking out of the subject, perhaps, or with the arrangement of parts. But the exactness of meaning that ought to follow our effort, the nice discriminations, the thinking precisely instead of being satisfied with a blurred and confused impression-these things have a good deal of connection with our ways of thinking, as with particular ideas. So we cannot wait much longer without working for a good vocabulary. Then there are the matters of Sentence-structure and Figures of Speech. Probably your first idea would be, "Couldn't we leave those out until they are absolutely necessary?" We shall find some knowledge of these matters and some intelligent command over them very useful in course of time; at present, perhaps, we need not point out their particular place, nor go into any further detail as to the minor topics which will call for attention some time or other. We may be satisfied with having given a disposition to the more important matters which we must deal with, and may now proceed at once with a discussion of the different Kinds of Composition, and with such practice as shall suggest itself. PART ONE KINDS OF COMPOSITION. 5. The Four Kinds of Composition. Rhetoricians generally note at least four Kinds of Composition: Narration, Description, Exposition, and Argumentation. Disregarding exactness for the moment, we may say, in the way of rough definition, that Narration details a sequence of events, Description gives the impression of some particular thing, Exposition explains a general idea, and Argumentation shows the truth of a proposition. These distinctions are founded upon the different kinds of subject that are likely to come to our attention; for this seems to be the most sensible basis to take while we are merely studying how to consider our subject, how to find out the best things to say of it, how to get the good out of it, and, in some degree, how to put in general order what material we can collect. We can always tell what kind of subject we are thinking about, and, if we can say "With such and such a subject proceed by Description," or whatever be the proper kind of composition, it will be a convenient way of beginning. The definitions given above include propositions, and terms both general and particular: whatever we are thinking of will come under one head or another. Terms, or names, are either particular or general according as they are the names for particular things or general ideas. Now if our subject be some particular thing which we view as a series of events, we call the mode of treatment Narration; if it be a particular thing which we are not so viewing, we treat it |