carry a message to the understanding," to the heart, or to the imagination, he spends it well; but if, by multiplying words, he obscures the meaning of the "message," or weakens its force, he purchases ease at the cost of things far more important.

CHAPTER III.

ARRANGEMENT.

SUCCESS in either spoken or written discourse depends even less upon choice or number of words than upon ARRANGEMENT. In a theoretically perfect ar- The ideal rangement, the order of the language would arrangement. distinctly indicate the relative importance of each constituent part of the composition. Of such an arrangement no human language is susceptible; but a writer should come as near to it as is permitted by the peculiarities of the language in which he writes.

SECTION I.

CLEARNESS.

CLEARNESS requires that the words and the groups of words which are near to one another in thought shall be near in expression, and that those which are separate in thought shall be separate in expression. A writer who conforms to this principle will give to each word the position that shows its relation to other words, and to each part of a sentence the position that shows its relation to other parts.

Obscurity may be caused by an arrangement that puts a pronoun before the noun which it represents. Position of For example:

pronouns.

“In adjusting his rate of wages for the future, the working man should realize that politics does not enter into the matter."

1 American newspaper.

"He had just failed in securing a house there, and Coleridge's company was a great temptation to him, as that of her sister was to his wife." 1

Occasionally a pronoun may, without causing obscurity, be put before the noun which it represents :

"illiterate writers, who seize and twist from its purpose some form of speech which once served to convey briefly and compactly an unambiguous meaning." 2

In this sentence, it would be hard to change the position of "from its purpose" without causing obscurity or clumsiness; "its," moreover, comes so near to "some form of speech," that the reader catches the meaning at once.

Position of correspond

Obscurity is caused by neglect of the rule that connectives of the class known to grammarians as “correspondents"-such as not only, but also; either, or; neither, nor; both, and; on the one hand, on the other hand should be so placed as to show what words they connect. For example:

ents.

"Lothair was unaffectedly gratified at not only receiving his friends at his own castle, but under these circumstances of intimacy."

66

They were a family which not only had the art of accumulating wealth, but of expending it with taste and generosity." 4

"This effeminate tone comes from the fact that the plays were written not to please the common people but the dissolute court.” 5 "I neither estimated myself highly nor lowly." 6

"he neither attempted to excite anger, nor ridicule, nor admiration."

1 Mrs. Oliphant: The Literary History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, vol. i. chap. viii.

2 J. S. Mill: A System of Logic, book iv. chap. v. sect. iii. Not in some editions.

8 Disraeli: Lothair, chap. xxxix.

4 Ibid. Endymion, chap. xxxviii.

6 J. S. Mill: Autobiography, chap. i.

5 Student's theme.

7 Lord Dalling and Bulwer: Sir Robert Peel, part ii. sect ii.

subordinate

Obscurity is caused by placing subordinate expressions where they do not show at once with what Position of words or groups of words they are connected. expressions. In each of the following sentences an adverb is out of place:

"All criminals are not guilty." "1

"Whatever qualities he himself, probably, had acquired without difficulty or special training, he seems to have supposed that I ought to acquire as easily."2

...

"he recovered his harquebuss without almost knowing what he did."8

"He was about to go on, when he perceived, from her quivering eye and pallid cheek, that nothing less than imposture was intended." 4

"In painting and in sculpture it is now past disputing, that if we are destined to inferiority at all, it is an inferiority only to the Italians and the ancient Greeks; an inferiority which, if it were even sure to be permanent, we share with all the other malicious nations around us." 5

In each of the following sentences a phrase or a clause is out of place:-

"A strong man's will tends to create a will in the same direction in others."1

"The scale was turned in its favour by a speech which ranks among the masterpieces of Am ́rican oratory from Fisher Ames.”✪ "Miss Meadowcroft searched the newspapers for tidings of the living John Jago in the privac of her own room.”▾

66

Although Madame Clermont had, as I knew, lost most of the money which Shelley had left her in the Lumley's Italian Opera

1 Student's theme.

2 J. S. Mill: Autobiography, chap. i.

Scott: Quentin Durward, vol. i. chap. x.

4 Ibid. Old Mortality, vol. ii. chap. ii.

De Quincey: Essay on Style.

• Goldwin Smith: The United States, chap. iii.

7 Wilkie Collins: The Dead Alive, chap. x.

House disaster, yet she had evidently still sufficient to keep her in perfect comfort, and even luxury." 1

"She wore a diamond pin in her hair which was bought in Paris."

“Under such circumstances, the poor woman, amid her cares, may be excused if she looked back a little wistfully at Lucilla going home all comfortable and independent and light-hearted, with no cares, nor anybody to go on at her, in her sealskin coat.” 8

“And it was with this sense of certainty that she put on her bonnet and issued forth, though it snowed a little, and was a very wintry day, on Mr. Ashburton's behalf, to try her fortune in Grange Lane." 8

"In a few moments more, he was mounted on a fine powerful black horse, and followed by Sampson, on his road to London.” 4

"Though they [the Lords] have been very far from a uniformly sagacious assembly, take them all in all, yet the English people are certainly very unlikely to decide in favour of a constitutional revolu tion which would have made the very hair of the American conscript fathers stand on end more than a century ago, at its utter folly and rashness." 5

"Her slings and arrows, numerous as they were and outrageous, were directed against such petty objects, and the mischief was so quick in its aim and its operation, that, felt but not seen, it is scarcely possible to register the hits, or to describe the nature of the wounds."6

66

Forty years ago, there was assuredly no spot of ground, out of Palestine, in all the round world, on which, if you knew, even but a little, the true course of that world's history, you saw with so much joyful reverence the dawn of morning, as at the foot of the Tower of Giotto.""

1 William Graham: Chats with Jane Clermont. The Nineteenth Century, November, 1893, p. 756.

2 American newspaper.

3 Mrs. Oliphant: Miss Marjoribanks, vol. ii. chap. xii. Tauchnitz edition.

4 Captain Marryat: The Children of the New Forest, chap. xxi.

5 The [London] Spectator, June 23, 1894, p. 844.

6 Miss Edgeworth: The Absentee, chap. iii.

7 Ruskin: Mornings in Florence; The Shepherd's Tower.