style which arises from severity; and from him I will illustrate them both. In a former lecture I pointed out what that severity of poetical style is, which comes from saying a thing with a kind of intense compression, or in an allusive, brief, almost haughty way, as if the poet's mind were charged with so many and such grave matters, that he would not deign to treat any one of them explicitly. Of this severity the last line of the following stanza of the Purgatory is a good example. Dante has been telling Forese that Virgil had guided him through Hell, and he goes on: 'Indi m' han tratto su gli suoi conforti, Che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti.'1 Thence hath his comforting aid led me up, climbing and circling the Mountain which straightens you whom the world made crooked.' These last words, 'la Montagna che drizza voi che il mondo fece torti,' — 'the Mountain which straightens you whom the world made crooked,' for the Mountain of Purgatory, I call an excellent specimen of the grand style in severity, where the poet's mind is too full charged to suffer him to speak more explicitly. But the very next stanza is a beautiful specimen of the grand style in simplicity, where a noble nature and a poetical gift unite to utter a thing with the most limpid plainness and clearness : "Tanto dice di farmi sua compagna Ch' io sarò là dove fia Beatrice; Quivi convien che senza lui rimagna.' 2 'So long,' Dante continues, 'so long he (Virgil) saith he will bear me company, until I shall be there where Beatrice is; there it behoves that without him I remain.' But the noble simplicity of that in the Italian no words of mine can render. "Both these styles, the simple and the severe, are truly grand; the severe seems, perhaps, the grandest, so long as we attend most to the great personality, to the noble nature, in the poet its author; the simple seems the grandest when we attend most to the exquisite faculty, to the poetical gift. But the simple is no doubt to be preferred. It is the more magical: in the other there is something intellectual, something which gives scope for a play of thought 1 Dante: Il Purgatorio, xxiii. 124. 2 Ibid., xxiii. 127. which may exist where the poetical gift is either wanting or present in only inferior degree: the severe is much more imitable, and this a little spoils its charm. A kind of semblance of this style keeps Young going, one may say, through all the nine parts of that most indifferent production, the Night Thoughts. But the grand style in simplicity is inimitable." 1 A striking example of exposition without unity is given by Dr. Phelps: ... "A Presbyterian clergyman in a Southern city once preached a sermon on these words, "It containeth much.' The text was a fragment broken from a verse in the Book of Ezekiel, 'Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup: it containeth much.' The passage is a comminatory one addressed to the ancient people of God. The preacher, probably in that vacuity of thought which is apt to dilute the beginnings of sermons, pounced upon the word 'it,' which had the distinction of heading the text. He remarked, that, as the context indicated, the word had for its antecedent the word "cup." Thy sister's cup: it containeth much:" thou shalt drink of it; of thy sister's cup shalt thou drink; it containeth much: a full cup, brethren, it containeth much: yes, thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup; it containeth much,— these are the words of our text.' 66 “I give you in the rough my impressions of the sermon after thirty years, not claiming verbal accuracy. The impression of the exposition, however, which has remained in my mind, justifies this inane mouthing of the text as the preliminary to the following exposition. The exegesis of the word 'cup' was the burden of it. I do not exaggerate in saying that he told us of the great variety of senses in which the word 'cup' is used in the Scriptures. A marvellous word is it. The Bible speaks of the 'cup of salvation,' and, again, of the 'cup of consolation;' then it is the 'cup of trembling,' and the 'wine-cup of fury.' Babylon is called a 'golden cup.' The cup of Joseph which was hidden in the sack of Benjamin was a 'silver cup.' The Pharisees, we are told, made clean the outside of the cup;' and, he shall not lose his reward who giveth a cup of 6 1 Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism; On Translating Homer, Last Words. cold water in the name of a disciple.' And therefore in the text we are told, 'Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup: it containeth much.' The preacher rambled on in this manner, with his finger on the right page of the concordance, till at last the sound of the word 'cup' was made familiar to the audience; and having accumulated, as I have in this paragraph, a respectable bulk of ‘sounding brass,' the preacher announced as his subject of discourse the future punishment of the wicked.” 1 Clearness and unity are essential to every exposition: clearness that lights up every part of the subject, unity that keeps the subject constantly in view. These qualities are, however, not enough for exposition in its highest form. A writer who The principles good writing that govern all apply to expo sítion. expects to interest his readers should comply with the principles that govern all good writing. He should avoid prolixity as well as excessive conciseness: while taking care not to leave a topic until he has made himself understood, he should not dwell on it after he has made himself understood. He should never explain that which does not need explanation. He should never move so slowly as to make his hearers or his readers impatient. "Mr. Jones,' said Chief Justice Marshall on one occasion, to an attorney who was rehearsing to the Court some elementary principle from Blackstone's Commentaries, 'there are some things which the Supreme Court of the United States may be presumed to know.' Many an audience would give the same reproof to some expository preachers, if they could. Their defenceless position should shield them from assumptions of their ignorance which they can not resent. Be generous, therefore, to the intelligence of your hearers. Assume sometimes that they know the Lord's Prayer. Do not quote the Ten Commandments as if they had been revealed to you, instead of to Moses. The Sermon on the Mount is a very ancient specimen of moral philosophy: do not cite it as if it were an 1 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching, lect. xiii. enactment of the last Congress. The Parables are older than the 'Meditations' of Aurelius Antoninus: why, then, rehearse them as if from the proof-sheets of the first edition? In a word, why suffer the minds of your audience to be more nimble than your own, and to outrun you? "It degrades exposition to putter over it in a pettifogging way, trusting nothing to the good sense of an audience, and assuming nothing as already known to them. On the text, 'I am the good shepherd,' said a preacher in the chapel of this Seminary, and that after twenty years of experience in the pulpit, -'a sheep, my brethren, is a very defenseless animal. A shepherd is one who takes care of sheep.' If a New England audience can not be supposed to know what a sheep is, what do they know?"1 In exposition, as in other kinds of composition, a writer should stimulate interest by variety in expression. He may avail himself of every means by which he can explain or illustrate his thought, comparison, contrast, antithesis, climax, epigram, figure of speech,- but he should never forget that these are means to the end of exposition and are useful so far and so far only as they conduce to that end. Exposition Except in the most abstruse writing, exposition may be, and usually is, accompanied by passages of description or of narration that give life and variety to the composition and at the same time help to communicate combined with the meaning intended. Exposition may prepare the way for a description or a narrative; it often serves to explain what the descriptive writer or the narrator is talking about; and it sometimes uses description or narration as a means to its own end.2 description and narration. 1 Austin Phelps: The Theory of Preaching, lect. xiii. 2 See the passage from Taine (pp. 305, 306), and that from Webster (pp. 308-310). In the following passage, both description and narration are used in the service of exposition, the exposition of a woman's personality: "Mrs. Peacocke, in her line, succeeded almost as well [as her husband]. She was a woman something over thirty years of age when she first came to Bowick, in the very pride and bloom of woman's beauty. Her complexion was dark and brown,- so much so, that it was impossible to describe her colour generally by any other word. But no clearer skin was ever given to a woman. Her eyes were brown, and her eye-brows black, and perfectly regular. Her hair was dark and very glossy, and always dressed as simply as the nature of a woman's head will allow. Her features were regular, but with a great show of strength. She was tall for a woman, but without any of that look of length under which female altitude sometimes suffers. She was strong and well made, and apparently equal to any labour to which her position might subject her. When she had been at Bowick about three months, a boy's leg had been broken, and she had nursed him, not only with assiduity, but with great capacity. The boy was the youngest son of the Marchioness of Altamont; and when Lady Altamont paid a second visit to Bowick, for the sake of tak. ing her boy home as soon as he was fit to be moved, her ladyship made a little mistake. With the sweetest and most caressing smile in the world, she offered Mrs. Peacocke a tenpound note. 'My dear madam,' said Mrs. Peacocke, without the slightest reserve or difficulty, 'it is so natural that you should do this, because you cannot of course understand my position; but it is altogether out of the question.' The Marchioness blushed, and stammered, and begged a hundred pardons. Being a good-natured woman, she told the whole story to Mrs. Wortle. 'I would just as soon have offered the money to the Marchioness herself,' said Mrs. Wortle, as she told it to her husband. 'I would have done it a deal sooner,' said the Doctor. 'I am not in the least afraid of Lady Altamont; but, I stand in awful dread of Mrs. Peacocke.' Nevertheless Mrs. Peacocke had done her work by the little lord's bed-side, just as though she had been a paid nurse. "And so she felt herself to be. Nor was she in the least ashamed of her position in that respect. If there was aught of |