we are again able to produce a great variety of effects, by varying the kinds of our sentences and by applying to all kinds the principles of Unity, of Mass, and of Coherence. In our composition of paragraphs and of wholes, we are little trammelled by good use; so we may vary our effects by the application of these principles almost as we please. Modern style may be regarded, then, as the result of a constant and by no means finished contest between good use and the principles of composition. And, finally, realizing that any effect in style must be produced only by means of our composition of the elements, we should never forget that in our choice and our composition alike there are two things to keep in mind: their denotation, — what they name; and their connotation, — what they suggest.

VI.

CLEARNESS.

To this point we have been considering the outward and visible aspect of style. Henceforth we shall approach the subject in another way. Of a given piece of style we shall ask ourselves, not what it consists of, but what effect it produces. We shall concern ourselves chiefly, not with its elements, but with its qualities. Widely various as the impressions which style can make evidently are, they may, we have seen, be summed up under three and only three headings. In the first place, any piece of style appeals to the understanding; we understand it, or we do not understand. it, or we are doubtful whether we understand it or not; in other words, it has an intellectual quality. In the second place, it either interests us, or bores us, or leaves us indifferent; it appeals to our emotions; it has an emotional quality. Finally, it either pleases us, or displeases us, or leaves us neither pleased nor offended; it appeals to our taste; it has a quality which I may call æsthetic. Under one of these headings, as I have said, fall in a general way all the qualities of style which I have discovered. We shall discuss these three headings in turn: the intellectual

quality under the head of Clearness, the emotional under the head of Force, the æsthetic under the head

may

of Elegance. Clearness - the quality before us now -I best define as the distinguishing quality of a style that cannot be misunderstood. To be thoroughly clear, it is not enough that style express the writer's meaning; style must so express this meaning that no rational reader can have any doubt as to what the meaning is. To come as near clearness as I could, for example, I deliberately avoided pronouns in that last sentence, repeating style and meaning with a clumsiness defensible only on the score of lucidity.

The first difficulty that meets us in considering this quality is a matter of every-day experience. One need know little of life to be familiar with the fact that plenty of things are daily said and written which are perfectly clear to some people, and at the same time wholly incomprehensible to others. A good many of my friends at college are deep in one or another kind of scientific study. I am apt to lunch with one of them who frequently has in his hand an elementary treatise on Physics. Once or twice lately I have looked into this book. The Preface and a considerable part of the text are indubitably written in the English language; but a large part of most pages that I have happened to look at is covered with formula which group themselves in my mind under the general heading a+b=. To a physicist, in all probability, that formula would mean

nothing whatever; but it would mean exactly as much as any of his profoundly significant formulæ mean to me. The only difference would be that while he and I know that my formula is probably nonsensical, we both know that in all probability his formulæ are not. To me, then, a reasonably educated man, an elementary treatise on Physics is wholly lacking in clearness; to a student of Physics, on the other hand, it is as clear as A B C. Again, among my pupils at Harvard there are a number who take a healthy interest in the game of foot-ball; and some of these write detailed reports of the games for the college papers. These reports I have sometimes had the curiosity to examine. Like the textbook of Physics, they are indubitably written in something that purports to be English. "Full-back," for example, is obviously a compound of familiar English words; so is "rush-line;" so is "a foul tackle;" and so on. But a column or two about full-backs and half-backs and rush-lines and such things convey to my ordinarily educated mind no definite meaning whatever; and this because, perhaps unwisely, I have never made myself familiar with the technical practices and terms of the game of foot-ball. To a great many undergraduates, on the other hand, I find these reports of sport perfectly clear. In matters of foot-ball their technical learning is as admirable as is my scientific friend's in the matter of Physics. In each case I am left in helpless bewilderment. But I discover that I can have my revenge by addressing physicists and

sportsmen in the technical terms of rhetoric, which to all appearances equally bewilder them. These very simple examples, such as each of you must constantly meet in daily life, if only when you hear people gossiping about friends of theirs whom you do not happen to know, are enough to show what we mean when we assert that clearness is not a positive quality, but a relative; that what may be perfectly clear to one man may be hopelessly obscure to another.

In a general discussion, however, we must not rest satisfied with a fact like this. The question before us is, very broadly, what kind of style is generally clear, and what not. As clearness is obviously a relative quality, this question means, in other words, what kind of human being shall we generally aim to address? And this question admits of a pretty definite answer. A generally clear style is a style adapted to the understanding of the average man. The more widely intelligible a given piece of writing is, the clearer.

I know few points in rhetoric which arouse in clever people more impatience than this. To clever people, no matter how philanthropic their general scheme of life, there are few more unlovely facts than the average man. He is commonplace; and what is commonplace is precisely what a clever person does not wish to be. The aristocratic instinct, which makes human beings in general exert so much of their energy to distinguish themselves from their fellows, makes clever people, who are fond of talking about " aristocracies