Particularly, as to the affairs of this world, integrity hath many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing with the world; it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it. The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker, and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them.-Tillotson.

2. Pleonasm, which is not so much a useless repetition of sense as a mere superfluity of expression:

I went home full of a great many serious reflections.-Guardian. If he happens to have any leisure upon his hands.-Spectator. He saw that the reason why witchcraft was ridiculed was, because it was a phase of the miraculous. -Lecky.

Until this be altered for the better, I do not see that we are likely to grow much wiser, or that though political power may pass into different hands, that it will be exercised more purely or sensibly than it has been.-Dr. Arnold.

3. Verbosity, or unnecessary profuseness, to remedy which it is often necessary to re-cast as well as to blot. It differs from pleonasm and tautology in being more pervasive. Forms of it are prolixity, the enumeration of things either trivial, or so obvious that they might better have been left to the reader to supply; paraphrase, a too diffuse explanation of something difficult or obscure; circumlocution, a roundabout mode of speech, allowable only when direct assertion might be offensive, or for the sake of variety or emphasis. Euphemism often takes the form of the last, as in the following, commended by Longinus: 'The appointed journey,' for death; 'The fallen are borne forth publicly by the state,' that is buried. What has been said requires the further caution, that the coupling of synonymous words and phrases is admissible either to put greater stress on prominent points or to explain an obscure term by one that is clear. A sentence is to be judged with reference to both thought and

impression. The lengthened 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' expresses more, and expresses it more vividly, than the direct 'Shall not God do right?' The first serves as an argument in support of the sentiment, since it represents the Deity in a character to which injustice is peculiarly unsuitable. The fault to be chiefly guarded against is the repetition of trite and unimpressive forms.

The importance of attention to order, with a view to perspicuity, has already been noticed. Energy, in arrangement, depends (1) on the right disposition of the capital parts. The more emphatic ideas should be expressed in the more emphatic positions, which are, in general, the beginning and the end of the sentence, especially the latter. Unless otherwise determined by the thought, the movement should be from the weakest or least striking statements to those which are stronger, the strongest being reserved for the last. The following are improvable:

His government gave courage to the English barons to carry farther their opposition.-Hume.

There will be few in the next generation who will not at least be able to write and read.-Addison.

Yet this, like all unusual methods, can only be occasionally employed.-Dr. Bascom.

The temperament of our language is phlegmatic, like that of our climate.-Dr. Campbell.

All these the third excepted answer well enough the requirements of clearness; but all would be strengthened by a different collocation:

His government gave courage to the English barons to carry their opposition farther.

There will be few in the next generation who will not be able at least to read and write.

Yet this, like all unusual methods, can be employed only occasionally.

The temperament of our language, like that of our climate, is phlegmatic.

(2) on the preservation of unity, the subserviency of every part to one principal affirmation. The usual precepts to be received, however, with limitations—are: not to shift the scene in the course of the same sentence; not to crowd into one sentence ideas which have no natural connection with the leading proposition; not to add clauses after a full and perfect close; to avoid an excess of parentheses. These faults can be perceived in the following:

Ojeda sent his stolen gold and Indians home to Saint Domingo, in order that more men and supplies might in return be despatched to him; and he inaugurated the building of his new town by a foray into the territories of a neighboring Indian chief, who was reported to possess much gold.—Helps.

And here it was often found of absolute necessity to influence or cool the passions of the audience, especially at Rome, where Tully spoke; and with whose writings young divines, I mean those among them who read old authors, are more conversant than with those of Demosthenes; who, by many degrees, excelled the other, at least as an orator.—Swift.

The next day upon the plains, Dr. Henchman, one of the prebends of Salisbury, met the king, the Lord Wilmot and Philips then leaving him to go to the sea-coast to find a vessel, the doctor conducting the king to a place called Heale, three miles from Salisbury, belonging then to Sergeant Hyde, who was afterwards ChiefJustice of the King's Bench, and then in possession of the widow of his elder brother; a house that stood alone from neighbors and from any highway, where, coming in late, he supped with some gentlemen that were accidentally in the house which could not very well be avoided.-Clarendon.

There are few principles of energy which are not violated by one or more of these passages. The remedy, in all such cases, lies in transposition or resolution, or in both. The disjointed or overcrowded sentence should be broken up into distinct and more congruous ones; the prominent in idea should be prominent in position; particles should

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be concealed in the middle; a significant and pregnant word or phrase should conclude the assertion. Youthful writers not infrequently commit the error of combining in one sentence irrelevant materials an error which Artemas Ward burlesques by saying, 'I am an early riser, but my wife is a Presbyterian.' Of course, attention absorbed in the search for relations that do not exist is so much abstracted from relations that do exist. One looks in vain for the point of connection, looking at nothing, yet struggling to see something. It should be added that the parenthesis, which may or may not be indicated by the curves, may, if not too long, too frequent, or too irrelevant, be of great value for emphasis or explanation. Thus:

Some of his own works show that he had at times strong, excellent common sense; and that he had the virtue of charity to a high degree is indubitable; but his friends (of whom he made woful choice) have taken care to let the world know that in behavior he was an ill-natured bear, and in opinions as senseless a bigot as an old washerwoman — a brave composition for a philosopher!-Horace Walpole on Dr. Johnson.

It should also be borne in mind that different particulars, however numerous, are not objectionable if kept in due subordination to the chief idea or statement:

He urged to him that the desperate situation of the Duke of Normandy made it requisite for that prince to bring matters to a speedy decision, and put his whole fortune on the issue of battle, but that the king of England, in his own country, beloved by his own subjects, provided with every supply, had more certain and less dangerous means of insuring to himself the victory; that the Norman troops, elated, on the one hand, with the highest hopes, and seeing, on the other, no resource in case of a discomfiture, would fight to the last extremity, and being the flower of all the warriors on the Continent, must be regarded as formidable to the English; that if their first fire, which is always the most dangerous, were allowed to languish for want of action, if they were harassed with small skirmishes, shortened in provisions, and fatigued with the bad weather

and deep roads during the winter season, which was approaching, they must fall an easy and bloodless prey to their enemy; that if a general action were delayed, the English, sensible of the imminent danger to which their properties as well as liberties were exposed from those rapacious invaders, would hasten from all quarters to his assistance, and would render his army invincible; that at least, if he thought it necessary to hazard a battle, he ought not to expose his own person, but reserve, in case of disastrous accidents, some resource to the liberty and independence of the kingdom; and that having once been so unfortunate as to be constrained to swear, and that upon the holy relics, to support the pretentions of the Duke of Normandy, it were better that the command of the army should be intrusted to another, who, not being bound by those sacred ties, might give the soldiers more assured hopes of a prosperous issue to the combat.-Hume.

The last example brings us again to the division of sentences into periodic and loose. The former, concentrating its force at a point, gives strength and dignity, but is too stately for the highest energy. The latter, being easier, less obtrusive, and more consonant with the spontaneous action of thought, must be the staple of composition. Finally, the unity of the paragraph or of the essay, like that of the sentence, implies the presence of one governing image, around which facts group themselves in progressive transition, according to their relative value and pertinence.

From the previous consideration of figures, it is evident that they conduce much to energy of expression by contributing to distinctness, to emphasis, to variety, and to conciseness. What has been said and exemplified elsewhere, in detail, may, so far as it relates to the present point, be summed up, illustratively, as follows:

He struck me as much like a steam-engine in trowsers.-Sidney Smith on Daniel Webster.

The head is on the block-the axe rushes--dumb lies the world; that wild, yelling world with all its madness is behind thee. -Carlyle.