beginning of a subject, ought to employ nothing but short sentences. They can afterwards be united into longer sentences, should that be thought desirable. In the following extract from a well-written article in the Times (of 28th March, 1872) it will be seen (1) how much is added to the clearness of statement by the shortness of the sentences; and (2) how the indignation of the writer hurries him into ever shorter and shorter sentences as he approaches the statement of results.

The

"But the circumstances under which tithes in kind are collected in Greece add to the evil necessarily attendant on their existence. It is the old story of Turkish rule, scarcely changed, save in name. The pasha used to send his soldiers out to collect the spoil at harvest and vintage time. The pasha-only we now call him the monarch-still does the same. Minister of the Interior at Athens appoints prefects and sub-prefectsnomarchs and eparchs-and when he issues his orders, these creatures of his who do his bidding make a circuit of their nomarchies and eparchies, with the military at their back assisting them. Until they come round no man dares to realize the fruits of his toil. His corn must be brought to the public threshing-floors to be threshed out in the presence of the official, who subtracts the tenth of the grain as it is threshed. His grapes must not yield their wine without the check of government superintendence. His olives must wait until it is convenient to the State to attend the crushing of them. Can any system be worse? What inducement is there for a man to improve the quality of his produce? The making of wine and the making of oil are operations which cannot be properly conducted without the greatest care and attention. The right moment for every stage must be seized. The Greek peasant must take his time at the direction of the eparch. And people say his oil is bitter and his wine is resinous! The marvel is that he can bring either to market in a condition to induce men to purchase it. A centralized Government hampers him in all his acts, and does nothing in return to mitigate its paternal cruelty. It does not make a road. It leaves irrigation to take care of itself. It neglects its own forests--which are, bit by bit, stripped away. It fails altogether to provide an honest magistracy."

Another good result of short sentences is that they enable us to avoid intricacy. Many persons, especially in public speaking, plunge into a sentence, lose themselves in a

multitude of subordinate and qualifying clauses, and reappear at the other end lame, pithless, and ineffective. For example, such a speaker begins :

“It will, I think, for my own part, be generally allowed at least by those who have had opportunities of judging -that no one who is not absolutely unable to estimate the importance of the question we are now met to consider, and which [a speaker of this kind holds on with a sort of despair to his and whiches] no one can overestimate the value of" and here he sticks fast.

He might have begun with short sentences, in which case he would always have had in his eye the close of his sentence when he entered on the beginning of it. Imitators of Mr. Gladstone, who indulges in a style of the extremest involution-especially when he is trying to explain himself -are in great danger of this catastrophe.

Ben Jonson says:—

"Periods are beautiful when they are not too long; for so they have their strength too, as in a pike or javelin.”

The two short sentences in the middle of the following passage give a striking force to the presentation of the argument. They are like shots fired point-blank.

"Now it does not appear to us to be the first object that people should always believe in the established religion, or be attached to the established government. A religion may be false. A government may be oppressive. And whatever support governments give to false religions, or religion to oppressive governments, we consider as a clear evil."-MACAULAY.

VII. Clearness may be gained by the REPETITION of the same word in the same sentence; and it ought certainly never to be sacrificed to a desire to avoid such repetition.

There is a foolish rule-generally made absolute—in books on Composition, against the use of the same word in the same sentence. For example, such guides declare

you must not say, "He went to Liverpool by rail, and then went home in his carriage;" but "He went to Liverpool by rail, and then proceeded home in his carriage." But every one must see that this is intolerably stiff, pedantic, and feeble, and that only a weak and affected person would use phraseology of this kind.

Now Macaulay, who understands perfectly how strength and force and clearness are gained, was never at pains to avoid such repetition. Take the following examples :—

"Tacitus tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till stimulants lose their power."

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"Black coats and red coats,' said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, are the curses of the nation.' But the discontent was not confined to the black coats and the red coats."

"A dispatch is written asking for instructions when Bonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come when he is at the Tuileries. A dispatch is written, asking for instructions, when he is at the Tuileries. The instructions come when he is at St. Helena. It would be just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern England at Calcutta."

In these extracts it is plain that the vividness and vigour and clearness of Macaulay's style are increased by the repetition of the words he uses, while an attempt to avoid them would have been felt as a sacrifice of the matter to the manner. In one word, it would have been plain that he was thinking more of his words than of his subject, and this is always felt to be weakness and affectation.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LAW OF SPECIFICATION.

HIS law is a close ally of the Law of Fulness. A person who has a complete knowledge of what he is talking about will not be likely to employ meaningless or half-meaning words and vague phrases. His words will be the things themselves, and not a dim suggestion or a vague hint of them. It is perhaps worth observing that it is chiefly halfeducated persons who employ vague words and " general" terms; they do not know exactly what they are talking about, and take refuge in wide Latinized polysyllables, which hold their own meaning perhaps, and ever so much more; and thus the responsibility of finding out what that meaning is, is thrown upon the hearer or the reader. The inquiry often ends in the discovery that there is no meaning; but this inquiry is valuable for itself. Persons, on the other hand, who have had no book-education-seamen, navvies, ploughmen, and other labourers-speaking only of what they know, and having the whole vocabulary of abstract conceptions entirely closed to them, employ nothing but specific terms. And thoroughly educated men meet them on this ground, for they have the same experience of the world of thought as labourers have of the world of matter, and they refuse to speak or write about a subject without having previously defined their terms.

SPECIFICATION may apply either (a) to words, or (b) to phrases.

(a.) As regards words. Go, for example, is a highly generic term. Under it may come the specific terms travel, visit, stroll, saunter, gallop, walk, march, and others. If a city was taken, we should say whether it was stormed, or surprised, or starved out, or battered down by cannon. an army was defeated, we would say whether it was outmanoeuvred, or routed, or crushed.

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If the event or subject we are writing about can be seen, we should do our utmost to see it.

(b.) As regards phrases, it may be well often to go into details instead of merely summing up in one or two words. This has the effect of giving vividness to the style, and of making the statement fasten more strongly on the memory of the reader. Thus Macaulay, when complaining that history tells us little about the working-classes, says that she "is silent about those who held the plough, who tended the oxen, who toiled at the looms of Norwich, and squared the Portland stone for St. Paul's." * Instead of saying that nobles and even princes were proud of a University degree, he says that they "were proud to receive from a University the privilege of wearing the doctoral scarlet." Instead of saying that the Dutch would never incur the risk of an invasion, he says that "they would never incur the risk of seeing an invading army encamped between Utrecht and Amsterdam."

Again, it adds to the strength and vividness of the style, when notable circumstances of place and time are mentioned. Thus Carlyle describes Raleigh's execution as taking place on a "cold, hoar-frosty morning ;" and in another passage

*Minto's English Literature, p. 139.

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