in many contradictions. In his speech to the jury he touched upon the absence of motive:

But, on the threshold of the inquiry, every one puts the question, What motive had the prosecutor to be guilty of the abominable conduct of feigning a robbery? It is difficult to assign motives. The jury do not know enough of his character or circumstances. Such things have happened, and may happen again. Suppose he owed money in Boston, and had it not to pay? Who knows how high he might estimate the value of a plausible apology? Some men have also a whimsical ambition of distinction. There is no end to the variety of modes in which human vanity exhibits itself. A story of this nature excites the public sympathy. It attracts general attention. It causes the name of the prosecutor to be celebrated as a man who has been attacked, and, after a manly resistance, overcome by robbers, and who has renewed his resistance as soon as returning life and sensation enabled him, and, after a second conflict, has been quite subdued, beaten and bruised out of all sense and sensation, and finally left for dead on the field. It is not easy to say how far such motives, trifling and ridiculous as most men would think them, might influence the prosecutor, when connected with any expectation of favor or indulgence, if he wanted such, from his creditors.-WEBSTER: Defence of Kennistons.

It may

be observed that had Webster been trying to convict Goodridge, instead of trying to acquit his clients, he would undoubtedly have failed.

It will be noticed that Webster uses the word "motive." This is the correct designation of those impulses which urge a person to the doing of an act.

The word "instrument" or "agency" is used to designate the person or thing by means of which a result is produced. A railroad, e. g., is an instrument or means of communication. In writing upon the benefits of railroads we undertake to state the good results that come from using them. We may in like manner state the benefits of the telegraph, of the telephone, etc.

58. General Idea. The word "idea," as here used, includes not only mental impressions (ideas proper), but also mental states and qualities and powers, which cannot be strictly classified and defined.

E. g., memory, as a faculty of the mind, can be defined by the psychologist. But mercy is not susceptible of definition. Yet that it can be successfully expounded is evidenced by Portia's speech, Merchant of Venice, iv. sc. 1.

Two definitions, loose and indirect, of eloquence have been given (§ 50). The following is Webster's well-known indirect exposition of it:

When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech farther than as it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is eloquent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object,—this, this is eloquence; or rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence,—it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.-WEBSTER: Adams and Jefferson.

All such definition and exposition, when examined, will be found to consist either in stating what the idea is not, or in enumerating the effects produced by an indefinable force, or in using an illustrative parallel (analogy). By means of analogy Emerson defines the orator, saying of him that he plays upon his audience as a musician plays

upon the keys of a piano. St. Paul expounds charity negatively:

Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.-1 Cor. xiii. 4.

59. Mixed Exposition.-Nearly all expository writing may be put under one or the other of the three heads, Definition, Classification, and General Statement, although the dividing-lines are not always to be sharply drawn. Occasionally we meet with a passage that seems too composite to be put under any one head; e. g., the passage from Darwin (§ 21). Here the author begins by sketching in the most general way a bit of animated nature. This is partly generalized description, partly the exposition of a group of phenomena. Then follow the laws which account for the phenomena. At last, the moral emotions evoked by the sight of varying life under unvarying laws.

The numerous experiments mentioned in works of science are, in the main, tests or arguments to prove or disprove certain views. Yet they are also expositions of the phenomena under examination. Furthermore, by giving each step in the experiment in chronological order they assume the form of narration.

sense.

POPULAR EXPOSITION-THE ESSAY.

60. Thus far Exposition has been taken in its strict But the term is also used in a loose popular sense to designate that mode of writing in which the writer undertakes to give a summary of his views upon a matter of public interest. In this sense an exposition is practically an Essay; e. g., Macaulay's essays on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, on Mill, on Bentham, on the Utilitarian Theory of Government. These essays just named are a mixture of exposition and argument. The essay on Lord Bacon is in part biography, in part an exposition of Ba

con's doctrines. The essay on Chatham is for the most part biographical and historical narrative and description, but with some exposition.

The young reader should not let himself be confused by mere words. Thus Tyndall denominated one of his books, Fragments of Science, a "series of detached essays, lectures, and reviews." He used the word here in its original sense of a trial or attempt, and meant thereby that he was trying to give the reader a brief expository outline of the doctrines of physical science. On examination, the book is found to be scientific exposition pure and simple, but adapted to the unprofessional reader.

An essay by Macaulay and one by Tyndall are thus quite different in substance; but in form they are alike to the extent that they are both short popular attempts, rather than complete treatises. Essays of the Macaulay kind may be called, by way of distinction, literary essays.

61. The varieties of Literary Essay are too numerous and too heterogeneous for systematic treatment. Only a few of the most striking can be mentioned here.

The Conversational or Personal Essay is a rambling discourse upon men and books and events. It has no principle of unity other than the individuality of the writer. If that is sufficiently important and attractive, we are glad to put ourselves under its influence. For the influence of any strong character helps to form our own character, independently of any positive knowledge we may gain by the way.

The writings of Montaigne are often cited as examples of the personal essay. Many of the "Spectator" papers are in this line; they introduce the personality of Addi son or Steele, giving the writer's polite jest at the foibles and follies of society. Many of De Quincey's writings, also, are personal essays. They acquaint us with his physical and mental traits, with his opinions, his estimates of his friends, and theirs of him. In fact, De Quin

cey found it impossible to exclude himself wholly from anything that he wrote, even from such didactic or critical writings as those upon Rhetoric and Style.

The Didactic Essay is an attempt to treat in a popular manner some question of popular interest, e. g., in finance, politics, public morals, jurisprudence, without obtruding the writer's personality. It is substantially exposition, but exposition unsystematic and suited to the comprehension of the unsystematic reader. Most of the magazine and review articles of the present time are of this kind. They are necessarily sketchy, raising many questions, perhaps, but answering only a few, and in general stimulating the reader's curiosity rather than satisfying his desire for knowledge.

The Critical Essay is an attempt to apply the canons of art to recent productions, and to inform thereby the reader as to their merits. Much valuable literature has come to us in this shape. Thus Lessing's Hamburg Dramaturgie, which began as a series of semi-weekly criticisms upon the plays and actors of the Hamburg stage, soon developed into the most suggestive exposition of dramatic art in general. Matthew Arnold's papers, On Translating Homer, while they dealt nominally with the insufficiencies of certain translators, old and new, of Homer, in reality developed a theory of the literary value of Homeric poetry. But usually the critical essay, like the didactic, is too short and too unsystematic to give wholly satisfying information.